Mar-??-2001
Kevin & Bean
Chat with Chris Carter

DJ’s: There is good news and there is bad news. The bad news…there are no new XFiles for a month. We were left hanging. We were left hanging with Mulder out in the middle of a field looking dead. That’s what we were left hanging with last Sunday night. But the good news, in its place the spin-off show from our friend Chris Carter, called, The Lone Gunmen. Chris, good morning, how are you?

Chris Carter: I’m great

DJ: Chris is the one that left us hanging, by the way, just so you know.

Other DJ: You bastard!

DJ: Tell us about The Lone Gunmen, Chris.

Chris Carter: It’s the 3 computer geeks from the XFiles, uh.. if you watch the show, it’s the three guys that Mulder and Scully go to when they can’t even get the answers.

DJ’s: Right

DJ’s: How did you come up with them originally? Because that’s a pretty funny idea to have computer geeks who have answers that somehow even the FBI can’t get.

Chris Carter: They were not my original idea. They were the creation of Glen Morgan and James Wong, who worked on the XFiles for a while. They were 3 guys even more paranoid than Mulder, and they were really comic relief for the first 5 years.

DJ’s: Yeah, right!

Chris Carter: All of a sudden we needed an episode without Mulder and Scully in it because we were doing the movie, and then uh… we did an episode about the Lone Gunmen. It was good, funny. And we realized we had, maybe a tv show there.

DJ’s: Yeah, you know, I was a little worried, to tell you the truth when I started thinking about this because they are comic relief. And a lot of times what makes them so effective is that they are two or three funny minutes in the middle of a show, and they do break the tension a little bit. So, I was worried that they wouldn’t be possible to spin them off. But like you said, you’ve already done that where you’ve spun them off for an hour, and they were able to carry it. So, they have a lot more depth maybe than what you’ve had time to use them for over the years on the X-Files.

Chris Carter: Exactly. We’ve surrounded them with other people, so like with Mulder and Scully, they now have other people to bounce off of.

DJ’s: And how? uh.. how do we start off Sunday night? What’s the episode about. Does it tell us how they came about?

Chris Carter: A little bit. You learn more about their background, particularly one of the characters, Byers, about his father, and uh…. his name is John Fitzgerald Byers, so you learn a little bit about that.

DJ’s: Interesting (laughing)

Chris Carter: Yeah. It’s a caper about people who are trying to actually fly a jet into the World Trade Center. It has great special effects. It’s ..uh.. really a funny story, it’s got tight plotting. It’s got all the things you’d expect from the XFiles except with three new guys.

DJ’s: Do you write it?

Chris Carter: Yeah. I am writing XFiles, and well, not as much Lone Gunmen this year because I’ve got three guys who I call my lone gunmen…

DJ’s: Right. Sure.

Chris Carter: They are co-creators on the show. They’re.. uh… it’s their baby.

DJ’s: Now, what do we know about these guys, any personal information? I sense that none of them have ever had a date. And it seems like they live in that laboratory down there.

Chris Carter: Yeah, they are all the 30 and over version.. of … uh

DJ’s: It seems like that… and any homo-erotic content between the three of them?

Chris Carter: Uh.. season 2.

DJ’s: Will the stories cross over at all with the XFiles?

Chris Carter: Yeah, there are some crossovers, and uh.. we hope to put to good use… you know XFiles as a good source of storytelling.

DJ’s: Let me ask you, I know you aren’t as involved in this show as you are the XFiles, but this paranoia that we sense in all these shows including Millennium and Harsh Realm, is this paranoia real in you? Do you sometimes sit around and think what is the government really really up to, or is it just fantasy to you?

Chris Carter: I think paranoia is a healthy thing to have. And I uh… pick up the paper every day, and read that they used radiation, all sorts of things being done. And I grew up in the era of Watergate, so…

DJ’s: Skeptical by nature.

Chris Carter: Yep.

DJ’s: That giant mistrust of the government

Chris Carter: (muffled under the DJs laughing) can’t blame me now (?)

DJ’s: So, lone Gunmen for the next few Sundays and then on the Chris Carter Fox timeslot, Friday nights at 9, right?

Chris Carter: Friday nights at 9, right.

DJ’s: Very cool. We’re excited about it. We just wanted to touch base with you to see what we can expect. It’s on this Sunday night, so we are looking forward to it. Thanks, Chris.

Chris Carter: Thank you.

DJ’s: Fantastic meeting you.

Chris Carter: Thank you.

DJ’s: That was the low key Chris Carter, unlike our other friend (plays a clip of another guy screaming).

Feb-20-2001
New York Post
End of the line
Michael Starr

GREAT TV shows are never cancelled – they are retired.

And so the countdown has begun on the final few episodes of some of TV’s oldest shows which, come spring, will be given gold watches and sent off to rerun land, “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Xena: Warrior Princess” will end their long runs in May and over the summer, while “3rd Rock from the Sun” is expected to fall out of orbit.

And now comes the strongest indications yet that this will be “The X-Files” final eerie seasons.

The future of “The X-Files” is as murky as the show’s convoluted plotlines. Star David Duchovny will appear in only a handful of episodes this season and is ready to hang it up as Special Agent Fox Mulder.

Gillian Anderson (Scully) is under contract for another season and the show continues to generate solid Sunday-night ratings for Fox.

But “X-Files” creator Chris Carter is not optimistic about bringing the show back for another season. He is focusing instead on launching an “X-Files” spinoff, “The Lone Gunmen,” on March 4.

“It’s the same as it’s always been,” Carter says of the show’s future. ” If we can figure a reason or find a reason to keep doing the show, meaning creatively, we’ll keep going. That’s really what it’s all about.

“We’re very, very happy with the way the show has gone this year with the addition of Robert Patrick [as Agent Doggett],” he says. “Creatively, it gave us an interesting way to tell stories. So I think it’s the same thing next year: Is there an interesting way to tell stories?”

Feb-19-2001
The New York Times
Without Mulder (most of the time), ‘The X-Files’ thrives
Anita Gates

Mulder has a brain tumor? One that he neglected to mention to Scully, his longtime partner in FBI investigations and unresolved sexual tension? And this was preying on his mind for a full year before he was abducted by space aliens last May?

These are thrilling, frustrating, patience-testing days for fans of “The X-Files.” The Fox show’s eighth season, which began in November, has been the first without David Duchovny – playing Agent Fox Mulder, lonely but sexy believer in all things paranormal and extraterrestrial – as a weekly fixture. Gillian Anderson, as Agent Dana Scully, M.D., has top billing now. And there’s a new guy in town: Robert Patrick as Agent John Doggett, Scully’s by-the-book partner. This month, Mr. Duchovny appears (more or less) in three episodes, the last one next Sunday. Tonight: Who or what is the father of the baby Scully is carrying?

Scully is a little stressed out, but for the series, things are going well. Ratings have remained high (an average of 12.99 million viewers this season as opposed to 12.97 million last season, according to Nielsen Media Research). And although a very vocal Internet-chatting, letter-writing group of viewers is convinced that Mr. Duchovny’s absence is some sort of plot rather than his own career decision, most fans have accepted Mr. Patrick’s Doggett for what he is: one more guy looking for Mulder, not a replacement for him. Sometimes Doggett has to spell it out for us. “I’m no Fox Mulder,” he admitted in this season’s third episode, “but I can tell when a man’s hiding something.”

In creating the new character, the idea was to bring in “someone as different from the character of Mulder as possible,” said Chris Carter, the show’s creator. And he has. Doggett is, as planned, “an insider rather than an outsider” and “a skeptic rather than a believer.”

“What I like about him is he’s an adult,” Mr. Carter said. “He’s very noble and honorable and restrained and all those wonderful characteristics in a man. And he’s got to play this every week.”

Mr. Patrick, 41, looks like a Secret Service agent, maybe from the Nixon administration. The first time Scully met him, she threw a glass of water in his face. (She didn’t like what he was saying about Mulder, whom, as we all know, she thinks of as much more than a friend.) He can be counted on to ridicule her theories with comments like, “Agent Scully, don’t ask me to believe that this is some sort of justice from beyond the grave,” or, “What do you think, Agent Scully? Haunted hotel room? Alien invaders? Sloppy vampires?” In Episode 5, he challenged her with: “What are you saying? Ray Pierce has become some sort of metal man?” But that was a semi-inside joke, alluding to Mr. Patrick’s most famous role until now, as the killer liquid-metal cyborg in “Terminator II: Judgment Day.”

Surely Doggett is becoming a little more open-minded. In the course of 12 episodes, working with Scully in Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, Massachusetts, Montana, Pennsylvania and points south, he has seen things. He has shot a half-man-half-bat to save Scully’s life, cut an otherworldly parasite out of her back and shot it dead, seen his own “third eye” in a mirror and, oh yeah, been devoured and regurgitated by a “soul eater.” Like Scully in the old days, however, Doggett contends that seeing does not necessarily mean believing.

The old days began on Sept. 10, 1993, when the series had its premiere. The premise was fairly original: two very different FBI agents investigating UFO sightings, aliens, mutants, telepaths – anything seemingly paranormal that would land the case in the so-called X-files. The show quickly became a hit, Mr. Duchovny quickly became a sex symbol (maybe the first one with a serious Internet presence), and the writers and producers were clever enough to let the unspoken attraction between Mulder and Scully build and build without consummation.

This has not stopped them, however, from teasing fans over the years: the almost-almost-almost kiss interrupted by a bee sting in the 1998 “X-Files” feature film; Mulder’s “I love you” to a Scully who wasn’t exactly Scully, because they were somehow on an ocean liner just before World War II; a Mulder who wasn’t exactly Mulder approaching Scully with a serious come-on (it was really another man borrowing Mulder’s appearance). The show’s so-called mythology, which included the story of the long-ago abduction of Mulder’s sister, Samantha, by aliens and Mulder’s belief in a government conspiracy to conceal the existence of extraterrestrials, took on a life of its own in the minds of the show’s millions of fans. Most of the time, Mulder turned out to be right.

Maybe that’s why Scully is behaving so much like him this season, which amounts to actual character development. Long the empirical analyst, she has taken on Mulder’s role as the agent willing to take a leap of faith rather than search endlessly for a scientific explanation. “He’s a kid who materialized out of thin air, unaged,” she pointed out to Doggett in an episode about a missing child who turned up after 10 years. “Do you not somehow recognize how strange this is?”

Like Mr. Duchovny, Ms. Anderson, 32, does have a life outside “The X-Files.” She earned generally favorable reviews two months ago as Edith Wharton’s heroine Lily Bart in the film version of “The House of Mirth.” But she has chosen to stay with the series full time so far, and with Scully expecting a baby, she is sure to be the focus of episodes ahead, especially during the next sweeps period in May. As Mr. Carter predicted, when asked just how pregnant the character is, “I would say that baby’s due on the season finale.”

Mr. Duchovny will be back on the show in April and May, but his character is very much a part of the series almost every week. When Mulder isn’t there, people are talking about him, or the camera is lingering lovingly on the nameplate on his desk.

When the principle of Occam’s razor (that the simplest explanation is usually the right one) came up in Episode 3, Scully quickly pointed out that Mulder had always called it “Occam’s principle of limited imagination.” In Episode 10, in which Scully shot what appeared to be an angelic little boy but was really a homicidal fakir, she wept as she told Doggett how she came to the decision.

“I realized that it’s what Mulder would have seen or understood,” she said. “Because that’s just how he came at things. Without judgment, without prejudice and with an open mind. And I am just not capable.”

That sort of talk is very satisfying to devoted David Duchovny fans (me included), who have been reduced this season to an adolescent kind of yearning for Duchovny-Mulder, whose current scarcity makes him the ultimate unattainable man. Sure, Mulder is presumably in some other part of the galaxy for the time being. Sure, Mr. Duchovny, getting serious about his film career at age 40, has been busy making “Evolution,” a science fiction movie with Julianne Moore. But if we get one more glimpse of Mulder in which he appears to be having his face stretched on the aliens’ examining table but says nothing (well, once he screamed “Scully!” and that was encouraging, but it turned out to be happening in Scully’s dreams); if we see him make one more five-second screen appearance without speaking; if we think we’re seeing him but it turns out to be an alien bounty hunter disguised as Mulder, we’re going to turn.

Flashbacks are fine (the scene in tonight’s episode in which he says, “The answer is yes,” is a semi-thrill). Even a best-of-Mulder collage will do.

Luckily, the lead characters and the actors who play them were never the show’s only strength. Most of the same writers and directors from past seasons are still around, creating scary one-hour dramas about exterminators with superhuman vision, religious cults, mystics who can stow away inside human bodies and murder suspects experiencing time in reverse.

The future of the series is still up in the air (negotiations for a possible ninth season are still going on, Mr. Carter said). Serious fans already know that the season finale is going to be a cliffhanger that will be resolved – well, as much as anything is ever resolved in “X-Files” world – either in the new season or in a second feature film. That film is not expected to happen until the series is off the air.

Meanwhile the show’s first spinoff, “The Lone Gunmen,” is scheduled to have its premiere on Fox on March 4 (in the “X-Files” time slot the first three weeks, then moving to Fridays). The title characters are, as X-philes know well, the trio of less than movie-star-glamorous, conspiracy-obsessed computer geeks whom Mulder has called on for assistance many times. Mr. Duchovny, Ms. Anderson and Mr. Patrick are listed as cast members in the new series, so they should be making at least the occasional appearance.

Watch “The X-Files” long enough and you can get a little zen about the big issues, like birth, death and terminal illness. With space aliens and backwoods healers around, nothing, it seems, is irreversible, which may be a good thing to keep in mind in the weeks ahead. And we have reassurances of that rule from the horse’s mouth. When I interviewed Mr. Duchovny last year and asked about the fate of Mulder’s sister, Samantha – was she really, most sincerely dead, as recent episodes seemed to have indicated – he put on a mischievous half-smile and answered, “She comes back for sweeps.” And Mulder’s mother – also dead, right? “Sweeps,” he said, switching to deadpan. “Whatever we need. They come back.”

Feb-08-2001
Chicago Sun Times
‘X-Files’ fate is up to Fox
Phil Rosenthal

An end is out there this season on “The X-Files.”

Just maybe not The End.

“The finale for this season will be the finale for the eight years of the show,” executive producer Frank Spotnitz said on the eerie, dimly lit set that earlier this season was the site of Fox Mulder’s tortuous alien exam. “The ninth season, if there is one, will be a whole new ballgame.”

First, of course, Spotnitz and creator/executive producer Chris Carter have to see if Fox–the network, not the abducted special agent–will play ball with them.

Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman said she “can’t imagine” going ahead without Carter’s involvement, though TV execs are not known for their imagination.

Carter, meanwhile, has sent strong signals he wants to see how the network treats his “X-Files” spinoff, “Lone Gunmen,” which is set to fill in for “X” at 8 p.m. Sundays for a month beginning March 4 before moving to Fridays.

If “Gunmen” gets gunned down before viewers can figure out what it’s about, the way Fox handled his “Harsh Realm,” don’t be stunned if Carter axes “X.” If “Gunmen” is given a fair chance to succeed, the way Fox handled his “Millennium,” he might find the inspiration he says he needs to make Season Nine a go.

Don’t look to Gillian Anderson for guidance. She didn’t want to do this season of “The X-Files” as Dana Scully, though it hasn’t been nearly as bad as she feared it would be trying to make things seem fresh.

“As much as I fantasized about getting out, simply for exhaustion if nothing else, I couldn’t,” she said. “I was obligated to come back, so I did. But quite honestly, I am having fun. It’s been a good year.”

That said, it probably wouldn’t break her heart–or any other vital organ-not to return for another season. One senses she envied the largely absent David Duchovny, no matter how the aliens poked and prodded him, if only because he didn’t have to show up day after day.

Some people are reading something into the introduction of Annabeth Gish as another special agent for three episodes beginning later this month. They may be right. But Anderson’s contract runs another year, whether the show does or not.

Duchovny, who had Fox over a barrel last year and negotiated a lucrative deal for Special Agent Mulder to appear in only half this season’s episodes, is under no such obligation. Fortunately, Robert Patrick’s John Doggett has proved an able replacement, no matter what some diehards say in the online chat rooms.

As for the actual storyline that has been playing out this season, Carter says Scully’s pregnancy will continue through the rest of the season. “But,” he said, “the episodes [this month] will explain much more of the context.”

It’s the birthing of Carter’s other baby–“Lone Gunmen”–that may hold the true suspense for “X-Files” fans.

Feb-??-2001
Sky Magazine
X-Terminator
Thomasina Gibson

Mulder’s vanished, Scully’s pregnant, and there’s a new agent in town. So, it’s weirdness as usual in the new series of The X-Files Sky One. Thomasina Gibson investigates…

When Mark Snow’s haunting music heralds the new series of The X-Files, look between smoke and crossed torch beams for another badge alongside Agent Scully’s – that of Special Agent John Doggett, Robert Patrick, who takes the role of the man investigating Fox Mulder’s disappearance, may be best known as mercurial cyborg T-1000 in Terminator 2, but he’s had lots of practice for his new job. “I’ve played a bunch of FBI guys and police officers,” says the 42-year-old, of roles ranging from a New York police officer in Cop Land to the bad cop in Wayne’s World. “But this is the first time I’ve had a chance to play such a straight shooter to such a wide audience. I’m really excited.”

David Duchovny may have stepped down from his lead role, but creator Chris Carter’s decision to push for an eighth (and a possible ninth) season of The X-Files wasn’t, he claims, about making more money from the franchise. “Adding Doggett gave us the scope to incorporate a new dynamic into the show,” he explains. “While the myth-arc of Mulder’s disappearance and the resolution of Scully’s amazing revelation at the end of season 7 remain to the fore, every episode of this season will be different from each other, with more emphasis on the return to the horror roots of the show.”

In contrast to Mulder (the FBI’s most unwanted) John Doggett is a respected member of the bureau, and, while Scully (Gillian Anderson) has been the one with her feet on the ground for seven years, its now her turn to lead the foray into the paranormal, with Doggett as the knee-jerk sceptic.

“There is a conflict between them in the beginning,” says Patrick. “Scully doesn’t like the way Doggett introduces himself to her, because he deliberately isn’t upfront with who he is. He was willing to risk the first impression because he wanted some information about her former partner.”

Despite initial differences, a strong relationship does develop between the characters. “They have a genuine chemistry,” says Patrick. Anderson has no doubts about her characters view of the new guy, suggesting that “viewers may come to appreciate the way Doggett is protective of Scully, the way he respects her journey and is mindful of her relationship with Mulder.”

Asked if there is likely to be any romantic entanglement, Carter hints, “You’re going to find that we’re dealing with all that in a delicate and provocative way.” No change there, then.

Coming into a television phenomenon that has already countless of millions of fans worldwide, many of whom worship Mulder, could have been a trifle daunting for a lesser man, but Patrick takes it all in his stride. “Early on, I was told that people might not like Doggett or the fact that I’m in the show,” he says. “So we kind of built that into the character, and as people watch the show they’ll see a guy who doesn’t really care whether he’s liked or not. Doggett is very confident. He believes in what he’s being asked to do and he’s going to do it.”

Although comparisons are bound to be made, Patrick doesn’t see himself as a replacement for Duchovny. “I see Doggett as a brand new character, and hopefully people will enjoy him as much as they enjoy Mulder.”

Describing himself as “a film actor who didn’t know a lot about television”. Patrick admits that he “didn’t really know how big the job was. It’s slowly starting to dawn on me that this is a pretty big deal. Mostly I’m known or my role in Terminator 2. Everywhere I go it’s like – “You’re the liquid metal guy!” and I’m used to shouting “Yeah! But what’s my name? – for The X-Files newest investigator, all that is about to change.

Jan-31-2001
TV Guide
Will Gunmen Shoot and Score?
Sheryl Rothmuller

As one-third of the scene-stealing Lone Gunmen trio on The X-Files, Tom Braidwood has spent eight seasons lurking in the background. But that’s all about to change now that the actor and his fellow super-sleuths, Dean Haglund and Bruce Harwood, have been spun-off into their own Fox series – aptly titled The Lone Gunmen.

“It’s really interesting to have to focus on it day in and day out,” Braidwood tells TV Guide Online of going from a bit player to a full- fledged series regular. But the actor – who originally joined The X-Files as an assistant director – admits he’s prepared if his career as a thesp doesn’t blast off with Gunmen. “If they run the series and it doesn’t get picked up, I’m quite certain I’ll simply go back to focusing on directing and producing,” he says. “But I would probably also make an effort to do auditions.”

Premiering March 4 in The X-Files’s Sunday at 9 pm/ET timeslot (where it will air for three weeks before being relocated to another night), The Lone Gunmen finds the three leads playing like a misguided Mission: Impossible team. And although the central characters were first introduced to viewers on The X-Files, Braidwood doesn’t view Gunmen as a spin-off.

“The way the comedy has been happening and the direction the show has taken, it’s really not a spin-off,” he admits, referring to the show’s differing tones. “It’s sort of like what we do in our life when we’re not helping out Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson)… And this is what we do, this is our life, which is very different than The X-Files life.”

Well, one thing both shows have in common is that they both have very attractive leads – although it didn’t start out that way. To beef up the babe quotient, Gunmen producers tapped comely newcomers Zuleikha Robinson and Stephen Snedden to round out the ensemble.

Braidwood, however, isn’t offended by the notion that the core threesome weren’t attractive enough to carry the show. Jokes the actor: “Us three are really ugly.”