The X-Files

Season 3 (1995-1996)

Continuing from "Anasazi", "The Blessing Way" and "Paper Clip" opened the third season, bringing in the involvement of former Nazi scientists, formally introducing the leading conspiracy member Well-Manicured Man (John Neville), and containing revelations about both Mulder and Scully's families. Ratings-wise, "The Blessing Way" was the most successful X-Files episode thus far.[4]

The third season confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life within the show[60] and suggested that a shadowy international consortium known as the Syndicate were conspiring with the aliens to colonize Earth. This would be achieved via use of the so-called black oil, introduced in the two-part "Piper Maru"/"Apocrypha." However, the season's other main mythology episodes, "Nisei" and "731", continued to call some of these conclusions into question. Chris Carter began to receive criticism for posing as many questions as answers in the mythology, while the mythology episodes were also praised for their increasingly Hollywood-like production values.[61] "Nisei" received Emmy Awards for its sound editing and mixing.
Season three was noted for its wide variety of "monster of the week" episodes. "Pusher", the second effort by writer Vince Gilligan, depicted the cold blooded Robert Patrick Modell, a man who could control people telepathically (a sequel, "Kitsunegari", came two years later in the fifth season). Simultaneously, the show continued to yield darker episodes, such as "The Walk" (a mysterious deadly force in a veterans hospital), "Oubliette" (a metaphysical connection between a recently kidnapped girl and another woman) and "Grotesque" (Mulder's descent into the world of a gargoyle-possessed killer, which received an Emmy for John Bartley's cinematography).

Behind the scenes, Darin Morgan continued his involvement with the show, becoming The X-Files' most critically acclaimed writer.[62] Despite intense perfectionism and having been unsatisfied with his well-received "Humbug",[63] Morgan managed to turn in three dark comedy episodes which were considered original for the show. The first of these, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," concerned a St. Paul insurance salesman (Peter Boyle) who could predict death. It won Emmys for best writing and guest actor Boyle, and comes in very high in fan polls of favorite episodes.[64] "War of the Coprophages" was Morgan's parody-tribute to H.G. Wells/Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, this time with an infestation of cockroaches driving a town to hysteria. It also mocked the sexual tension between Mulder and Scully by introducing the attractive female entomologist Dr. Bambi Berenbaum. A similar technique was also used in Chris Carter's own "Syzygy," only one week later, leading to what some viewers felt was a comedy overdose