UNCUT - The X-Files S1E9 - Space

joining the convo late, not sure if anyone else already said or not, they probably did, but just in case not - re the introductory banter on "will we see Mulder & Scully's families?" the answer is yes to both

this was probably done to save budget

Definitely the weakest of Season 1

I'd say this one is a low C for me. It's boring, but not to the extent of Imaginary friend say, and it's not cringeworthy like certain eps of Trek thus far. It's slow and a bit weird, like a casual walk through the park that's completely unremarkable save that one drug addict lying on the bench and shouting at the voices in his head. And yeah, in the conversation on the steps, she did mention the shuttle commander being her fiancee, so nothing to infer there. Nice job calling The First Duty connection though. I do agree the ghost effect and the slow mo shots are goofy AF though.

You can safely put this as the low bar for X-Files. Thankfully it very rarely gets anywhere near this bad.

Really surprised me seeing the comments on this episide, I really liked this episode, they tried something far beyond the budget would allow, and I dig that. As a kid when this came out was a really good watch, admittedly now, I'd rate it a c+

Not only do I think this is the worst episode of the season, but probably the worst of the entire series. So yes, this is as low as it can go, and 95% of the time it's nowhere even close. If you came off from this one as eh, not THAT horrible, yeah... this show was absolutely made for you guys.

Easily the worst episodes of season 1 and in the list of bottom episodes of the series.

worst episode so far by far

Not an amazing episode, but it was good to see more Mulder backstory and a bit of space spookiness. An okay episode first watch but definitely skippable on rewatches, thankfully it's one of a very few "okay" episodes season 1 that is followed by bangers. Enjoying the series with you guys each week!

Both major guest actors were previously on TNG in much better episodes: Ed Lautner from The First Duty, and Susannah Thompson from "The Next Phase" and "Frame of Mind!"

I mentioned in the previous episode's reaction takes "don't worry, be patient, we'll have some Season 1 E-tiers coming up!" This episode, the very next one, was exactly what I had in mind. We can defend a lot of "Oh, it was the 90s, SFX weren't that good then..." These effects were TERRIBLE by the standards of the time. I could forgive that if the plot was good, but it's really not. It's just a real jumbled mess of writing. Let's just move on from this.

Not a good episode. On to the next.

You can't waste Susanna Thompson like this

My least favourite episode of season one, very filler and I wonder why they kept it it the season run to be honest. Mulder and Scully also, for the most part, get reduced to expository characters, especially in the control centre. Hey, at least you can skip int when you come back to watch this again at some point in the future. At least I get to watch it again with you... yay! lolz

This is easily the weakest of the season with Ghost In the Machine.

The first "bad" episode of the series. Luckily, episodes like this are few and far between.

On behalf of the XFiles, I apologize for this episode. It won't happen again (at least not for another couple of seasons lol).

I think the episode suffers a little from budget/scale. Their "mission control" set looked a little cheap and tiny, and all the grainy videotape footage of the shuttle didn't help. The silly ghost face CGI (specifically that one where it comes across the screen from left to right) was a little embarrassing. It was an ambitious idea that they couldn't afford.

I didn't mind it. Ed Lauter brings his A game as one of the best character actors on tv. I watched it for him.

Oh man, honestly, I think it's great to get this episode out of the way. It's THE stinker of Season One. No other episode craps the bed the way this one does, haha. Definite E-Tier.

Fun fact or not so fun Secretary of Defense James Forestall killed himself by jumping out of the window of a hospital....there is this conspiracy theory going around that he was murdered because he was going to reveal the existence of aliens via the whole roswell incident...I'm sure this episode is a wink towards that

The astronaut in the shuttle was the woman's fiance. She mentioned it when she first came to Mulder and Scully. :D

As much as I didn't like the Jersey Devil one, this one is the worst of this first season by a long shot. The directions and effects are weird. The atmosphere just feels off and not in an intriguing way. I almost feel like Mulder and Scully didn't even need to be there and felt shoehorned in to make it an X Files episode. When I saw the title pop up, I was like, "Oh, is it that stupid one with the astronauts?" cause I couldn't quite remember since it's so forgettable. I was hoping I'd change my mind on it. This is the Aquiel of X Files.

What’s my highest ranked XF E-Tier episode? This pile of garbage. (And there aren’t many in my list.)

Gentleman, you have watched what I consider, one of, if not the worst episode of X Files. It was a made during the fervor of the 'Mars face' discovery and talk about the new show, 'The X-Files' was heating-up in the public causing some pressure. The story, like you said falls flat, the use of so much stock footage of the shuttle, the spacewalk and poor CGI is disrupting. I believe even Chris Carter says this episode just missed the mark. So Josh, to answer your question, I believe this is the bottom. Trivia : One of the reasons for the stock footage was, the previous episodes were going over budget so the cheaper stock footage was used. Unfortunately due to the extravagant Mission Control set they built, this episode became the most expensive episode of the first season.

For what it's worth, this is reportedly Chris Carter's least favorite episode. It's not hard to see why and you guys pretty much nailed all the main knocks against it. I'll be interested in seeing if anyone is nice to it in yt comments

Imo, the biggest dud of the season. Maybe even... the series

I forgot this one. It's all right. It feels like they had the pieces of an interesting story, but they couldn't figure out how to put them together. But it's evidence that even when X-Files episodes are slight, they're still watchable.

Ed Lauter did a great A-team episode I hope you will watch sometime. And decades later we now know that the mars face was always just a pile of rocks and shadows.

I also wanted to give an interesting little piece of trivia. In real life, Gillian Anderson is a HUGE believer in the paranormal (she was interviewed about it many times)...and David Duchovny is more skeptical. VERY skeptical about conspiracies in particular. I just thought that was a cool little thing to know.

If I do remember correctly this is IMHO one of the weakest episode of season 1. The story itself is not really bad, the actors are not bad but the production feels flat. I agree with your opinion. I think it was this episode which Chris Carter likes the least of the entire show. Not plot wise but due to budget cuts. Previous episodes stretched their budgets so this had to be cut short. Hence the few real different places but lot of NASA footage and diagrams on monitors. I like the story because it picks up the face on Mars discovery which was really a hyped media thing back in the days. Nowadays it's been proven that it had nothing to do with aliens but it was a mix of light,bad image quality of a mountain formation which has eroded since. I'm glad you two didn't dislike this episode so much that you would consider stopping to watch the show. Deffo one of the weakest episodes, yes, nevertheless watchable. But it's now out of the way and the journey can continue.

You know what? This episode was actually better than I remember! I would rate it as a solid B. I agree though that the special effects sucked. And the dude who played Belt....can that actor ever escape characters dealing with messed up shuttle missions? :P And everyone did see the face at the end. I just think Scully doesn't wanna talk about it. lol But I do think it's better than if, say, Scully leaves the room for a split second when the face presents itself. At least they didn't do something like that again! But yeah, I think that's why this time Scully really wasn't debating Mulder at the end. She just kinda wanted to change the subject away from the weird.

I saw this on the original air date, and threw an empty Pepsi at the TV because of it. Up to this point I was intrigued and wondering just where in the hell the series would take everyone, but this episode was a complete disappointment. That stupid "Face on Mars" was EVERYWHERE in the early reaches of the Internet and generated so much material for the "NASA IS HIDING THE TRUTH ABOUT ALIENS" for the next two decades (the original photograph was from Viking Orbital, in 1976, from a horrible orbital angle) and when we finally got better cameras in orbit and got serious high resolution images, it managed to shut most of them up. (Of course, you'd have hardcore cranks out there "proving" that the new images were NOT of the "Face" but something else, you can't win with these guys) So this was a very low point episode for me, and they blew too much budget on their "mission control" setup.

That Mars face is a real thing. I am not saying it's man-made, but it's a real phenomenon. It's mostly likely a trick of the light or something but Google it. It's interesting. :)

Not my favorite episode, but watchable