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Sep
10
2018

Vancouver, 25 years later!

No X-Files fan experience can be complete without a pilgrimage to where the series was shot!

Well, maybe these are strong words. You might not want to know too much about how the show was made, it might lose its magic. If the XF-vibe is not there, don’t blame Vancouver! Truth be told, the cinematographers and set designers had an important role to play, and visiting shooting locations after the fact may be underwhelming.

My travels recently took me to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where The X-Files‘ most memorable period was shot, seasons 1-5, so much so that it returned there for I Want To Believe and seasons 10-11; and where the other Ten Thirteen series were shot too, in particular Millennium. The (amateur) photos below are the result.

Past X-philes have done similar pilgrimages! A shout out to some favourites, that complete this article: TempusFugit; InvisiGoth; Fangirlquest.

If you ever plan to do something similar, here are some tips:

  • Plan your trip! “X Marks the Spot”, written by the series’ location managers Todd Pittson and Louisa Gradnitzer, will be your Bible (also, look at vintage fan sites X-Town or XF Marks The Spot, or Movie Maps). Placing your locations on Google Maps will help. For this, I am sharing here my X-Files Filming Locations map to you!
  • Take into account travelling time! Traffic is a big, big issue, and distances that might look like next door will take time. You might end up spending a large part of your day between locations. And so, due to time constraints, honourable highlights that are absent below are the Ascension cable car, the Anasazi quarry, the Paper Clip Strughold mines, or the Patient X Ruskin dam.
  • Don’t go during the summer! When you think XF you think fog, rain, clouds, that moody atmosphere. In summer you will have sunlight and no rain (that’s very obvious when you watch season 10, unfortunately). And if you’re not lucky you will also have smoke from forest fires, which blows in the area and limits visibility dramatically! Unfortunately this was my case.
  • Not everything is accessible! The XF crew had privileged access to location to do their work, obviously. Some locations are private properties (Mulder’s father’s house, or the Mulders’ summer cottage). Many locations have restricted access only to people working there (like the Anasazi quarry, or the place where the train car blows up in 731, or the ending to EBE, or many of the docks locations). Some might be restricted because filming is taking place there, again (North Shore Studios of course, and filming often takes place in Riverview Hospital). Obviously, many interiors are completely out of reach. Choose your locations with that knowledge.
  • Not everything exists anymore! As much as 25 years have passed, and things change. Some places have been renovated and are still themselves, like the mining museum from Paper Clip; some places have just changed owners and look different, like the Washington diner where Skinner is shot in Piper Maru (now a fancy gourmet restaurant), the pub where Ed Jerse and Scully flirt in Never Again (now a well lit bakery-café), or the café where Mulder meets Samantha in Redux (now a photocopy shop); and some places are just gone, like the roadside diner from the end of Eve or the train building Mulder observes the Japanese scientists from in Nisei ! And this will be more and more the case as time passes.

We are reminded of the weight of time that passes as The X-Files celebrates its 25th anniversary. A quarter century has flown by and the world is certainly a different place from what it was, in so many aspects. The X-Files has definitely hit that transition point between “recent and fesh but not quite new” to “something from a generation ago and just fondly remembered”. I wish I could say that at least, paraphrasing Casablanca, “we’ll always have Vancouver” to “remember how it all was“; but Vancouver too is changing, as do all things. Still, there’s a lot still there!

So see for yourself below, 1993-1998 versus 2018. The Vancouver area is separated in sections — The city, The suburbs, The docks, The woods — and do read the captions.

The city

                                      

The suburbs

                                 

The docks

   

The woods

                                 

Bonus

 

Happy 25th anniversary, The X-Files!

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Feb
19
2018

What ghouli.net tells us about William

The airing of 11X05: Ghouli was shortly preceded by the appearance of the website ghouli.net, which was also featured in the episode (and so its writing preceded the shooting of the episode). In an interesting move of 21st century viral marketing, this website is written in-universe as the blog of Jackson Van de Kamp, and offers information that was not presented in the episode.

ghouli.net went live on 25 January, with posts from William and others; the events of Ghouli happen at the same time it aired on 31 January; subsequent posts are user-submitted, i.e. any fan can post his or her story (and some of them could really pass for canon!). ghouli.net fills the double role of an in-universe creepypasta blog (fictional scary stories feeding an urban legend, in this case the Ghouli monster) and providing insight into William. The information here was certainly much more than could be discussed in a single episode, and Ghouli would have benefitted from being a double episode; some of it might be too much for even My Struggle IV to cover. Although “extended universe” information in multi-media platforms has become somewhat of a common practice in big franchises, it is a shame that the live show would not make more use out of this.

The William we discover in this blog is much more psychologically fleshed out and his experiences more detailed and interesting than the little we learn of him in Ghouli. Some of the character traits only roughly sketched out in Ghouli get more background here, in particular William’s troubled psychology. Some other traits that did not make him particularly likable in Ghouli, like him being a bad prankster and amateur pickup artist, are not referenced at all. Ghouli seemed to imply that William had an absolutely normal childhood, whereas here we see quite the contrary. All this would lead to believe that Chris Carter’s William in My Struggle IV and beyond will be somewhat different from James Wong’s William in Ghouli. On that topic, it is unknown who really wrote the content of this blog, possibly several people contributed; but given the close thematic resonance with the episodes, it is quite possible much of it is the work of Chris Carter and James Wong.

Let us go over the individual posts. William/Jackson is posting with the handle @Rever, which, apart from being a nice palindrome, also means “to dream” in French, which is relevant given the importance of dreams in William’s experiences. William posts either first person accounts or third person fictionalized accounts of what we suppose are true events, with himself as “The Boy”, “Billy” or “Sonny”, or even as Ghouli himself. The posts are dated from October 2017 to January 2018, however the events they describe are not presented in chronological order. @Rever’s posts can be roughly reordered in three groups, with non-Rever posts being relevant as well:

William’s young age

Crawling Empty Full
@Rever, 23 October 2017
William has been with his adoptive parents for five years, in rural Wyoming; his parents are considering moving around: “They lived in the middle of nowhere, by design. For now, anyway. […] She [mother] wasn’t sure how long they would stay in the Midwest.” This story is told with William as “The Boy”. On his sixth birthday, i.e. circa summer of 2007, William had a traumatic experience by being poisoned in the eye by tarantula hair. In his discussion with the tarantula, there are hints that William knows he is not quite human: the tarantula “looked like an alien from another planet” “Tarantula, what do you want to know from the People of Planet Earth?” “I do not think you are of this Planet. I think that you might be from mine.”

Your Imploding Cells
@Rever, 24 October 2017
Immediately follows. William had never been sick in his life before, appropriately superhuman. But with this incident his immune system collapsed. He was isolated in a quarantine room like a boy in the bubble, where he was monitored by scientists. Then: “He had been misdiagnosed. His immune system was more resilient than they had feared“, but the scientists were interested in him, taking stem cells from him, also fearing him. “They kept telling him that he was perfectly healthy. Maybe even healthier than he had ever been in his life.” His father visited at first, then no more; he remained under observation, trapped. He was exposed to a yellow gas from Project MK CHICKWIT, with no effect (this is reminiscent of MK NAOMI from Kitten; MK CHICKWIT was a real, post MK ULTRA, project over 1968-1971 that was collecting chemicals for experimentation on soldiers). He then exhibited telekinesis and mental powers, in scenes that are reminiscent of the children in Founder’s Mutation. Frustrated at being trapped, he escaped.

Does this experience mean that the tarantula poison somehow activated William’s Spartan virus, which destroyed his immune system? Following that, William’s alien biology would have kicked in and he reacquired his immune system. The exposure to the MK CHICKWIT gas was perhaps a way to test that immunity against the Spartan virus (Tad O’Malley mentioned the Spartan virus is activated via chemtrails, which could be this yellow gas). This incident is not referenced again, nor are William’s telekinetic powers; possibly the doctors “switched off” the genes resposible for some of his powers (with a magnetite injection like Jeffrey Spender’s in William?) and erased William’s memory of these events (like Mulder’s in Deep Throat).

This also means that William’s powers and location was known to “some” conspiracy since 2007. How to reconcile this with the fact that the CSM and the DOD are still searching for William in 2017/2018? So much has been made of the search for William that this contradiction cannot be ignored; but whichever solution adds enormous complexity that should be unnecessary at this point. All this could be an unreliable memory, or mixed with events that happened to another experiment child of Project Crossroads that William saw through remote viewing into the past, yet the tarantula incident is a blueprint for the later creation of the Ghouli monster. It could also be that these scientists were working for Dr. Matsumoto: as we learn in Ghouli, “Dr. Matsumoto burned all the files pertaining to the subjects to save their lives, and then he disappeared. The DoD has tried to track them down ever since.” After Matsumoto’s Project Crossroads was disbanded (circa 2002/2003), he could have found William somehow (psychic connection with the other gifted children he oversaw?), conducted these checks on him but did not share this with the rest of the conspiracy, and might still be keeping an eye on him from afar. The experiments in Founder’s Mutation with Dr. Goldman could be remnants of Project Crossroads, operated by Dr. Matsumoto.

You are the Living Key in a Dying Function
@Rever, 23 January 2018
William at 7 years old, i.e. circa 2008. He is “Billy Mullen” with his parents Janet and Steven, an “only child to two working parents” (Janet seems to be working in real estate). The setting is urban, the Van de Kamps have probably moved away from rural Wyoming after the tarantula incident. William has developed a sense of remote viewing and if not mind reading at least remote empathy — he is not clairvoyant, he cannot see future events. This only works with people or objects he has an emotional link to, he is only able to do it when he empathizes with people in distress οr sorrow or fear. The town psychologist tests his ability with a scientific method. During the test, with the key word “mother”, instead of searching for his “mom”, William searches for his biological “mother” — Scully, who at that moment was performing an autopsy in a morgue, and was thinking about the end of the world. William’s parents hadn’t yet told him he was adopted, and Janet fears his real biological mother might develop the same connection and come for him. This is the last entry on ghouli.net.

The visions posts

Time jump to a time much closer to My Struggle III and Ghouli.

Mobius Strip Tease
@Rever, 20 November 2017
William’s point of view of the dream Scully experiences at the beginning of Ghouli. Dream within a dream, feeling of being hunted by a shadow figure, doubling of self, fear of dying inside a dream, possibility this is premonition or memory: “As I stood there, about to flee again, someone else raced by me—it was me. Future Me? Past Me? No time to figure it out as he blew by, headed for the living room, undoubtedly. Good luck to him/me.” Of Scully: “She had red hair, wore a crucifix necklace, and had a look of deep concern. She seemed very familiar though.” She is not referred to as “Ginger” yet. This recurring dream is something William has had before Scully did, as per this post’s date months before the airing of Ghouli and Scully’s dream.

Dream Disease Apocalypse
@Rever, 22 December 2017
William’s visions of the impending viral apocalypse that is coming, clearly described as man-made: “The shadow powers are putting a plan in motion. They want to wipe out humanity to benefit themselves and start over with a clean slate.” He feels connected to the few that can change this: “Why I’ve been chosen as the conduit, I don’t know. But I know there are people in the world who can help, I see them in my visions, too. I just don’t know who they are. […] Their faces are foggy but they’re there, subliminally or just outside of my peripheral vision. The man with the eyebrows. The watching man. The blue eyed doctor. Others my age, possibly?” The first one is This Man (also in the posts’ tags; see the post “Radio Surfer” below); the second one could be Mulder, or again This Man, or even future William himself; the third is Scully; the others are possibly the Resistance (see the Knockout Mouse posts below). Could the date of this vision be significant? 22 December, exactly five years after the supposed alien colonization date in 2012.

In the Future We Shall Not Thrive
@Rever, 22 January 2018
Visions of the end of the world at the end of My Struggle II, the viral apocalypse and the majestic UFO appearing at the bridge. Scully is identified as “Ginger“. References to Tad O’Malley’s Truth Squad. The viral apocalypse is described both as man-made and alien. “Ginger was a beautiful sight in a sea of blights […] it was like a front row seat to seeing God appear from above in that final, transcendent moment before The End.”

This Screaming Skull
@Rever, 23 January 2018
An account of William’s seizures, which come with lights and an incomprehensible message, over which he does not seem to have any control (and resembles an alien abduction setup). As we saw in My Struggle III, these seizures come when he is bed, perhaps in his sleep as an evolution of his dreams. Visions of Scully as “Ginger“: “Blue eyes. Red hair. Of which I have neither. These are recessive genes.” William points out that he is physically and genetically different from Scully, but this observation would be out of place if he didn’t already suspect that he has a genetic connection with Ginger; hence he is already suspecting she is his biological mother. William knows he is sending messages to her: “When I seize, I transmit. I don’t know why or how. I don’t always know the message. But I know it’s important. And it’s important that she be the receiver. But transmission means pain for both.” William talks of injuries he has, perhaps as a result of his falling down or hitting himself when the visions come: “Do we bare the same scars? Slashed forehead and chin. Broken wrist and arm. Two or three concussions. I’ve fallen when there’s been no one to catch me.” He seems to go in and out of the hospital often because of this: “I’ll have to ask the next time I’m in the Emergency Room. They’ll think I’m weird. Weirder and weirder every time I go back. Inevitably, I go back.” Thus William must have had these seizures for a while, in a period of time longer than his connection with Scully, which only happened during the short length of My Struggle II/III. William cares for Scully but doesn’t seem to know who she is as a person: “Does she have someone to hold her hand, to break her fall? I hope she’s safe and cared for. She shouldn’t suffer more pain than I’ve endured myself. I want her to hear me, but I don’t want her to hurt, not because of my uncontrollable screaming skull.” William was thus sending these visions to Scully, but this was not some conscious choice; whoever or whatever is causing this, William does not know. This fits with Scully’s line in Ghouli about just being a receptacle. These visions could be a warning or a way to motivate these characters to do something about it, but we do not know who is causing this: “This Man”, aliens, God, future William reaching out in the past?

The Ghouli posts

Concurrent with the above; it is difficult to tell which come forst, the visions or Ghouli.

3H00. After Dark.
@Rever, 2 November 2017
William calls himself “Sonny”. In the suburban home with his adoptive parents, William has insomnia. The accompanying illustration from William’s diary includes a mention of a 4-feet tall black alien appearing at the foot of his bed. William wanders alone at night, street names clearly place this in Norfolk, Virginia, he passes through the gas station with the windmill from Ghouli. He is aware that he was given up for adoption when he was 10 months old, wonders “what’s wrong with Sonny“. He seems to be frequently monitored by doctors who study his unique biology: “Was his tetanus vaccine up to date? Maybe cutting himself with a rusty nail would prevent him from having to give blood again next week?” These could be not conspiracy doctors but just doctors doing checks on him with his frequent hospital visits following his seizures. What is causing his insomnia is “What he thought he may have overheard from the doctors. A single sample containing two separate blood types. Not biologically impossible, but extremely rare. Blood chimera. Abnormal.” William is a type of alien/human hybrid not seen before, as he seems to be carrying not one genome that is a mix but two genomes at the same time (somewhat similar to Mulder in the Biogenesis trilogy, but not due to the presence of Black Oil in his brain like Mulder, William carries this double genome from birth). The twin genome could point to William being a combination of natural birth (Scully and Mulder) and medical experiment (alien hybridization, as per My Struggle III using CSM’s genome?), thus William could have four biological parents; for the time being he has been in psychic contact with only one of them, Scully.

4H00. After Rust.
@Rever, 2 November 2017
Directly follows. William explores the Chimera boat; he used to hang around there with friends in the summer. He meets with Ghouli, a mix of insect and alien; cockroaches and spiders are referenced (the spider webs were also seen in the episode). Evidently Ghouli is a way for William to exteriorise his self-hate and incarnate the part of him that is alien, his “twin“, by making Ghouli look like a mix of human and spider (echoing his arachnophobia ever since that tarantula incident when he was 6). William knows he has been partly alien from his inception. William discusses with Ghouli: Ghouli: “We’re one and the same. I am you and you are me. I am inside of you. In your blood. […] I’m everything you hate, and feed upon your hate too.” Sonny: “I’m going to kill you.” Ghouli: “You already did. You absorbed me in utero. Face it, Sonny, you were a jerk before you were even born. If you’re not careful, you’ll kill everybody. Except for me. I could survive a catastrophic event. I could survive a goddamn nuclear winter.” This is all reminiscent of a long strain of episodes discussing the creation of a superhuman or supersoldier (Nisei/731, Nothing Important Happened Today) that could very well be a strategic weapon against the aliens themselves, and of the Black Oil emitting lethal radiation yet keeping the host intact (Piper Maru). There are hints that William has the power to kill everyone, and the power to survive the destruction he will unleash, reminiscent of the prophecised being that would have the fate of the world in its hands (The Sixth Extinction, Providence).

Encounter I
@Rever, 16 December 2017
Dream encounter of many flesh-eating Ghoulis in a primeval forest. William dies inside the dream (placing this after “Mobius Strip Tease“, where he still wonders about dying while inside a dream).

Knives Out (Encounter II)
@Rever, 19 December 2017
Dream encounter of Ghouli at William’s home. William is “J”, Ghouli takes the form of “B”, a girl he knows — presumably his girlfriend Brianna Stapleton. William is discovering that Ghouli — and by extension himself — can trick others into believing he is somebody else. Accompanying illustration could be storyboards for the teaser to the episode.

Mississippi Delta Waves
@Rever, 20 December 2017
A premonition that a Ghouli murder will take place on the Chimera boat. William talks about his collection of snow globes, especially the one with the Chimera boat. Inside that one, he witnessed a murder of a little man, and he was worried about his possible wife who would have to take care of their child alone. Since then the snow globe is deserted; he caught a glimpse of Ghouli there. William likes the calmness of the snowed landscape inside a snow globe; this could be significant with the reference to nuclear winter in the entry “4H00. After Rust.“: is William attracted by the idea of world destruction?

Melt, It Said.
@Rever, 22 January 2018
Ghouli — i.e. William — wakes up in an observation room, trapped and wired in scientific and medical equipment. Ghouli converses with the floor and the ceiling, about empathy and the inevitability of death. A UFO arrives. Ceiling: “You wish for the aliens to take everything man has built. You want the aliens to become hoarders. They will only take what is useful.” Ghouli: “I am of no use to them.” The UFO’s ray starts burning everything, including Ghouli. Is this a vision of a possible future fate for William? Or is William delirious during one of his hospital stays following his seizures? The fact that aliens are presented in a destructive light, but also in a destruction that might be liberating, might be significant for choices that William might have to make in the future.

The Knockout Mouse posts

Inserted between the posts are two that stand out, by K/OMouse. A knockout mouse is a lab test animal which has had a gene knocked out and replaced with an artificial one. These two posts have completely different date tags, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day 1970. This is possibly voluntary, to cover the tracks of whoever is sending these messages to William, who might have hacked his computer or blog to send these (1/1/1970 is date zero UTC in Unix computer systems). Knockout Mouse could be part of a group that is aware of Project Crossroads and other experiments aiming to create superhumans, perhaps a group formed by escaped children like the ones from Founder’s Mutation, looking to form an organized “Resistance” against the conspiracy.

the map Is not the territory
@K/OMoUsE, 31 December 1969
The title and the text relate to Magritte. The writer is teasing @Rever. It is pointed out that the handle @Rever is French “to dream”. A message endocded with Francis Bacon’s cipher reads:
“STUDY THE PAST IF YOU WOULD DIVINE THE FUTURE
PROJECT CROSSROADS IS PERTINENT TO YOUR HISTORY
THE REWARD OF TRUTH AND ENLIGHTENMENT AWAITS
DIG DEEPER AND YOU WILL BE LED TO THE DOCUMENTS”
Project Crossroads was the project William is the product of, as per Ghouli. This gets William on the way to discovering his nature by searching documents on Crossroads, which he has on his secret laptop in Ghouli.

the Resistance has landed
@K/OMoUsE, 1 January 1970
Echoing “The Eagle has landed“, Apollo 11’s first message when it safely touched the lunar surface in July 1969? This is a message to “The Boy”, encoded with a 3-letter shift:
“weseeyouwilliamvandekampweknowwhoyouare
andifweknowthentheyknowwhichyoushouldknow
crossroadswasonceanatombombandnowitisyou”
Operation Crossroads involved the testing of atom bombs in the Pacific Ocean in 1946, i.e. the development of a weapon (footage of these tests is in the teaser monologue of the CSM in My Struggle III). Project Crossroads, which produced William, also aimed at producing a weapon? Accompanying illustration has an alien face and an RNA nucleotide.

The rest of the non-Rever posts

Some relevant, some creepypasta and some whimsical posts.

THEM & THEY
@CameraBabushka, 25 October 2017
A trip into the conspiracies of The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat, as seen through the eyes of an elderly woman who discusses with Sarah Turner, one of William/Jackson’s girlfriends. Her mother and herself were experimented on by Dr E.B. “Bernie” Them and Dr. Thaddeus Q. They, whose ultimate conspiracy goal is to disseminate chemicals in food that aid the process of memory eradication and artificial memory implantation (first via Goop-A-B-C, and today via gluten-heavy foods). This woman was working as a secretary and translator for the government, and was working for the CIA in the 1970s, when the USA was trying to kill Fidel Castro with poisoned milkshakes. An amazing case of Mandela effect here: she mentions the movie “The Caligarian Candidate“, which is a misremembering of the conspiracy thriller involving mind manipulation “The Manchurian Candidate“, but it is also the title of one of Jose Chung’s previous books before he wrote From Outer Space! 1950s entertainer Dean Martin is also named…was this entry written by Darin Morgan?

Radio Surfer
@ThisMan, 30 October 2017
An odd associative account of sightings of This Man in dreams. The narrator remembers something from when he was five years old with his older brother. The narrator practices lucid dreaming and has many sightings of This Man, including some that correspond to the sightings in This and in Plus One (do the others correspond to upcoming episodes?). There are feelings that This Man travels from dream to dream through “The Signal” and that the narrator can find himself inside the dreams of others. There are mentions of a family watching television on a beach, which is an image in the teaser of My Struggle III. The narrator breaks the fourth wall when he describes what could be watching The X-Files and entering Scully’s dream: “This Man! He’s playing the neighbor in some old sitcom I’ve never seen before. Without hesitation, I run to the TV. I knock on the screen! I try to take his attention away from the woman he’s talking to! The sitcom plays on, ignoring me. I see him less and less and the woman more and more. Soon their scene together will be over. This is her show, she seems to dominate the scene. This is probably her own dream and I am intruding upon it.” This Man breaks the fourth wall himself when he reaches out to the narrator through the TV. Is this William’s account? Or the account of another person in a similar predicament as William, with which he feels connected (see “Dream Disease Apocalypse“). The accompanying illustration is from William/Jackson’s diary, with a portrait of This Man and scribbles like “Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious“, which is a Sigmund Freud quote.

The magic trick that was no trick
@RandyTheFake, 31 October 2017
A magician that would pretend to cut his assistant in two finds himself decapitated (by a katana sword like the ones in Plus One). He awakes in a secret facility, where his head and body are kept alive but separate; he learns to develop mental powers to control his body from a distance and is told that this is helping research for “the next step in human evolution”.

Here Be M_NST_RS
@CreepyBreezy, 16 November 2017
A Lovecraftian tale of two French anthropologists fatal encounter with a shape-shifting Ghouli in the Canadian wilderness, complete with disappearend Native American tribes, ancient runes, caves, skull shrines and murals.

[SPAMBOT] THESE MIND SUPPLEMENTS WORK!
@CaptainHarveyBrainBooster, 28 November 2017
Spam

How To Disappear Completely (Chapter 1 of 3)
@CreepyBreezy, 16 January 2018
Ghouli visits a family at dinner; nobody can see it, only the daughter momentarily senses it. Ghouli disappears in the mirror.

How To Disappear Completely (Chapter 2 of 3)
@CreepyBreezy, 21 January 2018
Continued. The daughter, Rikki Harper, has had her mobile phone destroyed and her dog killed by Ghouli; she keeps finding various small dead animals. She devises a plan to trap and kill Ghouli, with the help of a friend. Ghouli appears from a pool and is about to fall in the trap. There is no Chapter 3.

Summarizing what we learn

A tentative chronology of events in William’s life:

  • Age 6, 2007: the tarantula incident, which results in him being experimented on, developing mental powers and telekinesis; a traumatic experience; his memory is either erased or he suppresses the memory because of the trauma, possibly both
  • Age 7, 2008: developing a capability for remote viewing, first connection with “mother”/Scully
  • Closer to 2017/2018: starts seeing This Man in dreams, feels that he can connect with others via dreams
  • Has seizures with visions he cannot control, which result in him frequently visiting a hospital
  • More and more specific dreams of the world ending, of a man-made viral disaster and aliens arriving; he connects with Scully by unwillingly sending her his visions, and senses that she is his biological mother (possibly this unlocks his childhood memories that he had compartmentalized or had had erased)
  • Hospital doctors confirm there is something biologically peculiar about him (blood chimera: two genes expressed in a single body, hinting that William has more than two biological parents)
  • William is contacted by a resistance group that could be constituted by a generation of children of William’s age that has some of the same mental powers as him, pointing him to Project Crossroads and result in him learning about his nature
  • William creates Ghouli as a way to deal with his confusion, mixing in it his self-hate, his alien nature and his arachnophobia since his childhood trauma; he creates ghouli.net
  • William has a morbid attractiveness to death and the apocalypse; he realizes he is both a weapon and a cure to whatever inevitable future is coming.
  • Armed with that knowledge, after the events of the episode Ghouli, he takes off to travel the country in search of more information about himself, those who created him and those that send him messages or visions.

In essence, ghouli.net does what the series should be doing more of instead of focusing too narrowly on the old show formula: character development. William combines a story of a troubled teen with superpowers and a concentrated version of the seasons 1-6 mythology — the Black Oil/Spartan virus apocalypse-by-design along with Gibson/Cassandra/William, the perfect alien/human hybrid that would bring protection to the chosen few of the Syndicate/elites.

Hopefully the blog will be updated with @Rever’s thoughts, giving us insights in his story until My Struggle IV — until now it hasn’t been the case.

Thanks to Zerosum for many of the insights in this post!

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Nov
14
2017

Mythology elements of The Real Science Behind The X-Files

Dr. Anne Simon is a researcher in virology and professor in the University of Maryland. She also has in her curriculum the no less respectable title of science advisor for The X-Files! Anne Simon got involved in the show from the very first season, 1X23: The Erlenmeyer Flask, through a family connection — her mother’s best friend is Chris Carter’s wife and writer Dori Pierson — and has remained involved to this day, even earning a writing credit on the show’s last episode to have aired to date, 10X6: My Struggle II. She is also the daughter of screenwriter Mayo Simon, who wrote several science-themed or science fiction features (Marooned, Phase IV).

In 1999, Simon wrote “Monsters, Mutants and Missing Links: The Real Science Behind The X-Files“, a book that mixed episode stories with her own scientific knowledge and participation in the making of the series. Simon’s contribution in the series as a scientist elevates this particular book above the usual “the science of…” tie-in books that get released to ride on a pop culture phenomenon’s success. The book makes for a great read for the science amateur and informed X-Files fan, it invites the reader to enter the mindset of a scientific researcher questioning everything and attempting to reconcile facts in order to come up with theories — a quintessentially x-philian activity. The X-Files, after all, tried to balance Mulder’s encyclopedic knowledge of paranormal phenomena with Scully’s no less encyclopedic knowledge of medicine and more.

The US cover

The book covers seasons 1-5 as well as Fight the Future and the first episode of the sixth season. It would be interesting for Anne Simon to do a second edition of this book, with additional chapters not only covering seasons 6-9 (and importantly, as will be seen below, the revival) but also offering an updated view on the science: medical sciences and biology in particular are very lively fields that have seen great advancements over the past 15 years. Scientific truth is an ever-expanding, ever-shifting landscape!

By her own account, Simon only helped Carter with the science of the mythology episodes, the only stand-alone exception being 5X06: Post-Modern Prometheus, also a Carter episode. The science in other X-Files episodes must have been the writers’ own work or Ten Thirteen’s in-house researcher. Thus, the book’s science can be broken down into three types:

  • The book attempts to provide a scientific background for the phenomenon seen in an X-Files investigation. These are more akin to more or less wild sessions of theorizing and of attempting to put science where scientific accuracy might not have been the writers’ concern. For example, finding a biological basis for Virgil Incanto’s need for fat matter (from 3X06: 2Shy).
  • Scully (mostly) and Mulder explicitly reference a scientific concept in an episode, and the book offers further background to that concept. If the concept made it into the script, then it’s likely that the writers used this concept as the basis for their script, or at least they were aware of it and wrote it in in order to strengthen the scientific accuracy of the script. For example, the Chupacabra fungus launches a discussion of how fungi and enzymes work (from 4X11: El Mundo Gira).
  • A third category is Simon’s own contributions, which are first-hand accounts of what research was done to give these episodes scientific verisimilitude and what were the writers’ (well, Carter’s) intentions by including some elements of the research and not others. For example, identifying alien DNA with the two extra nucleotides (from 1X23: The Erlenmeyer Flask).

Anne Simon circa 1999

Sometimes, the additional research that didn’t make it into the final script and the behind-the-scenes discussions Simon had with Carter provide interesting insights into the script-writing process and valuable information about the mythology that cannot be found elsewhere. This mythology information could be described as “secondary” canon information: although not in the episodes themselves, it is certain it was in Simon’s and Carter’s minds and intentions when the episodes were being written and this extra information does not contradict the episodes. I used this extra information for EatTheCorn’s Mytharc Primer. This will be the focus of this article.

Are all of these elements below things we were to ponder on purpose as part of the larger mysteries of the mythology, or are they fan theories extrapolated from trying to inject too much science into a scripted piece of entertainment?

Mythology elements

The DNA to create an alien is already existing in humans and the Black Oil/Purity virus switches on this junk DNA

Quote:

Chris Carter, the movie’s scriptwriter, originally wanted to connect the black oily slime and the lizard-like entity in the following way: the black slime carries a virus, which is infectious when the slime enters a person; in the warmth of a person’s body, the virus develops into the monstrous creature..
Very imaginative, yes.
Minutely possible within the framework of biology, no.
After reading the movie script in early 1997, I hoped that Chris would change his mind. Having a special place in my heart for viruses, I discussed with him why a virus couldn’t possibly develop into anything. Viruses are, after all, just a bag of genes. A bag of genes that turns into a lizard with large black eyes and long pointed nails wouldn’t fit even my expanded definition of an extraterrestrial virus. I explored with Chris an idea for tinkering with his scenario. What if the black slime virus is responsible for the development of the creature but is not the progenitor of the creature? The virus, carried into a human by the black slime, could invade a cell in the person’s body and cause the cell to lose its identity. The cell could then be enticed by the virus to enter a new developmental pathway. That cell, together with its descendent cells, would regenerate into the hideous alien monster. I was thrilled that Chris liked the changes, since I wasn’t enthusiastic about the ribbing I would have taken from my fellow virologists if viruses changed into lizard-like aliens on the big screen — with me credited as science advisor.

The concern for scientific realism here is remarkable. A virus is a simple strand of DNA, much, much shorter than the DNA of a single-celled organism let alone of a complex multi-cellular organism like humans or grey aliens. For a virus to turn a human into an alien monster, it would have to carry much more information than a simple virus; so much so that it would not be categorized as a virus at all! The solution Simon found was to have the virus just be an activator of genes that are normally inactive in humans.

It would be have been simple to ignore that and just handwave the science away and make the virus do what viruses can’t do, but Carter was more than willing to incorporate this into his script.

Victim of (a strain of) Purity

Implications: human origins

This has large implications. If the information to create an alien were already present in human DNA, how did it get there? What happens if random genetic mutations switch part of that DNA on but not all of it? Gibson Praise and the Biogenesis trilogy storylines are the results of this idea. Super-human abilities such as mind-reading are the result of select genes in the so-called junk DNA being switched on (5X20: The End, 6X01: The Beginning). The alien DNA was put there by design because we are creations of aliens (6X22: Biogenesis). It would make sense then that the Ships with inscriptions on them containing a transcript of human DNA on them would belong to that same alien race that created us (7X03: The Sixth Extinction): Purity.

Implications: Black Oil virus origin

The Black Oil virus can thus be understood as a biological tool to transform a human into an alien. Could that mean that the Black Oil virus itself is manufactured, a tool of biological warfare on humans? The Purity aliens then would, in their natural form, be humanoid greys, the end result of the Black Oil virus’s life cycle. The Black Oil virus and its derivatives (see the creation of the Supersoldiers) would just be a tool for the Purity aliens to spread.

Extending this concept further, the Black Oil virus arbiters the mixture of active human genes and active alien genes in an organism, i.e. determines how much of an alien/human hybrid that organism is. Could that mean that hybridization experiments that result in our well-known green-blooded hybrids consist in finding out which genes to switch on and off? In the study of 5X14: The Red and the Black I theorized that the green blood in Alien Bounty Hunters and Faceless Rebels would mean that this race was created by Purity using some Purity genetic material in the same way humanity was, and that the green blood in alien/human hybrids is proof of that: could it be that this race of Shapeshifters actually be the result of earlier genetic experiments on humans?

Scully is not buying that viruses can think

Implications: virus vs. sentient organism

And so Carter and Simon thus went out of their way to present the Black Oil as a virus, behaving like a real virus. In most episodes we see it, the Black Oil infects people like a normal virus and at most put them into a coma (depending on things like temperature conditions, exposure of the host to a vaccine, potential weakness of the Black Oil strain). What doesn’t jive well with this is that the Black Oil, at times, behaves as if it has sentience: once it is inside a host, at times, it makes the host behave as if he is controlled by an intelligence other than his own. A simple virus would be very far from having the complexity necessary to do this. At best it could influence the behavior of the host in a specific way, like the worms wrapped around the brain in 1X07: Ice made the host violent. Could this be anything else than artistic license?

To be fair, the only times when the Black Oil virus shows real intelligence all by itself is in 3X15: Piper Maru / 3X16: Apocrypha, when for example it drives Krycek to negotiate with the CSM in order for it to reach its UFO — and the writers might not have yet settled their minds about what this black fluid was or that the “black cancer” they introduced in 4X09: Tunguska was the same entity. The other instance is in 8X16: Vienen, where the infected try to get more people infected. Interestingly, it is only in these two instances of the Black Oil that we see the host emit a flash of radioactivity to protect and attack, as if this were a different entity altogether. In both these instances, it could be that the Black Oil merely manipulates the brain to usher the host to rejoin with more of its kind, and the host uses the resources at its disposal — the host’s intelligence, memories, capabilities — to achieve that. This would not be unlike what some real parasites do when they control the host to their own benefit, for instance by ingesting more food or by moving to a safe place for the parasite to mature (see these or this lovely example).

How the Black Oil operates inside the Alien Bounty Hunters would be a different issue entirely.

The Black Oil/Purity virus doesn’t have extra nucleotides: is it terrestrial or extra-terrestrial?

Quote:

In ‘The Beginning’, the opening episode of the sixth season, Mulder’s convinced that there is a connection between Gibson and the virus involved in activating the development of the lizard-like creature. Unfortunately, hard evidence is lacking. Gibson is gone and the creatures have vanished. Muider’s only piece of evidence is a trace amount of the virus that he believes is extraterrestrial. Mulder is crushed when Scully cannot support scientifically the alien nature of the virus. After running tests, Scully reveals that the virus, although of an unknown species, has the same four nucleotides in its DNA and the same 20 amino acids in its proteins as earthly viruses. She therefore concludes that Mulder is mistaken. The virus comes from Earth.

Here Simon just summarizes how 6X01: The Beginning unfolds, but doesn’t counter Scully’s argument. Throughout the book, the Black Oil virus is casually referred to as alien and there is no question that aliens are here to colonize. There is just this catch: the Black Oil virus doesn’t contain the two extra nucleotides that was the most convincing proof of alien biology! Simon explains in detail her idea of two extra nucleotides to the usual four found in all earthly organisms, and how Carter integrated this idea in his script for 1X23: The Erlenmeyer Flask involving alien gene therapy on humans (i.e. inserting bits of alien DNA in the DNA of living humans). Surely, this is the best evidence Scully should have to make her believe in aliens. By Fight the Future and 6X01: The Beginning, Mulder believes the Black Oil virus and the clawed creature it spawns to be alien, but Scully’s analyses do not show something out of the ordinary apart from the fact that humans share a large part of their genome with it.

Southern blot DNA test in 5X02: Redux

Does that scientific result insinuate that the Black Oil is, in fact, terrestrial in origin and the entity with extra nucleotides is the only thing that is alien? The extra nucleotides are encountered in 1X23: The Erlenmeyer Flask and 5X02: Redux (and again in 10X6: My Struggle II; and since it is inside Scully, presumably it is what the Lone Gunmen analyze in 2X08: One Breath). What this would imply for the overall mythology is unclear. The Syndicate obtained the alien fetus with the extra nucleotides DNA from a deal with the aliens (6X12: One Son), the same aliens that are identified with the Black Oil/Purity colonization effort in many instances. Are the extra nucleotides necessary only in the mature grey form of the alien but not in the virus and first “clawed alien” forms? Is the Black Oil race in fact also seeking protection from the extra nucleotides race and conducting hybridization experiments as well? Did the Black Oil race originally evolve on Earth before leaving and now returning once more?

Gibson Praise’s DNA test in 6X01: The Beginning

This raises more questions than it answers, and unless it is building up to a future revelation about multiple races I will categorize it as an oversight on behalf of Carter for now.

The Syndicate’s endgame was the depopulation of the planet

Quote:

As Kurtzweil explains to Mulder in the X-Files movie, the corn is for production; the virus is the product; and the bees are for transportation. A deadly sting that the conspirators thought would depopulate the world but instead will repopulate it with virus-induced alien life-forms.
And that’s all the buzz on bees, corn and viruses.

Although there were talks of plagues and viruses and Apocalyptic warnings, the Syndicate’s purpose as it was exposed in Fight the Future and again in 6X11: Two Fathers / 6X12: One Son and 9X19/20: The Truth was to spread the Black Oil virus and see the world be taken over by the alien colonists, with the Syndicate members themselves surviving as immune hybrids. Indeed, if the Black Oil virus didn’t do anything else but put people in a coma or kill them why term it “colonization”? Why would the aliens collaborate with the Syndicate if they didn’t get something in return? In Fight the Future the Syndicate discovers the Black Oil triggers a gestation of a “clawed” alien. Well-Manicured Man: “This isn’t Colonization, this is spontaneous repopulation!” “We believed the virus would simply control us, that mass infection would make us a slave race. Imagine our surprise when they began to gestate.” We thus discover that the aliens perceive colonization as using the human population to reproduce themselves and increase their numbers, at humanity’s expense (and extinction).

The Well-Manicured Man spills the beans (that he knows about) to Mulder

Simon’s sentence could have been a shorthand — what effectively happens whether humans become hosts to Purity for life or humans die giving birth to the clawed alien form is that humans as such decrease in numbers. The mention of “depopulation” in Simon’s text is not backed up by anything in the series’ canon and would not mean much more — right until depopulation was presented as the (a?) conspiracy’s endgame in 10X6: My Struggle II. It could be then that the conspiracy’s initial objective was depopulation and choosing who would survive. Then came along the colonist aliens who offered the conspiracy with a means to achieve this objective: a potent pathogen, the Black Oil virus. In 1973, the conspiracy became the Syndicate by agreeing to share the spoils with the aliens in a post-depopulation colonized Earth. The Syndicate might have believed that the Black Oil virus would make humans into slaves that they, as new world leaders, would control jointly with the aliens. When the Syndicate discovered the aliens’ true purpose, the agreement was off and what remained of the Syndicate returned to the original plans of depopulation we see in season 10, using the Spartan virus injected into the population before 1973 along with the smallpox vaccinations.

Scully’s cancer was not cured, it only went into remission thanks to chip

Quote:

In the summer of 1997, I discussed with Chris some cool new treatments for curing Scully’s cancer. Scully’s health was getting progressively worse, until she lay near death in the sequel to the episode ‘Redux’, called ‘Redux I’. Chris decided to have Scully ‘cured’ when a synthetic chip was placed at the base of her neck. While watching the episode, I groaned. I knew what would happen the next day when I faced the 500 rabid X-Files fans in my Introduction to Biology class. Hands flew up as soon as I entered the room. ‘How could a computer chip in the neck cure cancer, Dr Simon?’ I was asked repeatedly. When I talked to Chris later that week, he said ‘It’s not a cure! It’s only remission!’ I remain hopeful that some new neat medical technology will prevail in the end.

The Redux trilogy ended in an excellent way synthesizing the core themes of the X-Files. Scully’s cancer disappeared, and it could have been due to her prayers being answered by God, or due to the conventional treatment she underwent, or due to the chip that was put into her again, a symbol of unconventional science and perhaps of the existence of aliens.

Studying Scully’s very first implant

That it would be just a remission instead of a cure makes some pseudoscientific sense. Scully’s cancer was caused by the experiments done on her during her abduction (radiation exposure to trigger hyper-ovulation? contact with alien genetic material?). A cancer is certain cells losing their constraints and duplicating endlessly growing into an unwanted tumor. The chip put inside Scully during her abduction put shackles on these cells and stopped their spread. The removal of the chip in season 3 caused the spread to begin anew; the addition of a similar chip in season 5 stopped it. Scully only has to remove the chip and her cancer could return; or, the chip could be reprogrammed to kill her by permitting the cancer to grow. Carter’s quote above could be both an acknowledgment that the chip did not magically cure her cancer, and a tease for a potential future development — one story thread that has not yet been pulled back to the fore.

Some additional short tidbits that have their significance

Dr. Anne Carpenter

In 1X23: The Erlenmeyer Flask, Dr. Anne Carpenter’s name comes from Anne Simon’s first name and not legendary director John Carpenter, but after Anne Simon’s husband name.

Magnetite

Magnetite is mentioned extensively in the description of the (real) Mars meteorite that might have contained fossilized bacteria, which served as inspiration for 4X09: Tunguska. Magnetite is of course a widely common iron compound found on Earth and elsewhere and there is nothing particular about it, however magnetite’s importance as the aliens’ weak spot introduced in season 9 does make this research relevant. One theory would be that the presence of magnetite in the Mars meteorites is what weakened the Black Oil’s potency and allowed the research into a vaccine to proceed faster in Russia compared to other, more potent Black Oil strains, like the ones in Fight the Future and 6X01: The Beginning.

Black vermiforms

Foum Tataouine

Discussing Mars meteorites, Simon also mentions the Tatahouine meteorite, which was analyzed in the wake of the potential bacteria find in the ALH84001 meteorite from Antarctica. That meteorite fell in the Foum Tataouine/Tatahouine/Tatawin region of Tunisia in 1931. This is the same place where we find Conrad Strughold at the end of Fight the Future. It is possible the Syndicate installed GMO corn fields above findings of Black Oil, some of which might have landed on Earth with meteorites.

S.E.P.

In Scully’s and Pendrell’s analysis of smallpox vaccination tags in 4X01: Herrenvolk, the aminoacid sequence that appears onscreen is not random: it is that of the cowpox virus, as could be expected from a smallpox vaccination!

Look what Pendrell found inside Scully

The chimera organism

The chimera organism in 5X02: Redux that develops under Scully’s microscope and could be alien is actually footage of a proteus urchin!

Alien urchin

Genetically modified plants

Fight the Future and colonization in general is based on genetically modified corn that carries the DNA from the Black Oil virus, which is passed on to bees when the bees come into contact with the corn’s pollen: the transfer of genes from one organism to the other is something that is observed in nature with Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which transfers its genes into plant cells and has been used to insert specific genes and thus create genetically modified plants.

Black Oil worms

The Black Oil coalescing into worms was inspired by dictyostelium slugs. It looks like the Black Oil behaves intelligently, for example when it forms worms that “attack” a host in Fight the Future. There is however a real nature counterpart to such behavior, as odd as it seems. One could imagine the Black Oil virus organizing itself and the hydrocarbons in the oil it is bathing in order to behave like a multi-cellular organism looking to infect a host, in a broadly similar way to the ‘dicti‘ organism.

Dictyostelium discoideum life cycle

ADA enzyme & gene

There is mention of the severe immunodeficiency syndrome caused by a faulty gene producing the ADA enzyme. Years later, Simon would use that knowledge to come up with the mechanism with which the conspiracy would depopulate the planet with the ADA-removing Spartan virus, in 10X6: My Struggle II.

Southern blot

Simon is well aware that the Southern blot test conducted by Scully in 5X02: Redux was done way too quickly because the narrative of the episode demanded it, and it has become a bit of a recurring joke that she has received criticism for this. (To accelerate the test, more heat is needed, thus the mention of a “blazing hot probe”: little did she suspect that FOX censorship might take issue with that expression!) I wonder how the same people would react to 10X6: My Struggle II and its extremely quickly produced alien DNA vaccine.

Annex: Book contents

An overview of all the information in the book’s six chapters:

1: Hidden and Hungry
Episodes: The Host ; Ice; Darkness Falls; Firewalker; El Mundo Gira; F. Emasculata
Described: extremophiles; pathogens; antibiotics; hypothalamus & hormones; flukes & worms; hermaphrodites; reviving extinct species; spores; silicon-based life; fungi & enzymes; immune system; parasites & outbreaks

2: Visitors from the Void
Episodes: The Erlenmeyer Flask; Tunguska; Piper Maru; Ice; Gethsemane/Redux
Described: bacteria; microscopes; DNA, RNA & nucleotides; virus replication; Human Genome Project; ALH84001 Mars meteorite, PAHs, carbonates & magnetite; dicti slugs; Tunguska event; life in space & panspermia; ammonia-based life; chimeric organisms; Piltdown Man hoax; RFLP DNA test; mitosis & somatic development

3: Mutants and Monsters
Episodes: Post-Modern Prometheus; Home; Small Potatoes; 2Shy; Leonard Betts; Fight the Future; The End/The Beginning
Described: fruit flies; genetic engineering; DNA mutations; epidemics & mutant gene spread in human population; birth defects & genetic disorders; chromosomes, autosomes, sex chromosomes; dominant & recessive genes; extra chromosomes & chromosome inactivation; inbreeding; PCR DNA test; enzymes, proteases, lipids & digestion; regenerating limbs & repression by the immune system; cancer, proto-oncogenes, p53 gene & mutation suppression; bacteria redirecting the identity of cells & viruses activating genes; junk DNA; God module

4: Releasing the Genetic Genie
Episodes: Eve; Memento Mori; The Erlenmeyer Flask; Redux; Zero Sum; Herrenvolk; Fight the Future
Described: cloning; genetic engineering; chemotherapy & radiation treatment for cancer; gene therapy; Southern blot test; cloning & extra chromosomes; reproduction by cloning; forensic entomology; smallpox, immunization with cowpox, Smallpox Eradication Program; immunohistochemical staining & protein amino-acid sequence “tagging”; adding genes to plants & Agrobacterium tumefaciens

5: Seeking the Fountain of Youth
Episodes: Young at Heart; Dod Kalm; Roland; Synchrony; Our Town
Described: immortality & cell life ageing theory; HeLa cells; Hayflick cell division limit; human experimentation & consent forms; ‘wear and tear’ ageing theory, progeria, Werner’s syndrome, helicase enzyme; gene therapy; telomeres; cancer & telomerase enzyme; free radical ageing theory; antioxidants; male/female longevity, hormones & metabolism; cryonics; cells freezing process & ischemia; cryopreservants; vitrification; nanotechnology; brain diseases, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease; prions; cannibalism & kuru disease; ‘mad cow’ disease

6: Fooling with Mother Nature
Episodes: War of the Coprophages; The Jersey Devil; Blood; The Pine Bluff Variant; Quagmire
Described: environmental problems; invasive species; species extinction from loss of habitat; mutations, global warming & Hsp90 protein; insect sterilization for pest control; man-made insecticides, DDT, environmental oestrogens & link to cancer; artificial chemicals & health problems; animal & human pheromones; adrenaline; biological warfare & US & USSR programs; flesh eating bacteria, Streptococcus, anthrax; terrorist groups with biological agents (Aum Shinrikyo & nerve gas sarin, domestic terrorism in 1998); amphibians extinction; Endangered Species Act; coelacanth; chytrid fungi

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Jan
19
2016

Story and Visual Influences on The X-Files: Updated

With less than a week to go for new X-Files (!)…

After more than 3 years after its launch, the massive list of influences on The X-Files — films, TV shows, scenes, cinema techniques, works of literature — has been updated! The list is complete with image “proof” and comparisons, and links to IMDb or Wikipedia for your “to (re)watch” or “to (re)read” lists.

As always, suggestions for further enriching the list are welcome!

Grand total: 205 references…

We’re going to the movies!

Introduction | Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6 | Season 7 | Season 8 | Season 9 | Movies

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Jan
17
2016

The Obsessions of Chris Carter

When The X-Files return next week (!), we are going to re-enter the world of Chris Carter. Throughout all his works — The X-Files and its two theatrical movies, Millennium, Harsh Realm, The Lone Gunmen, The After — certain common themes, threads, ways to tell a story, leitmotivs come up again and again, making his work recognizable and giving it a unique voice. Among these recurring themes is history and memory, loss, religion, trust, family.

Next week Carter not only returns with the cast from the original series, along with key writers Glen Morgan, James Wong and Darin Morgan. It’s also such key people, some of which have been with Carter since 1993, as: composer Mark Snow and sound editor Thierry J. Couturier; visual effects supervisor Mat Beck; casting director Rick Millikan; production designer Mark S. Freeborn; production assistant Gabe Rotter. Carter also returns to Vancouver, where The X-Files established its identity in its first 5 seasons and returned to to shoot I Want To Believe. It really is a family.

To delve deeper into this, EatTheCorn proposes below an article that looks at these “obsessions” of Carter’s, written in 2006 by Séverine Barthes — a long time ago, but these very interesting arguments are developed here in an elegant way. Read it after the jump.

XF crew 1994-1995

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Dec
22
2012

Notes beyond the world’s ending

> December 22, 2012

Well, if the scenery above is not the image you have outside your window, then something went wrong in the colonization plans. Somebody somehow prevented it; and if it was Mulder and Scully who did it we don’t know — yet!

Indeed, before we were given the date of Saturday December 22nd 2012 in 9X19/20: The Truth (2002), we were told it would be on a holiday in Fight the Future, it would be 15 years after 5X13: Patient X (early 1998), that “the date is set” (3X24: Talitha Cumi), that a new beginning was 18 years after 2X10: Red Museum (1994). This landmark date has been a long time coming. How full of possibilities did these ten years separating the end of the series and that announced date seem, back then!

Like so many things in the X-Files it was there in the series before it became widely known and a factoid of everyday popular culture. The X-Files was pre-empted in the big screen in popularizing the “end of the world” with the presumed end of the Mayan calendar by the disaster movie 2012 (2009) and in recent days it’s been the subject of endless eschatological occult warnings, de-dramatizing scientific articles, viral internet jokes and opportunistic merchandising with a “best before” date. It was also pre-empted by a novel by someone who could have served as an inspiration for X-Files scenarios, Whitley Strieber (author of Communion on close encounters with aliens, 1987) and his inter-dimensional invasion novel 2012: The War for Souls (2007). To all this we have to add a long list of invasion or apocalyptic films, most action- or horror-based, some of so-so quality, that have come out since the series ended ten years ago: Signs (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), 28 Weeks Later (2007), I Am Legend (2007), The Invasion (2007), The Happening (2008), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), Blindness (2008), Battleship (2012)… Even Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skulls (2008) and Prometheus (2012), despite their lame scripts, could be said to contain X-Files-like mythology elements! In this crowded pop culture environment, what place is there for a potential X-Files 3 that would wrap up the alien invasion mythology?

At its heart, the X-Files mythology is a syncretism of various conspiracy theories of the New World Order family and eschatological theories linked with spiritual and alien influence on human matters. Political scientist Michael Barkun said in his book A Culture of Conspiracy (2004):

“Prior to the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two subcultures, primarily the militantly antigovernment right, and secondarily Christian fundamentalists concerned with end-time emergence of the Antichrist.” (p. 179)

Interestingly, Chris Carter’s The X-Files (1993-2002) illustrates and beckons to the first group of subcultures, while his Millennium (1996-1999) illustrates and beckons to the second group. The X-Files’ stories of conspiracies “against the American people” from within the American government, “Government denies knowledge”, the NWO-like Syndicate that pulls all the strings, the loss of individual freedom against anything that has to do with arcane governmental doings: all these are ideas that are expressed in a way outside of the conventional bipartisan criticism of government, a point of view right from the US conspiratorial underground — and Millennium would delve deeply into this in its third season (going as far as using one of the most popular of US’s conspiracy theorists, Art Bell, as himself). On the other hand, Millennium’s mottos “wait, worry, who cares?”, its frequent Bible quotes, its use of Christian terminology such as good, evil, light, darkness, sin, redemption, Christian devilish and angelic imagery, its progressive use of apocalyptic themes: all these are popular worldviews in many Bible-frenzied groups that are so typically American.

In the 1990s these ideas were confined to the far right or conservative underground, and Carter’s two series were but one factor that brought them much closer to the everyday political landscape.

Of course these ideas do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the creator Chris Carter, at least not entirely. Whether the X-Files and Millennium defend a conservative or a progressive point of view is a large debate — and beside the point. All of the above plus the two series’ distinctive weight it gives to nuclear relationships (platonic romanticism; the ideal family) points to the former; Carter’s defining moment being the Watergate scandal and other facts point to the latter. Barkun again says:

“Conspiracism is, first and foremost, an explanation of politics. It purports to locate and identify the true loci of power and thereby illuminate previously hidden decision making. The conspirators, often referred to as a shadow government, operate a concealed political system behind the visible one, whose functionaries are either ciphers or puppets.” (p. 178).

And what a simplistic explanation of politics it is! Other works of fiction that adopt a different, more complex worldview are hailed for their quality but penalised for their intellectualism (see The Wire; in particular this scene from season 5, episode 8, 25:29, turning into ridicule the pop culture obsession with serial killers while larger and more lethal societal problems are given less weight in the things we spend our brain time on). Regardless, conspiracies just make for good drama-filled entertainment. Even if certain themes of the two series do speak to eternal inner struggles of the individual, like the believer/skeptic dichotomy or the protection of one’s offspring, their actual stories should not be taken at face value. A third film could continue the story/parable and spin it in new ways.

Still, Ten Thirteen shows were notable for bringing a high degree of realism in their fantastic stories. We are led to believe that somewhere in our world, these supernatural events do exist, and that Mulder and Scully and Frank Black are fighting the good fight, protecting us from evil. But if that realism is to be kept intact, the world the series depict must not radically differ from our own. If the alien invasion or the millennial apocalypse comes, disbelief settles in. If the invasion or the apocalypse is prevented, it must not be done so in a way that is too open or too public, like an all-out war or a presidential assassination or a massively deadly viral outbreak. What then are the possible outcomes of a third X-Files film? A silent revolution that manages to destroy the aliens, or a covert skirmish that manages to postpone the invasion. Both solutions leave the possibility open for a movie taking place after December 22 2012, something that’s been bothering fans as if it were an unmovable deadline.

There’s something to be said about the resolution, or rather the lack of resolution of Ten Thirteen’s two major series!

A “closure” on the colonization storyline would be a classic case of the “good guys” against the “bad guys” and who would win in the end. In this view, the series would have been “the mystery” unfolding, and “X-Files 3” would be “the action” capping everything off. The X-Files rarely was about the leading characters taking action in the grander scheme of things: they were merely observers and, though their personal lives were greatly affected by the surrounding mythology, they were passive receivers of developments that were beyond their hands’ reach. (At least during the first 7 seasons, after which the focus became radically different: the leading characters would act, would be the world savers, would produce messianic offspring.)

Quite similarly, Millennium featured a very personal story of a man and his family against another mythology centered around evil. For the better part of 3 seasons, Frank led his personal battle against that evil, under its many forms, but never hoped to eradicate it or not even protect everyone from it. Like in the X-Files’ mythology, the leads’ actions were nearly inconsequential on the greater battle between Good and Evil (with capital G and E’s). Frank suffered losses (Catherine), enjoyed small victories (resisting Al Pepper for example), saved a few, failed to save some others. But at its heart, the show was about a state of being; it never was about definite victories or failures. It was more interested in exploring the fact that Frank was worried (“Wait, Worry, Who Cares?”) than explaining whatever it was that worried Frank — something that could be changed to fit that week’s particular episode. Similarly, Mulder and Scully’s investigations brought forth dark deeds that asked for the world to stop and meditate on how power can corrupt. Neither shows were interested in making triumphant heroes out of the lead characters in a way other than heroes of moral superiority, heroes of ideas, not of revolutionary accomplishments. And ultimately, both shows introduce very interesting characters and plots and both serve to illustrate larger themes: both are tools, not ends, both are secondary to say something that is more than entertainment.

Thus, the closure in the respective storylines could only be partial, or bittersweet, or ambiguous. This is at the risk of sparking sequelitis in their fandoms: the continuous “we want to know what [insert character] did next…” problem, the problem of not saying that enough is enough. Sequelitis is the surest way to turn a lively universe into a badly perceived profit-seeking franchise, and that’s what happened with the X-Files with at least its last two seasons. But such a fine balance Chris Carter has walked since the beginning. “Who will win, Owls or Roosters, or Legion or ‘Samiel’?” is like “Will the colonization happen or will humans survive?”: essential questions created by the shows’ mythologies but questions Carter has till now chosen not to answer.

Does Carter want to bring his story to a simplistic heroic victory or a repetitive postponement of the deadline? A third X-Files promises to be the resolution, the final confrontation, the climax — while the show’s fabric has been based on a lack of clear-cut endings. This is why I anticipate a postponement of the colonization rather than a pure calling off, should there be an X-Files 3. The X-Files world cannot exist without dark forces looming above. Similarly, when Carter has mentioned a return to Frank Black, concepts like the “Millennium feel” are mentioned rather than “Frank Black vs The Group, Part IV”.

What is left, then, is a story of a secret fight against an alien conspiracy, with a touch of paranormal, necessarily stripped to a bare minimum of all of the intricate complications of the X-Files’ mythology. A warm setting would counterweight the winter setting of I Want To Believe; New Mexico or Mexico perhaps, to build on the Native American (Anasazi, Navajo) and Mayan references in the X-Files’ mythology (plus the state of New Mexico offers significant tax incentives to film production, the reason why Breaking Bad is filmed there!). A Village of the Damned-like (or 4X01: Herrenvolk-like) generation of abnormal children could be a starting point for the intrigue, thereby tying in with 12+ year old William. An underground league of resistance (like the hybrid clones in 4X15: Memento Mori…or the aforementioned children, there’s a plot twist!) that Mulder and Scully would stumble upon would provide the “broad impact manpower” necessary to provide a solution to a global invasion scenario, a solution which would most likely have to be biological and not military in order to respect the plausible realism explained above. This necessity for realism would also reduce the need for a blockbuster-level movie budget. After Mulder saving Scully (XF1) and Scully saving Mulder (XF2), in this one they would have to work together and save each other — and more. And surely, what would make it stand out from the rest of the action/horror invasion/apocalyptic movies would be that characteristic moody atmosphere with lazy silent shots bathed in Mark Snow’s ambient music, a look and feel inspired on Carter by 1970s political conspiracy thrillers such as All the President’s Men (1974) or Three Days of the Condor (1975). It would certainly need to appeal to a larger group than certain parts of the X-Files fans, whose campaigning has been quite vocal but of dubious aesthetics.

There would also have to be a layer over or under it all, conveying a certain message or theme, in order to make it more than mere entertainment. For me that message in I Want To Believe was spiritual solitude and decaying institutions, a move away from the NWO-inspired conspiracism of the show’s mythology into a more religious, or moral, ground. In this unending crisis of our times, possibilities abound to enclose a conspiratorial message in a third movie that would simultaneously strike a vibe with how our current times are experienced and making the X-Files relevant again, a conspiracy that needn’t be similar in nature to the NWO-like Syndicate; perhaps one extending the misdeeds beyond government to the private sector as well. A new backbone to strengthen a fandom which is fragmented, to say the least!

This is not exactly the profile of an action-packed summer box office hit, but given the performance of I Want To Believe (all expenses accounted for, it was barely profitable) and the X-Files’ distance in time from the media spotlight (ten years since the series ended, fourteen since its peak), can we hope for something more than a mid-budget flick? Would more be even necessary? Would Carter accept anything less than a theatrical release? Actually, sometimes it feels like the unlikelihood of an X-Files feature film is linked to the desire for it to be a theatrical feature, which is inherently more expensive. As if Carter and the X-Files wanted to “graduate” from TV to the big screen, while top-rate directors do not stop at the opportunity of doing the opposite (the Martin Scorcese-directed pilot of Boardwalk Empire reportedly cost $ 18 million) and many recognize that the 1970s kind of inventivity that existed in movies has now shifted to television. In a shifting environment for movie-making, the X-Files could take advantage of new means of release, distribution and funding, such as an exclusive television event, direct-to-video with special theatrical screenings, Japanese-inspired V-Cinema, Video On Demand pre-orders, iTunes premiere or YouTube premiere, funding from multiple sources (see 2012’s Cloud Atlas), international sale bundled with an HD remastering of the entire series, the economies on special effects and on-location shooting using full-greenscreen (see Starz’s Spartacus or SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, which reportedly cost $ 2 million). For comparison, Fight the Future reportedly cost $ 66 million ($ 93 million, inflation-adjusted) and I Want To Believe $ 30 milion. The marketing move to have the X-Files released on BluRay starting with next year, as hinted, on the occasion of the show’s 20th anniversary, could be a nice way to gauge interest before the movie. Stranger things have happened (see 2005’s Serenity, based on a FOX series of only half a season, or Star Trek‘s resurrection in 1979 after ten years off the air)!

Whatever happens, the film could only hope to be successful commercially if it is fully supported by the studio — unlike with I Want To Believe, which FOX didn’t seem to know how to market exactly (action, horror, romance), nor did it seem to particularly want to. Carter returning to the media spotlight with another project (the proposed The After series, for example) would benefit, not hinder, the odds for a return to the X-Files. Carter’s chances at directing it, however, might be fewer, given the second film’s history.

Actually, if there is a third X-Files, FOX’s interest might lie in the long-term profitability of the franchise: a continuation and a reboot should be considered as something that might really happen, especially now with the X-Files-like Fringe (2008-2013) now ending, with Duchovny and Anderson potentially acting opposite a couple of “next generation” younger actors. If an X-Files 3 is announced tomorrow, it’s unrealistic to expect a release before 2014. If they want to make it coincide with the full release of the series in HD (counting 2-3 BluRay seasons per year starting from September 2013), that’s end of 2016.

The passage of time has been very kind with Carter and Spotnitz’s I Want To Believe, mainly thanks to its production design and overall themes, and it’s possible to consider it in a good light despite its many shortcomings — which to me boil down to a tight schedule due to the 2007 writers’ strike and thus the impossibility of rewrites, and some aspects of Carter’s directing (including the counter-productive and ultimately needless efforts to maintain secrecy on the set). It could even do as a closing chapter for these characters, since the mythology became so much convoluted and absurd in the last two seasons that it might as well be left alone, or massively simplified, or expertly by-passed. My own time is spent on more important things, such as those Carter seems to have espoused recently, as evidenced by “Statements on green production” in I Want To Believe‘s bonuses.

Still, a third X-Files film or a return to Frank Black would be some gift! Actually it needn’t be “just” a resolution of the colonization storyline: the beauty of Carter’s universes is such that it’s interesting to explore them many times over, with a series of films as Carter had initially envisioned. Works of such a character as those established by Ten Thirteen are rare to find.

> One man alone cannot fight the future
> Don’t give up
> _

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