Soft Light (The X-Files)

"Soft Light" is the twenty-third episode of the second season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It originally aired on the Fox network on May 5, 1995. It was written by Vince Gilligan and directed by James A. Contner. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology, although it marks the breakdown in relations between Mulder and his informant X. "Soft Light" received a Nielsen rating of 8.5 and was watched by 8.1 million households. The episode generally received mixed to positive reviews from television critics.

The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, an ex-student of Scully's (Kate Twa) asks the agents to help her with her first investigation concerning a number of disappearances with very few clues. Mulder ponders the idea of spontaneous human combustion but rethinks it when they find a man, Chester Ray Banton (Tony Shalhoub), who is afraid of his own shadow. Banton is a scientist researching dark matter, and his shadow has somehow developed the ability to disintegrate people who come across it.

"Soft Light" was the first The X-Files episode written by Gilligan, who would go on to write several acclaimed episodes such as "Pusher", "Bad Blood" and "Memento Mori". "Soft Light" was one of the first episodes written by someone not on the main writing staff for The X-Files. Originally, the script called for Banton's shadow to be able to move independently, but it was rewritten to save on animation costs. In addition, the character of X (Steven Williams) was not in the script initially. His character was added to give Banton a legitimate fear of the government.