X-Files Season 10 Volume 1

“The X-Files: Cold Cases” is a fairly short, nostalgic audio drama featuring a full cast from the original series. What is an audio drama you say? Well, it's a full cast format with music and sound effects that harkens back to the 20's, 30's and 40's when families would sit around the radio and listen to their favorite caped crusaders (check out The Shadow – Its voiced by Orson Welles!), detectives that smoke pipes (Sherlock is voiced by Basil Rathbone in the audio production, who is great, but we all know Jeremy Brett portrayed him the best.) and fun horror anthologies. (The inimitable Bela Lugosi guests stars in some of these – need I say more?)

Sorry about the slight tangent. On wards with the review:

I really enjoyed the TV show as a youngster, so once I found out about how this audiobook expands upon some of the original cases, I had to check it out. So, the first thing I would say is that this is extreme fan service. There is practically no backstory, so if you pick this up without a strong knowledge of the show, you might be a bit lost.

Mulder and Scully dust off their trench coats and are pulled back into the X-files after a security breach on the bureau's firewall. Did you use an IDS instead of an IPS? Tsk, tsk, FBI. It is set after the movies, I believe, and right before the revival show.

I'm going to nerd out here, so please skip ahead if you so desire. Each mini-episode is about 15–25 minutes long and covers a vast array of exciting episodes. I was so INCREDIBLY excited and giddy when they chose to cover the Flukeman. Remember the weird, half-man, half-worm creature that floated around in the waste water system? Well, you find out (no spoiler) where it came from. Oh, Mr. X is back, Smoking Man is back, and the Lone Gunman are back. I could go on and on. It's just so much fun to briefly catch up with the characters.

There is a problem, though. It's not a turn-off by any means; it's just the nature of the production, I think. Since it's audio, some scenes have to explain away what is happening. For example, a gunshot will go off and someone has to say, “I think I shot (so and so)” or someone will transform into something and they have to describe what they are seeing. It has a campy feel, so it could be considered humorous, but it could also play as a negative for others. Your results may vary.

The bottom line is if you like the show, ‘I want to believe' that you will enjoy this. It's nostalgic and oh, so fun.

This was so much better than I thought it would be! David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and a ton of other original cast members are back as their characters in a fully-voiced and stunningly produced audiobook that feels just like you're watching episodes of the show.

The audiobook consists of five chapters that are essentially 5 all new X-Files episodes that take place between seasons 9 and 10 of the series. I'm going to quickly break each one down and give you a few thoughts on each as some were better than others.

Chapter 1 - Believers: So great having the whole ensemble back and it even had a few surprise appearances from X-Files side characters. This acted as a mythology episode and pretty perfectly made sense of all the twisted alien mythology the show had it its later seasons, making me wish that we'd seen something like this chapter in the actual show. Only downside was that the action sequence at the end was quite hard to follow in audio form, and could have done with a bit more narration from the characters on what was actually happening.

Chapter 2 - Hosts: Easily my favourite of the bunch, even if the ending was anticlimactic. As it's name suggests, this chapter finally gave us the long awaited return of the Flukeman and upped-the-ante just like Alien did with its sequel Aliens, giving us a ton more Flukemen. Some really cool scenes in this chapter, and really fleshed-out the Flukeman backstory.

Chapter 3 - Being for the Benefit of Mr. X: I found this one to be the worst of the lot. It was very hard to follow in audio form, very short compared to the others, and the whole chapter pretty much solely consisted of a single conversation and flashback. Mr. X was back though so even though this chapter was quite lacklustre, he was still as badass as ever.

Chapter 4 - More Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man: This chapter was probably my second favourite after Hosts. It works as a sequel to the Season 4 episode ‘Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man' and follows the same format as that episode did by pretty much only focussing on Cancer Man himself and taking us through different stories from his past for the runtime. Absolutely loved every single one of the stories and how they all connected to different moments in the show. The highlight of this chapter though was easily William B. Davis's voice acting. So good!

Chapter 5 - Pilgrims: This chapter was epic. Clocking in around an hour and a half long it had everything you'd ever want in a mythology episode and totally felt that it was movie-scale in execution. Even though this chapter was long, it went by in a breeze and the story was super engaging. And come on, our favourite rogue agent Krychek coming back? What's not to love about that.

All in all, I was blown away with the quality of the audiobook and honestly think that the stories and route that they took with this should've been what they went with for season 10 of the show, so much more engaging and a better storyline all around.

Would definitely consider this essential listening for any X-Files fan.