33 Years Ago, a Legendary Sci-Fi Series Redefined the Entire Genre With Just One Episode

Published Sep 24, 2026, 12:00 AM EDT

The X-Files is no exception.

In its first episode about FBI agents who investigate paranormal phenomena, true-believer Agent Mulder (David Duchovny) meets the skeptic Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) and they take on their first case, which seems to revolve around alien abductees. Then, in the second episode, they look into a case involving an Air Force base experimenting with alien aircraft. Both of these episodes are about the show’s central alien mythology, which is why the third episode — which was the show’s first standalone, “Monster of the Week” episode — was just as crucial as the first two in establishing the balance between plot-driven stories and one-off sidequests.

Fortunately, that third episode was so good it helped get early viewers hooked on the series and also set a very high benchmark for future Monster of the Week episodes.

Image: 20th Century Television

“Squeeze” first aired on September 24, 1993, and it was written by Glen Morgan and James Wong, the first people besides creator Chris Carter to write an X-Files episode. The case begins with a series of seemingly impossible murders occurring in Baltimore, where a person is killed and their liver is removed with the killer’s bare hands. Especially strange is the fact that each of the murders took place in very hard-to-get-to places, without obvious points of entry. Mulder also points out that a similar series of murders took place in 1963, 1933, and perhaps even further back than that.

By staking out one of the killer's crime scenes, Mulder and Scully apprehend a man named Eugene Victor Tooms (Doug Hutchison), a cold, blank-faced man who appears to be in his 30s. Given his apparent age, Tooms couldn’t have committed the earlier crimes, and once he passes a lie detector test, the local agent working with Mulder and Scully lets Tooms go. After that, the murders continue.

Spoiler alert: Tooms is eventually discovered to be some sort of creature that can stretch and squeeze his body into impossible spaces. He also consumes several human livers to sustain him before going into hibernation for 30 years. When he awakens, he repeats the pattern. While it’s never fully explained what Tooms is, he was certainly original and memorable, and the creepy way his yellow eyes are seen in tight vents and other small spaces makes the episode quite scary.

The legacy of “Squeeze”

Image: 20th Century Television

“Squeeze” was important because, as much as The X-Files was about its central conspiracy, far more of its episodes were about standalone, procedural stories where Mulder and Scully investigate paranormal cases all over the country. If episodes like that didn’t work, the show would not have been able to last for one season, much less 11. Fortunately, Morgan and Wong crafted a tight, creepy, intriguing story with a monster completely unlike anything people had seen before. Doug Hutchison played the character with a slightly empty, alien quality, which made the creature deeply mysterious, even though he usually looked like a normal guy.

Image: 20th century television

The episode was so good it also served as something of a benchmark for future Monster of the Week stories. In the years to come, the occasional standalone episode would surpass “Squeeze,” like “The Host” and “Home,” but such occurrences were rare. For the most part, “Squeeze” stood as the best example of how to nail a Monster of the Week story, and as long as an episode was somewhat in the ballpark of “Squeeze,” it probably made for a decent episode of The X-Files.

The X-Files is available to stream on Disney Plus, Hulu, and for free on Pluto TV