In its sixth season, THE X-FILES debuts with a story that challenges everything viewers think they have come to know about the series. Building on the success of this summers THE X-FILES feature film, the television series takes Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) on an investigation that gives them a startling new understanding of "the truth" about extraterrestrial life and alien colonization.

Beginning as a cult hit on the FOX network in 1993, THE X-FILES has gone on to become a Top Ten hit, a multiple-Emmy nominee and three-time Golden Globe winner for Best Dramatic Series. Most recently nominated for 16 Emmy Awards, the

show chronicles Agents Mulder and Scullys investigations into the FBIs unsolved cases -- called "X-files" -- whose only solution involves paranormal or unexplained phenomena. Mulder, whose belief in the paranormal was fueled by the abduction of his sister by aliens when he was 12 years old, was partnered with Scully, a medical doctor, so that she could debunk his outlandish theories. Instead, the two formed a close bond that has endured, even after the destruction of the X-files in the fifth seasons final episode.

The sixth season opener finds Mulder and Scully attempting to return to work on the X-files with the help of their supervisor, Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). But the dark figures in a shadow government, led by the Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis), have other plans. The first episode also features a return appearance by Mimi Rogers as Agent Diana Fowley and Chris Owens as Agent Jeffery Spender.

Behind the scenes, the new season also marks a turning point for the series, which for the first time will be filming in Los Angeles after five years of shooting in Vancouver. The change of location will allow the series to tell new kinds of stories, involving parts of the country that previously could not be easily duplicated in the Pacific Northwest.

Among the cases the pair has investigated are a violent, unseen force surrounding a young girl that kills those who threaten her; a series of bizarre deaths thought to be the work of a genetically-mutated serial killer who emerges every 30 years from hibernation to eat five human livers; the mysterious demise of a research team drilling for prehistoric ice core samples at an Arctic research facility; and an unorthodox government research project in which human subjects are injected with alien DNA.

The show returns this season to continue chronicling the lives of the two disparate FBI agents. "The truth is out there," declares the show's main title, and this season, Agents Mulder and Scully will again work to uncover that which is true.

Chris Carter is the creator and executive producer of THE X-FILES, which is produced by Twentieth Television in association with Fox Broadcasting Company. Robert Goodwin also serves as an executive producer; J.P. Finn, Kim Manners, Vince Gilligan and Paul Rabwin, producers and Lori Jo Nemhauser and John Shiban, co-producers.

ON AIR:

Sundays 9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT

ORIGINATION:

Los Angeles

CONCEPT:

Drama about two FBI special agents who are teamed to investigate a series of unexplained cases called "X-Files."

SEASON PREMIERE:

November 8, 1998

ORIGINAL PREMIERE:

Friday, Sept. 10, 1993

STARRING:

David Duchovny (Agent Fox Mulder)

Gillian Anderson (Agent Dana Scully)

ALSO STARRING:

Mitch Pileggi (Assistant Director Skinner)

PRODUCED BY:

Twentieth Television in association with Fox Broadcasting Co.

CREATED BY/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:

Chris Carter

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:

Frank Spotnitz

PRODUCERS:

Rob Bowman

Kim Manners

Bernadette Caulfield

John Shiban

Paul Rabwin

CO-PRODUCERS:

Lori Jo Nemhauser

ART DIRECTOR:

Lauren Polizzi

SET DESIGNER:

John Bruce

DIRECTORS:

Chris Carter

Michael Watkins

Dan Sackheim

Kim Manners

Rob Bowman

Peter Markle

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY:

Bill Roe

EDITORS:

Heather MacDougall

Lynn Willingham

Louise Innes