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Chris Carter doesn't want the X-Files to end. Why would he? It's his universe, his characters. He may have done other projects in the past but this is really representative of what he is interested in, especially after a fairly long break from it.
The dumb part is, Carter's unwillingness to let go of the arc that should have ended back in the mid-90's is what is ultimately killing the series/franchise as a whole. Life continues, but chapters in our lives do come to an end.
I think Chris Carter has said in interviews that he never intended for the X-Files to have a proper ending. Something like "life never ends, why should the X-Files?"
To be fair, "My Struggle IV" has closed off most of the show's plots, just not in a terribly satisfying way. The Spartan Virus isn't coming, the Cigarette Smoking Man is dead (?), the X-Files have been shut down and Mulder and Scully are starting a new family. If it weren't for Skinner being either dead or injured in an alley nearby as Mulder and Scully hold each other, this could have been an ending. But Carter deliberately aimed for the Season 11 finale to feel incomplete. CHUCK and BUFFY have shown how you can write a season finale that works as a series finale, but Carter has declined this route, instead insisting that THE X-FILES will return.
That seems unlikely to me. Season 10 started with 16 million viewers and ended with 7.6 million which is pretty solid, but Season 11 hovered around 3.5 million for most of its run.
I think something is wrong with Chris Carter. He was never the best writer on the show, but some of the decisions that went into this final season (especially the finale) were beyond just bad writing.
I think the problem is Chris Carter's anthology style. His refusal to engage in serialization is mismatched to how a modern viewer watches television.
Chris Carter once remarked shortly after Season 9 that THE X-FILES' audience had disappeared and he wondered where they'd gone. The answer: they'd gone to shows that offered ongoing plot and character development with characters who grew with the viewers.
In the 90s, it was fine for Mulder and Scully to be written with contradictory characterization from week to week and for the X-FILES universe to be magical one week and scientific the next. Most viewers didn't see every single episode. But towards the end of THE X-FILES, television was becoming more serialized. THE X-FILES wouldn't commit to serialization despite the alien myth-arc and Mulder/Scully relationship demanding it; as a result, the audience gave up on the show.
In 2016, THE X-FILES received a second chance and now it had viewers who would see every episode. Carter had an opportunity to serve this new, mainstream audience wanting to see week to week development with Mulder, Scully, the myth-arc and their partnership. But Carter instead presented episodes that contradicted each other from week to week.
"My Struggle" declares that the alien myth-arc is THE X-FILES primary content, but then "Founder's Mutation" offers no progress on delving into the Conspiracy of Men. The Spartan Virus is unleashed in "My Struggle II," but MSIII rewinds time to minutes before the outbreak – and then has it on hold for reasons never given. The Smoking Man is hideously scarred in MSII but healed in III. Colonization is debunked in Season 10 but genuine and aborted in Season 11.
One could argue that THE X-FILES is really about the characters, not the plot, but even the characterization was perplexing from week to week. Mulder and Scully had left the FBI in "My Struggle" but acted like they'd never been gone in "Founder's Mutation." Mulder went from believing in "Founder's" to skeptical in "Were-Monster." "This" had Mulder and Scully living together but "Plus One" had them apart. Later, "Followers" showed that Mulder had never been to Scully's home and had Mulder driving what was Scully's SUV in Season 10. "Plus One" wrote Mulder and Scully like they were still in their 30s and on the verge of becoming romantic while "Nothing Lasts Forever" made them amicable exes who were nearly senior citizens.
Each week, Seasons 10 - 11 found new ways to baffle. Was Colonization genuine or a fraud? Is the show about unravelling a conspiracy or weekly monsters? Are Mulder and Scully living together or not? Is the Spartan Virus coming or not? Are they searching for William or not? Is this universe scientific or magical? Chris Carter wouldn't decide. The result was a show that couldn't even figure out where the characters live or what car they're driving. A show that confused casual viewers like Slider_Quinn21 and broke diehard fans like the EatTheCorn webmaster.
Carter's view was that mandating consistency would deprive the individual writers of their creative freedom. But when even basic character details aren't consistent from week to week, viewers become detached. They can't connect, can't relate and can't get invested. The show went from 16 million viewers to 3.5 million. Alongside FRINGE and SUPERNATURAL, the modern revival of THE X-FILES looked clumsily out of touch. It's time to let THE X-FILES go.
cool:
https://www.fastcompany.com/40558899/wo … d=51809407
JRD always believed in the power of television and its impact.
interview with chris carter
So... the X-FILES comics are pretty much over too. The once canonical SEASON 10 - 11 comics were unfortunately sidelined by the Revival removing SEASON 10 - 11 from continuity. IDW published a tie-in X-FILES comic set in the Revival continuity, but without the cache of being canonical, sales sank like a stone. The series was cancelled (with an ending) on #17 and replaced by some two-issue mini-serieses: X-FILES - JFK DISCLOSURE, then X-FILES: FLORIDA MAN, and some novels and comics in the ORIGIN line featuring Mulder and Scully as children (who never meet). The next is two issues of X-FILES: HOOT GOES THERE... and then IDW doesn't plan on doing any more comics. They wouldn't stop if the sales were there.
It's strange how the show's resurgence on live action TV not only killed THE X-FILES as an ongoing TV franchise but also killed a series of comics and novels. Usually, a TV revival raises the profile of the tie-ins instead of crushing them flat.
So... the X-FILES comics are pretty much over too. The once canonical SEASON 10 - 11 comics were unfortunately sidelined by the Revival removing SEASON 10 - 11 from continuity. IDW published a tie-in X-FILES comic set in the Revival continuity, but without the cache of being canonical, sales sank like a stone. The series was cancelled (with an ending) on #17 and replaced by some two-issue mini-serieses: X-FILES - JFK DISCLOSURE, then X-FILES: FLORIDA MAN, and some novels and comics in the ORIGIN line featuring Mulder and Scully as children (who never meet). The next is two issues of X-FILES: HOOT GOES THERE... and then IDW doesn't plan on doing any more comics. They wouldn't stop if the sales were there.
It's strange how the show's resurgence on live action TV not only killed THE X-FILES as an ongoing TV franchise but also killed a series of comics and novels. Usually, a TV revival raises the profile of the tie-ins instead of crushing them flat.
Just last week, I was thinking about ordering the vol. 2 of season 10 (I have vol. 1) and maybe getting the volumes for season 11. At some point, I probably will, but I do agree the series coming back subverted the comics. Because they just don't align with where the happenings of the series, especially this finale (for late buyers like me).
The final issue of SEASON 11 -- #8 does have an ending. However, I felt that it was really rushed. SEASON 10 and SEASON 11 were all about creating a vast sense of mystery around the X-FILES mythology, delving into the past as well as exploring how the Syndicate, destroyed in Season 6, had reformed through clones seeking to continue the original project. Meanwhile, a new faction, the Believers, had stepped into the Colonization plot and somehow delayed the 2012 invasion. It was perpetually a middle chapter of intrigue and uncertainty that needed a grand finale. Instead, the finale was cut short: due to the Revival, SEASON 11's plan for 22 issues was cut to eight issues and a Christmas special. The final issue of SEASON 11 and the IDW continuity is low-key and muted rather than the big finish one would hope for.
And it's really sad because the IDW comic book line did so much good for THE X-FILES creatively. In addition to having Mulder and Scully as a couple working at the X-Files again, it resurrected the Lone Gunmen. It sidestepped the 2012 date while showing how the mythology could still be relevant and meaningful in the twenty-first century. It provided the YEAR ZERO mini-series which told the origin story of the X-Files Division. It gave the Lone Gunmen a spin-off series. It led to a MILLENNIUM series that featured Mulder with gave a big finish to this also incomplete Chris Carter show.
It was a golden age that could have continued indefinitely had the Revival not knocked them into irrelevancy and the Revival is clearly not continuing anywhere now.
And yet... SEASON 11 #8 does offer a complete and total finale to Colonization and the myth-arc while finding a way to let the comic book SEASON 10 and SEASON 11 co-exist with the finale. It's quite clever, too.
This was a great interview with Frank Spotnitz:
Very interesting. It's neat to hear that the supernaturalless/science fiction-free I WANT TO BELIEVE was the way it was because the studio wanted a minimal budget. Spotnitz graciously opted out of talking about the Revival aside from saying he would, like any writer, have told different stories.
Spotnitz was frank that the mythology of THE X-FILES suffered because there were certain stories they only wanted to tell to end the show and they never felt quite certain whether or not the show was ending. Except shows like BUFFY and SUPERNATURAL suggest it's best to wrap up your arcs after a reasonable time and eagerly create new ones rather than hoarding your stories and delaying your resolutions endlessly.
Bill Mulder, actor Peter Donat, has died at age 90.
There's some chatter about a potential Season 12 of THE X-FILES; Carter will be invited to propose the content and financials for a potential re-revival. But Gillian Anderson is fed up with the show and apologized to the fans for the Season 11 finale. The audience certainly lost interest; the show went from 7 - 8 million viewers in Season 100 to about 3 - 3.3 million in Season 11.
I dunno. Were we talking about a Season 10 revival, my proposal would have been to have Mulder and Scully wrap up the Colonization arc in the season premiere in a single story and then focus on standalones. Instead, Carter decided to stretch out the myth-arc while ignoring nine seasons of detailed continuity. At this point, the show had a second chance to get its house and order and has shown itself incapable of doing so. Despite "My Struggle IV" offering some closure by killing off all the conspirator characters, Skinner is either injured or dead and Scully's pregnancy (again?!) will be another distraction from what has always been the bulk of TXF content: standalone monsters of the week.
Knowing Carter and his total inability to sustain running storylines (while constantly starting them) and his refusal to ever end a story arc, he'll likely have a Season 12 that:
(a) opens with Mulder and Scully again estranged after Scully lost the baby in a miscarriage
(b) reopens the X-Files to investigate the myth-arc and an impending doomsday scenario
(c) reveals that the Smoking Man's alive and extracted the fetus that was Scully's child
(d) ignores the above for a run of standalone episodes follows by
(e) a series finale that has a bunch of action moments and leaves all of the above unresolved.
And that's assuming Gillian Anderson would return. She doesn't want to and I think crap like this is why.
You could conceivably do a revival without Carter or Duchovny or Anderson with new FBI agents stepping into the basement office, but at this point, Carter has accumulated so much baggage with William, the Spartan Virus, Scully's pregnancy, the Smoking Man likely being alive, Skinner's injury and loyalties and whatnot that it'd drag down any new creators and cast members. I wouldn't trust Carter to offer any sensible continuation or finale after the way he used his 16 episodes.
As much as Slider_Quinn21 will object, I think that if THE X-FILES comes back, it's time for a reboot. I know Slider_Quinn21 always prefers revivals, but Seasons 10 - 11 were the revival and given the ratings and the content having alienated Gillian Anderson, this well has been poisoned by the ineptitude of the original creator and his inability to run a show. The time and opportunity for revival has passed. It's time to start over with a new Mulder and Scully and get it right this time.
I'd like Eric Kripke, Joel Wyman and Bryan Fuller to write it.
Very interesting how Project Blue Book -- X-Files meets Mad Men -- is alive and well (renewed for three seasons and very successful for the History Channel) and yet, the reality is, X-Files won't come back. Unless it can find a home on a FOX/Disney owned premium subscription streaming service one day in the future.
The "buzz" matters, as does the live ratings of the silent majority. Hardcore fans liked quirky X-Files, the general public wanted monster of the week.
In the end, too many casual fans were put off by S10 not being what they wanted and then Carter killed the 'buzz' by pissing off female fans in the S11 finale. It lost all hope of being a live show for FOX.
Personally, I liked S11 (and 10) but we are where we are. I fit more into the general audience than the hardcore group in the sense I don't recall the original mythology well (though love the show closer to the way the hardcore fans do than the general public).
So, the X-FILES had a run of comic books from 2013 - 2018 from the publisher IDW. The 2013 - 2015 comics were essentially the SLIDERS REBORN of THE X-FILES: writer Joe Harris wrote SEASON 10 and SEASON 11 with 34 issues that focused on the myth-arc, Colonization and the war between the Rebels and the Colonists. Due to the Revival rendering these comics apocryphal, SEASON 11 #8 was the final issue offering a conclusion to the whole Colonization arc and this avenue for THE X-FILES was abandoned. IDW didn't see the point of publishing a tie-in comic that didn't tie in anymore.
However, Amazon Audible got the X-FILES license for audiobooks and for reasons beyond me, elected to do an adaptation of the SEASON 10 and SEASON 11 comic books called COLD CASES and STOLEN LIVES. Yes, that's right; their idea for tying into the 2016 TV series was to release an audiobook adaptation of material that was in stark contradiction to the series. And they hired David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson to perform it. It's interesting -- there was some hope of doing Tracy Torme's fanfic proposal as an audioplay as well (but Torme never finished it). Transmodiar was regularly suggesting that I rope Robert Floyd into doing some sort of audioplay version of SLIDERS REBORN. RussianCabbie wanted the REWATCH PODCAST to perform an audioplay adaptation of my scripts.
Well, I listened to COLD CASES and it is my worst nightmare for how a SLIDERS REBORN audioplay could have turned out. David Duchovny has clearly not read the script and is delivering it as he's skimming it for the first time in a recording booth; there has been no rehearsal or consideration whatsoever for the session. Gillian Anderson is also doing it cold and she's slightly more awake than Duchovny but not by much. They have not recorded together, and there is a terrible sense of Mulder and Scully having had their voicemail greetings clipped and intertwined; they're supposed to be in the same room, they sound like Mulder and Scully action figures with pullstrings delivering canned soundbytes that have been edited into something that vaguely resembles a conversation.
And then there's the fact that Audible didn't hire the entire cast. We've got Duchovny, Anderson, Mitch Pileggi, William B. Davis, and all the Lone Gunmen actors -- but there's no Robert Patrick, Annabeth Gish, Nicholas Lea, and we have actors who aren't even trying to impersonate the originals. It is bizarre to hear Scully talking to a Krycek who isn't Nicholas Lea. I want to call it an uncanny valley effect to hear Doggett and Reyes chatting with voices that aren't their own, but that suggests the actors sound anything like Patrick and Gish and they don't.
The entire project exudes minimality. Audible hired only some of the original cast, didn't build rehearsals into the production schedule, declined to create anything new and instead raided some of IDW's Word files for comic book scripts to serve as content and have performed the most half-assed adaptation possible. It doesn't seem like a professional product. It comes off as the audio track of one of those awful STAR TREK fan films that rope in some of the original actors from time to time.
I hope writer Joe Harris never listened to these, never heard his thoughtful, written-for-print dialogue being performed by the original actors with no concern for how dialogue meant to be read was now being spoken by Duchovny and Anderson recording in separate sessions with no idea of what they're saying or why they're saying it.
As much as Slider_Quinn21 will object, I think that if THE X-FILES comes back, it's time for a reboot. I know Slider_Quinn21 always prefers revivals, but Seasons 10 - 11 were the revival and given the ratings and the content having alienated Gillian Anderson, this well has been poisoned by the ineptitude of the original creator and his inability to run a show. The time and opportunity for revival has passed. It's time to start over with a new Mulder and Scully and get it right this time.
I'd like Eric Kripke, Joel Wyman and Bryan Fuller to write it.
I actually agree with a lot of your rationale here. For me, I'd want to have a show that's a "soft reboot" that takes place in the same universe. Even if none of the original characters ever come back, it'd be nice to watch a show where their stories took place. I know it's dumb, but there's a sense of comfort knowing that the people haven't been erased.
At the same time, I completely understand not wanting to try and connect to a mythology that is so ruined that it's not worth salvaging. I actually think it's pretty similar to Sliders. It takes a Herculean SLIDERS REBORN effort to try and patchwork Sliders' tattered mythology while also trying to tell a new story. Instead, it probably makes more sense to throw the whole thing in the bin and start over with a new Mulder and a new Scully.
We must add that, in addition to all of Chris Carter's crimes against television, he mangled THE X-FILES so badly that even Slider_Quinn21 would accept a reboot. :-)
But I actually go back and forth on this. If you go back one page in this thread, you can see me offering proposals for an in-continuity Season 12 featuring a new character and William joining the X-Files office. Since then, I've revisited Season 10, Season 11 and all the comic books.
The case for a revival instead of a reboot (on behalf of Slider_Quinn21): THE X-FILES' story stretches from 1993 to 2018 with 11 seasons and two films. It'd be a shame to put all that away especially when "My Struggle IV" arguably closed off the mythology: all the conspirators were killed off on-camera. In addition, Carter has consistently ignored his own arcs. As of Season 3, Mulder has known of an impending alien invasion; he would only ever mention it for season premieres and finales and sweeps week.
Carter ended Season 9 with an exact date for the invasion; his subsequent XF movie didn't mention it. In Season 10, he called the invasion a hoax and brought an analogous Colonization, the Spartan Virus, in the Season 10 finale. In Season 11, he contradicted himself again. Mr. Y declares that the Colonization plot was actually genuine but aborted as Earth has become unsuited to the Colonists' purposes. Season 11 retcons the Season 10 finale as a vision of the future, but offers no rationale for why the Smoking Man is holding the virus back.
Season 11 shows the Smoking Man completely uninjured when Season 10 showed the Smoking Man hideously scarred. As a result, the Season 11 finale showing Mulder shooting the Smoking Man repeatedly and throwing him off a pier means nothing.
As X-FILES reviewer Darren Mooney observed in X-Cast, at this point, Mulder could decapitate CGB Spender, scoop out his brain, keep it in a jar -- and the Smoking Man would still be back next season. Carter confirmed this opinion in interviews, saying he felt the Smoking Man could have survived.
So, we have a nine season mythology retconned as a hoax and retconned again as genuine but aborted. We have a Season 11 finale that teases the re-return of William, leaves us unsure if Skinner's dead or alive, and offers an end to the series' main villain that cannot be trusted. We have Scully pregnant with the actress refusing to return for any follow-up.
I grudgingly concede that throughout THE X-FILES, Carter has ended episodes indicating that some terrible cataclysm is coming -- only to immediately follow up with a monster of the week that makes no reference to the threat. I concede that yes, you could have THE X-FILES: THE NEXT GENERATION where a new showrunner introduces two new investigators who take over the X-Files division and never speak of Colonization or the Spartan Virus or William again.
However, I feel that any new showrunner would be crippled by this situation. With eleven seasons of three incompatible mythologies in the background, THE X-FILES would never be trusted to develop a new mythos no matter who's running it. The showrunners would be unable to open new arcs involving aliens or government conspiracies without getting entangled in the Colonization, the Conspiracy of Men and the Spartan Virus, none of which Carter had resolved or clarified.
Despite the bulk of THE X-FILES being monsters of the week, I think it is unreasonable to have new showrunners engage in a revival where aliens and conspiracies are off the table or so inextricably linked to Carter's clumsy myth-arc that any new alien conspiracy material would be connected to Carter's mis-steps.
Any future X-FILES production should allow a new writer to make full use of THE X-FILES' defining qualities: a skeptic and a believer, monsters of the week, government conspiracies, and aliens plotting some unknown endgame. It's not fair to saddle a new creator with Chris Carter's incompetence. A new set of hands deserves the clean slate of a reboot. So, once again, I say that we should start over with Summer Glau as Agent Fox Mulder and Rupert Grint as Dr. Dana Scully.
But as another concession, perhaps we'd have a Season 1 finale in which Glau's Mulder and Grint's Scully encounter a rip between universes and they come across a confused Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and as they help him find his way back home to Scully and his child, Duchovny's Mulder congratulates this new Mulder and Scully on their stewardship of the X-Files and passes the torch to them. Before he steps back into the vortex to go home, Duchovny turns to the camera and asks Slider_Quinn21 if this will do, if he can finally retire and move on, and if he can accept this new incarnation of THE X-FILES as a true and valid successor.
:-)
Yes, that will do.
Now cross it over with FRINGE.
However, I feel that any new showrunner would be crippled by this situation. With eleven seasons of three incompatible mythologies in the background, THE X-FILES would never be trusted to develop a new mythos no matter who's running it. The showrunners would be unable to open new arcs involving aliens or government conspiracies without getting entangled in the Colonization, the Conspiracy of Men and the Spartan Virus, none of which Carter had resolved or clarified.
Despite the bulk of THE X-FILES being monsters of the week, I think it is unreasonable to have new showrunners engage in a revival where aliens and conspiracies are off the table or so inextricably linked to Carter's clumsy myth-arc that any new alien conspiracy material would be connected to Carter's mis-steps.
I think this pretty much sums up the reasons why it doesn't make sense to just carry on with new writers. With something like Ghostbusters, I think it makes more sense to continue in-universe vs. do a reboot (moreso than the gender of the main characters). With that, you have established canon, rules, and mythologies. It does nothing but pad the run time when you have to re-invent proton packs, re-build the ECTO 1, and re-introduce villains that we've already seen or were already referenced. My opinion is pick up where they left off - everything's already invented and the characters you want to use already exist. Just put your new characters into that story.
With the X-Files, you're right...alien arcs would be a mess and there's no sense in doing the X-Files with no references to aliens.
So my thought is....just make a new show. If you have a show about a skeptic and a believer that solve paranormal mysteries for the FBI, the only thing from the X-Files you're carrying on are last names and a title. Fringe was an updated X-Files with more tech-based monsters. Supernatural is backroads X-Files. (Insert the name of 20+ shows or movies that I've never heard of) is (insert adjective) X-Files.
But as much as writers would be crippled by a revival, I think a reboot would be the same way. They'd either need to make quick payoffs to their mythology episodes, or they'd be accused of dragging it out like Carter did. Would they ever be able to get away with impregnating the female character? And any payoff they would do would be compared against the original.
So if it's me, I just find my own twist on it. What if, instead of FBI, the agents are CIA? Have it all take place outside the United States with the agents investigating European/Asian/African urban legends. Instead of an American government conspiracy, maybe it's the Russians or the Chinese working with aliens. Or create your own mythos - maybe aliens have been working with the Indian government and slow-playing their advancements a la Wakanda.
Maybe you set the show in the future. Or the past. Tweak one thing, call it something else, and do your own version of the X-Files that isn't hampered by anything Chris Carter did, including his title.
I think THE X-FILES has value as a brand, but in the same way MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE had value in 1996. It was just the name. The MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies are summer action blockbusters; they make small nods to the heists, mindgames and deceptions of the TV show, but the centerpieces are always Tom Cruise and heights. For better or worse, M:I's value was in its name recognition as opposed to the content. THE X-FILES is a name. I could see it being rebooted as a 21st century revitalization of the source material like SHERLOCK; I could also see it becoming a star vehicle for Alison Brie for movie after movie in which she fights CG aliens with everyday objects.
As for payoffs -- I think BUFFY had the right formula: each season has its own myth-arc. I think SUPERNATURAL has the right attitude: complete your myth-arc as planned even if you get renewed after your conclusion. Come up with a subsequent story instead of stretching out your first one. ANGEL had a neat approach where each season tweaked the premise slightly with new characters and new locations.
I think the most interesting challenge in THE X-FILES for a new creator is also its central weakness: the show is decidedly indecisive on whether its universe operates on scientific principles or supernatural principles. The advanced biotechnology of the Colonists has always been an odd fit next to the vampires, angels, demons and evil dolls. Mulder and Scully never comment on this discrepancy; the magical elements of the X-FILES never confront the technological aspects. It's a symptom of Chris Carter treating each episode like its own XF universe.
I think a rebooted X-FILES should confront this head on. Summer Glau’s Mulder and Rupert Grint Scully find themselves going back and forth between the magical and the technological and try to reconcile how they exist. Are the vampires a form of genetic engineering? Are the ghosts the result of telepathic ability? Why doesn't their world operate on consistent principles? Is it the result of some interference in the very nature of reality? Are the aliens from other planets or from an alternate plane of reality? Has some cataclysm corrupted the laws of nature, bending them and twisting them? Is there a person or an organization causing this? What is their endgame?
And this also gives a reboot room to maneuver. At some point, the skeptic has to move towards believing, so what if it becomes a conflict between Grint believing in the magic, Glau believing in the science, and neither ever being entirely right?
Going with the SHERLOCKesque approach of treating the source material with reverence while moving forward in time --
Season 1: Starting with basics: monsters of the week, an alien conspiracy that's infiltrated the government, Mulder and Scully investigating, occasionally aided by the Lone Gunmen. In the season finale, they encounter David Duchovny's Fox Mulder and help him find his way back to his home dimension.
Season 2: The Lone Gunmen join the FBI as consultants and become regulars.
Season 3: Mulder, Scully and the Gunmen are fired from the FBI, decide to restart the Lone Gunmen magazine and rename it X-Files Magazine.
Season 4: The magazine was so successful in Season 3 that with Season 4, they hire more staff, more trainees and the X-Files has gone from Mulder and Scully in the basement to an underground magazine to a global operation.
Season 5: The alien invasion begins and we have a full season of myth-arc intrigue. The arc is resolved in a feature film where the invasion is thwarted by alien technology used to shift planet Earth out of phase from the aliens' dimension, preventing any further extraterrestrial incursion. The X-Files disbands, having served its purpose and proven the existence of aliens.
The entire operation is bought up by the Department of Defense and Mulder asks Scully to marry her. As Mulder and Scully embrace in their house surrounded by their friends and family, we pan away to see William B. Davis' Smoking Man observing the scene...
Season 6: Mulder and Scully are called out of retirement when a new conspiracy arises, one based in magic rather than technology, and the X-Files Division is reopened as a DOD operation.
Season 7: Mulder and Scully are now being hunted by the Smoking Man's monsters and seek help from the Duchovny and Anderson incarnations of their characters from the parallel universe where the Smoking Man originated. We spend a season with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Summer Glau and Rupert Grint wandering across America, finding monsters of the week.
(Gillian: "I did not want to come back, but my daughter said she'd never forgive me for turning down a chance to work with Ron Weasley.")
Season 8: The Mulders are transformed into vampires by the Smoking Man and the Scullys must find them and cure them before it's too late. (Gillian: "I didn't want to come back, but the chance to stab David Duchovny through the heart was too good to pass up even if he comes back to life after.")
Season 9: With aliens re-entering this reality and the monsters on the loose, the Mulders and Scullys begin a search for the creator of their existence, a mysterious being known only as God. The season ends with the Mulders and Scullys confronting God. God is played by Chris Carter. (Gillian: "I didn't want to come back, but I couldn't turn down the chance to punch Chris Carter in the face.")
Season 10: Carter resolves the multiversal conflict, but at a great cost: the Mulders are trapped in the Glau/Grint universe of monsters and magic and the Scullys are trapped in the Duchovny/Anderson universe of sci-fi aliens. We alternate universes each week as the Mulders and Scullys try to solve cases of the week and find their way home. (Gillian Anderson: "I didn't want to come back, but Rupert Grint said he'd star in an adaptation of my EARTHEND novels if I did.")
Season 11: With the Mulders and Scullys having been restored to the correct universes, Glau and Grint decide they're not ready to stop exploring yet and begin exploring parallel universes. Every week, they visit the universe of a TV show that ended on a cliffhanger and resolve that cliffhanger, so we finally get conclusions to SLIDERS, SARAH CONNOR, PUSHING DAISIES, MY SO CALLED LIFE, FREAKS AND GEEKS, LOIS AND CLARK, QUANTUM LEAP and HEROES and we also find out what happened with Big Eddie in Season 1 of FRINGE and get Walter back to the present day to be reunited with Peter and Olivia.
I could also see it becoming a star vehicle for Alison Brie for movie after movie in which she fights CG aliens with everyday objects.
lol
Summer Glau’s Mulder and Rupert Grint Scully
lol
In the season finale, they encounter David Duchovny's Fox Mulder and help him find his way back to his home dimension.
lol
Mulder, Scully and the Gunmen are fired from the FBI, decide to restart the Lone Gunmen magazine and rename it X-Files Magazine.
lol
Mulder and Scully are now being hunted by the Smoking Man's monsters and seek help from the Duchovny and Anderson incarnations of their characters from the parallel universe where the Smoking Man originated. We spend a season with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Summer Glau and Rupert Grint wandering across America, finding monsters of the week.
lol
(Gillian: "I did not want to come back, but my daughter said she'd never forgive me for turning down a chance to work with Ron Weasley.")
lol you are the ultimate fan-troll.
Season 11: With the Mulders and Scullys having been restored to the correct universes, Glau and Grint decide they're not ready to stop exploring yet and begin exploring parallel universes. Every week, they visit the universe of a TV show that ended on a cliffhanger and resolve that cliffhanger, so we finally get conclusions to SLIDERS, SARAH CONNOR, PUSHING DAISIES, MY SO CALLED LIFE, FREAKS AND GEEKS, LOIS AND CLARK, QUANTUM LEAP and HEROES and we also find out what happened with Big Eddie in Season 1 of FRINGE and get Walter back to the present day to be reunited with Peter and Olivia.
Ah, there we go. 
It's strange -- I'm not sure at what point my semi-serious reboot proposal became a series of tongue-in-cheek jokes to amuse us all, but it happened somewhere between Seasons 4 - 11.
Going back to Slider_Quinn21's preference for revivals -- the very strange thing is that with Seasons 10 - 11 and their 16 episodes, Carter needed to do only FOUR episodes differently -- slightly differently -- to make continuing the revival a workable option.
I think "My Struggle," the Season 10 opener, should have resolved the Colonization arc entirely. Mulder and Scully, living in retirement in 2016, are recalled to active duty to investigate a series of murders: employees of the Mount Weather military complex, the Strughold Mining Company, FEMA, Fort Marlene have all been founded killed with messages left on their corpses that read ALIEN CONSPIRATOR and HUMAN TRAITOR. These people worked for the Syndicate to bring about Colonization which for some reason didn't happen in 2012 as planned. Mulder and Scully meet Tad O'Malley, a conspiracy theorist who helps them identify the killer.
The killer takes hostages with a bomb vest in the 46th Street house that the Syndicate used for their meetings and demands that the conspirators show themselves. Mulder and Scully go in to confront him and reveal: Colonization is cancelled. The environmental damage to the Earth has rendered it unsuited for the Colonists; they abandoned their plans in 2006 and are not coming. (This was Chris Carter's retcon of his own retcon in "My Struggle III.")
The killer, unable to accept the truth, triggers his bomb vest, Mulder and Scully lock him in a Syndicate vault and the killer blows himself up. Back in the X-Files office, Mulder and Scully prepare to re-resign from the FBI when they realize there are thousands of monsters of the week cases that have accumulated since 2002, some of which are supernatural, some of which resulted from alien technology that was left behind in 2006. They begin reviewing the files, all thoughts of retirement vanishing. We go to a distant house in South Carolina. An unseen lady lights a cigarette and extends it to the tracheal tube of the Cigarette Smoking Man who hangs up from a phone call. "We have a slight problem," he observes. "They've re-opened the X-Files... "
And then we have the same episodes as Season 10 and even the same Season 10 finale, "My Struggle II," except we have a few added lines of dialogue for the Smoking Man. "The Colonists abandoned their plan, but I never did. I kept their methods and changed the goals -- spontaneous repopulation for them became systematic depopulation for us." We establish that the Smoking Man is using the Colonization virus to reduce the global population, but it's a new plan as opposed to the aired "My Struggle II" that suggested it was the original plan. We end on the same cliffhanger: contagion, Scully having found a cure, a spaceship descending upon Mulder and Scully.
"My Struggle III" in Season 11 could be the episode "Ghouli" where William made his first full appearance. But it's modified so that it's set 18 months after "My Struggle II" and opening with a news broadcast saying that the cure was mass-produced and mass-distributed through unknown means and the Spartan Virus was resolved inside a day. Mulder and Scully are missing. Agents Miller and Einstein, investigating the Ghouli attack, encounter Mulder and Scully doing the same independently. Flashbacks establish: the spaceship warped spacetime, allowing Mulder and Scully to spread the cure around the globe. It then landed in West Virginia and left Scully with a vision of William; they've been searching for him ever since. The episode ends with William running off, Mulder and Scully reinstated to the X-Files and Season 11 proceeds as it did but with replacement episode for where "Ghouli" originally aired.
And with "My Struggle IV," we could have pretty much the same story except a few lines of dialogue to indicate that after the Smoking Man's failed bid at his own form of Colonization, he's been trying to procure any and all remaining Colonist/Rebel technology for his own ends and that includes William's peculiar genetically enhanced powers.
With a few minor tweaks, Chris Carter could have ended his original myth-arc and then started this new one with the Spartan Virus and William's immortality and indicated that everything in Seasons 1 - 9 was still valid even if the climax had been aborted. None of these adjustments improve the quality of the individual episodes, but it leaves the mythology open for further development without three conflicting retcons and confusing contradictions.
Which is why, despite my opinion that a reboot is the way to go -- the fact that only FOUR episodes of THE X-FILES' last 16 present the problems at hand suggest Slider_Quinn21 could be right to say there must be some way to carry on in the same continuity (not that THE X-FILES as it stands has any coherent continuity).
I do not like THE X-FILES. I am not a fan of THE X-FILES. And yet, I was recently listening to X-CAST podcast interviews with Brendan Beiser (Agent Pendrell) and William B. Davis (he played Professor Myman on SLIDERS in the episode "Eggheads" for one scene).
Beiser was talking about how Pendrell died in a myth-arc episode and Davis was talking about he had no idea how the Smoking Man went from being conspiracy middle management in Seasons 1 - 9 to its leader in Seasons 10 - 11 or what the hell he was even saying when describing the Spartan Virus. I was marvelling at how THE X-FILES was SLIDERS' sister show and had all the advantages SLIDERS didn't -- its original creator running the show throughout its lifespan, actors who fully completed their contracts, massive budget increases, two feature films, a recent two-season revival -- and yet, THE X-FILES is in the same narrative mess as SLIDERS albeit with better cinematography.
In the first page of this thread, I remarked that the retconning of the Colonization arc as a hoax made sense. But listening to these podcasts, I've changed my mind. Too many story points of massive emotional weight were pinned to Colonization. The Smoking Man's depiction as a power-addict who saw Colonization as flattering to his self-importance no longer holds together, leaving poor Davis clueless about his own character.
If Colonization is a lie, then it completely undermines the deaths of Melissa Scully and Emily and the Lone Gunmen and even Agent Pendrell and it means Mulder and Scully's search for the truth was a search for nothing at all. The emotional arcs of THE X-FILES becomes totally unworkable due to "My Struggle" and the subsequent episodes seemed at a loss. "Founder's Mutation" has Mulder referring to the Syndicate like he didn't debunk them completely one episode ago; "My Struggle II" has Scully describing the human collaborators in Colonization as the conspiracy behind the Spartan Virus when the virus and the alien invasion are two completely different conspiracies with two completely different endgames. "My Struggle II" has Mulder and the Smoking Man confront each other; Mulder doesn't even comment on the change in the conspiracy. "This" has Mulder visiting Deep Throat's grave and not commenting on how Deep Throat's hints at impending invasion don't fit the Conspiracy of Men theory he advanced in "My Struggle."
I've changed my mind. I realize that many people watch THE X-FILES like Slider_Quinn21, someone who doesn't remember Seasons 1 - 9 all that well and for whom continuity barely exists aside from confusion over Mulder and Scully being a couple in "This" and being amicably separated in "Plus One." But THE X-FILES' character arcs were so intertwined with its myth-arc that declaring that myth-arc retroactively non-existent means that even the characters have become a muddled mess. Carter should have respected the myth-arc especially when he's the one who created it.
You know Chris Carter also had Millenium a show that got 3 seasons on Fox, had cast changes and concept changes every season and only got a 3rd season by Chris Carter kicking the wong/morgan off the show and completely overhauling the show for yr3 with a new ep, chip johnson. Watch yr1, episode 1 then any episode in yr3, only Lance and the daughter are still around.
This from a guy Fox liked, either you know when to roll or they cancel ypu
Glen Morgan and James Wong were not kicked off MILLENNIUM. They believed the show cancelled with Season 2. In addition, their development deal with FOX had come to an end and they had accepted several TV and film jobs (FINAL DESTINATION, THE OTHERS, THE ONE) that they would begin working on after Season 2 and the end of their contract with FOX. They wrote the Season 2 finale as a series finale. But then FOX renewed MILLENNIUM for Season 3, at which point Morgan and Wong were too deep into their other obligations to return to MILLENNIUM. In 2015, Carter re-hired Morgan as co-executive producer on the X-FILES revival, so there was clearly no animosity at all.
Put the isec.txt into the same folder as the dat files are. I suppose you did it but just to be sure...
If you delete the DAT files and start KLN does it work normally or starts the Update? If it works, then find my posts about problem with Vista Virtual Store.
You can also try the stand alone utility to reindex the files. You can find it in the sticky posts.
Collusion!
Haha! Spam account banned, post retained because TF’s joke was too funny to lose.
I'm told Chris Carter has been giving away X-FILES props that he'd been keeping since 1993. Carter seems like he's done with the show.
Transmodiar's counterpart in THE X-FILES fandom at Eat the Corn and I have been chatting a bit. He thinks that THE X-FILES would have best ended with Season 7, an open-ended non-conclusion where Mulder is abducted by aliens and Scully is pregnant.
I take the view that THE X-FILES really only ever had one chance to pay off its alien invasion arc, a storyline that called for widescreen spectacle, mass destruction, enormous setpieces, extensive computer generated effects and a final conclusion on a scale well beyond the budget of a FOX procedural television series. That chance was with the X-FILES feature film. When Chris Carter failed to capitalize on that opportunity for a finale, he ensured that THE X-FILES would never be able to tell a story that it couldn't ever afford to show onscreen on a 90s TV series.
I remarked that THE X-FILES would inevitably be rebooted. And that ideally, Chris Carter would be as involved in the reboot as he was in the IDW comics where his name came first on all the covers and he talked about it at conventions and in interviews -- but ultimately, it was the comic book writer(s) doing all the work and Carter's writing credit was merely to indicate that he had looked over the scripts without contributing anything else to them.
But it shows by contrast how showrunners on SUPERGIRL, THE FLASH and ARROW have taken the approach that future seasons are not ensured and how they don't want to spend the episodes they have teasing stories they might not get to tell. Instead, they make sure to tell the stories they have ambitions to tell upfront.
That's why SUPERGIRL and THE FLASH established the teams by the first episode without waiting a season to let all the cast members in on the secret identities. That's why Supergirl faced her aunt and the Flash faced his mother's murderer by the Season 1 finale. They didn't want to only offer foreshadowing building to what could potentially be nothing; they ensured that each season had a beginning, a middle and an end, and if there were to be a subsequent season, there would be another beginning, middle and end.
Eat the Corn, however, suggests that THE X-FILES' finale for Colonization could have been more akin to the low budget horror movie SCANNERS, which I have not seen and therefore, that has paused the conversation until I see it. It is in my queue.
I thought the movie was going to be bigger too. I had actually gotten into X-Files around the time of the movie. I rented all the collections on VHS that they had, and watched the show. I had read (god knows where) that the movie was going to pick up where the show left off. I even went to an X-Files convention where they showed a trailer for the movie (and I got a script signed by Mitch Pileggi (god knows where that is).
The movie ended up just being a seemingly random two-hour episode. Not even as good, in my opinion, as some of the two-parters we'd seen on the show.
Maybe Carter just didn't understand spectacle. Or didn't want it. I do think a CGI-fest invasion would've felt weird. X-Files wasn't about it. It was about small towns and back alleys and government buildings. Something would've felt off if X-Files went Independence Day. But I think you're right.
******
You make a great point about narrative structure for a show. X-Files was built around a story that just kept getting delayed. They thought if they ever got to that part, the show was over. And in their case, maybe it was.
The Flash set their whole show around crisis, and they've struggled a bit after crisis (but those struggles were happening pre-crisis). I think the best example is Supernatural - they had a roadmap for a five season show and hit it out of the park. They'd beaten the devil. And they realized there was even more story after that. The show never got as good as it was in seasons 1-5, but they kept it going.
Could X-Files have done the same? I don't know. It seems like Carter was never comfortable with any level of conclusion to his show. Like Twin Peaks before it, it's destined to end open-ended.
I really like SUPERNATURAL and I'd argue that all the post-Season 5 episodes have plenty of strengths. They aren't the same strengths as Season 3 where the monstrosity of the demons represented the monstrosity of human nature. Or Seasons 4 - 5 where Eric Kripke found a way to render the Apocalypse on a CW budget by keeping it focused on the brothers rather than the spectacle and by ensuring that the myth-arc was focused on Sam and Dean's roles.
Seasons 6 - 15 are more humourous, have more range in their genres and genre pastiches, have more experimentation in their formats, have more joyful metatextual humour -- and while they're not as scary or as mysteriously compelling or as creative as Seasons 3 - 5, they have their own merits and are stronger than Seasons 3 - 5 in those areas while maintaining the importance of the brothers.
In contrast, THE X-FILES indicated that Mulder and Scully were pretty much irrelevant to Colonization.
I think SUPERNATURAL found the answer that THE X-FILES missed; SUPERNATURAL concluded its apocalyptic myth-arc of Satan -- and then started a new one with Crowley, then the Leviathans, then Hell, then the Mark of Cain, then the Darkness, then the Men of Letters, then Jack, then the parallel universe, and now the final battle against Chuck himself. In the same way, THE X-FILES needed to conclude the alien myth-arc -- and then create a new myth-arc focused on the monsters of the week.
Season 8 of THE X-FILES established that all the aliens will die if exposed to a form of magnetite that came to Earth much in the same way Leviathans are extinguished by sodium borate. The X-FILES comics, in their SEASON 11 series, ended the storyline where magnetite is spread all around planet Earth, meaning that the aliens will have to avoid Earth from now; it is useless for their incubation purposes and deadly to them in any form.
If the magnetite plot point had been established earlier in Season 2, then the feature film could have had Mulder and Scully contaminate the planet with magnetite using the spaceship they found in the arctic. And then Season 5 could have started a new myth-arc where the Cigarette Smoking Man, stripped of the power he had through his alliance with aliens (who have all fled), now seeks alternate power through the monsters of the week. There could have been a new conspiracy.
My biggest problem with Carter is also the same problem Amazon had with him; they greenlit his pilot, THE AFTER, where society has broken down due to some unknown cataclysm. But when Amazon asked Carter to submit a series bible, a five year plan and an explanation for all the mysteries in the pilot, Carter refused to write any of that, saying he wanted to stay open to improvising. Amazon promptly refused to order THE AFTER to series, unwilling to commit any further resources to a writer who either wouldn't or couldn't furnish a plan.
Carter then took this approach to THE X-FILES in Season 10; he freely confesses in his audio commentary that "My Struggle II," the sixth episode and the finale, was a first draft, written in a rush during the filming of the fifth episode. Carter not only didn't plan his ending (and had no ending), he would think of his stories one page at a time, writing Page 1 with no idea what would be on Page 2.
"My Struggle III" reveals "My Struggle II" to be a dream. Carter may have had some faint inclination for this when hacking out MS2, but given that MS2 ends with a spaceship hovering over Mulder and Scully and MS3 doesn't follow up on the spaceship's purpose at all, it's clear he wasn't thinking about MS3 during the scripting of MS2.
During the original series, Carter's improvisation was reined in by having a co-writer, Frank Spotnitz. Spotnitz was too busy with THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE for X-FILES' tenth and eleventh seasons to help and I think it shows.
I don't think it's necessarily that Carter eschews endings; I think it's that his approach of writing stories in terms of one scene at a time doesn't allow him to plan an ending or plant clues in advance to reach an ending. Amazon wouldn't tolerate it and judging from the ratings of Season 11, FOX sees no further profit in it.
Sliders Bboard → Sliders Bboard → The X-Files
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