I WANT TO BELIEVE

A set of portraits in tribute to everyone's favourite paranormal police procedural science-fiction-horror-thriller pseudo-anthology TV series.

The show was first broadcast on the BBC when I was 13 years old - and ticked every box for an enthusiastic little proto-geek with a growing obsession with science fiction, fantasy and horror.  While I’ll admit I fazed out by the last couple of seasons (by which point I had moved away to college and university and was pre-occupied with drinking and trying to make new friends), I still think the series deserves kudos for reinventing the sci-fi/horror anthology format for a ’90s audience.  I really think it was The Twilight Zone of it's day - switching weekly from speculative science-fiction, to out-right horror, to black comedy, to straightforward police procedural (and sometimes a mix of all the above).  It had that key surprise factor, where you never really knew what the next episode would bring (besides a lot of waving torches in the dark) and that still resonates with me even today.  I keep buying DVDs of horror anthology series like Tales From The Darkside and Night Gallery hoping for the same buzz, but they're never the same.

Narrowing down the list of subjects to fit the 12-person format was tricky, so I’ve kept it to characters and monsters from the first three seasons, when the show was still fresh and starting to play around with the formula.  Apologies if your favourite character or monster got missed out.

For more X-Files kicks, check out Shaenon K Garrity's brilliant Monster Of The Week webcomic, wherein she sets out to summarise every episode in turn in a snarky comic manner.