The Mythology is Chris Carter's visionary story arc of "The X-Files" comprised of 60 episodes from all nine seasons of the show. Now you can follow every government conspiracy, alien abduction, and hidden truth right from the beginning. In Black Oil, even as Scully searches for the truth behind her abduction, an alien autopsy tape leads her and Mulder to a professed group of women abductees who all have chips identical to the one found in Scully's neck. Then, while investigating a series of deaths connected to a sunken World War II aircraft and a mysterious black oil, Mulder encounters Alex Krycek, who claims to have a digital tape documenting the existence of extraterrestrials. A second encounter with Krycek leads Mulder to Siberia, where an unidentified object crashed into Earth in 1908. Yet for all the seemingly undeniable proof, when agents are asked to verify the remains of a 200-year-old-alien, they finally discover just how far the government will go to make Mulder believe.
Black Oil, the second volume in the X-Files Mythology series, covers one of The X-Files' weirder concepts: the alien being that travels from host to host, occasionally revealing itself as it travels across a person's eyeballs. But the volume actually begins with a two-parter from season 3, "Nisei" and "731," in which FBI agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) dig deeper into topics of post-World War II Japanese scientists conducting experiments on alien and human subjects, mass executions at a leprosy colony, Scully's own abduction experience and her sister's murder, and a possible alien-human hybrid being hidden aboard a railroad car. That's our way of saying that Black Oil will make little sense to the X-Files novice. In fact, because those first two episodes (as well as other, later episodes in the set, "Memento Mori," "Tempus Fugit" and "Max") deal more with abduction than with the black oil, they would have fit more appropriately in the first volume, titled Abduction. It appears, then, that The X-Files Mythology is not intended as a themed collection of episodes, but rather an inexpensive and smartly packaged attempt to capture the complete X-Files conspiracy/alien arc while bypassing the stand-alone "creature feature" episodes. As that arc makes for riveting watching and did give The X-Files its water-cooler reputation, the Mythology series is a good buy for new viewers or just for casual fans who want to pick up a bunch of great episodes with some new commentary tracks. The four-disc Black Oil set encompasses 15 episodes (starting late in season 3 and ending early in season 5, the period often considered the peak of the series). Notable episodes such as "Talitha Cumi," "Herrenvolk," "Tenguska," "Gethsemane," and "Redux" offered more about the alien bounty hunters, Mulder's family, Scully's affliction, the mysterious informant named X, and turncoat agent Krycek. Still, devoted fans should stick to the complete-season sets for memorable episodes that are excluded from this set, such as "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," "War of the Coprophages," "Hell Money," "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," "Home," "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," and "Paper Hearts," to name a few. That's not even mentioning "Leonard Betts," the plot of which was technically outside the normal arc but contained a key dramatic revelation.
New features are less generous than on volume 1, restricted to director commentaries on three episodes plus the next installment of creator Chris Carter's new "Threads of Mythology" documentary. --David Horiuchi
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