I think I'm one of its few viewers who actually watched the show from its debut. With cancellation looming large back then, its producers shot their wad often, going so far as to, for all intents and purposes, wrap things up in the traditional May finale. Like Star Wars, "The X Files"' central premise (thinking-person's sexy FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate the paranormal, he the believer (holding aliens responsible for his sister's childhood abduction), she the sceptic) took on the arrogance of predestined mythology only after the series proved popular. An end to the conspiracy arc is a mirage that fans have chased for eight years now.

"The Truth About Season Three" (21 mins.) is this collection's most revealing supplement in that regard. Within, staffer Frank Spotnitz recalls being asked at an early fan convention why the murder of Agent Dana Scully's sister had not been resolved, which jogged his memory of the hanging plot thread and inspired the revenge-themed "Piper Maru". Meanwhile, Season Three's excellent cliffhanger "Talitha Cumi" (starring "X" pre-cursor "The Invaders"' Roy Thinnes) is best ingested as a short film, for it's basically a big stall. Sensing that creator Chris Carter and his team can't see the forest for the trees, I don't think I've ever once felt truly satisfied by a "mythology" hour.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN'S FINAL REPOSE (w. Darin Morgan; d. David Nutter) Warm, wise, and haunting, the Emmy-winning "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" is an "X" of a different colour, and the best reason to pick up this latest seven-pack. Mulder intuits that Peter Boyle's sadsack insurance salesman can see the future as it pertains to death, and begs his help in solving the serial murder of area fortune tellers. For once, the show saw comfort in the great beyond, and even managed to turn broad comic relief (the celebrity psychic "The Stupendous Yappy") into something profound. My goosebumps just won't go away...

Still, the series' third annual time at bat was, for the most part, not a strikeout but a charm. Chemistry on both sides of the camera led to confident comedic leaps (see "The War of the Coprophages", and its famous roach scuttling across your TV screen, an especially disquieting effect in the hi-res DVD format), while the production designers routinely and deftly accepted bigger challenges from the scripts, whether it be getting Vancouver to pass for Ecuador ("Teso Dos Bichos") or building a passable prison in a city that doesn't have one (the Carter-directed "The List", predating Stephen King's similarly themed "The Green Mile" by a few months).

To be sure, there are some clunkers--I'm not a fan of said slow, begrimed "The List"; "2Shy" is 2Silly; the promise of "Revelations" is constricted by the standards and practises of network television; and "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" is excruciatingly overrated (though it is supplemented by instructive commentary from censor-plagued writer Darin Morgan and director Rob Bowman; another splendid screen-specific 'yak-track' is offered for "Apocrypha" by Carter and Kim Manners, helming his first serious ep)--but the through line is steady, and the who's who of cult-value guest stars (Giovanni Ribisi (warming up for his The Gift persona in "D.P.O."), Jack Black, Peter Boyle, James Hong, and others) are a qualitative testament. All in all, a good warm-up for gem-packed Season Four.

Interspersed throughout the set and gathered together on Disc Seven are deleted sequences from "The Blessing Way", "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", "The List", "Revelations", and "Avatar", each with optional commentary from Carter. These are laid out well: the omissions are in colour and bookended by the footage that made it to air in black-and-white, thereby giving the cut stuff context whilst also differentiating it. Most, if not all of these character-oriented trims were removed due to rigid time-slot constraints. Carter is interesting here, but a lot of his comments in twelve interviews regarding select episodes double up from "The Truth About Season Three". (These, I'm told, were originally seen on VHS.) Also on Disc Seven, visual effects supervisor Mat Beck deconstructs choice illusions found in "Clyde Bruckman...", "The Walk", "731", "Apocrypha", "Teso...", "Jose Chung..." and "Quagmire".

Rounding out this last DVD are seventeen brief making-of FX (as in the channel) interstitials, 10- and 20-second original Fox promo spots ("Apocrypha" and "Wetwired" are curiously missing the longer commercials) that have their share of redundant voice-over ("This week, Mulder and Scully discover aliens and the government pursues them," goes one), and a DVD-ROM game called "Mere Words" (erroneously listed as "Unholy Alliances" at various sites) that I couldn't get to work, although I obeyed the helpful insert booklet's commandment. ("In order to enjoy the DVD-ROM as only a true fan would, walk through the easy installation process...")

As for the transfer quality of the full-frame episodes, it's uniformly great; line structure is visible in digitally processed shots ("The Blessing Way" is a major culprit), and you'll always see grain, but these discs blow their tape and cable counterparts out of the water. In broadcast form, I've always thought the photography is too dark; nothing's been lightened for these presentations, yet the increased detail makes it appear so. The Dolby Surround sound is also smashing (previous seasons are only in stereo, even on DVD), with a healthy bass present in Mark Snow's main theme and the rear channel contributing crawly depth to "The War of the Coprophages" and needed volume to ambitious entries like "731". This is the best "X Files" DVD lot yet!-Bill Chambers