X-Files: Season 4

Details

Hidden away in a dark corner of an FBI office, Fox "Spooky" Mulder works for a division of the FBI dealing with paranormal and unexplained cases. Whilst Mulder is usually quick to suggest that the events surrounding their investigations have a paranormal explanation, Dana Scully remains the level-headed scientist who demands something rather more substantial before accepting his theories.

However, after everything Scully has witnessed since being assigned to the X-Files, it's becoming increasingly difficult for her to explain every event with a convenient rational answer. Her own mysterious abduction and the discovery of a tiny implant in her neck have also made the conspiracy surrounding Mulder's investigations far more personal.

The accusations of a government conspiracy and cover-up surrounding the existence of extraterrestrials continue to expand during Season Four, with the alien bounty hunter, mysterious black oil and evidence of alien experimentation ensuring Mulder has plenty to get excited about and Scully plenty to frown at.

Meanwhile, Mulder's search for the truth surrounding the childhood disappearance of his sister Samantha takes another disturbing turn when a serial killer claims to know what really happened to her. Could Mulder's belief that Samantha was abducted by aliens simply be the result of a traumatised child's memories, or is somebody deliberately trying to make him question everything he's spent his adult life believing?

Things become considerably worse for Scully when she begins suffering unexplained nosebleeds. Medical tests reveal a cancerous mass between her sinus and cerebrum and, worse still, the tumour is considered inoperable. When Mulder discovers that other women who claim to have been abducted have developed similar cancers, he becomes convinced that Scully's illness is another consequence of whatever happened during her disappearance.

With Scully's condition deteriorating, Mulder becomes increasingly desperate to discover a cure and begins looking towards the very conspiracy he's spent years attempting to expose. If the people responsible for Scully's condition created the illness, perhaps they also possess the means to cure it.

Alongside the developing conspiracy and Scully's illness, the agents continue investigating the usual assortment of bizarre X-Files. Inbreeding, supernatural tattoos, shape-shifting, time travel, invisible assassins and assorted unpleasant creatures ensure that neither Mulder nor Scully are likely to be asking the FBI for additional holiday entitlement any time soon.

Picture & Sound

The picture is reasonable enough but, with the large number of dark interior and exterior scenes - don't these people ever work during the day? - the reproduction certainly provides the DVD format with a challenge. Fortunately, there are no significant signs of artifacting, outlining or excessive edge enhancement and the bitrate remains reasonably high throughout the season.

However, there are a few occasions where the image becomes noticeably grainy and, to be honest, it can become something of a distraction. The deliberately gloomy photography has always been an important part of The X-Files, but there's a fine line between atmospheric darkness and simply losing detail in the murk.

Brighter sequences fare considerably better, with convincing colours and a reasonable level of detail for television material of this age. The increased production values are also evident in some of the larger locations and more ambitious effects sequences, which generally survive the transfer well.

Overall, it's certainly superior to watching the programme on VHS and there's nothing seriously wrong with the presentation, but after the impressive improvement offered by Season Three I was perhaps expecting another similar step forward.

The soundtrack is good enough but, unsurprisingly, hardly on a par with a big Hollywood blockbuster. The standard stereo track is functional rather than exciting and could really have benefited from something more adventurous, particularly during the season's more dramatic sequences.

Nevertheless, dialogue remains clear throughout and every member of the cast is easily understood. Mark Snow's atmospheric score also comes across nicely, whilst feeding the soundtrack through a suitable surround decoder can extract a little more ambience from proceedings.

It's still a great pity that Fox couldn't remaster the soundtrack into something more substantial. With nearly £70 disappearing from your wallet for the privilege of owning each season, you'd hope for something capable of giving the speakers a little more exercise.

Menu & Extras

The seven discs continue to be presented in an attractive fold-out box set, although there's still the question of long-term wear and tear on the paper packaging. As the number of box sets increases the collection certainly starts to look increasingly impressive on the shelf, but only time will tell whether those cardboard spines survive years of repeated use.

The accompanying booklet is reasonably useful, providing chapter listings for each episode, although it's still padded out with episode listings and original air dates for the other seasons. Quite why anybody buying Season Four particularly needs a list of episodes from Seasons One to Three is another matter.

As the series progresses, however, the extras continue to improve and Season Four provides the best collection yet. The Truth About Season Four offers the expected retrospective overview, whilst the interviews with the various writers and directors provide some genuinely interesting background information about individual episodes.

The special-effects material is particularly interesting. Although some of the computer-generated effects can still look a little obvious, many of the physical sets and practical effects are remarkably convincing. This is highlighted by the behind-the-scenes look at the filming of Max, where a UFO and passenger aircraft supposedly crash after being attacked by a fighter jet.

The production crew constructed the crash site using pieces of a real aircraft and scattered debris across the surrounding area. Apparently the result was so convincing that members of the public began telephoning local radio and television stations to report that there had genuinely been a plane crash. You can't ask for a much better endorsement of the production design than that.

The interviews concerning Home are equally interesting, particularly given the fuss surrounding the episode's depiction of inbreeding and incest. The episode proved so controversial in America that Fox declined to repeat it for several years. A shame really, because despite all the complaints it's definitely one of the best episodes of the season.

The collection of deleted scenes is also worth investigating, particularly as Chris Carter provides optional commentary explaining why the material was removed. There's at least one scene here that I found especially interesting and it's always useful to see how an episode changes during the editing process.

Better still, we get full audio commentaries for Memento Mori and Small Potatoes. After the rather limited supplementary material on the earlier box sets, it's encouraging to see Fox finally beginning to make proper use of DVD's ability to provide substantial material alongside the episodes themselves.

The inevitable promotional spots and short Behind the Truth pieces are still present, but they're becoming easier to forgive now that they're surrounded by more worthwhile material. Taken as a whole, Season Four offers easily the most satisfying supplementary package of the four sets so far.

Overall

Overall, the quality of the episodes in Season Four remains high, with several genuine classics amongst them. Naturally, there are a few stinkers - twenty-four episodes are never going to maintain exactly the same standard throughout - but fortunately they're few and far between.

The balance between the conspiracy mythology and the more bizarre standalone stories is also just about right. There's enough movement in the larger story to keep you wondering what's really going on, but Mulder and Scully still have plenty of opportunities to disappear into the middle of nowhere and investigate something nasty hiding in a sewer, cupboard or darkened forest.

Unfortunately, I know that in future seasons the alien conspiracy increasingly disappears up its own behind and starts becoming rather tiresome. At this point, though, it's still sufficiently coherent and intriguing to keep me interested. Best make the most of it.

The season certainly doesn't waste any time demonstrating how far it's prepared to push things either. Home is a wonderfully unpleasant piece of television involving an isolated family, incest and a baby discovered buried in a field. Hardly ideal Sunday afternoon viewing with Grandma, then.

The controversy surrounding the episode almost threatens to overshadow just how effective it is. It's disturbing, occasionally disgusting and considerably darker than most network television programmes would probably dare to be. Yet underneath the shock value is a genuinely creepy story and, for me, it remains one of the best episodes of the season.

Paper Hearts is another highlight, although for completely different reasons. Mulder's search for his missing sister has been one of the driving forces behind the entire programme and suddenly presenting him with a plausible alternative explanation for Samantha's disappearance strikes directly at the character's greatest obsession.

Then there's Leonard Betts. What initially appears to be another wonderfully bizarre monster-of-the-week story involving a headless corpse getting up and leaving the morgue takes a considerably more serious turn when Betts tells Scully that she has "something he needs". Her subsequent nosebleed provides one of those moments where you immediately realise that something much bigger has just happened.

That leads directly into Memento Mori and what is probably the most important character storyline of the season. Scully's cancer gives the programme an emotional weight that the alien conspiracy alone could never provide. For once Mulder isn't searching for the truth simply because he needs to know what's being hidden - he's desperately trying to save his partner's life.

Gillian Anderson gets some particularly strong material from the storyline. Scully has spent years attempting to approach everything scientifically and rationally, but she's now faced with something horribly real that science may not be able to cure. Her determination not to let the illness define her makes the situation considerably more effective than endless scenes of hospital-bed melodrama would have been.

The relationship between Mulder and Scully has also developed enormously since the first season. What started as a believer and sceptic reluctantly assigned to work together has become a genuine friendship based on complete trust. Naturally, that raises the question fans have been asking for years: are the pair ever actually going to get together?

With Scully seriously ill and Mulder prepared to do practically anything to save her, surely this would be the perfect opportunity for that long-awaited romantic moment. A lingering look? A declaration of undying love? Perhaps even the kiss that half the audience has been waiting for?

Don't hold your breath.

Elsewhere, Small Potatoes provides some welcome comedy and allows David Duchovny to have a little fun with Mulder's personality, whilst Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man attempts to fill in some of the background surrounding one of the programme's most mysterious characters. Whether everything we're shown can actually be believed is another question entirely.

Tempus Fugit and Max also demonstrate just how far the production has come since the comparatively modest first season. The aircraft crash and subsequent investigation provide some impressive visuals and the behind-the-scenes material on the DVD makes the sequences even more interesting when you realise how much of the wreckage was physically constructed.

By this point The X-Files has become an extremely confident television series. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson know their characters inside out, the production team can tackle considerably more ambitious stories and the writers have developed a formula capable of moving from horror to science fiction, drama and comedy without completely losing the programme's identity.

The DVD package has matured alongside it. The picture isn't perfect and I'm still disappointed by the rather ordinary soundtrack, but the extras are considerably better than those supplied with the first couple of seasons. Interviews, behind-the-scenes features, deleted scenes and full episode commentaries finally make the supplementary material feel like something specifically created for DVD rather than promotional scraps gathered from the Fox archives.

I'm sure every X-Files fan with a DVD player will want to collect these box sets, whilst anyone who has already spent a small fortune on the VHS editions may understandably be rather more reluctant to buy everything again. At nearly £70 a season, replacing an existing collection certainly isn't something to be undertaken lightly.

However, with twenty-four episodes, improved supplementary material and subtitles for the hard of hearing across every episode, Season Four provides plenty for your money. More importantly, the programme itself remains close to the top of its game.

We've now had four seasons and, remarkably, The X-Files still has the ability to surprise, disturb and occasionally make me laugh. The truth may still be out there, but unfortunately so are several more expensive DVD box sets.

Special features

• The Truth About Season Four
• Promotional Spots
• Interview Clips with Writers and Directors
• Behind the Truth Spots
• Special Effects Clips
• Deleted Scenes with Commentary by Chris Carter
• Episode Commentaries on Memento Mori and Small Potatoes