n more ways than one, season two of The X-Files is
considered to be one of the most pivotal seasons in the
long-running series' history. First and foremost, this
was the season that the series really found itself,
laying the groundwork for the complicated mythology we'd
see unfurl in the years to come.
It was the year that
the real-life pregnancy of star Gillian Anderson (Agent
Dana Scully) forced series creator Chris Carter and his
production team to come up with Scully's abduction--a
plot point that continues to drive the show's action
even now, in its eighth season. It was the year that key
peripheral characters--including The Cigarette Smoking
Man (William B. Davis), Krycek (Nicholas Lea) and
Assistant Director Skinner (Mitch Pilleggi) gained their
footing. And while the season as a whole had its share
of clunkers (including the vampire episode "3"),
overall, the stories were more evenly
distributed in quality--and many longtime viewers look
to the season with nostalgia.
Some of the best-written--and best-acted--shows of the
series can actually be seen in this season. There's the
stunning Scully abduction arc of "Duane Barry"/"Ascension"/"One Breath,"
with the latter movingly written by the
writing team of Glen Morgan and James Wong. There are
potent stand-alone episodes, such as Carter's "Irresistible"
and Morgan and Wong's "Die Hand Die Verletzt," and memorable
episodes, like writer Darin Morgan's "Humbug." And there's
the two-part alien mythology treatise of "Colony" and "End
Game," followed later in the season by the gripping
finale, "Anasazi."
A season of stunning surprises
As with its predecessor, The X-Files' second season
DVD boxed set is jam-packed with added goodies that DVD
aficionados have come to know and love. There are seven
discs, containing all 25 episodes of the season plus
video bonuses not available with the video releases.
(It's unfortunate, though, that the two-part "Colony" and "End Game"
had to be split up onto two different discs.)
While the set is generally well executed,
we did encounter some glitches. Our
review copy of the DVD set showed no image
artifacting on a TV; however, the discs showed some
noticeable artifacting and other image blips when
played using a software-based DVD decoder on a PC.
Furthermore, surprisingly, the DVD interface has its
rough spots, most of which are minor annoyances. There's
no way to skip the intro montage to each disc--which gets
tiring with repetition. The branched scene
insertions--while interesting--are inelegantly inserted, and
sometimes give difficulty when it's necessary to adjust the
sound or playback speeds. And on the seventh disc--which
features all of the DVD extras aggregated in a single
place--a menu option leads you back to the same screen
you started on.
Among the key bonuses that make the DVD set worth its
hefty price are the inclusion of a handful of deleted
scenes--each of which is available both as an in-line
branching alternative during episode playback and as a
separate video clip. There's a scene from "Sleepless"
showing the original X, as played by Natalija Nogulich
(commentary provided by Paul Rabwin), a scene from
"Humbug" in which Scully and Mulder are being served by a
hermaphrodite waitress played by Denis Simpson, and
others from "3" and "Anasazi."
The seventh disc also features: 10- and 20-second promo
spots from all episodes (except "Anasazi," which has only
a 20-second spot); interview spots with Carter
commenting on 12 season-two episodes; three behind-the-scenes
clips, including Gillian Anderson's infamous
ingestion of a cricket in "Humbug" and a look at how
Vancouver's rock quarry transformed into New Mexico for
the setting of "Anasazi"; and nine FX: Behind the Truth
segments about specific episodes and characters. The
14-minute documentary about season 2 is nicely edited, with
interview excerpts from several of the show's producers
and supporting actors. Less strong is the DVD-ROM's
computer game, which simply expands on the game in the
first-season DVD to add additional case files from
Jane Goldman's The X-Files: Book of the Unexplained, Part
Two.
