Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → The X-Files
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.
An X-FILES branded animated series is in development. It's a spin-off not featuring Mulder and Scully, and Chris Carter will be tangentially involved without being the showrunner.
this ooks great
Not surprising but a bit depressing
How is that depressing?
Chris Carter is a mess. He hasn't been able to write a coherent screenplay since 1998; he only held it together after that because he took on a co-writer, Frank Spotnitz, and by 2008, Spotnitz was unable to wrangle Carter's incoherent, stream-of-consciousness, first -drafts-as-filming-drafts approach. Carter and Spotnitz cite the writer's strike forcing them to rush the 2008 I WANT TO BELIEVE script, but considering they'd had eight years to work on that story, this seems like an excuse. And with the 2016 and 2018 seasons, Carter has proven completely incapable of running a TV show. He failed to script-edit, so the episodes alternate with Mulder and Scully living together/separately, romantically involved/platonic, believing in the paranormal/totally skeptical, searching for William endlessly/never mentioning him. The Season 10 premiere and finale show the Cigarette Smoking Man hideously scarred by the missiles of Season 9; the very first Season 11 episode has him totally healed. The Season 10 finale has the Smoking Man triggering a biological attack; the Season 11 premiere rewinds to moments before the Smoking Man is about to start his plan and he nonsensically doesn't start it. Season 10 ends with a spaceship descending on Mulder and Scully; Season 11 rewinds time and never reveals why that ship was there or who was piloting it or what the crew's mission would have been.
Who would want a twelfth season of THE X-FILES from Chris Carter? Why would Gillian Anderson want to be in it?
Anderson's stipulation is simple and totally reasonable: she will only come back to THE X-FILES if Chris Carter is not writing it and if a new set of writers transition from Mulder and Scully to a new generation of X-Files investigators. Considering how badly Carter has handled his show and how Mulder and Scully can't be FBI agents forever, this is entirely sensible and rational and it would be better to have no more X-FILES than an X-FILES that is incomprehensible and incompetent. Chris Carter is incompetent.
Chris Carter had NINE seasons, TWO feature films, and then 16 years after the original finale and eight years after the second film, he received SIXTEEN episodes with a full budget and his original actors and he STILL could not bring his storylines to a conclusion while leaving room for future follow-ups. What kind of showrunner receives the opportunity to do a SIXTEEN EPISODE epilogue to his unfinished TV series and still can't finish it?
A bad one and Gillian Anderson is done with him. Who can blame her?
I'd say it's depressing because I want more X Files with Mulder and Scilly.
I get that they mythology got a bit messed up and people took issue with the serialized narratives but I thought the procedural shows were decent (and in some cases very good) and I'd like more of that.
I certainly understand Gillian's anger and reluctance to return.
Btw... apparently "Gillian" turns into "William" on autocorrect.
Chris Carter and Mulder and Scully have been given more chances than anyone who has ever worked in television. One would expect a paranormal procedural on FOX in the 90s to get cancelled after 6 - 9 episodes; they got a full first season and renewed for a second. One would expect a modest run of 3 - 5 seasons; they got a feature film after his fifth year followed by four more seasons. One would have thought that the Season 9 series finale would have been the end; they got a second feature film. One would have thought that poorly performing film in 2008 would have been the end; they got a six episode season for 2016 and a 10 episode season for 2016. In each revival, Carter seemed to dig a deeper hole for Mulder and Scully.
I think you might consider wishing you had less Mulder and Scully instead of more; perhaps five seasons followed by a big budget feature film series finale.
However... I agree that the Season 10 and 11 standalones were mostly very strong and there is a certain absurdity that the myth-arc episodes were only the premieres and finales and yet diminish the show far more than the standalones can elevate it.
They certainly earned the nine seasons they got with very good ratings. I agree it is shocking for a sci-fi show on fox but they really had a strong vision from the beginning and there was not much for FOX to muck with. Though maybe fox is the reason Gillian was told to walk behind David.
The movies obviously duchovny was unhappy with, especially on the budget, which he thought treated it like an indy film (not that I agree). But the backstory on the second film failing was the studio pushing for that creative direction.
Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster and The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat were classics.
There actually is a new x files series in development but it doesn't involved Mulder and Scilly.
The X files should never be more relevant though. Our government has a new publicly acknowledged UFO office and there are rumors we may get public hearings on the matter.
I find THE X-FILES quite dated. The show is founded on the idea that government is insidiously all-powerful and all-controlling. Reality has revealed that government is in fact divided, incompetent and ineffectual.
The show is founded on the idea that evil is an extrinsic force alien to human nature. Since the 90s, psychology and psychiatry have further penetrated the mainstream and instead indicate that evil is due to human failings and human self-interest.
Carter attempted to update THE X-FILES mythology to the modern era, but his update was incoherent and non-committal, backtracking on Colonization, backtracking on backtracking on Colonization, backtracking on backtracking on backtracking on I've lost track and so has he.
The entire episodic non-structure of THE X-FILES is also extremely dated. While the non-Carter scripted, individual episodes are strong, they don't cohere as a series. Season 10 is confusing even within a mere six episodes. 10.1 declares Colonization was a hoax; 10.2 has Mulder describing a Colonization plot like it was genuine (because Carter didn't inform the 10.2 writer of 10.1's retcons). 10.2 shows them falling back into work like they never left; 10.3 has Mulder doubting that the supernatural is real. 10.1 ends with Mulder and Scully getting text messages from the FBI about an "urgent" situation; 10.2 starts with them reinstated at the FBI with no explanation as to why.
Season 11 was even worse. One episode shows Mulder and Scully as a couple living together in Mulder's house; another indicates that Scully lives separately and that Mulder has never been to her house and will disappear into the woods for days without letting her know.
This negative continuity was awkward in the 90s and simply unprofessional in 2016. It reminds me of Mr. Bean's teddy bear constantly being destroyed only to be made whole in the next scene.
THE X-FILES is also further dated in that Mulder and Scully are fundamentally passive characters, observing but rarely driving the story forward. Their involvement rarely if ever saves any lives in their cases of the week; the monsters are regularly free to prey again with Mulder and Scully seeming indifferent as they move onto the next case of the week wtihout having addressed the previous one. This may have been fine in the 90s when the average viewer was only watching 40 - 60% of each season's episodes, but it made the characters seem weak and inept when watching the show as a whole via streaming and time-shifted viewings in 2016.
My impression of Carter based on his dull, uninspired scripting: he just isn't interested in TV any more or in modern television. That's why he was hacking out first drafts to be filmed and performing none of the reworking and revision he did before. I think he got burnt out in the 90s.
In this 90s, Carter hired a collaborator, Frank Spotnitz (who was not available for the revival due to running THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, Slider_Quinn21's favourite Nazi show which he assures us is very, very good).
Strangely, Carter hired Glen Morgan and James Wong for the revival and gave Glen Morgan an showrunner-executive producer credit for Seasons 10 - 11 with Morgan's name appearing at the end of all episodes to indicate Morgan's stature on the show. Morgan declared this an inappropriate credit, saying he wasn't particularly involved in any episodes beyond his own.
Morgan's two scripts show that he is extremely interested in removing the passivity of Mulder and Scully and engaging in running arcs: "Founder's Mutation" had them investigating Colonization-adjacent technology and "This" had them more actively engaged in the story than any X-File before or after. Glen Morgan clearly had a vision for updating THE X-FILES, but it was confined to his own episodes.
Morgan could have revised scripts for consistency and running arcs. Morgan could have taken Carter's basic ideas for the "My Struggles" and written the full teleplays. Morgan has flaws like any writer, but he's engaged and Carter is disengaged.
I will forever wonder why Carter gave Morgan the showrunner/executive producer title, the closing credit and the money, but never had him do the job. It is apparently a mystery to Morgan as well who tried to refuse the title (and presumably the money too) and felt it was a little disrespectful to Frank Spotnitz (whom Morgan noted was an actual co-writer and script editor and nevergot the showrunner credit at the end of episodes).
Morgan certainly would be great to take over it the show was ever handed over.
I think generally X-Files really works for me because of the Mully Sculder relationship and characters. I just want to watch them, and them in situations... particuarly the dramatic ones X-Files allows.
I can live with other issues because at the end of the day, I am interested in following them along.
I never was into X-Files to the same degree as Sliders, and I def. think you are a bigger fan othan me of the X-Files (and have much greater knowledge), but as far as shows go... well, other than Sliders, I can't think of a show that I like more. OK, maybe Breaking Bad?
I'm quite picky with shows. And at this point, it's hard to invest in 5-10 hours or more in new ones. Maybe I'll completely watch all the season of like 3-4 new series a year.
Other than our classic foursome from SLIDERS, I just can't think of other characters I want to spend time with more than Scully and Mulder. I think for both shows, the characters work because of the relationship between them. There is a bond between the characters. And each come at life from a different angle. And they go about their journey together, with a underlying respect for one another.
I can tolerate problems with any of the series if those characters are there. As you've said so often, you know these characters are like good friends.
update: I realized I like Succession more than X-Files...
This is just my personal opinion: Mulder and Scully are bad friends, bad employees, bad neighbours -- I don't mean bad as in evil, I mean bad in that they are incompetent and terrible at their jobs and responsibilities. They are arguably worse than the sliders.
I'm not a fan of THE X-FILES. I do not like it. I respect its place in TV history. I am a student of THE X-FILES. I've watched it. I'm aware of it. I'm familiar with it. But I didn't buy that X-FILES casefile format episode guide because I like THE X-FILES or feel compelled to purchase the merchandise; it was an interesting project. I didn't buy THE X-FILES comics because I am a fan of the show; I liked the writer, Joe Harris, and felt he would do something strong with the series.
To review the sliders: Quinn was a terrible scientist and team leader in Seasons 3 - 4; Maggie was a terrible soldier in Season 3 and had a number of odd lapses in Seasons 4 and 5. The only reason Wade, Rembrandt and the Professor don't rank as terrible friends is because Wade vanished, Rembrandt only received four A-plots across Seasons 3 - 5 ("The Prince of Slides," "Asylum," "The Java Jive" and "Requiem"), and the Professor died before it went from bad to really bad.
But Mulder and Scully are arguably worse than the sliders. The sliders lost their original creators. In contrast, Mulder and Scully had Chris Carter writing them from 1993 - 2018.
Mulder is a bad friend and a bad partner: right up to 2018, he would not provide Scully, his colleague and teammate, with a desk in her office.
Scully isn't a bad friend to Mulder, but her attitude towards her life of public service is suspiciously inept.
Mulder and Scully are terrible investigators: they repeatedly fail to do anything more than observe paranormal events. They are also terrible public servants, repeatedly abandoning innocent people to die.
The most telling example for me when I was watching this show in middle school: in the Season 3 episode, DPO, Mulder and Scully encounter a psychotic teenager with electrical powers. By the end, Mulder and Scully have failed to find a way to charge the perpetrator with the murders or to depower or contain or imprison him; the next episode has them working on their next case, having presumably abandoned the entire state of Oklahoma to be ruled by a low-rent Electro.
By the Season 4 premiere, Mulder has a full picture of the alien invasion coming in 2012 and a weapon that is effective against aliens; despite this, Mulder makes no effort to share this knowledge or mount a defence and as late as 2008, Mulder is pointedly ignoring any need to fight off Colonization.
Mulder and Scully are terrible friends who are making zero effort to save your life or mine from an alien invasion and the fact that no invasion happened in 2012 seems less like effort and more like luck. If there are two people I don't want around in a crisis or a mystery, it's Mulder and Scully.
To be fair: I don't think it's entirely deliberate. I think that 90s TV called for running arcs to be siloed and Chris Carter wrote Mulder and Scully as passive observers because he found it unrealistic that normal humans could seriously battle supernatural forces -- but considering Mulder and Scully have been working since 1993, their total lack of professional development right up to 2018 is extremely poor.
Darin Morgan, Glen Morgan, James Wong, Vince Gilligan and even Frank Spotnitz recognized the problem that Mulder and Scully were overly detached and passive. All of them wrote scripts that made some effort to change this, but Carter would invariably revert to his factory defaults right up to the 2018 season's "Plus One" where Mulder and Scully are shockingly indifferent to a man fearing for his life.
Writer Joe Harris for the IDW comic book line made a determined effort to have Mulder and Scully actively focusing on the delayed but impending alien invasion only to be curtailed and cancelled.
As it stands onscreen: aside from short exceptions, Mulder and Scully are not good at being your friends and not good at their jobs. They are incompetent, ineffectual, indifferent, non-commital, uninvested, disinterested and have no regard for saving your life. That's not how the actors play their characters, but the show makes it clear: If you, RussianCabbie, were being tormented by a psycho with electrical powers, Mulder and Scully would show up, take notes, file a report, and then leave you to be further menaced and eventually murdered.
In the event that you are facing a psycho with electrical powers or an alien invasion, I suggest you skip calling Mulder and Scully. Call Sam and Dean from SUPERNATURAL or Peter and Olivia and Walter from FRINGE or Wynonna Earp or Liv Moore from iZOMBIE or the cast of DOCTOR WHO or Emma Swan from ONCE UPON A TIME, all of whom actually try to close the paranormal case of the week before going to the next one.
I would call the sliders, but I can't totally recommend that either given their poor job performances across Season 3 - 5.
This is just my personal opinion: Mulder and Scully are bad friends, bad employees, bad neighbours -- I don't mean bad as in evil, I mean bad in that they are incompetent and terrible at their jobs and responsibilities. They are arguably worse than the sliders.
I'm not a fan of THE X-FILES. I do not like it. I respect its place in TV history. I am a student of THE X-FILES. I've watched it. I'm aware of it. I'm familiar with it. But I didn't buy that X-FILES casefile format episode guide because I like THE X-FILES or feel compelled to purchase the merchandise; it was an interesting project. I didn't buy THE X-FILES comics because I am a fan of the show; I liked the writer, Joe Harris, and felt he would do something strong with the series.
To review the sliders: Quinn was a terrible scientist and team leader in Seasons 3 - 4; Maggie was a terrible soldier in Season 3 and had a number of odd lapses in Seasons 4 and 5. The only reason Wade, Rembrandt and the Professor don't rank as terrible friends is because Wade vanished, Rembrandt only received four A-plots across Seasons 3 - 5 ("The Prince of Slides," "Asylum," "The Java Jive" and "Requiem"), and the Professor died before it went from bad to really bad.
But Mulder and Scully are arguably worse than the sliders. The sliders lost their original creators. In contrast, Mulder and Scully had Chris Carter writing them from 1993 - 2018.
Mulder is a bad friend and a bad partner: right up to 2018, he would not provide Scully, his colleague and teammate, with a desk in her office.
Scully isn't a bad friend to Mulder, but her attitude towards her life of public service is suspiciously inept.
Mulder and Scully are terrible investigators: they repeatedly fail to do anything more than observe paranormal events. They are also terrible public servants, repeatedly abandoning innocent people to die.
The most telling example for me when I was watching this show in middle school: in the Season 3 episode, DPO, Mulder and Scully encounter a psychotic teenager with electrical powers. By the end, Mulder and Scully have failed to find a way to charge the perpetrator with the murders or to depower or contain or imprison him; the next episode has them working on their next case, having presumably abandoned the entire state of Oklahoma to be ruled by a low-rent Electro.
By the Season 4 premiere, Mulder has a full picture of the alien invasion coming in 2012 and a weapon that is effective against aliens; despite this, Mulder makes no effort to share this knowledge or mount a defence and as late as 2008, Mulder is pointedly ignoring any need to fight off Colonization.
Mulder and Scully are terrible friends who are making zero effort to save your life or mine from an alien invasion and the fact that no invasion happened in 2012 seems less like effort and more like luck. If there are two people I don't want around in a crisis or a mystery, it's Mulder and Scully.
To be fair: I don't think it's entirely deliberate. I think that 90s TV called for running arcs to be siloed and Chris Carter wrote Mulder and Scully as passive observers because he found it unrealistic that normal humans could seriously battle supernatural forces -- but considering Mulder and Scully have been working since 1993, their total lack of professional development right up to 2018 is extremely poor.
Darin Morgan, Glen Morgan, James Wong, Vince Gilligan and even Frank Spotnitz recognized the problem that Mulder and Scully were overly detached and passive. All of them wrote scripts that made some effort to change this, but Carter would invariably revert to his factory defaults right up to the 2018 season's "Plus One" where Mulder and Scully are shockingly indifferent to a man fearing for his life.
Writer Joe Harris for the IDW comic book line made a determined effort to have Mulder and Scully actively focusing on the delayed but impending alien invasion only to be curtailed and cancelled.
As it stands onscreen: aside from short exceptions, Mulder and Scully are not good at being your friends and not good at their jobs. They are incompetent, ineffectual, indifferent, non-commital, uninvested, disinterested and have no regard for saving your life. That's not how the actors play their characters, but the show makes it clear: If you, RussianCabbie, were being tormented by a psycho with electrical powers, Mulder and Scully would show up, take notes, file a report, and then leave you to be further menaced and eventually murdered.
In the event that you are facing a psycho with electrical powers or an alien invasion, I suggest you skip calling Mulder and Scully. Call Sam and Dean from SUPERNATURAL or Peter and Olivia and Walter from FRINGE or Wynonna Earp or Liv Moore from iZOMBIE or the cast of DOCTOR WHO or Emma Swan from ONCE UPON A TIME, all of whom actually try to close the paranormal case of the week before going to the next one.
I would call the sliders, but I can't totally recommend that either given their poor job performances across Season 3 - 5.
An interesting take. Maybe an accurate assessment... or at the very least a fair way of looking at it.
That said, I feel there's some pulpiness to the show and I'm OK with the approach to the monster of the week and not having to tie up loose ends on those. Part of the point of it is just that electro guy exists. And Mulder's own curiosity to explore the unexplained, or the stuff nobody would belief. Not necessarily for us, but for him. And Scully's desire to keep investigations based on finding facts in front of acting on faith. And the conflict with that against the faith she lives by.
For me, I love Mulder's dry humor, his obsessions, his weirdness. Hey, isn't it great that not every character on tv is like Matthew Perry or something? In some ways... mulder made it OK to be weird. And we all know about the scully effect.
I don't pretend to be able to wrap my head around the mythology, nor do I get overly concerned about it. I think it's fair for viewers to want everything to make perfect sense and break down how it holds up to reality. It's just not how I personally process these things. I'm willing to look the other way, and think life doesn't always seem to make perfect sense anyway even though there's underlying reasons for everything that we don't always have access to.
I love the partnership between the pair. They have different dynamics that make for an interesting pairing. I just love what the show gives me and really don't worry about where it falls short. I feel like there's always good stories to be told with both and would love to see more in the future. If I'm not crazy about half of it or even two thirds, I still get the episodes that really fall into the X-Files classic material. I suppose it may also be because I don't go in with huge expectations and don't know the mythology back and forth that I'm less bothered.
With a franchise like Blade Runner, I'm a bit more critical. So I guess I can understand frustration with approach and writing at times.
I agree that Mulder and Scully did a lot of foundational work to make the Hollywood Nerd and women in STEM subjects more mainstream and no other show did as much for prioritizing male intellect over athleticism and female aptitude over allure. Mulder and Scully were presented as an image of male and female professionalism. The unfortunate reality of the show, however, presented them as deeply unprofessional.
**
While I am not a fan of THE X-FILES, I do understand THE X-FILES and I feel I can say: the mythology mostly made sense until Season 10.
I would say that about 85 per cent of Seasons 1 - 9 made sense, and the 15 per cent or so that didn't make sense is pretty reasonable as no story is without human error.
Reputation over Reality
THE X-FILES certainly had a *reputation* for having a nonsensical mythology that was made up as the show went along, but having watched the whole series when it first marathoned on the Canadian SPACE channel, I didn't find that to be the case.
Reviewers and viewers who described the mythology as confusing or contradictory in Seasons 1- 9 always struck me as extremely *casual* fans who maybe watched one out of four episodes. The mythology was very, very straightforward.
Purity
The original inhabitant of planet Earth was an alien being called Purity that manifested in two forms: gray aliens and the black oil virus. To survive the Ice Age, Purity departed from Earth but remnants of the intelligent black oil virus were left behind. Purity and their black oil virus conquered the majority of life in the universe, infecting all life forms via the black oil virus, and then returned to Earth as Colonists, intending to use Earth as a breeding ground.
Syndicate
Before the invasion could begin, one of the Colonist ships crashed to Roswell in 1947, alerting world shadow governments to the threat. The shadow government, the Syndicate, threatened to trigger nuclear winter unless the Colonists withdrew; the Colonists in turn threatened to exterminate the planet. A bargain was struck: the shadow government would be permitted to survive and choose survivors if they facilitated the Colonists' invasion of Earth to use black-oil-possessed humans as a slave race.
Resist or Serve
However, both sides were plotting treachery: the Colonists intended to use the infected humans as breeders regardless of the deal. The shadow Syndicate was attempting to create a vaccine against the black oil. A third faction entered the conflict: the Faceless Rebels, a race of aliens who had sealed their mouths and eyes shut to prevent black oil infection and landed on Earth and killed most of the Syndicate members.
The Colonists replaced their human collaborators by capturing key members of world governments (and a small town sheriff and some of his neighbours, very odd). They converted these humans into alien supersoldiers to infiltrate all levels of human society to keep their 2012 invasion plan on track. The series ended/paused in 2000 with a two part finale that gave a full summary of the mythology, the intent being to continue/conclude this story in a feature film series that didn't come to pass.
Loose Ends
There are a few myth-arc elements that don't fit into the overall story very smoothly. Episodes in Seasons 3 - 4 indicate that the aliens are quietly infiltrating the human race, living civilian lives, waiting for humanity to destroy itself so that they will quietly inherit the planet. This doesn't track with later seasons indicating that the plan is in fact outright invasion.
The alien-human hybrids were intially presented as the civilian-aliens experimenting with alien-human co-existence and being exterminated by the alien bounty hunter at the behest of the Colonists. The bounty hunter, however, would later be shown as aligned with the Faceless Rebels.
I don't understand what the bees were all about and nobody has ever been able to explain it to my satisfaction.
It's unclear why the Colonists wanted a few randoms from a small American town to be their supersoldiers when the other supersoldiers were high level government operatives. But this is well within the range of human error for most shows with myth-arcs.
Most of the other aspects of the mythos fit into Colonization: the clones were attempts to create black-oil-resistant biology, the abductions were for tests for the same project.
My Struggle
The Season 10 premiere, however, abruptly declared that the entire Colonist plotline had been a massive hoax and that the true endgame had been humans using stolen alien technology to create the Spartan Virus to massively depopulate the human race.
This did not track with the Colonization arc at all. While an understandable retcon to simplify things, the Season 10 finale made it even more tangled by declaring the Spartan Virus and Colonization to be the same conspiracy and presenting the Colonization conspirators as participants of the Spartan Virus plot.
This threw Seasons 1 - 9 into a state of hopeless confusion: how had the 2012 invasion date and the abductions and the black oil been relevant to a plot about human depopulation? And what about the supersoliders?
This is the part where THE X-FILES actually stopped making any kind of sense in its mythology, sadly. Carter was shockingly careless and indifferent to a mythology he'd built up over nine seasons. Season 11's premiere confusingly declares that there was a plot for alien colonization but it's not clear if this is a reference to the Spartan Virus or the disavowed Colonization plot.
To Be Fair
With THE X-FILES having been off the air between 2000 and 2016 and having missed the 2012 invasion date, it made sense to set the Colonization arc aside. But Carter didn't conclude it; he come up with a completely different story for Season 10 and claimed it was the same story as Seasons 1 - 9.
It seriously undermines the entire structure of the show. It makes Mulder look ridiculous for devoting 1993 - 2000 (if not more) investigating an alien invasion plot that was all a joke. In Season 11, Mulder encounters Deep Throat's grave, but Deep Throat's death and role in the Colonization conspiracy has been completely undermined by Colonization being a hoax. All the angst over hiding William from the Colonists is silly if the Colonists weren't real and had no plans to invade.
The X-Files Reborn
I think that Carter could have wrapped up the myth-arc in a single episode for the Season 10 premiere. The 2016 premiere could have shown an uninvaded Earth, Mulder and Scully retired from the FBI -- only to be recalled due to a series of murders where the victims turn out to be former employees of the now-defunct Syndicate. The murderer turns out to be a man targeting people he deems to be traitors to the human race in an alien invasion.
Mulder confronts the murderer, tracking him to the New York City Syndicate headquarters. Surrounded by artifacts and tools of the Colonists, Mulder reveals to the killer: the Colonization of Earth has been cancelled. The Colonists have lost interest in Earth, a warming planet with depleted resources, and no invasion is coming. The murderer can't accept that Colonization has been cancelled as the conspiracy gives his life meaning and kills himself.
At the end of the episode, Mulder and Scully prepare to return to civilian life only to find that since 2000, the X-Files office has accumulated thousands of paranormal casefiles, all unsolved, all filed under X, all in need of a believer and a skeptic to investigate. Mulder and Scully decide to return to the FBI and the adventure begins again... preferably with Glen Morgan running the show...
...
If only.
**
I have sent the webmaster of EatTheCorn.com a message. I've asked him what the bees were all about.
IB: " ... so, what's the deal with the bees?"
KIMON: "Is this a serious question?"
IB: "Yes! I was just telling Brad that every part of the X-FILES mythology makes sense to me in Seasons 1 - 9 except for the bees. I don't understand the role they play in Colonization at all. How are they supposed to carry the black oil in their tiny forms? They're bees!"
KIMON: "The black oil is at its core a virus and the virus was injected into the genetically modified corn which the bees consumed and the bees would then transmit the virus to humans and create a mass pandemic for Colonization."
IB: "So -- the bees are actually carrying the black oil but in a microscopic form."
KIMON: "That's my understanding."
IB: "Oh, okay. I was pondering how the bees fit into the mythology and then I realized I could just ask The Expert. Well. Not The Expert. That's a loaded term in SLIDERS fandom."
The bees are a smart delivery mechanism.
There's aspects of the mythology that I love.
As you mentioned there are casual fans and there are hardcore fans. It's probably a lot harder for a hardcore fans to tolerate with very real issues with continuity and mythology. Casuals fans can look the other way, simply in part because they don't always see the problems.
I think I heard something like when S10&11 returned, the very broad casual audience didn't like the humor stuff -- they wanted the monster of the week. And of course hardcore fans liked quirky stuff.
I hope the new series in development, The X-Files: Albuquerque, actually happens.
The X Files: Official Archives book is soo well done
I believe there was just a Chris Carter event at the x files museum.
In X-FILES fandom, the Eat the Corn website and its founder, Kimon, are basically the Temporal Flux of SLIDERS. The defacto expert on the series both in terms of its in-universe mythology and its behind the scenes situations. I asked him what he would do if he were handed Season 12 of the show. "I would resign," he told me. He didn't feel THE X-FILES could proceed as it had collapsed its own mythology and he could see no way back.
Well, that sounded like a challenge.
Kimon, pre-Revival, wrote numerous essays on the mythology of the show as defined over nine seasons: the black oil, the bees, the alien-human-hybrid experiments, the Bounty Hunter(s), the shadow government, the Colonists, the Rebels. Naturally, he wasn't pleased when Season 10 declared the entire mythology to be a hoax. And he was irritated by Season 11's myth-arc incoherence and the Season 11 finale, particularly in how Mulder wasn't an FBI agent as much as some gun-wielding vigilante who'd gone from investigating a conspiracy to simply shooting conspirators in the head.
How to amend all this so that Kimon would like the show again?
My Season 12: we open in the offices of The X-Files. But it's not the Basement! No, no, we are now in the offices of The X-Files Magazine, a new media venture that does everything the FBI X-Files did, but as a monthly magazine investigating monsters of the week.
Gillian Anderson said she would only return to the show if it were a new take and if the X-Files were passed onto a new generation, so our lead character is Tamlynn Rivers (obviously Summer Glau), a down on her luck journalist reduced to what she thinks will be a ridiculous job at a glorified tabloid, X-Files Magazine. She is partnered with Wesley Ronalds (obviously Rupert Grint), a disgraced former medical doctor, who has been working at the magazine for a little longer and has seen some truly strange things and is willing to believe where Tamlynn is a skeptic.
Mulder and Scully are the editors, but we do not see them onscreen much -- or we see them all the time and they investigate monsters of the week in half the episodes. It depends entirely on what Gillian Anderson is willing to do. Assuming their involvement is minimal: Wesley informs Tamlynn that their job is to investigate monsters of the week and only monsters of the week. If they see UFOs, they send it "upstairs" to Mulder and Scully. If they see black oil, it goes upstairs. If they see aliens, upstairs.
The X-Files Magazine does NOT do aliens, Wesley tells Tamlynn (he doesn't know why, it's a direction from upstairs). Tamlynn and Wesley are strictly on monsters of the week.
And from there, we have a setup where we can resume the usual monster hunting of classic X-Files stories.
In the Season 1 finale, Tamlynn and Wesley investigate a series of murders that lead them to a wishing well, a water well that grants wishes to rewrite reality so that reality and history will center around the wisher. They also find a pack of Morley's cigarettes next to the well.
It's revealed that the Cigarette Smoking Man found this well before the Season 9 finale and used it. This is why, in Season 10, the mythology was now rewritten to make the Cigarette Smoking Man the center of the mythos and the master of the conspiracy when, in Seasons 1- 9, he'd been middle manangement. This is why he kept coming back to life and recovering from his injuries (even if some took longer than others to heal). This is why he comes back now, returning with armies to menace Tamlynn and Wesley.
Mulder and Scully locate the genie from Season 7, and it's explained that when Mulder freed the genie, her power went into this well. Mulder convinces her to take her power back and she does, but in doing so, she resets all of the CSM's revisions to past and present meaning that while the CSM is finally defeated, the original mythology has been reinstated, the Colonists and Rebels will return to existence and resume their war over planet Earth, and Colonization is back on.
I informed Kimon that it was now his job to come up with a plot for Season 13 and that I'd be expecting it by October 2023.
How do Mulder and Scully beat Colonization? How do two humans who can barely get office supplies from the FBI fight an interstellar invasion force of hyperadvanced aliens who are essentially a virus that coagulates into a black oil that can possess and control any biological lifeform, that has infected the majority of life in the universe?
... I personally always assumed that Mulder and Scully would rally the malevolent magic dolls and voodoo priests and werewolves and anthropomorphic representations of Death and the poltergeists and the time travellers and the Flukeman and the shapeshifters and the mites and the zombies and the telekinetic clones and the vampires and God as played by Burt Reynolds, forming an army to defy the Purity virus.
I always figured that the Colonists would take one look at the magic dolls and zombies and decide that, on balance, they would prefer to invade another planet.
"Look here, we're a biotechnology-driven species," Purity would say. "We wanted to infect and possess humans to use as broodmares, but we really don't care to mess around with voodoo and magic dolls and anthropomorphic representations of Death and anything played by Burt Reynolds. We are not equipped to engage with the metaphysical and mystical and we can't co-exist with ghosts and fire demons and magic goat suckers and talking tattoos and such. You can keep the Earth, it's just too damn weird."
Watched the directors cut of the first x files movie the other day
Thought it was excellent. Was surprised to see it's only 2.5 minutes different than the original.
The movie that starts out in Dallas featuring very prominent mountains in the background? 
The movie that starts out in Dallas featuring very prominent mountains in the background?
Is that Fight for the Future or I Want T Believe?
I watched the lattet
Dallas is featured very prominently in the first X-FILES movie, FIGHT THE FUTURE. The extended scene in FIGHT THE FUTURE is primarily some extra dialogue explaining why Samantha was kidnapped by aliens... which no longer makes any sense due to the revelations of the Season 10 episodes.
The second film, I WANT TO BELIEVE, is set primarily in Washington, DC and then Richmond, Virginia. The director's cut on the second one is only four minutes longer and it's barely significant.
I honestly don't remember thinking it was as well done as I did on the last watch. Maybe my age. Either way was quite an interesting story. Far better than the super hero schlock of today.
I honestly don't remember thinking it was as well done as I did on the last watch. Maybe my age. Either way was quite an interesting story. Far better than the super hero schlock of today.
I fundamentally disagree with this on every level. The entire thesis of THE X-FILES seems to be: you can't make a difference. No one can make a difference. Mulder can't do anything about the alien invasion except talk about it. Scully can't seem to get anywhere in her career: no matter how many times she gets fired or quit, she ends up working at the most disdained department in the FBI.
Even the evil characters can't seem to accomplish anything on THE X-FILES. The alien invasion is never coming; the Syndicate is constantly referring to how "the date is set" and "they're coming, they're here, they've been here for a long time, they're only coming back" and then Season 10 went and declared that the alien invasion was never happening at all and all those ominous, mysterious men were wasting their time.
In addition, THE X-FILES also seemed to be unable to grasp the concept of education. Mulder and Scully never seemed to collate and accumulate their details on the monsters or the Syndicate: by Season 11, they were as incapable of stopping monsters as they were in Season 1.
This is the antithesis of a superhero movie. The superhero movie declares: we can all make a difference and anyone can be a hero. Even the most obnoxious or easily dismissed or ordinary can be heroes. Tony Stark is a drunken moron tripping on ego and liquor; when stripped of his wealth and luxuries and forced to survive, he discovers he has what it takes to battle war itself.
Dr. Donald Blake seems to be a crazy person who thinks he's the Norse God of Thunder and here to help people; it turns out he actually is Thor. Steve Rogers is a washout and a reject who can't find shoes small enough to fit the feet on his frail frame; he is determined to battle Nazis and is given a body that is as strong as his decency of character. Everyone has it in them to be a hero; it's just that not everyone looks hard enough or digs deep enough to find it.
And I know what some will say: well, that's a fairy tale. THE X-FILES is far more realistic (because yes, a TV show about aliens made of black oil colonizing the Earth with bees and supersoldiers is truly very grounded), THE X-FILES' cynicism is believable. But cynicism is easy. Despair and depression and giving up are the easiest options for a person and for a storyteller. It is much harder to tell superhero stories than it is to tell X-FILES stories.
One of the hardest parts of writing the TV show SUPERNATURAL, I think: it has to be finding a way for Sam and Dean to find some solution to beat the monsters of the week, to defeat Lucifer, and to, in the final season, take on God Himself. But THE X-FILES takes the easy way out by never having Mulder and Scully triumph.
Writing THE X-FILES is shooting fish in a barrel: raise mysteries and don't resolve them, create monsters and don't find a way to stop them, have two lead characters passively wander through the story and accomplish nothing whatsoever. Superheroes take much more talent.
I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's cat, Wade's teddy bear, Rembrandt's shiny suit and Arturo's bow tie that the opinions of ireactions are not the views of Sliders.TV.
Dallas is featured very prominently in the first X-FILES movie, FIGHT THE FUTURE.
I've just always thought it was funny because it was clearly filmed outside of Dallas because there aren't mountains for hundreds of miles in the real Dallas 
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:I honestly don't remember thinking it was as well done as I did on the last watch. Maybe my age. Either way was quite an interesting story. Far better than the super hero schlock of today.
I fundamentally disagree with this on every level. The entire thesis of THE X-FILES seems to be: you can't make a difference. No one can make a difference. Mulder can't do anything about the alien invasion except talk about it. Scully can't seem to get anywhere in her career: no matter how many times she gets fired or quit, she ends up working at the most disdained department in the FBI.
Even the evil characters can't seem to accomplish anything on THE X-FILES. The alien invasion is never coming; the Syndicate is constantly referring to how "the date is set" and "they're coming, they're here, they've been here for a long time, they're only coming back" and then Season 10 went and declared that the alien invasion was never happening at all and all those ominous, mysterious men were wasting their time.
In addition, THE X-FILES also seemed to be unable to grasp the concept of education. Mulder and Scully never seemed to collate and accumulate their details on the monsters or the Syndicate: by Season 11, they were as incapable of stopping monsters as they were in Season 1.
This is the antithesis of a superhero movie. The superhero movie declares: we can all make a difference and anyone can be a hero. Even the most obnoxious or easily dismissed or ordinary can be heroes. Tony Stark is a drunken moron tripping on ego and liquor; when stripped of his wealth and luxuries and forced to survive, he discovers he has what it takes to battle war itself.
Dr. Donald Blake seems to be a crazy person who thinks he's the Norse God of Thunder and here to help people; it turns out he actually is Thor. Steve Rogers is a washout and a reject who can't find shoes small enough to fit the feet on his frail frame; he is determined to battle Nazis and is given a body that is as strong as his decency of character. Everyone has it in them to be a hero; it's just that not everyone looks hard enough or digs deep enough to find it.
And I know what some will say: well, that's a fairy tale. THE X-FILES is far more realistic (because yes, a TV show about aliens made of black oil colonizing the Earth with bees and supersoldiers is truly very grounded), THE X-FILES' cynicism is believable. But cynicism is easy. Despair and depression and giving up are the easiest options for a person and for a storyteller. It is much harder to tell superhero stories than it is to tell X-FILES stories.
One of the hardest parts of writing the TV show SUPERNATURAL, I think: it has to be finding a way for Sam and Dean to find some solution to beat the monsters of the week, to defeat Lucifer, and to, in the final season, take on God Himself. But THE X-FILES takes the easy way out by never having Mulder and Scully triumph.
Writing THE X-FILES is shooting fish in a barrel: raise mysteries and don't resolve them, create monsters and don't find a way to stop them, have two lead characters passively wander through the story and accomplish nothing whatsoever. Superheroes take much more talent.
I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's cat, Wade's teddy bear, Rembrandt's shiny suit and Arturo's bow tie that the opinions of ireactions are not the views of Sliders.TV.
If x files was never a tv series and I Want To Believe didn't have the name x files in it, you would still feel the same?
I think it works well... Either for a x files film or as a standalone creative work.
[One of the hardest parts of writing the TV show SUPERNATURAL, I think: it has to be finding a way for Sam and Dean to find some solution to beat the monsters of the week, to defeat Lucifer, and to, in the final season, take on God Himself.
This is why I was a fan of my fanfic season of Supernatural. I think it would've been cool if something the boys did to save the world actually broke the fundamental laws of the world. What if Dead Man's Blood didn't work against vampires? What if silver didn't work against werewolves? What if the Colt didn't work against *anything*? Because I think at some point, the monster of the week stuff got stale because none of the traditional monsters were much of a challenge. John's book essentially was a cheat code.
But if the boys had to start fresh? Find new ways to kill vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons, etc. Write their own book. That would've really reinvigorated the show, especially in the later years.
ireactions wrote:Dallas is featured very prominently in the first X-FILES movie, FIGHT THE FUTURE.
I've just always thought it was funny because it was clearly filmed outside of Dallas because there aren't mountains for hundreds of miles in the real Dallas
With my lightning fast mind, I only needed 20 hours to realize what you were getting at. Haha!!
If x files was never a tv series and I Want To Believe didn't have the name x files in it, you would still feel the same?
I think it works well... Either for a x files film or as a standalone creative work.
FIGHT THE FUTURE isn't a standalone movie. It's a very peculiar movie where the supposed heroes don't seem to accomplish anything; it's not even clear if their actions are why the X-Files were reopened. One reason the movie is like this: it was filmed between Season 4 and Season 5, and the creators were clearly unsure of what would happen in Season 5, so they made sure the movie wouldn't have anything too eventful would actually happen and no progress would take place. Of course, Mulder and Scully never accomplished anything on TV either.
I WANT TO BELIEVE is... peculiar and puzzling in so many ways to me. It's a film without any tension or stakes; where the lead character 'solves' the mystery through luck; and once again, it's a film where Mulder and Scully fail to save the people they were brought out of retirement to save. Just baffling. Carter and Spotnitz say that they had to rush the script due to the writers strike of 2008, but they'd had six years to think about it since the original series finale!
This is why I was a fan of my fanfic season of Supernatural. I think it would've been cool if something the boys did to save the world actually broke the fundamental laws of the world. What if Dead Man's Blood didn't work against vampires? What if silver didn't work against werewolves? What if the Colt didn't work against *anything*? Because I think at some point, the monster of the week stuff got stale because none of the traditional monsters were much of a challenge. John's book essentially was a cheat code.
But if the boys had to start fresh? Find new ways to kill vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons, etc. Write their own book. That would've really reinvigorated the show, especially in the later years.
Where is this fanfic?! I must read it!
Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → The X-Files
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