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10) “Squeeze” (Season 1)

With The X-Files third episode ever, the series’ immediately set the tone for its creepier outings. Factor in Doug Hutchinson as the rubbery, hibernating killer Eugene Victor Tooms and you have a recipe for the first, great X-Files monster and the show’s first, great encounter with a mysterious force beyond those generated by extra-terrestrials. The episode ended up spawning a sequel later in season one, which saw Tooms meet his fate slice and diced underneath an escalator. Worst. Trip to the Mall. Ever.

9) “X-COPS” (Season 7)

The X-Files and COPS didn’t seem like the most obvious crossover in the world, but hey, they were both, at one time, two of the great franchises in FOX’s staple. So why not team them up? What starts as a COPS episode filming a Sheriff’s Department deputy on the job in LA County, quickly turns into an X-File as the cop runs across a werewolf and his pursuers: Agents Mulder and Scully. The episode’s writer, Vince Gilligan, was a big COPS fan and ended up touching on a lot of the series’ landmarks like crack house raids and domestic disturbances.

8) “Humbug” (Season 2)

Darin Morgan set himself up as an X-Files writer par excellent with this entry which found Mulder and Scully investigating murder in a small town populated by retired circus sideshow performers. The late, great Vincent Schiavelli and Carnivale’s Michael J. Anderson play two of the town’s numerous colourful residents as the FBI agents are forced to wonder the identity of the murderer they’re tracking: Is it the inexplicable human piranha known as The Conundrum or could it be Jim Jim, the Dog Faced Boy? Plus, the parting shot, while leaving the agents stunned in silence, ends up leaving the audience in stitches.

7) “Triangle” (Season 6)

It what was another bizarrely experimental turn for the series, Carter wrote and directed this tale into the heart of the Bermuda Triangle. Mulder solo investigates the reappearance of a World War II-era cruise ship, only to end up in the ship’s past encountering a number of alternate versions of familiar faces, including the Cigarette Smoking Man as a Nazi Commandant and ADA Skinner as a double agent. Not only is the episode a spry and inventive ode to The Wizard of Oz, but it’s ambitiously filmed as a single, long shot called a one-off. Although in reality, there were actually 34 cuts instead of five, the magic of the episode is flawless.

6) “The Post-Modern Prometheus” (Season 5)

In what was a very uneven season, Carter once again showed the versatility of his creation by combining Frankenstein and Cher and filming it in black and white. The ensuing episode is a weird wild ride through small town paranoia, reporters that look like chickens and a cameo by Jerry Springer. Chris Owen, who went on to assay the rat-like Agent Spender later in the season, played the Great Mutato beautifully, as this Frankenstein’s monster escapes to a happy ending… sitting front row centre at a Cher concert with Mulder and Scully.

5) “Jose Chung's From Outer Space” (Season 3)

Another Morgan script (his last for the show, actually) pretty much took everything about The X-Files and threw into a giant blender along with the kitchen sink. The story follows writer Jose Chung (played by Charles Nelson Reilly) as he tries to write a book about an alien encounter of two teenagers, which was investigated by Mulder and Scully. Combining hilarious POV flashbacks, the show’s trademark mysteries that go nowhere and a cameo by game show host Alex Trebek as a man in black, this episode helped establish more zany kind of episodes to come and opened up the series to a strong sense of self-parody.

4) "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (Season 3)

The late Peter Boyle won an Emmy for his guest turn as Mr. Bruckman, an insurance salesman with the inexplicable ability to predict people’s deaths. In what is uniformly brilliant episode from beginning to end (again, thanks to the Emmy-winning Morgan), the big question posed by the episode is what do like more: Japp Broeker short but sweet role as the utterly fake Stupendous Yappi, or this exchange between Mulder and Bruckman:

Bruckman: “There are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified one than autoerotic asphyxiation.”
Mulder: “And why are you telling me that?”
Bruckman: “Look, forget I mentioned it. It's none of my business.”

3) The Host (Season 2)

Before Darin Morgan put words into Mulder’s mouth as a writer, he wore pounds of make-up to play the Special Agent’s most grotesque pursuit: the Flukeman. Coming off a Russian freighter, this mutated fluke, or flat, worm came straight from the radioactive sludge of Chernobyl and starts killing people on the Jersey shore. For the first time really, X-Files goes all out with the monster make-up, giving the creature the full monty as opposed to relegating it to the show’s abundant shadows.

2) Bad Blood (Season 5)

Based on the set-up for a classic episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, both Mulder and Scully tell “their side” of the story involving Mulder’s staking of a suspected vampire. With the TV version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer beginning its legendary run on a rival network, The X-Files proved that it knew how to do vampires too with this outing which remains one of the highest rated episodes of the series. This is actually Files second vampire epic after season two’s “3,” which was notable for being Scully-less due to Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy.

1) Home (Season 4)

This was The X-File so terrifying, so gruesome, so taboo that the FOX Network only aired it once. In a small town called Home, Penn., Mulder and Scully encounter a Sheriff named Andy, a Deputy named Barney and a family of inbreeding, impoverished farmers that will kill anyone that threatens their quiet, happy home. The network considered the episode so disturbing that it swore to never air it again. They changed their minds however in 1999 when “Home” was billed as a “Special Halloween Episode” though it came attached with a TV-MA rating.