It’s #Tenthirteen! Chris Carter is 68 years old (and Fox Mulder 63). Time to celebrate: here is the script for the unproduced #TheXFiles seventh episode of season 10! Kindly uploaded for everyone to see by the fans who acquired it from an auction for charity. The cover page is missing, so the episode remains untitled. Apparently the episode was ready to be shot, and it was not budget but only a scheduling issue (main cast availability?) that prevented it from being made. It was written by Gabe Rotter (Carter’s assistant during season 9 and IWTB, who would eventually write “Kitten” in season 11) and Brad Follmer (Carter’s assistant over s7-9).

Some impressions (very mildly spoilery) when reading this: This is a monster-of-the-week episode focusing on killer ants. Impossible not to think of several previous episodes: War of the Coprophages (for the panic settling in among the local population), Zero Sum (for “foreign” bugs introduced in the USA being the killers, and for a scene with bugs attacking children) or Schizogeny and the episode Millennium (for weird things taking place in basements in the climax). Perhaps unexpectedly, the overall tone is lighthearted and with many references to popular culture (especially The Walking Dead and fears of the zombie apocalypse) and some Mulder-Scully flirting. At other times it’s like a very straightforward action movie. It is weirdly structured, with short acts in the beginning and the final act lasting for half the script; and the whole episode takes place over one day or two; this gives it the feeling that there’s less story here than would warrant an entire hour-long episode. And it ends, in classic TXF fashion, with a promise that not everything is over.

I found the script not particularly strong — could this be the reason why it was not picked up again when season 11 was greenlit? It’s an entertaining, if not memorable, read.

(Image from the “Season X” behind the scenes documentary)

Link: https://archive.org/details/the-x-files-s-10-unproduced-script

[Edit: Internet Archive is back online, so I am removing the Google Drive link]