Season 6, Episodes 11 and 12: “Two Fathers”/“One Son”
Original Airdates: February 7 and 14, 1999

Okay so we're halfway through season six and it's a mythology two-parter. This is, it's been five and a half years of mythology at this point, it's been oilians and shapeshifters and Consortiums and rebels and even if you have managed to keep track of it, you probably haven't always managed to make sense of it. And the thing is—they know that. They they, the people making this show, they know. They know that there's mythology fatigue. How do I know they know? Because they made us these episodes. And blew everything up.

[You've never seen one before, have you?]

Season 6, Episode 9: “S.R. 819”
Original Airdate: January 17, 1999

People don’t die so much on The X-Files. I mean, people die on The X-Files all the time, and if you’re an informant you’ve really got to watch your back, but this is six seasons and a movie and we’re talking fairly minimal recurring character death. So what are we to think, facing a cold open with a flat-lining Walter Skinner? Are we thinking, this is it, they’re killing someone off! Or are we thinking, oh hey! It’s the Slightly Disappointing Semi-Annual Walter Skinner Episode.

[Who did this to me?]

Season 6, Episodes 4 and 5: “Dreamland I/Dreamland II”
Original Airdates: November 29, 1998 and December 6, 1998

The body-swap narrative, she is a satisfying old gal. A morality tale with a science fiction spin; empathy, but for real this time. “Dreamland”  is the story of a couple of G-Men who get body-swapped and nothing really bad comes of it, except one of them gets a slightly cleaner apartment and the other, possibly, a better marriage. It absolutely shouldn’t work—heaven’s sake, it’s a two-part episode with a single part concept—but somehow, it does. Endearingly so.

[You think being a Man in Black is all Voodoo mind control?]

Season 6, Episode 6: “Triangle”
Original Airdate: November 22, 1998

For a science fiction television program, The X-Files is not particularly interested in time travel. We’ve had fortune-tellers, missing time, and an old man who encouraged us to Fight the Future, but not so much with the landing in the past/waking up in the future. “Triangle”—which drops Mulder onto a Nazi-laden luxury liner in 1939—could have been the category winner, but, unfortunately, it’s more party trick than TARDIS up in here.

[How’d you like to see the stars on the American flag?]

Season 6, Episode 2: “Drive”
Original Airdate: November 15, 1998

Let’s say you’re the kind of person who goes around saving the world. Sometimes in a big way. Sometimes in a small way. But always: with the saving. And it’s a good life to have, or anyway, it’s a good thing that you’re doing. Except when you’re saving the world, there’s this catch. There’s this catch that when you’re saving the world, you don’t get to choose who you save. When you save the world, you save everyone. Even the lousy, nasty, slur-spewing ones.

[I can think of something else I’d like to call you.]

Season 6, Episode 1: “The Beginning”
Original Airdate: November 8, 1998

The strangest thing about “The Beginning” is how much it cares about “The End.” After the bright, broad bombast of Fight the Future, you might expect another crowd-pleaser, something to lock down those potential new fans who might be interested in the show now that they’ve seen what it can do with bees and Antarctica. But “The Beginning,” is really “The End, Part II,” a tough-nosed mytharc that wants to define the show’s future rather than fight it.

[Is there going to be data to back this vague, omnibus account?]

The X-Files: Fight The Future
A Major Motion Picture
US Release Date: June 19, 1998

Fight the Future might be better named Sheesh, Hubris, You Guys! A real-live-movie-film premiering between seasons 5 and 6 of The X-Files—what is that! What is that at all, a movie that airs during the run of a hit television program? A film that will both satisfy hardcore fans and entertain the average Joe Popcorn, you had to be a brave and bold showrunner to think that would work. And with so many expectations riding on this thing, it's a miracle that Fight the Future holds up as well as it does.

[Don't think! Just pick up the phone and make it happen!]

Season 5, Episode 20: “The End”
Original Airdate: May 17, 1998

Oh, my friends. There’s a movie a’coming. It’s been there for months, lurking just around the bend, slotted between Season 5 and Season 6. And if you get into your imagination time machine and pretend it’s the spring of 1998, it’s like this: you know it’s there, you’ve known the whole time, but you haven’t had to think about it until right now, until “The End,” a season finale that has the unpretty job of setting up both a major motion picture and the rest of the freaking show.

[My long term plans? You got them right there in your hands.]

Season 5, Episodes 13 and 14: “Patient X”/“The Red and the Black”
Original airdates: March 1 and March 8, 1998

After going several rounds with multi-part mytharc episodes that froth quite a lot but pay out not much at all, “Patient X” and “The Red and the Black” are basically just a joy. Here are two completely comprehensible episodes that manage to introduce a new layer to the conspiracy without further obscuring the big picture, and, bonus, they've got some lovely bits of character development and excellent performances from nearly everyone present. Has someone been peeking at my Christmas list?

[Destiny, fate, how to throw a curveball.]

Season 5, Episode 12: “Bad Blood”
Original Airdate: February 22, 1998

There was a time when a television program could do a funny vampire episode that did not contain even one joke about vampires sparkling in the sun, do you remember that? “Bad Blood” is just such a vintage gem, a Vince Gilligan-penned monster-of-the-comic-relief with an irresistible premise and no brooding whatsoever. It’s also The X-Files’ funniest episode since the departure of Darin Morgan and a delightful send-up of the show’s most crucial relationship.

[Do you have an old cemetery in town, off the beaten path, the creepier the better?]

Season 5, Episode 11: “Kill Switch”
Original Airdate: February 15, 1998

“Kill Switch” is an old story gussied up with new tech. Of course, the tech is from 1998, so the new tech is now not so new, so it's good for the old story that it is an old story, because it's a decent old story—ever heard the one about the machine that got smart and then got even? Written by cyberpunk godfathers William Gibson and Tom Maddox, “Kill Switch” is a fresh take on the show's usual slime-and-evolution monster of the week, the rare one-off that doesn't include a scene where Mulder refers to some wacky event that happened a century ago. Here is an X-File that doesn't yet have a file.

[Were you the bass player?]

Season 5, Episodes 6 and 7: “Christmas Carol”/“Emily”
Original Airdates: December 7 and December 14, 1997.

Was there ever a character so abused by her writers as Dana Scully? In tribute to the character’s fortitude, the Internet used to call her Saint Scully—overlooking, of course, the fact that saints tend to be dead. Scully’s not dead, but Scully does suffer, over and over, as though the show’s writers believe that the character couldn’t exist without depression dogging her heels. Just a handful of episodes after she survives cancer, along come “Christmas Carol” and “Emily,” a bleak pair with angst in mind.

[Medicinal or recreational?]

Season 5, Episode 5: “The Post-Modern Prometheus”
Original Airdate: November 30, 1997

Boy! Are there a lot of supernatural pregnancies on this show. Which shouldn't surprise me, I guess, I mean first of all I've seen it before and second of all it is a show that draws heavily on the popular alien abduction mythologies—you know, the ones where ladies get taken away and knocked up with alien babies. Supernatural pregnancies are scary if you're scared of humans being wiped out not by a big explosion but by biology, by the dilution of the species. If you're convinced that a mutant or an alien-human hybrid is going to be, somehow, better than you are.

[You think baloney would be more effective?]

Season 5, Episode 4: “Detour”
Original Airdate: November 23, 1997

Mulder and Scully are headed for a teamwork seminar, which of course is a funny idea. Who needs a a teamwork seminar less than these two, right? These two who have fought side-by-side, who have seen things, who have saved each other over and over? But even the closest of partners take something for granted, as Scully learns within the first few minutes of this episode. As her better half gets out of a car and walks away without a word of explanation.

[How do I say this without using any negative words?]

Season 5, Episode 3: “Unusual Suspects”
Original Airdate: November 16, 1997

There shouldn’t be anything particularly vital about “Unusual Suspects.” It’s an origin story, for sure, but it’s an origin story for three of the show’s peripheral characters: Frohike, Langly, and Byers. Together, the Lone Gunmen have always been available to advance a plot or allow Mulder a quip, but as characters they’ve never been key. It’s an episode that could easily have gone down as filler, but writer Vince Gilligan makes a concerted effort to give the Gunmen an important place in the mytharc.

[What’s with the narc?]

Season 5, Episodes 1 and 2: “Redux”/“Redux II”
Original Airdates: November 2 and November 9, 1997

Let’s talk about Mulder, and let’s talk about his life’s work. His life’s work is a quest (for the truth) built on a faith (that the truth is out there). In “Gethsemane,” Mulder was led to believe that his faith was misplaced and that aliens might not exist at all. Then, we were led to believe that the merest suggestion of this would immediately make Mulder suicidal, or at least very very very sad. The Reduxes continue in this vein, reconstructing the Mulder we know as a man who might not believe, after all.

[Level 4 clearance. That means I get to dine at the officer’s club?]

Season 4, Episode 24: “Gethsemane”
Original Airdate: May 18, 1997

“Gethsemane” is a trick. A sleight-of-hand performed clumsily, a cliffhanger with safety gear firmly in place. By the end of it, Mulder is meant to be dead, again, and that’s not even all: he’s meant to be dead by his own hand. What could drive Fox Mulder to kill himself? What, on earth, at this point, could be so terrifically bad that a man with his resilience and determination would give up?

[Funny place to take a nap.]

Season 4, Episode 21: “Zero Sum”
Original Airdate: April 27, 1997

What is Walter Skinner’s deal, anyway? No seriously, the guy is shadowy. You don’t think about it much, because he’s not constantly smoking cigarettes in dark rooms and looking smug, but how much do you know about this guy? You know he lives in a pretty ugly apartment building and you know that he was in Vietnam. You know that he can be pretty badass when he needs to be. But what drives him? Why does he defend Mulder and Scully? What, you might ask, is his deal?

[A man digs a hole, he risks falling into it.]

Season 4, Episode 20: “Small Potatoes”
Original Airdate: April 20, 1997

“Small Potatoes” is a charming yarn about a mutant who tricks a bunch of ladies and has sex with them and then they have babies and the babies have tails and somehow he’s supposed to be sort of a sympathetic character who teaches us something about how to live one’s life. It is meant to be a funny episode, and parts of it are. But there is something off about it, a flawed construction that diminishes what should have been one of the series’ smartest and most affectionate demonstrations of self-parody.

[Should we be picking out china patterns or what?]

Season 4, Episodes 16 and 17: “Tempus Fugit”/“Max”
Original Airdates: March 16 and March 23, 1997

As we become more aware of the scale and complexity of the conspiracy, it becomes more important to remember the individuals who are affected by it. “The government” “the people” “the aliens,” these are all large groups, faceless groups, overwhelming to imagine. The show is at its strongest when it is able to put a face on something, to show the effect on a person whose name that we know. The smaller the better, sometimes, the more intimate, the more affecting. The closer the conspiracy seems to home.

[I just thought it was a pretty cool keychain.]