There is a conspiracy at the heart of America’s institutions. The FBI, the CIA and the Pentagon are all involved. In darkened rooms and nondescript offices, faceless men conspire to control the world. They have the resources of the American military-industrial complex at their command and they are not afraid to use them. Individual lives mean nothing to them; nor do the fates of thousands or millions. For them power, and maintaining their hold on power, is the only reality.

And then there’s The X-Files.

Watching the show ten years on, while the box sets are a tenner a throw in County Books, is a disturbing experience. Any producer walking into a network today and proposing the basic concept would be shown the door very quickly. In today’s environment, the American people don’t need to be shown that their institutions can’t be trusted- instead we have the likes of Alias which, while fun in its own way, has for the most part clearly defined good guys (the CIA) and bad guys. Perhaps The X-Files needed the benign smiling face of the Clinton administration to have any effect; the portrait of Slick Willie in Skinner’s office is the most important prop there, but there’s a contrast between the affable Clinton and the conspiracy-ridden Washington offices which is far more effective than any attempt to contrast the Cigarette Smoking Man and the Bush Administration- except that even George Wanker Bush can’t hang on for nine years.

By the way, this is not an episode guide. If it’s anything, it’ll be a series of miscellaneous pieces provoked by my random exploration of nine years of television. I’m starting with Season 3, by the way- it was the first one I bought, mainly because I never saw it in transmission order. Those of you with long memories may remember that the BBC seriously fucked up the running order back in 1996-7; the months after the Dunblane killings (and how quickly we’ve forgotten those) saw a hypersensitivity about televisual violence which meant that the running order was shuffled several times until the most violent episodes could be shown together in a later slot- and in the case of ‘Talitha Cumi’, the last episode, held over until the start of Season 4 because it coincided with the Dunblane anniversary. Needless to say, if they hadn’t mucked around with the transmission order in the first place (bringing Scully’s dog back from the dead), the season would have ended a few weeks earlier and we could have seen the season Chris Carter intended.

That’s about it for the moment- I’m having a bit of a lost weekend, with 22 episodes to watch, wine and pizza to hand (and cake tomorrow once I go to the market and see the Cake Man). Anybody who’s still paying attention to the Buffy reviews may have to wait a little while, although I’m sure I can fit ‘Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion’ in if I try.