The Great X-Files Rewatch Begins — Pilot Episode

“I want the truth.”

Then

The X-Files had a significant impact on my teenage years. Every Sunday I settled in front of the TV with my dad and we watched the latest episode in joyful expectation of what unsettling mysteries Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would investigate. In between episodes, we chatted theories about hidden truth behind the aliens, government conspiracies, and other oddities the show revealed.

The X-Files fed my fascination for the paranormal, weird, creepy, and strange. In particular, I was a fan of the stand-alone episodes over the mythology ones, as I was less interested in aliens than in other weirdness, such as ghosts, deadly AI, and pyrokinetic and other mental abilities.

When reruns aired, I rewatched all the same episodes over and over again. I read the novelizations and tie-in novels. I bought X-Files-themed magazines and general swag. In other words, The X-Files filled much of my waking thoughts for a number of formative years. In fact my love for The X-Files was such that my grandmother began to believe I had an unhealthy fixation (something that still amuses me to this day).

Now

I’ve been wanting to rewatch The X-Files for a while — a hefty task considering the series consists of 209…