??-??-1994
Electronic Media
‘X-Files’ boosts FBC ratings, picks up momentum globally

Last year, Twentieth Television’s new “The X-Files” turned international heads at the Los Angeles Screenings, four months before the show even premiered to U.S. audiences.

Since then, the show has caught on in such international territories as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Spain, and has built into a Friday night ratings power for FBC.

The key to the show’s success, its creators say, is its blend of fact-based “weird science” and the universal fright appeal of the unknown. “There are some really creepy episodes of this show that get under your skin and turn you into a raving psychotic even though you know the two leads are going to get out of it OK,” says USA today television critic Matt Roush.

“In terms of the sort of ‘fantastic’ franchises out there, ‘X-Files’ possesses a sort of special kind of terror,” he adds.

“We haven’t seen that kind of scary anthology since the 1960s or 1970s . . . where the show really dares to get under your skin.”

Before FBC slotted the new “X-Files” into what had been a weak 9 p.m. (ET) slot on Fridays, the show had already created a buzz with international buyers.

“‘X-Files’ was a bit of a surprise, because we all knew very little about it upfront,” says Marion Edwards, senior vice president for Twentieth Century Fox International Television.

“The paranormal aspects of the show are fascinating to people of every culture. Even though it’s a strictly American-style, one-hour show, it’s really universal in its theme,” she said.

Internationally, “X-Files” is posting strong young adult demographics for such leading broadcasters as Spain’s Antena 3 TV, where it airs in Monday’s 10:30 p.m. time slot, and on Australia’s Network Ten, where it runs Thursdays at 9:30 p.m.

Domestically, FBC had dedicated much of its Friday promotional efforts to the new 8 p.m. Western spoof “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.” early in the season, but since beefing up promotions for “X-Files” at 9 p.m., the show has taken off in the ratings.

In fact, its season finale on May 13 generated the best ratings for households and adults age 18 to 49 for any FBC series ever on a Friday night, scoring an 8.8 Nielsen Media Research rating (percentage of TV homes) and a 16 share (percentage of sets in use) and 7.2/23, respectively, in those categories.

“When people began hearing about the name ‘X-Files,’ there was a lack of awareness about what this show really is,” says Dan McDermott, FBC senior vice president of current programming and specials.

“Once people start to watch the show, what they find is that it’s one of the most original creative shows on television today,” he said.

“It’s a little bit sci-fi, a little bit paranormal, and involves the belief — or at least the acceptance of the potential belief — in the paranormal,” he said.

“What we do best is take the story and try to make it as believable as possible, and that’s where the big scare lies,” says series creator and executive producer Chris Carter.

??-??-1994
San Francisco Examiner
‘X-Files’ marks the plot

Fox’s “The X-Files” is the guilty pleasure show of the season, a moody, atmospheric and very scary sci-fi drama that recalls “Twin Peaks” or “Silence of the Lambs” in its intensely credible portrayal of the, shall we say, otherworldly. It may not make you a believer (and the great thing about the show is, it’s not out to), but you’ll sure have fun considering the possibilities.

Abduction by extra-terrestrials. Government-sponsored human genetics experiments. Spontaneous combustion. The Jersey Devil. Jack the Ripper. Cover -ups, conspiracies, cults. “The X-Files” is “Unsolved Mysteries” for sophisticates. Created and usually written by Chris Carter, “The X-Files” premiered in September and has built a following in its 9 p.m. Friday time slot that, while loyal, amounts to a mere blip in the Nielsens. Nonetheless, Fox has recently ordered a full season’s worth of episodes and is showcasing the series in better time slots. Monday, it gets a tryout in the two-hour Fox movie block (8 p.m, Channel 2) with two episodes back-to-back.

“The X-Files” depicts the adventures of two FBI agents who investigate the nutty top-secret stuff the Bureau (on orders from the Pentagon or the White House) doesn’t want the public to know about.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny, who played the cross-dressing DEA agent on “Twin Peaks”) is a believer and, for that, his fast-track career has been derailed. Tortured by a recovered memory of his sister’s alien abduction when they were children (she’s been missing ever since), Mulder is obsessed yet professional, mopey but sort of funny about it.

His partner, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), is cut from the Jodie Foster-as-FBI-agent mold, methodical, cool under pressure, rational. A specialist in forensic medicine, Scully was originally assigned to discredit Mulder’s offbeat theories but she has ended up his protector, she’s come across enough evidence of governmental cover-ups to convince her that Mulder’s paranoia is justified. In their impassioned on-going debate, Mulder represents the metaphysical, Scully the logical. But it’s within the vast gray area between these poles that “The X-Files” does its most sneakily entertaining work.

“The X-Files” hangs on The Big “What If?” but deftly avoids both New Age schmaltz and tabloid-TV schlock. Like its leading characters, “The X -Files” maintains a detached yet curious tone, the suspense builds almost imperceptibly and then you suddenly realize you’re on the edge of your seat. Like “Twin Peaks” or “Miami Vice,” “The X-Files” draws you in with the force of its conviction and the dark edginess of its vision. For sheer chill factor, it’s the spookiest thing on the tube since “The Twilight Zone.”

For its special Monday showing, Fox is repeating “The X-Files”‘ pilot episode (8 p.m.), followed by the best episode so far (9 p.m.), in which Mulder and Scully go to the Arctic to investigate mysterious deaths at a government research outpost where scientists are drilling down into the ice to take core samples from prehistoric times.

The episode borrows heavily from both “The Thing” and “Alien”; the scientists have unknowingly dug up prehistoric wormy creatures that enter victims through bodily orifices and mess up their hormones so they become highly aggressive, jumpy and super-strong. Isolated in the middle of snow fields with an ever-shrinking band of hysterics (and then there were three . . .), Mulder and Scully get to be even more paranoid than usual, suspecting each other of being a worm-infested murderer. Cool!

Despite such phenomena as gnarly killer worms and thermonuclear alien beings, “The X-Files” is not your basic Weekly World News geekshow. What makes it worth your time is that it’s open to all possibilities, including the possibility that there’s a scientific explanation for everything. It’s not that the writers yank your emotions and then cop out. It’s just that the show suggests skepticism, restraint and scientific research before entertaining otherworldly answers.

Without preaching, “The X-Files” acknowledges the vulnerability that makes us want to believe. In a recent episode, Mulder and Scully flip-flopped attitudes. She was convinced of a Death Row serial killer’s psychic powers and his ability to channel the dead, her father had just died and she desperately needed to hear his voice clearing up unfinished business between them. This time, Mulder was the skeptic, warning her about charlatans who play on fears and yearnings.

As we approach the end of the century, belief in angels is the hottest trend and new revelations are emerging daily about government radiation experiments on unwitting Americans. In its distrust of the powers that be and its tug-of-war between the intellectual and the spiritual, “The X -Files” has captured the profound confusion of the times.

??-??-1994
Boston Herald
Cult hit asks ‘Why not?’

Genetically engineered twins. A psychopath who starts fires with his mind. Aliens inside human hosts.

The latest edition of the National Enquirer? Tomorrow’s ‘Geraldo’?

Nope, it’s just another Friday night on ‘The X-Files,’ a 4-month-old Fox series that is developing a loyal cult following faster than you can say ‘Twin Peaks.’ ‘X-Files’ targets other worlds

And no wonder Network TV doesn’t get much weirder than this mystery-thriller-drama that’s one part ‘Twilight Zone,’ one part ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and one part pure paranoia. Each hour-long episode revolves around FBI agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), an agency outcast who spends his time investigating unexplainable cases. He’s aided – and sometimes hindered – by level-headed partner Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). ‘The show is about the collision of the mundane world and extraordinary reality,’ says Duchovny, who played a transvestite FBI agent on three episodes of ‘Twin Peaks.’ ‘The tension and the excitement comes when one of the two worlds has to adjust to incorporate the other one.’

Mulder is the bridge between the two universes, an intelligent man whose willingness to accept the possibility that Something Is Out There originated during childhood, when his sister was mysteriously abducted. Since then, he’s been obsessed with all things paranormal.

‘He’s someone that could have had a very thriving career in the mainstream of the FBI,’ says Duchovny, ‘yet he’s chosen to pursue something that means something to him and has therefore given up everything and become kind of a laughingstock.’ Ratings for ‘X-Files’ are low by network standards, but the folks at Fox consider it one of their hottest new shows. That’s because it’s attracting a large percentage of the network’s target audience – men and women ages 18-34. Moreover, word of mouth from — both critics and audiences has been excellent.

All of which is good news to creator and executive producer Chris Carter, a former journalist who came up with the idea for ‘X-Files’ while researching examples of paranormal activity for a possible series.

‘I thought there must be a branch of the FBI that investigates these cases that involve unexplained phenomenon,’ he says. ‘The FBI doesn’t cop to any such branch, but I can’t imagine that it doesn’t exist.’

While ‘X-Files’ is clearly science fiction, its creator insists the phenomena explored in each episode aren’t complete fantasies.

‘All of them spring from some tidbit of scientific fact,’ says Carter. ‘Then we proceed on the big ‘what if?’ ‘