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The X-Files 103: Ten Spin-Off/Tie-In Stories

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Darren

Next week sees the release of The X-Files on blu ray for the first time, just over a month before the new six-episode series premieres on Fox in January. We’re running daily reviews of the show (and its spin-offs) between now and the end of the year, but we thought it might be worth compiling some guides for newer viewers who are looking to experience the length and breadth of what The X-Files has to offer. Every day this week, we’ll be publishing one quick list of recommended stories every day, that should offer a good place to start for those looking to dive into the show.

Although the bulk of discussion around and attention paid to The X-Files focuses on the two-hundred-and-two episodes (and two movies) tied to the series itself, it is worth commenting on the rich world of spin-offs and tie-ins that Chris Carter and his production team built up around the show. The X-Files was not just a nineties television show, it was a multimedia phenomenon. However, these aspects of the show are frequently overlooked in discussions of the show’s legacy and cultural impact.

xfiles-millennium33

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Filed under: Harsh Realm, Millennium, Space: Above & Beyond, The Lone Gunmen, The X-Files | Tagged: , , , , | 6 Comments »

Harsh Realm (Review)

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

Harsh Realm seems destined to be a curiosity in the career of Chris Carter.

Sure, other projects would fail. Millennium had lasted three seasons, but its audience had been in decline since the second episode was broadcast. The Lone Gunmen would fold after only half a season. However, nothing was quite as sudden and brutal as the failure of Harsh Realm. The show did not even make it to half a season. It was cancelled by the network during the production of its ninth episode, after only three episodes had aired. The six unaired episodes were shunted over to FX, where they could be broadcast away from the media spotlight.

harshrealm-pilot34

This might not have been such a big deal if it wasn’t the first project developed by Chris Carter as part of his new contract at Fox, if it hadn’t been hyped up and analysed and debated. Harsh Realm was one of the most talked about new dramatic shows of 1999, and so its death was not a quiet or dignified affair. The cancellation became something of a public spectacle. Most of the attention fell on Fox Chief of Programming Doug Herzog, who seemed to be out of his depth running a major network.

Inevitably, though, some of the attention was focused on Chris Carter. Harsh Realm was a spectacular commercial failure for Carter, and one which raised questions about whether Carter and his production team were ready to face the twenty-first century.

harshrealm-leviathan5

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Harsh Realm – Camera Obscura (Review)

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

And so, with Camera Obscura, it seems that Harsh Realm comes to an end

The show had been developed as a television series for the new millennium; all involved had great plans for it. Fox had made no secret of the fact that they planned for Harsh Realm to take pride of place in their schedule going forward. The assumption was that it would replace The X-Files after that juggernaut was retired. There was a lot of hype around the development, a lot of excitement about the new show from producer Chris Carter. Harsh Realm was to be the first of many new shows developed by the producer as part of a highly lucrative contract with Fox.

Burning down the House (of God)...

Burning down the House (of God)…

Sadly, it did not work out that way. Harsh Realm had premiered to low ratings. Fox shuffled it off the schedule after only three episodes, which seemed a knee-jerk response given the talent involved in the show’s production. The six remaining episodes were locked away from the light of day, relegated to premiering on FX at the tail end of that season of television. For all that everybody involved had hoped that Harsh Realm would be a breakout hit, it ended up little more than a footnote.

Here, it dies. After nine episodes aired across two channels over seven months, the curtain comes down on Harsh Realm. It ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

Time for reflection...

Time for reflection…

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Harsh Realm – Cincinnati (Review)

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

Cincinnati finally gives Terry O’Quinn something to do.

Despite the fact that O’Quinn is credited as a series regular on Harsh Realm, he has appeared about as frequently in the first nine episodes as he did during the equivalent episodes of Millennium. With his “and…” credit at the end of the opening title sequence, it felt like O’Quinn might be forgotten by the show. His face might appear on posters and propaganda, but he was not going to play a particularly dynamic role in the events of the first season. After all, Hobbes is trying to assassinate Santiago; there are reasons why the writers would want to keep them separate.

Walk softly, but carry a big stick...

Walk softly, but carry a big stick…

Nevertheless, Cincinnati is a story that unfolds from Santiago’s perspective. Hobbes and Pinochio play a major part in unfolding events, but they largely reacting. The bulk of Cincinnati concerns a conflict between Santiago’s forces and the Native American population of Ohio. When a military strike goes horribly wrong, Santiago is forced to survive on his own terms. He infiltrates the eponymous city and sets about furthering his own agenda with ruthless efficiency.

A lot of Cincinnati is pure nonsense; the plot is barely held together by contrivance and coincidence, hinging on a final twist that manages to be both obvious and completely unearned. At the same time, it is hard to hate an episode that is carried by Terry O’Quinn and offers the actor a chance to sink his teeth into a juicy part.

It's all in ruins...

It’s all in ruins…

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Harsh Realm – Manus Domini (Review)

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

Manus Domini continues the influx of assistance from the writing staff on The X-Files, with John Shiban contributing a script to the first season of Harsh Realm.

Manus Domini is a very strange episode. In a way, it feels more keenly aligned with the sensibilities of Chris Carter than those of John Shiban. It is the most overtly religious episode from the short run of Harsh Realm, with characters contemplating faith and spirituality in an otherwise cruel world. It is the logical continuation of themes seeded and developed across the rest of the season, bringing the religious subtext of the show to the fore so that it might be acknowledged and explored.

Florence in the machine...

Florence in the machine…

To be fair, there are elements that fit comfortably within Shiban’s oeuvre. Shiban is very much a fan of classic horror tropes, so it makes sense that his script should feature a monstrous supporting character whose complete moral decay is symbolised through grotesque facial deformities. (The element recurs in Camera Obscura, but is not as pronounced as it in this episode.) There are elements of Manus Domini that feel like they might have been lifted from classic seventies horror.

Nevertheless, Manus Domini is defined by its religious components, making it clear that the show retains the same core moral perspective that runs through Carter’s work; there is a recurring sense that faith and spirituality are essential to survive and endure in an increasingly faithless world.

A literal mine field...

A literal mine field…

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Harsh Realm – Three Percenters (Review)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

Three Percenters is written by Frank Spotnitz.

Spotnitz is the longest serving staff writer on The X-Files, with the exception of Chris Carter. He worked with Carter in shaping and defining the mythology, sharing credit on some of the biggest episodes of the series. He is credited as a screenwriter on both The X-Files: Fight the Future and The X-Files: I Want to Believe. He is the only writer apart from Carter to work on all Millennium, Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen. As such, Spotnitz is an essential part of the Ten Thirteen family.

Talk about finger food...

Talk about finger food…

Spotnitz has a very clear of structure. Working on The X-Files, he was renowned for his ability to “break” a story, to split it down to its constituent elements and to make it make sense. His first credit on The X-Files was the script for End Game, which was a hugely important part of shaping and defining the mythology of the show. His two scripts for the first season of Millennium (Weeds and Sacrament) capture the spirit of the show in that moment in time, for better and for worse. It makes perfect sense for Spotnitz to script a first season episode of Harsh Realm.

However, Spotnitz’s script for Three Percenters perhaps demonstrates one of the problems with these initial nine episodes. Spotnitz is very good at understanding story structure and logic, but Harsh Realm doesn’t really have a set formula or template that he might be able to apply. Five episodes into its run, the show hasn’t settled into a grove in the same way that Millennium or The X-Files had. This perhaps explains why Three Percenters feels so odd and uneven; it occasionally seems like Spotnitz just pasted over a template from The X-Files itself.

Walking on water...

Walking on water…

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Harsh Realm – Reunion (Review)

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.

– Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, The First Part, Chapter XI

Reunion continues the sense that Chris Carter envisioned Harsh Realm as something of an allegorical episodic adventure series through a post-apocalyptic reflection of contemporary America.

Carter quite clearly wanted to use Harsh Realm as a vehicle to explore and comment upon certain aspects of the American experience. Inga Fossa touched on the links between projected masculinity and violence; Cincinnati will find Santiago’s “manifest destiny” brushing up against the country’s Native American population. Even scripts like Three Percenters and Manus Domini feel tied into Carter’s large oeuvre, touching on the writer’s recurring fascination with homogeneity and spirituality in the modern world.

Things come to a head...

Things come to a head…

Reunion is very consciously a critique of excessive and abusive capitalism, presenting a vision of America built upon the economics of slave labour reinforced by the rhetoric of freedom and competition. In some respects, Reunion feels like Harsh Realm is channelling the spirit of classic science-fiction television like Star Trek or The Twilight Zone. Its central allegory is hardly subtle, but there is a goofy charm in carrying these ideas well past their logical extremes. The vision of labour presented in Reunion is grotesque and exaggerated, but it is not completely fantastical.

Reunion also reaffirms the link that exists between the digital world and the real world, suggesting that perhaps the world that we inhabit is not as far removed from the horrors of the virtual reality as might hope.

Family matters...

Family matters…

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Harsh Realm – Kein Ausgang (Review)

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

So, what does an average episode of Harsh Realm look like?

After all, the show was cancelled after only three episodes had been broadcast. Those three episodes were all written by the creator, and formed something of a loose introduction to the show. Inga Fossa ended with our protagonist finally accepting his place in the virtual world and his mission to defeat General Omar Santiago before the dictator can destroy the real world. There is a sense that the show had yet to even demonstrate what a regular episode of Harsh Realm might look like. It was over before it had even begun.

Jumping into action...

Jumping into action…

Kein Ausgang is the first episode of Harsh Realm to be written by somebody other than Chris Carter. As such, it is an important milestone in the development of the series. It is also the first of two episodes written by Steven Maeda, who would prove to be a pretty reliable set of hands in the life of the young show. Based on his contributions to Harsh Realm, it is easy to see why Carter drafted Maeda over to The X-Files in the wake of Harsh Realm‘s cancellation, even if his contributions to that show were a little more uneven.

Kein Ausgang offers an interesting glimpse of what Harsh Realm might have looked like going forward, if Fox had waited more than three episodes to cancel the show.

Shining a light on it...

Shining a light on it…

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Harsh Realm – Inga Fossa (Review)

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

Inga Fossa is a noteworthy episode of Harsh Realm for a number of reasons.

In production terms, it closes out the loose three-episode introduction to the series. The Pilot, Leviathan and Inga Fossa were all written by Chris Carter and served as an introduction to the world and rules of Harsh Realm. Perhaps owing to the relative complexity of the show’s premise, Carter takes a bit of time to lay out and establish the core ideas of the show. It isn’t until the end of Inga Fossa that characters like Thomas Hobbes and Sophie have reached the status quo that will carry them through the rest of the first season.

Game on...

Game on…

However, all of this is ultimately irrelevant. Inga Fossa will always be notable for being the final episode of Harsh Realm to air on Fox. Chris Carter’s new show was infamously cancelled after only three episodes were broadcast. The six episodes that had been produced before cancellation were quietly shuffled off Fox’s 1999 schedule; they eventually aired on FX in mid-2000, to little fanfare. The cancellation was a shocking development. The ratings were spectacularly terrible, but Harsh Realm had been intended to establish Carter as the network’s idea-generating machine.

Something was very wrong.

"You can't $@!# in here, this is the war room!"

“You can’t $@!# in here, this is the war room!”

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Harsh Realm – Leviathan (Review)

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Darren

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

The first three episodes of Harsh Realm are an interesting combination, and not just because they were the only three episodes of the show to air before cancellation.

All three episodes are written by Chris Carter. The first two are directed by Daniel Sackheim. Taken together, they form a loose triptych. They are effectively three separate stories that come together to form a three-part pilot for the show. It is only by the end of Inga Fossa that Thomas Hobbes (and the audience) fully accept the virtual world into which they have been placed, embracing the hero’s journey that lies ahead. It isn’t until Kein Ausgang that the show really offers the audience a sense of how it might work on a weekly basis.

Fading out...

Fading out…

This is not to suggest that the events of The Pilot flow elegantly into Leviathan, nor that the events of Leviathan bleed over into Inga Fossa. All three episodes of television are discreet and individual; foreshadowing the format that the show would take in its relatively brief life. Interestingly, Carter does not take advantage of the show’s video game structure to enforce more rigid serialisation. If anything, most the nine episodes (particularly the back six) are rigidly episodic.

Leviathan is particularly relaxed in its structure. The Pilot offered all the spectacle and exposition necessary to establish Harsh Realm. In contrast, Leviathan is a bit more focused on mood and atmosphere. There is an impressive action sequence to close out the episode, but there is a larger sense that Leviathan is about establishing what day-to-day existence must be like in this virtual world.

General problems...

General problems…

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