As Blu-ray started to pull ahead of HD DVD in the next Battle of the New Formats, production companies started to try the same trick. Increasingly, all the good extras are reserved for the Blu-ray, in the hope of encouraging fans to upgrade once again, with DVDs often vanilla discs, or very nearly. It’s always pleasant, then, to see a DVD release of new material that still offers a good selection of extra material, the sort of thing you can’t get from Netflix, on what is now the old-fashioned DVD format. The X-Files Event series is one such DVD box-set. Across three discs, it includes the series (obviously), three episode commentaries, two Making Of features, three other short featurettes, deleted scenes and a gag reel. The series itself received what might kindly be referred to as a mixed reception, and you can see our reviews of individual episodes elsewhere on the site. To an extent, it benefits from a short binge-watch of all six episodes, as threads running across the season can be drawn out more easily; on the other hand, a certain amount of repetition designed to keep weekly viewers up to date becomes more noticeable. It also benefits from a re-watch, knowing what this new series is and how it plays out. Without the burden of years of expectation, it becomes easier to enjoy these episodes for what they are, rather than feeling disappointment that they are not what you might have expected them to be. The highlight of the series and the main reason to want your own permanent copy of the episodes, though, is certainly the Darin Morgan-scripted (and directed), Rhys Darby-starring Mulder And Scully Meet The Were-Monster, which is a joy from start to finish. There are two Making Of features. The first, a 50-minute feature perhaps confusingly titled 43:45 after the standard length of an episode, focuses on the making of Episode 1, My Struggle, from initial table read to the end of shooting. The second, Season X (one hour and ten minutes), offers an overview of the making of all six episodes (including My Struggle). Both are thorough and offer some interesting insights through the usual combination of behind the scenes footage and talking heads. One particularly interesting feature of Season X is that it goes through the season in its original running order (i.e. My Struggle, Home Again, Mulder And Scully Meet The Were-Monster, Babylon, Founder’s Mutation, My Struggle II), offering a sense of how the overall story arc would have developed across the season had the running order not been changed. The other DVD features offer the usual smorgasbord of smaller offerings. The first deleted scene, a conspiracy scene from My Struggle, doesn’t really add much, but the other, an extended version of Mulder’s dance routine from Babylon, is quite fun. There’s a short film (Grace) written and directed by the series’ script co-ordinator Karen Nielsen, a gag reel, a ten-minute featurette written by and featuring Kumail Nanjiani choosing the most memorable monsters of the week from each season of the original run of The X-Files, and a two-minute featurette on environmental measures taken by the production. The X-Files – The Event Series came out on DVD & Blu-Ray on the 13th of June. Read our spoiler-filled episode reviews, Chris Carter interview and more on The X-Files, here.
