Nov-05-2000
Arizona Republic
Pleasantly mystifying ‘X-Files’ takes a few cool new turns
Bill Goodykoontz
[posted to atxfa by Alfornos]
When last we left our man Mulder, he was busy being whisked away in a spaceship as FBI Deputy Director Skinner watched.
Scully, the no-longer-so-skeptical skeptic – and, by all the available evidence, celibate workaholic – dropped a little bombshell of her own on Skinner: She’s pregnant.
Now, as a new season begins, Skinner and Scully – sounds like a law firm in a Marx Brothers movie – must find Mulder, even as new agent John Doggett comes aboard.
And so it goes with The X-Files, the only show I know of that doesn’t have to make a lick of sense to be entertaining. The first two episodes of the new season certainly carry on both elements of that tradition.
The whole series was in doubt until late last season, when David Duchovny, who plays Fox Mulder, agreed to a limited role for the upcoming year. Happily, getting abducted by aliens makes a good excuse for not being around all that much.
But before we delve further, a few quick answers to questions haunting X -philes everywhere:
Yes, Duchovny appears in both new episodes. Sort of.
Yes, Robert Patrick is good as Doggett, who’s now the skeptic.
No, the father of Dana Scully’s baby isn’t revealed. Yet.
Come on, this is The X-Files. We don’t find out much. We never do. Which has never really bothered me. I want to like this show, the way Mulder wants to believe. I’ve never been one of those slaves-to-the-mythology types, who need to make sense of all the alien gobbledygook. I just th ink it’s cool.
It still is. But it’s different. At its core, the relationship between Mulder and Scully is what has made the show work. That relationship has changed drastically, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
“I think, really, Mulder and Scully are the reason – David and Gillian (Anderson) are the reason – for the show’s great success,” creator Chris Carter told critics this summer. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t threaten the paradigm, you can’t threaten the model, you can’t threaten the relationship.
“In fact, I think, dramatically, you better do that every once in a while, or else you’re going to have a very stale show.”
He doesn’t. Although at times seeing the familiar faces in different roles is unsettling, a kind of alternate-universe feeling. Sounds like it might make a good X-file.
Tags: chris carter, x-files