ended up, we need to go back to the start. When the show began on September 10, 1993, the TV landscape looked a lot different than it does today, and we’re not just talking about the outdated fashions and clunky technology. There were no streaming services, cable wasn’t a threat to the big broadcast networks, and Fox had only just expanded to seven nights of programming per week. Primetime shows tended to follow either a serialized format or an episodic one .
It was a tricky balancing act that had to be constantly calibrated. The paranormal cases had to be solved, or at least resolved, within a single episode, and they had to have an interesting hook. Otherwise, they could feel like filler and risk the audience losing interest before the next major development brought the alien conspiracy back to the forefront. Plenty of them missed the mark , but on the whole,
these standalone stories proved to be some of the best, most beloved, and most talked-about episodes of the series. Episodes like “