Cliff Notes – The 90s TV episode so disturbing it was banned from TV for 3 years
- The X Files episode "Home," aired in 1996, was the first to receive a viewer discretion warning due to its graphic content involving inbreeding and a buried infant.
- Following its initial broadcast, the episode was removed from regular repeats and only aired once more in 1999, three years later, due to its controversial nature.
The 90s TV episode so disturbing it was ‘banned from TV for 3 years’
The X Files was one of the biggest TV shows of the 1990s (Picture: FOX)
Almost 30 years ago, an episode of The X Files proved to be so controversial that it was subsequently banned from TV.
The groundbreaking sci-fi series, which started in 1993 and ran until 2002, starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
On the show, Mulder and Scully investigated strange, unsolved cases related to the paranormal and aliens across the United States of America.
Initially a cult hit, The X Files received rave reviews and soon became a major cultural touchstone of the 1990s, pulling in 20 million viewers at its peak.
Two revival seasons were released to mixed audience and critical reviews in 2016 and 2018, and a third revival season is apparently in the works with Sinners director Ryan Coogler.
In the days of streaming, The X Files has seen renewed interest from fans, with people able to watch every episode from all 11 seasons on demand on Disney Plus.
The fourth season of The X Files had a particularly controversial episode (Picture: 20th Century Fox)
But while the Fox series was on TV, there was one episode that proved so controversial that fans had to wait years to have a chance at seeing it again.
In the second episode of season four, titled Home, Mulder and Scully investigate the death of a baby which had been born with severe physical defects.
The pair travel to the rural village of Home in the US state of Pennsylvania and arrive at the estate of the Peacocks, a family of physically deformed farmers.
Mulder and Scully find a deformed family in a remote village (Picture: Ken Staniforth/Fox)
It was the first X Files episode to receive a content warning (Picture: 20th Century Fox)
Before the episode aired, it became the first X Files broadcast to be given a viewer discretion warning – for the graphic, harrowing content that followed.
Initially believing that the Peacocks kidnapped and raped an innocent women to produce the baby who died, a much darker truth is eventually unearthed.
Mulder and Scully find that the baby was actually buried alive by the Peacocks shortly after it was born, and that the family have been inbreeding for centuries.
Would you tangle with the Peacocks? (Picture: FOX)
The show made stars of Gillian Anderson and Dave Duchovny (Picture: SkyTV)
With some of The X Files’ producers saying they’d gone ‘too far,’ singer Johnny Mathis refused to have his song Wonderful Wonderful played during the episode.
Shortly afterwards, Home was removed from regular repeat runs by Fox, only being shown once more on Fox in October 1999, more than three years after its original broadcast.
The X Files wouldn’t receive another viewer discretion warning until four years later, when the season eight episode Via Negativa also got slapped with a content advisory sticker.
It was only shown on Halloween night in 1999 – three years after its broadcast (Picture: Fox)
Speaking to The New York Times in 2015, James Wong, who co-wrote the episode, was surprised at the backlash to an episode he considered ‘straightforward X Files’.
He said: ‘We didn’t think we were pushing the envelope of taste in the way people seem to ascribe to us. We thought this was the most down-the-middle, straightforward X Files of all [the episodes we wrote].’
While the episode is now featured in its rightful place among the rest of the series on Disney Plus and other streaming services, TV syndication broadcasts are still iffy over Home’s content.
TV re-runs on certain linear channels in America still don’t include the tale of the Peacock family, and even the version on streaming services is apparently edited.
Some of The X Files’ most dedicated fans claim that only on old DVD copies of season four can you watch the original cut, which shows more of the birthing scene at the beginning of the episode.
Watch The X Files on Disney Plus.