After the series ended in 2002, a huge number of fan sites started going offline or stopped being updated, continuing a trend that had started since 2000 and Season 7 and few remained. The big X-Files fashion of the mid-to-late ’90s passed away and all that remained were the silhouettes of Mulder and Scully bathing in a paranoid atmosphere in the collective unconscious. The general feeling, when the show was on the air but also after it ended, was that the mythology is incomprehensible, full of gaps and contradictions. That XF was a show with good characters and high production values that offered little payoff with its mythology episodes, and was thus worthy to watch mostly for its stand-alones.This is wrong. The mythology is fully comprehensible when you watch the episodes and there is only one way to explain everything that happens. Everyone can have his appreciation of a work of art and this doesn’t make any particular interpretation more valid than the other. The mythology isn’t like that. There are enough elements in the episodes to form a single story that makes sense, leaving only minor points to one’s interpretation. This site attempts to make things straight and provide answers. That is, to show that the answers really exist and that they’ve been given already throughout the episodes. It takes some work to get it but for my case at least it’s worth it.

Also, this site points out that the XF community didn’t die with the show — as also evidenced by the recent ectivity related to the second X-Files feature film. Evidently, this site is more focused on the mythology more than the characters and the Mulder-Scully relationship. I’m not trying to be over-serious, I love Small Potatoes as well. I’m not against change or character evolution either, the contrary in fact: The X-Files’ major weakness was definitely in those areas compared to other, better-handled series. This site is here to stress the fact that those fans who were disappointed in the apparent “shipper” consensus inside the fandom still exist and that no faction can declare itself the only legitimate fanbase: as much as we love this series and its characters, they really belong to their creators first and to us only second. This non-confrontational, mildly “noromo” approach strives to make it clear that there is so much more in the X-Files than an obsession over the Mulder-Scully relationship!

Where do I stand? The X-Files opened my eyes to intelligent storytelling, the art of quality TV, and even politics and post-WWII history! And I was satisfied with the end of Season 7, it was in accord with what Carter had said earlier, that we wouldn’t see M&S together until the very end. If anything, M&S was the best part of I Want To Believe as well!

I was looking for something original! You can name an XF-related site with something from within the series, just like you could name a Twin Peaks site “Double-R” or “Glastonberry Grove”…As for the name itself, it came from a graffiti from the 1998 X-Files Game (“Agrippa”)! It’s tagged on the fishing warehouse (yes, it’s really a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference!):

English not being my native language, only after setting the site up did I realize that “eat the corn” was actually not a very nice thing to say! It was actually put there by the crew because the expression was used by Gillian Anderson on-set (According to the X-Files In-Jokes & Trivia site, “A grip in the Vancouver X-Files crew suggested that one of his colleagues “eat the corn” from a substance excreted regularly by most mammals. Anderson adopted the phrase and has been known to use it on occasion.”)… I found it very fitting because the XF mythology does include corn, and bees that became carriers of the Black Oil virus by more or less eating corn pollen!

1) It should have ended in Season 7. The journey of the characters was complete: Mulder had found Samantha, Scully became pregnant after all she endured after her abduction, the CSM faced damnation in the hands of Krycek…2) It should have ended with Requiemand Season 8, if anything, should have been the beginning of another series with different characters. Over the years, the X-Files became synonymous with its leading duo. But by the end of Season 9, one main character is absent and the other is a pale shadow of her original self.

3) The mythology isn’t as good. It certainly is well structured but becomes outrageously ridiculous and painfully mainstream sci-fi compared to the mysterious ambiguity of the earlier seasons. Too much religious symbolism (Existence, Providence), androids exploding because of a B-movie gimmick (Trust No 1, The Truth), Scully crying (too many episodes to mention) and carrying around a baby which turns her into a secondary character. And it doesn’t add much after all: The Truth offered a conclusion little different than Requiem, the colonization is inevitable.

Seasons 1-7 are one story with a beginning, a middle and an end (though I’ll always regret the Season 7 that could have been) and their mythology can be treated almost independently from seasons 8 & 9. That being said, these latter seasons present qualities that testify to the excellence of TenThirteen Productions compared to other television products.

Initially, I had doubts over the utility of a move to the big screen. Despite its cinematographic ambitions, XF had lost steam during its last seasons, and its mythology in particular. Indeed, how to write post-series finale mythology after the improbable wanderings of the Supersoldiers and William? Does Carter still really think he can shoot a whole series of films on William leading to 2012?Hence what I hoped for “XF2” was a stand-alone story and not a mythology. A good moody foggy dark atmosphere, a good “guest star”, witty dialogue, a “reasonably paranormal” plot and a complete disregard of the current situation of Mulder & Scully, ie not to know whether it took place during this or that season or after the series: just keep the concept of two investigators into the paranormal and do a film on them. This is the approach with which I would definitely like to see a film based around Millennium.

While IWTB served its purpose of providing a sense of closure with characters we had not seen for six years, its weaker points made me wonder whether it would be best for Carter and Spotnitz to move on to other projects, without a ten-year canon history to burden them. But it would seem Carter still has something in his mind for a movie providing more closure to the mythology, an “XF3” (or 4?) to wrap it all up. If it is done under less stressful conditions than IWTB, then I for one am curious to see what he has in mind. And, I’m all for a Millennium/Frank Black movie!