Starring: X-Files, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. This DVD will probably
NOT be viewable in other countries. Read more about DVD formats.)
Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Box set
Rated: NR
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
DVD Features:
7 disc boxed set
All-new documentary "The Truth About Season Four"
Interviews with Frank Spotnitz on "Herrervolk,"
Vince Gilligan on "Unruhe" and "Paper Hearts,"
James Wong on "Home" and Chris Carter on "Tunguska"
* 13 "Behind the Truth" spots from F/X
Episode commentary from "Memento Mori" with writer/producer
Frank Spotnitz
Episode commentary from "Small Potatoes" with
writer/producer Vince Gilligan
8 special effects clips with commentary by Paul Rabwin
9 deleted scenes with optional commentary by Chris Carter
48 promotional television spots
DVD ROM: Game - Urbs Tertia
Full-screen format
Editorial From Amazon.com
In season four, The X-Files continued to expand the breadth and
complexity of the mythology established in the previous two seasons
while developing a deeper, romantically ambiguous relationship between
its photogenic leads, FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)
and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). New players such as United Nations
official Marita Covarrubias and virus-carrying bees joined familiar
faces like Cigarette Smoking Man, Alex Krycek, the blockheaded Alien
Bounty Hunters, and the Consortium in the growing cast of a global
struggle involving multiple factions of alien forces. It was a season
in which Mulder and Scully seemed to lose ground to the global forces
surrounding them, in which Mulder was infected with the black oil
and Scully discovered she had cancer. With even the loyalties of
Assistant Director Skinner and Mulder's mother in doubt, Mulder
and Scully learned to trust only each other in their pursuit of
the truth.
The show also continued to take breaks from the dizzying, heavy
mythology to serve up standalone episodes with the show's unusual
blend of sophisticated humor and creepy paranormal explorations.
In "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," the show parodied
the scope of the public's conspiracy paranoia, implying that Cigarette
Smoking Man was involved in everything from JFK's assassination
to the Buffalo Bills' four straight losses in the Super Bowl. The
three previous seasons had not exhausted the list of popular paranormal
phenomena to tackle, and season four covered a wide range of topics
from invisibility ("Unrequited"), past lives ("The
Field Where I Died"), and inbreeding ("Home") to
shape-shifting ("Small Potatoes") and golems ("Kaddish").
The X-Files proved, again, to be that rare science-fiction show
that could both frighten and touch its audience, telling intelligent
stories that resonated with the skeptic in each of us, all the while
sprinkling in a few laughs. -- Eugene Wei
