The X Files: The Complete Third Season (1995-1996) – DVD

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"The Blessing Way," "Paper Clip," "D.P.O.," "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," "The List," "2Shy," "The Walk," "Oubliette," "Nisei," "731," "Revelations," "War of the Coprophages," "Syzygy," "Grotesque," "Piper Maru," "Apocrypha," "Pusher," "Teso Dos Bichos," "Hell Money," "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'," "Avatar," "Quagmire," "Wetwired," "Talitha Cumi"

by Bill Chambers They're folded compactly in a box, similar to those gift packages of Life Savers I used to find in my stocking on Christmas morning. Likewise, they inspire trial-and-error taste tests (I never ate the butterscotch ones), the names often betraying little about the flavours. I'm talking about the seven-disc/24-episode collection of "The X Files"' third season, which bows on DVD a year after Season One did and arguably improves upon the high standards set by it. It helps that this is the series in top form.

I think I'm one of its few viewers who actually watched "The X Files" from its debut. (Well, technically my mother introduced me to it my first weekend home from university.) With cancellation a constant threat back then, its producers shot their wad early and 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 skeptic–took on the swagger of preplanned mythology only after proving popular. An end to the conspiracy arc is a mirage fans have chased for eight years now.

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 not only the best reason to pick up this latest seven-pack, but maybe a reason by itself. Mulder intuits that (a brilliant) Peter Boyle's sadsack insurance salesman can see the future as it pertains to death and beseeches him to help track down a serial killer of area fortune tellers. For once, the show was sanguine about the Great Beyond, and even managed to turn broad comic relief (the celebrity psychic "The Stupendous Yappi") into something more profound. My goosebumps just won't go away…

"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 sated by a "mythology" hour.

Still, the series' third annual at-bat was, for the most part, not a strikeout but a homerun. Proven chemistry and an increasing confidence on both sides of the camera led to wild 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). (King himself would script the season-five instalment "Chinga.")

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 too constricted by the standards and practises of network television, although its casting of Kenneth Welsh as a serial killer may charm "Twin Peaks" aficionados; and "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" is, in my humble opinion, excruciatingly overrated, though it was elevated in my estimation by the instructive audio commentary here from censor-plagued writer Darin Morgan and director Rob Bowman. (Another splendid screen-specific 'yak-track' accompanies "Apocrypha" and features Carter and Kim Manners, helming his first serious ep.) But the season achieves a good balance of monsters-of-the-week and the larger conspiracy arc, 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.

THE DVD
Interspersed throughout the set and collated 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 well laid-out: the elided material is in colour and bookended by the footage that made it to air in black-and-white, making it easy to differentiate the deletions. 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 within the 12 individual interview segments regarding select episodes are repeated 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 17 brief making-of FX (as in the channel) interstitials, 10- and 20-second original Fox promo spots (longer commercials for "Apocrypha" and "Wetwired" are curiously absent) 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, even though 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. Some combing is visible in digitally-processed shots ("The Blessing Way" is a major culprit), and there's a base level of video noise, but these discs blow their tape and cable counterparts out of the water. I've always thought the series looks too dark on broadcast television. Nothing's been brightened for these presentations, yet the increased shadow detail illuminates new corners of the cinematography. The Dolby Surround sound is similarly smashing (previous seasons were only in stereo), 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 much-needed volume to ambitious entries like "731." This is the best "X Files" DVD lot yet!

47 minutes apiece; NR; 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; 7 DVD-9s; Region One; Fox