“The X-Files” momentous return to television is now available on Blu-ray and DVD with a wealth of extras!

The X-Files’ tenth season six-episode event was certainly one of the biggest moments in television over the course of the past year. Fervent efforts to bring the series back finally paid off when the show returned to FOX after a staggering thirteen-year hiatus. With the incomparable David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson back in tow, and much of the series’ original writing staff returning, it was looking as if this revival was being treated with the utmost respect. Now that it’s nearly been four months after The X-Files’ latest season’s finale, the consensus that seems to be settled upon is that this was a very mixed bag, albeit one that was still worth opening.

I attest that some of the series’ very best and very worst work is contained within these six episodes. The quality of season ten (which you can read my thoughts on elsewhere on this site) is not being put under scrutiny here, but rather the special features and extras that have been culled together for the season’s Blu-ray and DVD set. The wonderful thing about DVD releases is that even if you’re lukewarm to the main content, hopefully the trove of extraneous material will be enough to change your mind or broaden your opinion. In the case of “The X-Files – The Event Series,” the set does a commendable job of cramming in the goodies; it’s just a question of how important they all are.

Just to be clear, there are over 25 hours of bonus content on this set, and for a season that’s made up of only six episodes, that’s not bad at all. To begin with, the usual TV season boxset culprits are here, such as deleted and extended scenes for all episodes. None of these excised scenes are terribly crucial. Their inclusion here is certainly nice and helps expand on some of these episodes in small ways, but if you’re looking for bombshells or big stuff, there’s nothing like that here. Although a number of great gags are removed from “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” that are worth checking out. And on the topic of humor, there’s a lengthy compulsory gag reel that’s also included. It’s much of your standard gag reel fare, with a lot of Anderson and Duchovny stumbling over rhetoric and jargon, but it’s nice to just see the two of them laughing it up on set.

Commentaries are always something that excite me, and on such a puzzling season of The X-Files I was especially curious to get some insight on production decisions. The set has commentaries for the episodes, “Founder’s Mutation” (with Chris Carter and James Wong), “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” (with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Darin Morgan, and Kumail Nanjiani), and “My Struggle II” (with Chris Carter and producer Gabe Rotter). Arguably these are the biggest episodes to necessitate commentaries, but on a set with only six episodes would it have been that difficult to include a commentary on all of them? The amount that we get is still nice, but for instance, on “Were-Monster” Morgan and Nanjiani are on one recording that’s spliced together with Duchovny and Anderson’s. Clearly this means that two full commentaries were recorded. Why not just include them both rather than mashing them together? Surely the idea was to eliminate fat, but I don’t think anyone would have objected to listening to more of Duchovny and Anderson.

Minor nitpicking aside, there’s still plenty of good in these commentaries. The track for “Were-Monster” was the first thing I put on when I popped in the disc, with the episode still maybe ranking as one of my top three ­X-Files episodes of all time. The chemistry on this commentary is so much fun and palpable; with it making perfect sense that such an easy-going commentary would accompany such a lighthearted, silly installment. Hearing everyone giggle and gleefully recite lines is such a great reminder of how much these people love this show. It’s nice to hear Kumail’s “X-Files Files” get brought up repeatedly, and other antics like Nanjiani and Morgan doing line readings of deleted scenes act as great material. Morgan even talks about having written an explanation for why Rhys Darby’s Guy Mann character speaks with an Australian accent, too. That’s the degree of meticulous dedication Morgan puts into his script, whether it’s making it to the screen or not.

Wong keeps the insight coming on his commentary track, with Carter frequently falling back on technical aspects of production or reminiscing to the first nine years of the show. Carter’s commentary track for “My Struggle II” was another I was deeply interested to listen to, hoping it would shed some light on the wildly polarizing finale. Unfortunately, Carter decides to focus on minutiae here rather than content. This track doesn’t make this episode seem any less ridiculous, with most of its focus going to technical and casting aspects rather than trying to explain story points or talk alternate ideas.

As soon as things like mass alien DNA end up coming up in the episode, Carter will digress into an anecdote about the room that they’re filming in, or what catering was serving that day instead. Big decisions in the finale like explaining the Cigarette Smoking Man’s survival, Reyes’ limited return, or why Doggett wasn’t included are not even touched upon. These are the sorts of things I feel like fans would be interested in. Carter even reveals that the episode wasn’t written until as late as the fourth or fifth episode was being worked on, with him needing to call in the help of fellow fans and science advisors to the show, Dr. Anne Simon and Dr. Margaret Fearon, which feels like a pretty strange move. I mean, why not just get the Morgans to help him with the finale, or really pester Frank Spotnitz and try and coax a story by credit out of him.

Fortunately, the two bigger pieces on the set are fairly comprehensive and don’t disappoint. The first is, “43:45 – The Making of a Struggle” which is essentially five thirty-minute documentaries that break down the premiere episode, “My Struggle I.” Like I mentioned, there might not be a commentary for the episode, but this pretty much says everything that it needs to on the matter. The feature looks at the effort necessary to bring this difficult episode together, but also the stringent restrictions where network TV cannot surpass 43 minutes and 45 seconds, breaking down just how much is packed into this premiere. The documentaries literally take you through every aspect of production, going from the final production meeting table read, into the shooting of the episode, and all the way to the episode’s premiere at New York Comic-Con and watching the fans’ responses.

The pieces are mostly led by Carter, but everyone gets a moment to shine. Highlights include the discussions on how much of a family the production team is, the trepidation on where to start the series and where Mulder and Scully should be in their relationship, and Anderson’s learning curve on tapping back into the head space of Scully. There’s even a pretty cool detour on how the show effectively films the cinéma vérité UFO-style footage involving hubcaps on fishing line. All of this is pretty satisfying and while it gets into a lot of typical territory and what you might expect from a feature like this, it’s also incredibly in-depth and as thorough as possible. While at times it might feel redundant or that it tries to cover too much, this is a pretty big event in television so I can understand the need to be indulgent.

The other focal piece is “Season X” which is split up into thirteen five-minute segments covering various topics from the season like the show’s return, Mulder and Scully’s relationship, or digging into each episode. This is pretty standard fare where two or three featurettes are devoted to each episode. Previous season sets just feature one of these per episode and with this season being shorter it’s nice to see a little more being devoted to each entry. Usually one feature focuses on the episode’s story, with the other getting into some technical, casting, or more specific element of the episode at hand, like how they did the huge explosion in “Babylon” or the process behind Mulder’s mushroom trip in the same episode (yes, Mulder’s shroom trip gets its own featurette). Perhaps my favorite nugget of knowledge to come out of this feature though is that Morgan reveals that his episodes, “Home”, “Never Again”, and “Home Again” are meant to function as an unofficial Scully trilogy of motherhood, which helps frame the episode in a much better light.

The next feature on the set, “Monsters of the Week: A Recap from the Wildest and Scariest from the Original Series” is a nice little addition but hardly feels crucial. The Kumail hosted segment sees him singling out his nine favorite monster-of-the-week episodes, selecting one for each season. Nanjiani runs down a lot of expected picks (although his inclusion of season six’s “Field Trip” is a pretty contentious choice), but this is really no different than any “Best Of” list online. Kumail’s heavy inclusion on the DVD is nice, albeit a little puzzling. This almost feels more like a bonus episode of his podcast or something he personally made, rather than an official special feature.

The final two extras are definitely the most puzzling. One of them, “The X-Files – Green Production” is essentially a glorified PSA. The segment is all about “greening” the show and how to be further environmentally conscious. This sort of feature is great—and it’s wonderful that ­The X-Files partakes—but what fan honestly wanted this special feature? It feels more like FOX trying to advertise their own mandate. At least make some sort of alien/green gag if you’re going to spend time in this territory! This could have been a paragraph on the liner notes.

Finally, a short film, Grace, written and directed by The X-Files’ script coordinator, Karen Nielsen, is included. The moody film depicts a broken world where a girl and her dog will do whatever’s necessary to survive. It’s an appropriately fucked up story that’s well shot and acted at that, it’s just that it’s got nothing to do with The X-Files! Maybe if the devastation in the film was due to aliens or something, but instead, this film is just here. I think it’s great that The X-Files wants to support its own, but simply reference the film or link to it elsewhere. Don’t put it on a DVD that it’s tenuously related to. A feature devoted to any other production topic would have been more relevant than this.

Overall, “The X-Files – The Event Series” on Blu-ray and DVD feels much like the latest season itself where a lot of great content gets lost under some puzzling decisions. If you’re a fan of season ten (and even if you’re not), there’s no disputing that this is the definitive set to acquire. The content that is worthwhile is strong enough that the lack of value in some of the other content is a little more excusable. If we are lucky enough to get another “event season” of The X-Files, hopefully the kinks present here will be worked out by the next DVD set.

“The X-Files – The Event Series” and “The X-Files – The Complete Series” are both available on Blu-ray and DVD on June 14th