I had watched only a few episodes of the show when I was younger, catching them on BBC2, certain episodes would stick out for being really scary.  The most terrifying memory was the Tooms episodes, that character was one of the most brilliantly scariest creations in television or even film.  If you ask anyone, fan or just a casual viewer, they always remember Tooms.  Those chilling, frightening moments is what made The X-Files stand out to me.  Sadly as I was only a casual viewer of the show in my early teens, I could never follow the conspiracy plot.  I always wanted to follow the main arc of the show but that just wasn’t possible as I didn’t own any copy of VHS or DVD.

It wasn’t until about 2005/2006 while I was at uni, I used my student loan and bought the complete DVD boxset, all nine seasons in one glorious box.  It was a great day when I got my hands on that, I could now go through all nine seasons at my own pace and enjoy one of the greatest shows ever created.  Though because I was at uni, I had lots of free time and was able to watch the show, hell I didn’t do work.  I powered through the seasons very quickly, I can’t honestly tell you how long it did take me to watch all nine seasons but I know it was quick.  I will always remember that as one of my fondest memories, people might think that’s sad but it truly was a fantastic experience.  After I had done with it, I passed the DVD’s onto two friends and they felt the same way as I did.

The greatest appeal was the variety of episodes on display, you get the mythology episodes and the stand-alone episodes but the stand-alone episodes are all very different, some scary and some extremelly funny.  My favourite X-Files episodes are the comedy ones, e.g X-Cops, Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.  Many people probably agree that on a whole the stand-alone episodes are much stronger than the mythology ones and for the most part I agree.  Some people don’t like the mythology of the show too much, they even don’t understand it or aren’t that interested.  Yes sometimes the mythology can become quite confusing but most of the time I understood it.  I liked learning more about the mystery behind the show, I wanted to know what happened to Mulder’s sister and I wanted to find out what the truth was.

You cannot talk about The X-Files and not mention the criticism the show got about it’s nine year run.  Many people think, me included that the show should have ended a lot sooner than it did.  For me, I think it should have ended in season 6 when the The Syndicate were killed.  That moment really signalled the end of the show, after that the mythology of the show just limped along, getting stupid Super Soldiers and having Mulder gone for most of two seasons.

I am not a huge fan of the last two seasons of the show, there are some good episodes in there but as a whole they’re very weak, you can’t have The X-Files without Mulder, it just didn’t feel right.  Sadly when people think about The X-Files they concentrate on the negative aspects, the show should be remembered for redefining sci-fi television, it should be remembered as redefining television.  Ask yourself, if X-Files never existed, do you think we would have shows like Lost or Heroes?  I highly doubt it.  X-Files shaped the future of television.