The X-Files: Season 1

This reduced price edition of The X-Files: Season 1 differs from the original not only in packaging but in content.
The episodes are all here, but the bonus features found on the 7th disc is not. This is evidenced here:
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=5019
I also have personally checked this and other reissued sets in the store.

A masterful series exploring the unexplained. Its conception was brilliant, its production spectacular, and its themes ahead-of-its-time. The X-Files is a series which should never be forgotten.

Chris Carter, earlier a freelance writer and associate editor of the magazine "Surfacing", afterwards initiated into a semi-successful writing career for Walt Disney in 1985, was given a chance to help a struggling FOX network in the early 90s. Tired of the comedies he had been working on and inspired by a report that 3.7 million Americans had been abducted by aliens, Carter wrote the pilot for a very different kind of television series in 1992. This idea placed both a believer (Fox Mulder) and a skeptic (Dana Scully) together to investigate a series of unsolved paranormal mysteries, and to peer into the very well-guarded secrets of covert FBI and military factions. These often involved the 'Shadow Government', responsible for safe-guarding certain classified truths at any cost.

Despite the carefully developed plots, Carter never wanted the cases to dominate the characters; instead, the series is very character-oriented, focusing deeply on their pasts, beliefs and personal struggles. The show was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, which supplied the filmmakers with ample rich forests in which to film haunting scenes for eerie effect. The series is ultimately about the value of truth, about how passionately some of us are willing to fight to find it. It is part horror, part murder mystery, and part government conspiracy intrigue and part mythological adventure. The brilliant photography, lighting, acting and directing added up to make a fantastic series which will live on long after the series' end. I also believe it is the most realistic series ever aired on television ... if the fact that I'm calling a show which believes 'we are not alone' realistic doesn't get me tagged as a total nut, that is.

In the first season we meet a number of noteworthy characters. The first is the Cigarette-smoking Man; an enigmatic figure who was never intended to be a main character but whose curious presence earned him a place of central importance in the series, as a high-up member of the Shadow Government. In this season he only speaks one line. There is Deep Throat; Mulder's first informant, famed for uttering the words, "Trust no one." There is Eugene Victor Tooms -- a liver-eating, body-stretching, 40-year-hibernating nemesis famed for killing his victims in seemingly impossible locations. Skinner is also introduced; a stone-faced FBI boss known for 'skinning' his agents down from individualism, but who will later in the series become a likeable and central character.

For this set I can tell you that the packaging is good, but not great (it is reasonable for the price.) There are six disks, each with its own unique artwork, two to a thin plastic case which are together stored inside a sleeve, which is in turn stored inside another sleeve. Some of the teeth in the plastic cases were broken off, likely due to crude handling before packaging. But otherwise everything was in excellent condition. The sound and visual quality are very good. (And it is in color, in case the B&W cover has you wondering.) I cannot wait to watch season two (on DVD, that is!)

In short, this is an adult series which I highly recommend for anyone feeling open-minded or just plain bored with the usual. It is a classic series, and on DVD!!

"The truth is out there."

As Mulder states, "I believe !". Well, so do I. Whether there are Alien life forms or paranormal beings out there, I have no history of contact with them myself, but I still believe there are more mysteries in this Universe than we can realize with our human senses.