"The X-Files" has always been a flawed series, asking more questions than it answers, leaving gaping plot holes and more often than not failing to provide the payoff that it promises.

Creator Chris Carter and his writing team crafted suspenseful tales of aliens, mutants and supernatural creatures that wowed audiences and managed to generate plenty of scares, even though you knew the two main characters, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, would always survive.

It's hard to know for sure, and with Scully increasingly playing the part of a true believer, the series loses much of the back-and-forth that made the show so watchable when it first hit the airwaves.

When "The X-Files" first slithered its way into the public consciousness in the early '90s, Mulder's quest to expose the truth made him seem like a noble freedom fighter, battling jack-booted thugs bent on concealing government schemes.

The government conspiracy at the center of the show's mythology offered tantalizing clues in the first three or four seasons, but dragged on laboriously after it became clear that the writers were stalling over a lack of good ideas for a conclusion.