The X-Files 2016: Introduction | 10X1: My Struggle | 10X2: Founder’s Mutation
This episode is written and directed by Darin Morgan. With only four-and-a-half episodes (4 + 3X22: Quagmire) written previously but all of them in people’s “best of” lists, he is known for how his comic episodes expanded what the show could be and made fun of its codes and characters while managing to present a good X-file investigation.
Blood-squirting spoilers after the jump!
The X-Files 2016: Introduction | 10X1: My Struggle
Billed as the second part of a two-night premiere by Fox, The X-Files return to self-contained cases with this episode — however in the tradition of many season 1 episodes not all is as it seems and the mythology points its nose midway through.
Spoilers after the jump.
The X-Files 2016: Introduction | 10X2: Founder’s Mutation | 10X3: Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster
After this introduction, let us now get into the meat of this: the episode itself.
“My Struggle” is written and directed by Chris Carter. It has the difficult task to do no less than the following: introduce the concept of the show, its central characters, its main intrigue, to new viewers; refresh the memory of fans on where the story stood when we last saw our heroes; reintroduce the main characters and what makes them tick; cover the time gap between 2008 and today; address and advance the mythology; present an episode’s worth of intrigue, with beginning, middle and end; last 44 minutes; and satisfy fans as much as possible.
Spoilers after the jump
After “a thirteen-year commercial break“, as per Chris Carter, The X-Files are back! — and with them the entire trio of creator Chris Carter and actors Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.
Writing these words does seem surreal. Things could have developed differently. A victim of its own success, the “original series” (a term we are going to have to get used to from now on!) exceeded its welcome on television and ended in 2002, going well beyond Chris Carter’s original ideas for about five seasons and continuing past the point where it would have made sense to make a clean break from the two main leads and focus on new leads entirely. By that point, the series was well past its peak popularity and Carter’s vision to transition into a feature film franchise was compromised; lawsuits with Fox involving Carter and Duchovny did not help either. With 2008’s I Want To Believe, Carter had stayed true to the idea he has expressed since 1998, of doing a stand-alone story for the second film, and enriched it with Mulder and Scully’s personal story. A very interesting enterprise but marred by many flaws (EatTheCorn review here), the second film did not generate enough momentum to lead into a third film, which Carter has teased as a return or one could hope a resolution (as far as resolutions go in The X-Files) of the mythology. The franchise was put on cold storage, being remembered only in anniversary events for an aging audience like any antiquated show before it.
If nothing else, The X-Files‘ feature films have showed that the franchise is too multifaceted for individual stories to satisfy everyone. If more films had closely followed, what was left unsaid in the second film would have a chance to develop and the whole would be elevated above its individual components; if the films were to focus on the mythology, there wouldn’t be the opportunity to verse into other paranormal themes, horror, comedy, experiment out of the norm. As much as it tried to bring feature film quality into the world of television, across the wide range of its fans and critics The X-Files is remembered fondly not for one of its aspects but for the sum of what it could do: for being a multi-episode series.
And so, a return to television. EatTheCorn has already argued that other avenues than a prestigious feature film could be a valid future for the franchise — see our recollections on the occasion of the passing of December 22, 2012, and at the 2013 20th anniversary panel at San Diego Comic Con, where key people still saw the feature film as the only option. Keep also in mind that FOX’s feature film branch and FOX’s television branch are two rather distinct entities, and this revival was certainly made possible in television thanks to the arrival at the top management of people with whom Chris Carter has had good relations with since the very beginning of the show in 1993 — namely, Dana Walden and Gary Newman, CEOs of Fox Television Group since July 2014. Conversely, the feature film industry is more wary of a franchise transitioning from television to film rather than the other way around, and Carter would still have a lot of people to convince were he to make that third film.
The return has been brewing for a couple of years. Carter and Walden attribute the fan excitement of the 20th anniversary as a catalyst. Frank Spotnitz has been mentioning that discussions were going on throughout 2014. IDW’s The X-Files comic series, expertly held by writer Joe Harris (and covered extensively at EatTheCorn), have brought novelty to the brand since their launch in June 2013. Kumail Nanjiani’s The X-Files Files podcast and of course fan activity online have also helped. The revival was put out there as an idea in January 2015, and a firm decision came in March; shooting took place between June and September; post-production lasted till December; and here we are barely a year later. Things went very quickly once the will was there.
But one has to make the obvious question: was a revival necessary? And one has to shed the knee-jerk reaction of the cliché of the unconditional fan, who will ask for more whatever might happen, or EatTheCorn’s obsession with seeing a continuation or closure of the show’s mytharc. With the passage of time and the endless cyclical urge of popular culture to eat itself, we live at a time of a revival/recycling/retooling/reneologismation of the landmarks of the 1980s and 1990s — the examples of that are everywhere. The X-Files was sure to come at some point, not because it has something more to say but because of the mere fact that its first incarnation had success, and thus presents an good case for easy return on investment (not to mention the opportunity of increasing the price of sales of Fox’s back catalog to streaming services like Netflix, which is a very important financial argument in the present days). What more does The X-Files has to say? This is the question that the revival needs to answer.
From the first declarations that Carter made on the revival, it came as a surprise that it was going to be a much more ambitious enterprise than “just” a matter of adapting his ideas of the continuation of the mythology, elements that he might have been keeping for a third X-Files feature film, to a multi-episodes television event. In fact it became something else entirely from that as well, but we will come back to that.
Carter wanted to revive the old show entirely: propose a series of episodes that would recreate the format of mythology, stand-alone scary stories and experimental; return to Vancouver to shoot, the place that defined the show’s identity and look in the first five seasons, same as for I Want To Believe; reunite with the band of writers that made its success; reunite with as many people as possible in the crew (just to name the most obvious that participated in this revival: 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; cinematographer Joel Ransom; editor Heather McDougall); and with the cast. Reunite the TenThirteen family. The project of the revival, what many would have expected to be a one-shot single-story event, including this fan, became something much more ambitious. A new season of the show, albeit with fewer episodes (initially 8, but trimmed to 6 for no other reasons than scheduling), and a season that could be, and has been conceived to be, the first of many!
Everything is made to channel the old show again. Its success, even, is measured by how close it is to the original: Dana Walden has said that “We are excited creatively by what we’ve seen. These episodes are incredibly consistent with the original series.”
Of course the revival makes use of current themes for the stories and of modern film-making technology, it certainly looks very fresh; but other than that, the “revival” could easily be modified to be a “reboot”, i.e. the recreation of the original starting from a blank slate, an X-Files for the 21st century. Yet story threads still dangle embarrassingly in the absent centre (William, anyone?) and characters do feel like they are defined by the weight of the past; this is a continuation, not a reboot. This mix of old and new defines this revival.
What can be discussed and argued then is the mixture of “old” and “new”. How far does the new show stray, or evolve, from the old one? How much does it want to? In the run-up to the revival, we explored different possibilities, different possible futures for The X-Files. Out of the wide range of possibilities, out of that fourteen-year playground of the imagination for armies of fans across the world, a choice has been made, a single path has been taken, and the other possibilities are no more.
The six-episode revival is shaped by Carter and the people he has surrounded himself with. He has referenced in interviews that he wanted the whole gang of the original 3-5 seasons back — Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan, Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa — however not everyone was available at such a short notice. Spotnitz’s absence is particularly notable since over the years he had become very much identified as the biggest creative force along with Carter and the two lead actors: they co-wrote both films, they co-wrote most of the mythology over seven seasons, he was imagining himself as participating in a future X-Files endeavour as well when asked in interviews over the long gap years of the past decade, as recently as 2014. Yet it so happened that success hit him at the same time and he was busy with launching his own series, The Man in the High Castle — both series were actually shot simultaneously in Vancouver in thesummer of 2015! Whether the revival series would have taken a different path with him is something to wonder at — particularly concerning the romance between Mulder and Scully, something he has always been an articulate proponent of.
The writers team for this revival ended up consisting in Chris Carter, Glen Morgan, James Wong and Darin Morgan. It already is a bit of a dream team, and a team that has not worked closely together since seasons 1-4 of the show! This sets the tone for what will follow.
Morgan and Wong (“the Wongs”) are of course responsible for some of the series’ best episodes, and to a great extent they are responsible for the identity of the show, being the writers of the show’s first non-alien, monster-focused episode (1X02: Squeeze and its sequel 1X20: Tooms); they developed the characters immensely, particularly Scully (1X12: Beyond the Sea, 4X13: Never Again); they created the characters of Skinner, the Lone Gunmen, Scully’s mother and father and sister Melissa; they injected a great sense of paranoia in the mythology (1X16: E.B.E.) and gave the show episodes where the supernatural could be something optimistic and not necessarily scary (2X08: One Breath) as well as some of its most horrific B-movie-guilty pleasures (2X14: Die Hand die Verletzt, 4X03: Home). After they left The X-Files and Millennium in 1998 and after some other projects, Morgan and Wong stopped being a creative duo after 2006 and went on their own ways; this is the first project in which they work together since a decade.
Darin Morgan is another celebrated writer, with only four-and-a-half episodes (4 + 3X22: Quagmire) but all of them in people’s “best of” lists. His unintentionally comic episodes expanded what the show could be and made fun of its codes and characters while managing to present a good X-file, mixing both cynicism and humanism.
Carter remains the main creative force since the show’s inception, however it will be interesting to ponder which story directions were his own and which came as a result of a back-and-forth with the rest of the writers. Each one writes the script and directs “their own” episodes, however the general story of the episodes and the arc they follow is a result of several interactions involving all of them — this time, not in the TenThirteen offices in Los Angeles, but in Glen Morgan’s garden!
Also, another important point is that Chris Carter is not the only on getting credit as an Executive Producer — the well-known last image of each episode — he is now joined by Glen Morgan. This puts Morgan on equal footing as Carter as the person who has the last word on any decision, from vision to script to film, and essentially makes this revival a Carter-Morgan project. What hadn’t happened in The X-Files and Millennium has happened now, almost two decades later!
On to the episodic reviews/first reactions.
It is now 2016 and not only have we survived another winter solstice since December 22nd 2012 but we are presently less than a month away from entering the world of the X-Files again!
The FOX marketing machine is gearing up accordingly. “I Still Want To Believe” is the new tagline, echoing the old and underlying the fact that this is a repeat, “more of the same”. This fine line to walk between repeating the old — cozy, reassuring, nostalgic — and the new — bold, risky, unsettling — is a balance that all continuations must face. The recent Star Wars sequel (only very relatively successful, in my opinion) is the most recent example in the impulse to keep on continuing pop culture franchises.
So far there have been exclusive premieres of the “pilot” episode at select festivals (Monte Carlo, Los Angeles, Italy), we have seen posters, trailers, and a behind the scenes documentary. This is a lot of material for a six-episodes event, and goes a long way to show that FOX really believes in this and wants it to succeed. Also, the amount of images revealed goes very far — fans have been trying to assign each single frame to not only individual episodes but also chronologically within episodes — and key plot points have been revealed by the promotional campaign disregarding Carter’s previous obsession with secrecy and spoilers control. This is a very modern way to promote entertainment — the social networks buzz must be fed continuously and at all costs — but could prove counter-productive. Already, there is very little one cannot find on the first episode and many story details on the other five by searching the internet.
However, as a fan, I must admit that it all looks extremely exciting! (Including some worrying aspects on the mytharc, but coming up with theories to fill the gaps/plot holes is what we do for a living here.) It is all calibrated to appeal to those who remember the X-Files from the early seasons, including the radical approach on the Mulder-Scully relationship — which is a mix of a non-risk-taking return to how it used to be in the early days and part of a greater plan to reveal what has happened since 2002 progressively throughout all episodes, especially on the fate of William and their romantic split, using elliptic narration and flashbacks. Hopefully the episodes will actually deliver on the good buzz.
Of course, everything is done to promote the new series, which also means that the old series benefits from this buzz too — some even say that financially the new series is made so as to pump up the value of the old series as well for broadcasting rights for internet streaming services. The one-episode-a-day event that FOX marketing is animating over all its social media (head over to EatTheCorn’s Facebook page for some comments on each mytharc ep) is not only a way to count down to the new series but also a way to bring in new fans.
The most important event however, and quite possibly the ultimate and, well, last possible thing that could ever be done with the “old series” is its release in BluRay. Long anticipated with HD broadcasts in Germany and the USA since 2013, the whole package, including the two films and all bonus material from the DVDs, and a slot for the future new series’ BluRays (I wonder where “season 11” will fit if there is one?) was released on December 8 2015. After being one of the very first TV series that was edited in complete form in the DVD format in 2000, the X-Files has made the jump to the next format.
The challenges to do such a release were many — head over here for an interview with Jim Hardy, CEO of Illuminate, the company behind the transfer — chief among which the fact that every single episode had to be recreated from scratch by scanning the films of the raw unedited dailies. Post-production in the 1990s was done directly on VHS, and creating HD transfers is comparatively easier for shows both before and after that period! We’ll leave the debate on whether original 4:3 aspect ratio or feature-like revisionist 16:9 widescreen was better to the experts — what is out there looks amazingly fresh regardless. However, no release is perfect: the fonts that were used for the XF logo, the opening credits, the cast and crew credits, and the place and time tags are different from the original; some departures from “The Truth Is Out There” tag were not respected; and some other issues. These things are all the more frustrating that they could have easily been respected, and I don’t expect FOX to do a re-release (or a re-scan for 4K for example) any sooner than one or two decades. You can see some DVD to BD comparisons and a detailed list of differences here.
Another important “old series” release could also be very close. The third volume in the X-Files music by La La Land has been postponed from 2015 to early 2016, and I could very well see LLL taking the opportunity to make use of the revival to release it. After two volumes for both X-Files and Millennium, it’s going to be worth the wait — and in the case where LLL lacks inspiration, here is a requests list.
The interest on the X-Files has been rising steadily since IDW started publishing X-Files comic books in mid-2013, and EatTheCorn has been covering closely the storylines developed by Joe Harris. “Season 11” should be drawing to a close with three more issues and what follows next is still unclear, apart from an independent “what if” alternative history issue in April. What is certain though is that IDW will be continuing to publish X-Files comics, with Joe Harris very much involved! What form will these comics take (unique stories, continuing storyline) and what continuity they will follow (alternate universe, pre-revival, post-revival) is not yet revealed.
It’s no wonder that IDW is also expanding its X-Files merchandising line: after the X-Files board game (which should have a couple of extensions in the future) and re-prints of all older comics and novels, a trilogy of X-Files short story collections is coming out, edited by horror writer Jonathan Maberry. The stories mostly take place in the “golden age” of the series, around 1996, but not exclusively. The first volume, “Trust No One“, was released in July 2015 and the second, “The Truth is Out There“, will be released in March 2016. There are some older XF alumni in here: Stefan Petrucha, writer of the (excellent) first 16 issues of the XF Topps comics in 1994-1995, Sarah Stegall, famous XF reviewer of old; Joe Harris and Dean Haglund might participate in a future third volume.
Titan also publishing two X-Files Companion books that seem to consist in collections of already published material, namely articles from the official XF magazine (some of which can be found on EatTheCorn) published by Titan in the 1990s. There will be two volumes: the first “The Agents, the Bureau, and the Syndicate” in January and the second “Monsters & Villains” in March.
I wonder what else we will be seeing in terms of merchandising in the coming weeks and months.
The fandom is also gearing up to the revival. Professional genre expert John K. Muir, who has written on X-Files and all things Chris Carter several times on his blog, also published his book on XF, The X-Files FAQ, featuring reviews and analysis of The X-Files and Carter’s other works. Darren Mooney finished his epic series of reviews of all four Ten Thirteen shows on his site, an incredible amount of text and many amazing insights. The reference site X-Files News has relaunched their website afresh. Retrospective articles in the media abound.
FOX is planning to broadcast the episodes in over 60 countries all around the world within 24 hours of their broadcast in the USA. Barely three weeks remaining for the launch of potentially the first season of the revival.
After looking at what was left unsaid in Part 1 and a quick sociopolitical analysis of the past two decades in Part 2, we finally look here at The X-Files’ future in terms of where the storylines could go compared to the state of the show and its mythology after nine years and two movies.
The X-Files wasn’t big on making changes to its core formula. It was pushed outside its comfort zone when Gillian Anderson was pregnant in early season 2, creating the seminal storyline of Scully’s abduction. It worked around actors’ availability in season 5 due to the shooting of Fight the Future, coming up with episodes like the Lone Gunmen-focused 5X01: Unusual Suspects or the flashback 5X15: Travelers. It promised big changes by assigning two different agents to the X-Files in the first half of season 6, Spender and Fowley, but went nowhere with that. It promised even bigger changes by ending the core of the mythology in 6X12: One Son, but tried to tell stories around that and not addressing the fallout of these events for the rest of the season and the next. It introduced new characters in season 8 and 9 but still built the story around the old ones.
The X-Files really became more about Mulder and Scully than the “X-Files” cases in season 6. In front of the camera, we were following X-Files-like cases investigated by two agents no longer on the X-Files bureau, who either did it out of leisure (6X04/05: Dreamland, 6X08: How The Ghosts Stole Christmas) or stumbled upon that out of coincidence (6X15: Monday). Behind the camera, the X-Files production had changed location, a decision that impacted literally hundreds of people, to accommodate the leading star’s wishes. It became even more so about Mulder and Scully in season 8 and 9, ironically, when it was trying to pass the torch to new agents but tried to keep the older audience by using continuously Mulder’s return as a selling point and making the search for Mulder the structuring plot line of season 8; then by keeping Scully and her “old mythology” baggage in season 9, still building the whole season around Scully and a missing character rather than around the two new agents.
So, presently, “The X-Files” is synonymous with “Mulder and Scully investigate paranormal phenomena”, and I wouldn’t expect this to change much in a revival series — up until (maybe) Carter, Duchovny and Anderson all call it a day and FOX decides to do a reboot.
Two souls in search for meaning
Within that framework, there is a lot that can change. There have been many theories and fan fiction stories as to where things could go, literally numbering in the thousands. Let’s examine a few creative possibilities, based on hints that the show has left and some speculation. Warning: The list below is not necessarily where I want this to go. Careful what you wish for!
Our ex-agents investigate paranormal cases through their own consulting company, occasionally brushing with the FBI (or the Millennium Group), occasionally getting help from Skinner, Chuck Burks or a Lone Gunmen-like network of truth-seekers. Mulder can fulfill his fantasy of living in a trailer like Max Fenig’s. Mulder’s obsession wouldn’t stop after he left the FBI, but finding a motivation for Scully to do this would be trickier. It could involve the quest for William.
Of course this is the opposite option of them joining the FBI again, or acting as consultants exclusively with the FBI (like Frank Black). The FBI certainly gives access and authority they wouldn’t otherwise have, and provides them with forensic, medical, criminal records, and all kinds of resources, like Danny. Them becoming agents is certainly the decision that makes the most sense in terms of brand recognition. It is practical, obvious, predictable. I Want To Believe and the comics Season 10 both went that way, making their career as FBI agents or FBI consultants intrinsically linked with their “quest for the truth”.
However, acknowledging the passage of time, they are no longer the young agents that are sent out on the field doing all the work from the ground up; had they built a career in the FBI they probably would have moved to more managerial positions and would be training or overseeing other agents, like Skinner did for them, than being in the field themselves. Which brings us to…
Mulder and Scully are the experienced Special Agents In Charge who head a team of younger Agents in the field. In line with the “big franchise” aspect, the X-Files can become a show with not just two leads who do everything, but an entire team with agents in the field, agents specialized in forensics or medicine, agents more involved in the internal politics of the FBI… In short, an ensemble show like we usually get in cop shows. This had really started in season 9 already: not just Scully and Doggett, but Scully, Doggett, Reyes, Skinner, Kersh, Follmer. Scully was no longer an agent in the field but a doctor training younger agents in Quantico. While this direction was forced on the show due to cast changes behind the camera, it was also due to the writers looking for ways to make the show different after nearly two hundred episodes strictly centered around two leads.
Keeping with the franchise idea in a globalized world, one can imagine a “core” team (or core series) with Mulder and Scully and other X-Files divisions and teams (or mini-series spin-offs) spread across the country or the world. Like “CSI” and its multiple spin-offs or “Doctor Who” and “Torchwood”, the recombinations and cross-over possibilities are multiple.
Scully in one of her many attempts to escape The X-Files
This is the “next generation X-Files” direction, that was so abhorred by a large part of the fandom during the airing of seasons 8-9, but is really a natural evolution of many long-lived shows. The fact that a large part of the fandom rejected it shows how intrinsically linked are the X-Files with Mulder and Scully. Perhaps FOX will want this possibility for the future to be thought of and prepared, introducing a couple of younger agents, spending some time with both the old and new generations, then allowing Carter/Duchovny/Anderson to retire while FOX continues on with the new agents. But as long as the head trio is game to continue, the next generation or reboot is still a thing of the future.
What a resolution to give to the mythology’s main hook? How final can the conclusion be when it comes to a replacement of the human population by aliens?
The X-Files built a reputation out of treating fantastic stories realistically, placing them in our world, present time and in everyday settings. Even if Mulder searched for undeniable proof of the existence of extraterrestrials or of some paranormal phenomenon, he was doomed from the start: if he found this proof and presented it everywhere for the world to believe, we would instantly no longer be in the same universe as the X-Files and all credibility the show built would crumble. Like for true religious faith, one has to believe even if he spends his entire life without proof, without certainties. When Mulder and Scully did find parts of the truth, it was a personal revelation that didn’t go beyond themselves. In 6X22: Biogenesis Scully tells Mulder of the end of the Syndicate “after all you’ve uncovered […] you exposed their secrets. I mean, you’ve won. What more could you possibly hope to do or to find?” as if personal knowledge was enough. In 7X22: Requiem Mulder is told that “investigating your sister’s abduction and the government conspiracy around it, both of which have been resolved” as if for the FBI Mulder’s (and the viewer’s) own closure was equivalent to revelation to all. This is removed from the energy of Scully and Mulder of earlier seasons who not only wanted knowledge but also justice: Scully in 3X02: Paper Clip: “I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.” Mulder in 3X10: 731: “I want them accountable for what did happen. I want an apology for the truth.”
Yet as discussed earlier on Eat The Corn on the occasion of the (real-world) December 22, 2012, this lack of clear resolution is intrinsic in perhaps all of Ten Thirteen shows. It is about the quest, the doubt, the absolutes, rather than the answers. About “fighting the future” in the face of forces that seem too big even to comprehend, but not ever reaching to a point where stopping to fight is acceptable. “Don’t give up“.
Not the resolution you are looking for
Thus, what could happen about colonization? An “Independence Day” scenario where ships appear and explosions ensue? Carter already dismissed that by having Mulder pee on that poster in Fight the Future; far too caricaturistic. The most likely option is that colonization is or has been postponed, and its menace still hangs over us like a sword of Damocles. Whether some actions secretly countered the invasion in 2012, or the invasion started only it is happening insidiously underground and very progressively, or the 2012 date was misunderstood by religious cults, the colonization will remain. Even not referencing it will not make its threat go away. Like for the Christian Apocalypse, its believers will say that “the date is set” but God has its ways.
Let us then explore some creative possibilities that could add some spice to the apparent scenaristic dead-end of the colonization — possibilities that express some big remaining uncertainties to the mytharc: is the William prophecy real? are the Creation Ships coming from the Black Oil alien race? were Supersoldiers created by the Black Oil race or by the Shapeshifters race?
The Colonist aliens (i.e. the Black Oil, or the Greys, in case you have lost count) have always been presented so invincible and powerful, God-like at times, that their superiority over any resistance the low-tech human race could present appears doomed. But what if the Colonists are really much more fragile than they appear? For all we know, their entire force resides in their superior technology, but their numbers could be few and their forces on Earth could be little more than the large ship in Antarctica and the UFOs we have seen.
So the Faceless Rebels could have really won the “war for Heaven and Earth”, eventually, after their trail of fire in 5X14: The Red and the Black and 6X12: One Son, perhaps with the help of certain ex-members of the Syndicate or of the Russian syndicate (along with Krycek and Covarrubias, as was originally planned for season 7 according to rumors). With the Black Oil aliens out of the way, the race of the Faceless Rebels might betray their human allies and make their own plans for colonization of Earth.
Not so final as it appeared
There are some who have also theorized that this happened already, and that the Supersoldiers we see over seasons 8-9 really are envoyés of the Faceless Rebels, and not a secret weapon of the Black Oil aliens that got activated after the Syndicate was exterminated. This could be a possibility, given that the evidence to tie the Black Oil aliens to the Supersoldiers is mainly based around their biology, and the Faceless Rebels’ biology is akin to the Black Oil’s (as evidenced by similarities with hybrids, see the relevant dossier). Thus, confusing things a little more in the alien bestiary of the X-Files, there is still colonization looming but no specific invasion date.
A story thread extensively used in the X-Files is the idea that we humans are all part alien, due to what proves to be alien intervention in our creation. This idea finds echoes not just in the concrete biological sense but also in an abstract, somewhat esoteric sense: “The truth I’ve been searching for? The truth is *in* you” Mulder tells Scully in 5X14: The Red and the Black. It would only make sense then that the resolution to the show’s mythology would involve our biology and our common ancestry with the aliens.
The X-Files’ central mythology is essentially a story of biological warfare at a cosmic scale. It joins both Mulder’s beliefs in extraterrestrial life and Scully’s basis in science via her expertise in medicine. The objective then could be to prevent colonization thanks to biology with the latest biological weapon against the Black Oil virus invader.
A possibility is to develop a storyline around the idea that we already have the solution to the problem: ‘immunity is inside us’. We have seen occurrences where humans have activated alien genes that give them special abilities and perhaps immunity (Gibson Praise, Mulder in 7X04: Amor Fati). We have seen occurrences where humans are naturally immune to the Black Oil (the Huichol Indians, 8X16: Vienen). We have seen a vaccine against the Black Oil be developed in Siberia, perhaps thanks to the presence of magnetite from meteors weakening the Black Oil or to an already present partial immunity among the local folk. Joining pieces of information together, this could even all be tied together in a single string of immunity among humans: Gibson Praise might have ascent from the Philippines, colonized by Asia; American Indians, ancestors of the Huichol and the Anasazi, reached the American continent via Siberia by crossing the Bering Strait; alternate names for 5X20: The End were Zhigansk and Okhotsk, two cities in Siberia, one a meteor crash site, the other a port city close to the Bering Strait. Perhaps the vaccine we saw being developed is derived from that natural immunity — appropriately, Native Americans would give the answer to the White Man and the world. See 5X20: The End, 8X16: Vienen and 9X19/20: The Truth for more; granted, this theory might contain a more than considerable amount of speculation.
Scully only minutes after googling “hybridization with gene therapy”
Of course, William, the product of the union of two people who have had precedents with biological experiments with the Black Oil, not to mention a fertility possibly recovered thanks to alien technology, would be the natural and ideal candidate for being the source of the biological solution to counter the aliens. By doing so, he would also be fulfilling prophecies around his role in countering the colonization.
Thus, an antidote could be devised, rendering the biological attack of the colonization moot. It would have to be delivered, without the aliens or Supersoldiers knowing about it. Like the Syndicate made use of fertility clinics, obligatory inoculations and even the water supply system (9X01/02: Nothing Important Happened Today), so the human resistance could make use of these same tools to deliver an antidote to everyone. Any surviving cloned hybrids, grown from the start to be experts in biology (e.g. 4X15: Memento Mori), could be part or even orchestrate that resistance network. Conducting a secret underground war to prevent an all-out military war would be fitting with the low-key approach that the X-Files has had form the beginning. If Mulder and Scully were to stumble upon this underground network in an investigation, using the Syndicate’s tools in secret for a good purpose, could even lead them to mistake it as nefarious, ironically.
This is but one way with which a non-apocalyptic, biology-based war on the future of colonization could develop.
How to make the mythology feel more real and thus scarier in a time when the omnipresence of personal cameras has not proven the existence of UFOs and when the alien craze is not what it used to be in the 1990s? Make it more about the human aspect of it. The X-Files understood early on the importance to have human villains opposing Mulder and Scully instead of impersonal aliens, given the drama and emotion and personal backstories that could be created as we got to know the conspirators better. Could The X-Files pull another try at taking the aliens entirely out of the picture and make it about humans only, like it tried with 4X24: Gethsemane and 5X02/03: Redux? At the time the “rational” explanation was an impressive narrative achievement but it did leave a lot of in-universe questions to be explained; the “Mulder as skeptic” arc that followed was, for many, too sudden and not believable; and then came mythology episodes that firmly confirmed the alien forces at play.
Still, in 9X19/20: The Truth, Mulder, and Carter via him, ends his testimony with: “[I’ve learned] that the devil is just one man with a plan but evil, true evil, is a collaboration of men which is what we have here today“. The choice of words is interesting, especially since Mulder knows that Supersoldiers are involved in the ploy to have him on trial. Today, after all we have seen, a coup à la Gethsemane would be unrealistic. However, there is flexibility.
Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent and Alien Bodies”
With memory manipulation (1X01: Deep Throat), hypnosis (3X20: Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space”), proof manipulation (photos in 1X16: E.B.E., whole bodies in 4X24: Gethsemane) and given how easily false information can be planted and how fake footage can be produced with the technologies of today, the show could argue that once you manipulate enough memories and plant enough false evidence, you manipulate the way people remember about things: you effectively change history. There are hardly any eye witnesses of the Roswell crash left alive, for example; what we know about it is what we are told about it. This could insert much-needed doubt and uncertainty as to what “the truth” is.
The show could also take focus out of the aliens and more on how the various conspiracies have used the fear of the aliens as a tool for mass psychological manipulation: under a greater menace, you are willing to turn the eye when those who state they will protect you make immoral things. This thread, stated in Kritschgau’s memorable speech in 5X02: Redux, could fit nicely with the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the surveillance culture and associated loss of liberties in exchange for security.The show could even go as far as to downplay the role the aliens have played in the past. We mentioned above how the forces of the Colonists might be much fewer than what we are led to believe; perhaps the Colonists had also a much lesser hand in events than what we thought. They do exist but beyond specific occurrences like the seminal Roswell crash of 1947 or the deal with the Syndicate in 1973 their appearances are rare; the abductions and experiments are man-made, the UFO crashes is more or less advanced technology, the whole manipulation is more or less made known depending on each one’s access to top secret information.
On the credibility of this option, given how much we have seen on The X-Files, your mileage may vary. I was certainly very seduced by the ideas introduced in the “Redux” trilogy. It would give new windmills to chase for Mulder, and could perhaps inverse the roles with Scully, as she might defend the aliens’ presence given the quasi-religious experience she had when discovering that spacecraft in Africa in 6X22: Biogenesis. Which brings us to…
The show could decide that it’s all about God. The aliens as an allegory for God is something the X-Files have played with several times in the past, with visual imagery of alien abductions reminiscent of religious rapture, with Mulder’s quest for life in the skies paralleled to Scully’s religious belief, and of course with the idea that the human race is a creation by aliens. “What we call God is only alien, an intelligence much greater than us” the Cigarette-Smoking Man says in 7X22: Requiem. Yet this “ancient astronaut” theory cannot give the whole picture though: if “they” created us, who created “them”?
Fascinated Supersoldiers
Fascinated God seekers
It was never fully ascertained that the “Origin Ships” seen in 6X22: Biogenesis and 9X11: Providence belonged to the same alien race as the Black Oil. This was hypothesized because the pieces fit, the Ships seeding life so that it can be later colonized by the “Purity” race, and there was no need to complexify things further with more alien races. But there is enough uncertainty there to build a different story. These “Origin Ships” could come from elsewhere; contact with them is linked with religious awe and stories of prophets and prophecies (the old religions in Biogenesis, the William prophecy in Providence). The Ships are linked to William (the one in Biogenesis possibly returned Scully her fertility; the one in Providence called for William and safeguarded it from the fire that killed all the others); the Supersoldiers themselves might not know everything about these Ships and their interest in them would be similar to their interest in William, a religious yearning to understand something that is mysterious for them as well.The search for the truth on these Ships could instill some interesting new dynamics on the show, and would also make us humans and the alien Supersoldiers all equal before this grander religious quest.
Actually, Chris Carter’s scripts have grown more and more religious as time has passed. The aliens-as-God is only subtext until it becomes the core of the mythology in the last three seasons. Christian symbols abound around the immaculate conception and birth of William. I Want To Believe is a lot about faith (Christian faith, specifically). The turning point really was Millennium’s “Seven and One” near the end of the show’s last season, an episode preceding Biogenesis and the rest; it was Carter’s last script for Millennium, and gave Frank Black the closest he could get in terms of character development and closure by turning him towards religious faith (Catholic Christian, specifically): “it is the light which guides me now“. Initially a person with doubts, Carter’s personal faith perhaps matured and strengthened during those years, which showed in his work. Perhaps this faith is more strong now than before — in “The After”, discussion of the Christian Apocalypse and the whole premise which might have proven to be a take on Dante’s “Inferno” is proof towards that — and religious themes in The X-Files will become the big focus. That is fine as long as Carter is subtle, intelligent and perhaps ambiguous about it, indeed the best years of the show are associated with times when several versions of “the truth” were possible.
Another interesting point that shows The X-Files being steered towards more spiritual and religious ground is the importance of ghosts in the show’s finale. Ghosts and paranormal phenomena in general were kept in principle out of the very science fictional mythology, yet in later seasons the lines began to blur: the Biogenesis trilogy, but also the Walk-ins in 7X11: Closure, and Krycek and X’s ghosts in 9X19/20: The Truth. Mulder summarizes what he believes in not as something related to alien life, but something much more spiritual: “I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us, greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.” This echoes very well 3X16: Apocrypha where Johansen memorably told Scully: “We hear them everyday. They talk to us, They haunt us. They beg us for meaning. Conscience… it’s just the voices of the dead, trying to save us from our own damnation.” Scully later says: “I think the dead are speaking to us, Mulder, demanding justice. Maybe that man was right. Maybe we bury the dead alive.”
Possessions of the alien kind
Possessions of the spiritual kind
The X-Files mythology never fully explored that, but reminding that thread in the show’s finale, of all places, is significant. Also, a parallel is made between the forces of the dead and the forces of the aliens: one, obviously, is a force of good, the other a force of evil. By extension, the fate of humanity is then framed between those two forces, and the fight against colonization becomes a fight where supernatural forces could have an unexpected role.Indeed, to the Black Oil — black, alien, malevolent — can be opposed the Walk-ins — beings of light, well-intended. Both are beings that occupy a human host, but one is the light that counter-balances the darkness of the other. There is some visual imagery that could illustrate that, with the black filter in front of the eyes of a Black Oil-infected host, and the white aura of ghost appearances in the show (7X10: Sein und Zeit / 7X11: Closure, specifically). The show even toyed with the idea of absolute, spiritual evil as a kind of infectious virus in 8X17: Empedocles, where fire behind the eyes signified that person was infected — just an episode away from 8X16: Vienen and its Black Oil-infected oil workers. Unexpected allies of the spiritual kind could be a nice twist to the colonization storyline.
The possibilities are not endless but the mythology is not in the dead end it is often being described to be.
There are other possibilities as well, such as developing a different mythology altogether. Seasons 8 and 9 seemed to be building towards a Doggett and Reyes-specific mythology on evil as an immaterial force and the disappearance of Doggett’s son Luke, with episodes like 8X06: Invocation, 8X17: Empedocles, 9X04: Hellbound, 9X16: Release. It is a bit late in the game for Scully and Mulder to change the mythology as radically but it is a possibility. In a revival show with much fewer episodes per year than 24, what is mythology and what is not could blur and the so-called monster-of-the-week shows would have to be as important to the central characters and with high stakes as the so-called “mythology” ones. The show could even take a radical turn towards realism and really have episodes where Mulder is wrong and Scully is right, where the paranormal phenomenon is disproven and the scientific explanation is proven as correct — possibly Carter’s initial plan before he saw the difficulties in making such a show as exciting as having the mysterious and the paranormal “win”.
Whatever direction the continuation of the show takes, it will have to reintroduce the central divide that made the X-Files so interesting to watch: the debate between the “skeptic” and the “believer”. The debate provides different worldviews, the debate exists because there are things that are uncertain, because there are mysteries unsolved. In the later seasons of the show, in particular during season 7, Scully and Mulder’s views on things seemed to be converging, appropriately enough since they were reaching the end of the show and their romantic union was also a union and synthesis of ideas. As good as that ending was, that divide has to be there to drive the show. It does not have to mean disagreement on everything or a return to how things were in 1993 or the end of their relationship; it does not even need to be over the existence or non-existence of extraterrestrials. But their intellectual discourse has to have a basis on a divide, and only if there is a divide will there be uncertainty and the truth can be “out there”.
There are possibilities and fan theories. And then there is what Carter has decided to do. Options are discarded and future paths are not chosen: the story Carter will choose to tell will be one direction only. He seems to have the ambition to tell it over more than “just” these six episodes, once more postponing the resolution again, but giving more ample ground to storytelling and experimentation.
Now, for the spoilery part. There are lots of spoilers out there, some of which are very hard to avoid, and some of which seriously spoil the fun of discovering these episodes when they will air. I will not participate in spreading confirmed spoilers or rumors around… but I will link to this trailer:
So. Weary Mulder and reluctant Scully, check. Dark spaces and flashlights, check. Supportive Skinner, check. Shadowy old informant, check. The immortal Cigarette-Smoking Man, check. Modern paranoia and secrets from our post-World War II past, check. Beautiful photography, check. What is here can be compared to the three-part analysis of these Eat The Corn dossiers; we could do a minute analysis of the trailer but at barely over three months from the premiere I will leave that to the whim of each one.
The date is set for January 2016 — but before that, the world premiere of the first episode, Carter’s “My Struggle“, in MIPCOM, Cannes, France, today, October 6. Expect to find spoilers everywhere.
If you want to refresh your memory on the mythology, you can delve into our synthesis, the Eat The Corn Mytharc Primer.