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March 28, 2024, 06:13:35 PM

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Notably terrible X-Files Episodes

Started by Sebastian Cobb, March 19, 2021, 03:02:06 PM

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Sebastian Cobb

I know it's common knowledge the series dropped off a cliff but I Just decided to rewatch the William Gibson X-Files episode Killswitch which I knew would've dated really badly with it's cyberpunkness but saw at the time genuinely liked, but I then saw on wikipedia there's another Gibson episode in series 7 called First Person Shooter.

Fuck me it's amazingly bad, The Lone Gunmen have been consultants on a virtual reality game (projected inside a closed room, so basically a Holodeck) where a couple of people actually died. And it's basically like they're just playing a gothy version of laserquest.

There's loads of pathetic campy sexism throughout and the character in the game they try and find in real life turns out to be this stripper that got 3d scanned, but she makes a joke about 'causing a fuss with the metal detector' and does the leg-cross from Basic Instinct at one point, it's amazingly cringeworthy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEK0ktoBudY

And a fan vid of the 'in game' bits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x6pbQNMuWY

Mulder seems cartoonishly gleeful about the whole thing. I guess it could be seen as a parody or commentary about gaming attitudes in men but it's so bloody awful it gets lost.

I do want to go back and run through the series as I do/did enjoy it but at the time I watched it sporadically and I think I missed the later series entirely.

Are there any other episodes that deserve attention for being dreadful?

up_the_hampipe

Yeah, First Person Shooter is absolute bollocks.

Teso Dos Bichos was so bad, the crew had t-shirts made saying "Teso Dos Bichos Survivor". Basically, the monster that week turned out to be a bunch of house cats.

Also, there was that episode "Space" in season 1 with the worst special effects ever. Still amuses me:


purlieu

The first time I saw Space, it scared the shit out of me. I was probably only 10 or 11. Revisiting it was a hell of a let down. Easily one of the worst in the whole show.

Phil_A

First Person Shooter was pretty much a total embarrassment from start to finish, but my choice for all-time stinker has to be the same season's Fight Club, which was a Chris Carter-scripted attempt at doing the kind wacky off-beat comedy which a writer of Vince Gilligan's calibre probably could've pulled off, but Carter...nah. Every attempt at humour falls utterly flat and the episode is dominated by a teeth-grindingly obnoxious guest star appearance by Kathy Griffin. At one point the plot needs Mulder to be out of the way for a bit, so he gets inexplicably sucked down a manhole for no apparent reason. There's also a "funny" reveal at the end that Mulder & Scully have basically been beaten to a pulp, which is just completely baffling.

The revival seasons also had some top-drawer clunkers, "This" from Season 11 is utterly nonsensical and feels like it was written by someone who'd never seen the show before...but it's Glen fucking Morgan!

up_the_hampipe

Haha, I forgot about Mulder going down the manhole. It was probably good that Duchovny left after season 7 because everyone was really going through the motions by that point. I think season 8 (and the character of Doggett) is quite underrated.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: purlieu on March 19, 2021, 03:23:10 PM
The first time I saw Space, it scared the shit out of me. I was probably only 10 or 11. Revisiting it was a hell of a let down. Easily one of the worst in the whole show.

The first one I saw had Tooms slithering about in a sewer so rightly shit me up, looking at the BBC air dates I'd have been 28 8.

Deanjam

These are all great episodes you monsters. The worst one was that incredibly dull episode penned by Gillian Andrrson. And every conspiracy episode made after season 5 is rather tedious.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I don't know about terrible episodes as such, but I had an attack of nostalgia a few years ago and sought out the series, only to realise that pretty much all of the episodes I remembered fondly were from the first season. Happily, they held up pretty well. It was only really the cheap synthy strings on the score that seemed a bit naff.

Sebastian Cobb

I know the X-Files was quite happy to not be grounded by science or what is/was possible and it works most of the time but it annoyed me FPS made no effort to explain how a projection was causing physical harm to people both via a gun and a sword.

I mean I'm happy to accept the prop crt projectors that did a shit job of showing a football match in a pub could somehow do a 360 degree immersive experience, somehow, but come the fuck on.

purlieu

There was one about a serial killer that really felt like it was written for an entirely different show, so they just showed him having a demon-like figure in the shadows for a brief second to make it X Files-friendly. I remember that being so fucking tedious.

madhair60

All the absolutely STINKING "My Struggle" episodes in the revival.

up_the_hampipe

Quote from: Deanjam on March 19, 2021, 03:53:22 PM
These are all great episodes you monsters.

You are insane.

Quote from: Deanjam on March 19, 2021, 03:53:22 PM
The worst one was that incredibly dull episode penned by Gillian Andrrson. And every conspiracy episode made after season 5 is rather tedious.

You're right there.

purlieu

The conspiracy cutoff point is surely Two Fathers / One Son in the middle of season 6, which actually quite neatly ties the whole thing up. Then there was some loosely related crap for a couple of years before the whole Super Soldier conspiracy came along and it all went down the drain.

I've forgotten - or not seen - all of these from the original broadcast and have been rewatching - currently up to mid-season 3. I think Teso Dos Bichos is the last one I watched.

There are some absolutely great ones in S2-3 though (sorry, not the point of the thread). Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, in particular struck me as one that must be a fan favourite. I'm trying to pace it a little, as I understand S4 and S5 are meant to be the better ones, and don't want to race through them to be left slogging through a load of shite ones.

mothman

The show just should have ended after season 7. Taken a year or two off, then movies. Don't know why that wasn't ever considered, unless the underwhelming reaction to Fight The Future put them off.

I liked "all things." And "Fight Club." The wackier or format-bending, the better, often. "War Of The Coprophages." "The Unnatural." "Dreamland." "Monday." "Je Souhaite." And - granted from after s7 - "Improbable" and " Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" and " Rm9sbG93ZXJz."

GoblinAhFuckScary

I'm a little amazed at how I watched every single episode of the original run one summer and can remember almost absolutely nothing of it. Wasn't actually an incredibly good show was it.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: GoblinAhFuckScary on March 19, 2021, 05:16:38 PM
I'm a little amazed at how I watched every single episode of the original run one summer and can remember almost absolutely nothing of it. Wasn't actually an incredibly good show was it.

I bought the DVD's about 10 years ago with the intention of doing that, and didn't get round to it (and now they're on prime in hd anyway) and I think what's stopping me is I'll come to the same conclusion as you. I still want to watch it though.

madhair60

Quote from: GoblinAhFuckScary on March 19, 2021, 05:16:38 PM
I'm a little amazed at how I watched every single episode of the original run one summer and can remember almost absolutely nothing of it. Wasn't actually an incredibly good show was it.

Yes it was. :(

I wrote a little episode guide a while back, I could post it if anyone's interested

Sebastian Cobb

I suspect Millenium will have aged better, despite not being popular and getting axed.

madhair60

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on March 19, 2021, 05:24:23 PM
I suspect Millenium will have aged better, despite not being popular and getting axed.

Horses

GoblinAhFuckScary

Quote from: madhair60 on March 19, 2021, 05:21:50 PM
Yes it was. :(

I wrote a little episode guide a while back, I could post it if anyone's interested

Please do! I'd like a lil refresh. Could be that my feelings are coloured from the dire tenth season I tried to watch

Bazooka

#21
Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, is not badly made but just completely moribund, I know it's a X-aedophila fan favourite.

First Person Shooter goes without saying.

Shapes, does absolutely nothing new with the werewolf format, might as well have made a Mummy escaping from a museum.

Ghost In The Machine, moribund.

Fight Club

My Struggle 3, makes you really not care for Scully by this point.

Edit: First Person Shooter is beyond our consciousness.




Sebastian Cobb


madhair60



Campbell Soupe

#25
Quote from: purlieu on March 19, 2021, 04:11:20 PM
There was one about a serial killer that really felt like it was written for an entirely different show, so they just showed him having a demon-like figure in the shadows for a brief second to make it X Files-friendly. I remember that being so fucking tedious.

Sounds like Irresistible from season two, featuring a "death fetishist" serial killer (cos the censors wouldn't allow "necrophiliac" as originally written). Carter was apparently so impressed with how this one played out, he used it as the inspiration for Millennium.  I found it dull as dish-water and slightly laughable by trying to make hair-washing scary.

Talking of Millennium, the s7 x-files ep Millennium was dog-eggs.  Frank Black's mythic and occasionally brilliant odyssey into the heart of darkness concludes with a tawdry ruck against some crap zombies, in a basement. Disappointing shite.

S7 had some great eps but also some real real low points.  I find the smug, self satisfied, "meta" shenanigans of Hollywood AD pretty much unwatchable.

BlodwynPig

Need a Millennium thread, the far superior (although I love X-Files) Carter series.

JamesTC

Quote from: Bazooka on March 19, 2021, 06:35:13 PM


My Struggle 3, makes you really not care for Scully by this point.

I thought Season 11 was great (The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat might be my all-time favourite episode) but that was absolutely dire. I'd nominate that one as the worst as it near made me stop watching altogether.

petril

Quote from: BlodwynPig on March 19, 2021, 09:00:19 PM
Need a Millennium thread, the far superior (although I love X-Files) Carter series.

call it Minnelllium and start it off with Victoria Wood in dinnerladies

BlodwynPig