The Beginning (The X-Files) - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"The Beginning" first aired in the United States on November 8, 1998. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 11.9, with a 17 share, meaning that roughly 11.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 17 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 20.34 million viewers and was the second highest rated episode of the sixth season. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on March 7, 1999 and received 1.08 million viewers, making it the second most watched episode that week. Fox promoted the episode with the tagline "The new beginning." The episode was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 3 – Colonization, a DVD collection that contains episodes involved with the alien Colonist's plans to take over the earth.

Critical reception to the episode was divided, as reviews ranged from largely positive to negative. In the book The End and the Beginning: The Official Guide to The X-Files, Vol. 5, author Andy Meisler noted that some fans and critics responded positively to "The Beginning," most notably because the episode functioned as "a particularly artful and effective way to launch the series's new season—and era." Tom Kessenich, in his book Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files wrote positively of the episode, saying "'The Beginning' was a pretty good premiere episode. I was quite pleased to see how Chris Carter took last season's finale and the movie and tied things together to get Season 6 off to a fresh start." Todd VanDerWerff from The A.V. Club gave it a B. He praised the performance of Chris Owens, noting that he was "acting the shit out of Spender". Despite this, however he called the episode "lackluster" and noted that it "isn’t a great episode of the show, but it works well enough". VanDerWerff's main issue with the entry was that it chose to close off the events of the fifth season finale, but did little to expand upon the revelations of the series' feature film. VanDerWerff also criticized the fact that Scully was, once again, a skeptic in the paranormal after all she saw.

Not all reviews were positive, however. Critical Myth reviewer John Keegan gave the episode a 5 out 10 ratings and wrote that, "Overall, this episode is the unfortunate victim of several writing and production challenges, many of which were nearly impossible to overcome. While the idea of new agents assigned to the X-Files was quite good, it was never realized to the extent that it should have been. Add to that the need to recap far too many plot points from the film, and this becomes one of the weakest season premieres of the series." Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode one star out of five, writing that "'The Beginning' opens witty enough and then offers the viewer no substance. It's a better season opener than 'Redux' but it's still very poor." Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a largely negative review and awarded it one-and-a-half stars out of four. She derided the episode's plot, noting that the episode was "another mile down the X-Files Road of Mythology. Monster aliens? This is something out of a schlocky pulp novel with the science of the show dissolved into compete technobabble".