Stars: Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, Annabeth Gish, Robert Patrick, Mitch Pileggi, Nicholas Lea

Summary: With Scully preparing to give birth to her baby, Alex Krycek claims the baby is a threat to the aliens. When Scully and Reyes flee, aliens arrive claiming the baby as their own.

This X-FILES collection features the thrilling final two episodes of the eighth season. In "Essence" and "Existence," Mulder (David Duchovny) and Doggett (Robert Patrick) investigate Scully's (Gillian Anderson) mysterious pregnancy. Meanwhile Reyes (Annabeth Gish) struggles to protect Scully, from looming forces that have descended on their hidden location. And to make matters worse, Krycek (Nicholas Lea) and other forbodingly familiar faces have begun to reappear.

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The pretentiously titled Existenceis another two-part X-Filesyarn glued together to make a feature-length episode. Here the story concerns the birth of Scully's perhaps-alien-tinged child and proves the old maxim that you should stop watching any series when the characters start having babies. By now, newbie Robert Patrick is settled into the role of Agent Doggett, Scully's new partner on the X-Files, but David Duchovny's contract negotiations have enabled Fox Mulder, no longer in the FBI, to come back and hang about the delivery, clashing and then bonding with his replacement. The action content comes from a mild-mannered alien abductee transformed into an unstoppable killing machine, ripping through everything as he tries to prevent the upcoming nativity for reasons that (as ever) don't quite become clear. Also in the support cast are semi-regular Nicholas Lea as lurking plot-explaining conspirator Alex Krycek, and the more welcome Annabeth Gish, whose interestingly spiritual Agent Monica Reyes is being worked up as a replacement for Scully when Gillian Anderson gets out of her contract. Weirdly, The X-Filesis in pretty good shape for a show that's been running this long--the performances and the direction are still strong, and outside the "continuing story" shows individual episodes hold up well. But this dreary muddle of running about (plus the odd decapitation) and agonised rumination (blathery philosophical musings about the miracle of life and childbirth) does not represent the series' strengths, suggesting that the best thing that could happen would be to get shot of the long-time stars and their played-out characters to make room for a revitalised show starring Patrick and Gish.

On the DVD:The full-screen print, with the extra detail of the DVD image and Dolby Digital, allow you to pick up a lot more than from the murky telecasts. "Alex Krycek Revealed" Parts 1 and 2, a couple of character profiles, turn out to be very snippet-like Fox TV promo pieces, with some interview footage and behind-the-scenes stuff amid the usual teaser clips.--Kim Newman

Aspect Ratio:	1.78 Wide Screen, 16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Alex Krycek Revealed Part 1, Alex Krycek Revealed Part 2, Scene Access
Subtitles:	Dutch, French, German
Year:	2001
Release Date:	November 5, 2001
Runtime:	84 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	22276 D V D
Keywords:	General, Fiction, Science, Files, X, Horror, Sci, Fi, Existence
Genre:	Science Fiction