The X-Files The Complete First Season on DVD: Follow Mulder and Scully's Earliest Investigations

Debuting in the fall of 1993, The X-Files started out as creator Chris Carter's tribute to the ‘70s cult-classic series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, but it became a genuine television phenomenon during the course of its impressive nine-year run. The first season finds the show surprisingly well formed, with FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), encountering paranormal activity that ranges from alien abduction to supernatural murder. While steeped in all of the strangeness, Mulder and Scully - "the believer" and "the skeptic," respectively - develop a fascinatingly complex relationship, that, even at this early stage, reveals itself as disarmingly deep and surprisingly playful.

Although the increasingly complex mythology that begins here would become one of the show's attributes, with legions of devoted fans carefully tracking the labyrinthine alien/cloning story arc, it also became a burden. This initial season, however, largely consists of stand-alone tales of suspense that are rooted in old-fashioned, something-lurking-in-shadows horror. Among these are the creature-driven episodes "The Jersey Devil," in which Mulder desperately searches for the legendary pines-dwelling monster while catching flak from the local constabulary (a blatant nod to the aforementioned Kolchak), and "Shapes," a creepy tale featuring a werewolf-like Native American being known as a Manitou.