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Millennium – Pilot (Review)

This February and March, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fourth season of The X-Files and the first season of Millennium.

You think you’re protecting me but you make it worse, Frank. You can’t shut the world out for me. You can’t ask me to pretend that I don’t know what you do.

Everyone pretends. We all make believe. These men I help catch – make us.

We’re raising a daughter, Frank. The real world starts to seep in. You can’t stop it.

I want you to make believe that I can.

Fade to Black...

Fade to Black…

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The X-Files: Season One (Topps) #0 – Pilot (Review)

This February and March, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fourth season of The X-Files and the first season of Millennium.

Given the success of the monthly comic book series, it made sense for Topps to try to capitalise on The X-Files as much as possible. The series was exploding into the mainstream. Chris Carter was launched a second television show, Millennium, to capitalise on the success. Fox were planning to move the series to Sunday nights. There was already talk about a possible movie franchise. This was a great time to be publishing X-Files comics.

Topps had already used the series to sell “digests” packed with unrelated comics, and had published annuals to get a little extra sales revenue into the fiscal year. However, there was a clear desire to publish more X-Files work with more consistency. Ideas began to percolate – Kevin J. Anderson would pen a miniseries based on his Ground Zero novel during the show’s fifth season, for example. The company also decided to publish a series of comic books adapting early episodes of the series.

The truth is out there...

The truth is out there…

The series didn’t properly launch until the following year, with a series of monthly adaptations of first season episodes running from the start of the fifth season through to the month following the release of X-Files: Fight the Future. Conveniently titled Season One, these comics were only cancelled when Topps folded its comic book division – vanishing quite suddenly from the stands, with little warning.

The adaptation of The Pilot was actually released a year earlier than the monthly series – it was re-packaged and re-released once Topps committed to a monthly series of adaptations. As such, it makes for a strange teaser of things to come.

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship...

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship…

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The X-Files – Herrenvolk (Review)

This February and March, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fourth season of The X-Files and the first season of Millennium.

After Talitha Cumi, Herrenvolk cannot help but seem like a little bit of a disappointment.

Towards the end of the episode, the Alien Bounty Hunter hunts down Jeremiah Smith. Mulder begs for mercy, but the Bounty Hunter will hear nothing of it. “He shows you pieces, but tells you nothing of the whole,” the Bounty Hunter remarks to Mulder. It feels like that sentiment encapsulates Herrenvolk in a nutshell. Mulder goes on the run with Jeremiah Smith and sees a collection of vague but compelling things that may or may not tie into colonisation.

"Now you're thinking, 'I hope that's shepherd's pie in my knickers!'"

“Now you’re thinking, ‘I hope that’s shepherd’s pie in my knickers!'”

Like a lot of the mythology in the fourth and fifth seasons, it feels like a holding pattern. Talitha Cumi was surprisingly candid in its revelations. The aliens were plotting to colonise Earth in collaboration with the human conspirators. The date had been set, the plot was in motion. That was a pretty big bombshell, confirmed in unequivocal terms. It was arguably the clearest and most transparent that the conspiracy arc would ever be. There was a clear goal, a deadline, and a sense of purpose.

Almost immediately, Herrenvolk works to muddy the water. It stalls, it procrastinates, it delays, it evades. It is a plot structured around a collection of ominous conspiracy buzz words (DNA, smallpox, colonies, clones) without a clear purpose or objective.

A bloody mess...

A bloody mess…

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The X-Files – Season 3 (Review)

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

The second season of The X-Files was quite experimental in nature. Not all of that experimentation was intentional or planned, but the second season worked quite hard to demonstrate what the show could do. Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy forced the show to plot a relatively long-form arc, with Scully getting abducted and the X-files remaining closed for the first six episodes of the season. In essence, Anderson’s absence forced the show to embrace serialisation.

Other second-season experiments seemed more relaxed. The show discovered that big two-part mythology episodes did well during sweeps. Die Hand Die Verletzt and Humbug proved that the series could do comedy. David Nutter, Rob Bowman and Kim Manners became the show’s go-to directors. The show’s alien conspiracy arc became a recurring thread rather than a subset of the monsters of the week. There was a lot learnt during that second season.

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The third season of The X-Files feels a lot more relaxed, and a lot more comfortable. The third season seems to be largely about reinforcing the lessons learned during the second season. The third season gives more work to writers, directors and actors who made an impression during the second season. It works hard to solidify the concept of The X-Files. It seems like Chris Carter and his collaborators have finally figured out exactly what The X-Files should be, and are delivering it consistently.

The result is one of the most impressive seasons of television produced in the nineties, beginning a hot streak for the show. Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen would manage to produce three consistently fantastic seasons of television between September 1995 and May 1998. The third season of The X-Files really gets that ball rolling in a very profound and meaningful sense.

xfiles-josechungsfromouterspace5 Continue reading

The X-Files – Talitha Cumi (Review)

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Talitha Cumi is a staggeringly confident piece of television, the kind of episode casually produced by a show at (or approaching) the top of its game.

It is interesting just how much this season finalé seems to promise business as usual. It is perhaps the least radical of the show’s season-ending cliffhangers, with the third season closing on an immediate rather than a conceptual threat to our leads and to The X-Files as a show. The Erlenmeyer Flask ended with the death of Deep Throat and the closing of the X-files. Anasazi ended with Mulder being burnt alive in a boxcar filled with alien bodies. Gethsemane ups the ante further.

A stab in the dark...

A stab in the dark…

In contrast, Talitha Cumi ends with the Alien Bounty Hunter walking towards Mulder and Scully in a rather menacing fashion. It is very effective television – and a solidly suspenseful cliffhanger – but it also feels rather low-key when compared to other season-ending episodes. Talitha Cumi feels like a pretty effective hook, rather than a game-changer. There’s an immediacy to the cliffhanger, but nothing that threatens to upend the show as a whole.

Then again, one suspects that is entirely the point. The third season has been largely about consolidation of The X-Files. It makes sense that it wouldn’t throw everything up into the air at the end of the season.

It's been a long year...

It’s been a long year…

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The X-Files (Topps) #15-16 – Home of the Brave (Review)

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

And so, we approach the end of an era.

The end of the third season of The X-Files brought down the curtain in a number of different ways. It was the last season of The X-Files to air beginning-to-end on Friday nights, turning it into a truly global phenomenon. It was the last season to air before Chris Carter launched Millennium and the last season broadcast before the show began to focus on The X-Files: Fight the Future; perhaps making it the last season of the show to have Chris Carter’s completely undivided attention for quite some time.

This is the end...

This is the end…

Amid all these changes, the shifting of the creative team on the tie-in comic book is not the biggest change taking place, but it contributes to a larger sense that The X-Files is changing. Writer Stefan Patrucha and artist Charles Adlard had worked on The X-Files since Topps launched the comic. On top of their sixteen issues of the regular series, the duo had worked on an annual, two digests and a variety of short (and special) stories during their tenure.

It is very strange to see the pair departing, because their work on X-Files tie-in comic book ranks as one of the most consistently interesting tie-ins published in mainstream comics.

Don't go into the light...

Don’t go into the light…

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The X-Files – Pusher (Review)

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Pusher is perhaps one of the most effective stand-alone “monster of the week” stories that the show ever did.

It is no wonder that the episode is frequently cited among the best episodes of The X-Files ever produced, but it is telling that it was identified by Slate as the perfect “gateway” episode of the show. If you want to give someone a taste of The X-Files without burdening them with continuity or back story, this is a good choice. It may not be the best episode that Vince Gilligan ever wrote, and it may not even be the best episode of the third season, but it is one the strongest demonstrations of what the show does on a weekly basis.

Mano a mano...

Mano a mano…

Pusher is the first episode that Vince Gilligan wrote after joining The X-Files writing staff. It is the only episode credited to Gilligan in the show’s third season. He had been offered a position on staff after turning in Soft Light at the end of the second season, but had hesitated before accepting the job. When he did accept the job, he came down with a dose of infectious mononucleosis. As a result, Gilligan only wrote one script for the third season, despite becoming one of the show’s most prolific writers.

Pusher is a pulpy delight, a spectacularly constructed standalone that perhaps points the way to Gilligan’s later work.

Gift of the gab...

Gift of the gab…

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The X-Files – Grotesque (Review)

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Grotesque is probably Howard Gordon’s strongest script for The X-Files.

F. Emasculata had demonstrated that Howard Gordon and Chris Carter worked very well together as a writing team. Carter was very good at big philosophical concepts, while Gordon was very adept at structuring a plot. Gordon knows how to build momentum and suspense, and his best scripts benefit from that particular talent. It helps that Gordon and Carter are probably the writers with the best understanding of Mulder as a character at this point in the show’s run.

Here there be monsters...

Here there be monsters…

Grotesque is an intriguing episode, particularly when examined in the context of the third season. The first and second season of The X-Files had been rather experimental in nature – the show tried to figure out what worked and what didn’t. The third season built off the successes of those earlier seasons. The idea seemed to be that the show would do more of what had worked, only better. So there were more two-part mythology episodes, more grounded stories, more comedy.

Grotesque is fascinating because it draws as much from earlier stories that didn’t work, using the lessons that the show had learned in the years since in order to make them work this time around.

Face-off...

Face-off…

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‘Ship Shape or Ex-Files? Mulder, Scully and Paranormal Romance

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

It is very hard to talk about The X-Files without talking about the relationship between Mulder and Scully.

This goes without saying. After all, David Duchovny was a regular for seven years of the show, making a few appearances across the final seasons. Gillian Anderson was in the primary cast for all nine seasons. Both movies have centred around the characters. The recent comic book “Season Ten” returns to the classic Mulder and Scully dynamic. It is impossible to imagine The X-Files without Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

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Given how frequently the possibility of a revival comes up, one suspects that the biggest problem with potentially rebooting or relaunching the series is the fact that it would be impossible to book Duchovny and Anderson for twenty-odd episodes in a given year. Surely some enthusiastic executive has pitched a new X-Files show (“the neXt files”, perhaps?), only to have the idea shot down because it fails to consider how big a deal Mulder and Scully are to the show.

Indeed, given how important Mulder and Scully are to the show, it seems inevitable the discussion would turn towards the possibility of a romantic relationship between the two. They are two very attractive straight people of opposite genders with great chemistry. Romance seems all but assured between the two. Of course the possibility of a romance between Mulder and Scully became a fault line in X-Files fandom.

xfiles-endgame3

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The X-Files – Syzygy (Review)

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

On original broadcast, Syzygy and War of the Coprophages were separated by three weeks, airing either end of January.

That probably helps to make Syzygy seem like less of a disappointing retread on initial broadcast, but it doesn’t help on modern binge re-watches. Even allowing for the three weeks between the episodes, Syzygy was always going to suffer in comparison its direct predecessor. If War of the Coprophages was Darin Morgan affectionately mimicking Chris Carter’s style, then Syzygy feels like Carter’s attempt to write a script in a voice quite close to that of Darin Morgan.

The horny beast...

The horny beast…

Structurally, the third season is constructed quite cleverly – and Syzygy is a massive part of that. The third season seems to fold in on itself, which means it makes sense for Syzygy to serve as a fun house mirror War of the Coprophages from a purely structural perspective. The problem is that this decision adds a lot to the third season of the whole while undermining Syzygy itself. It feels like an unsatisfactory decision.

However, even divorced from context, Syzygy is still a mess of an episode. Carter would go on to provide some of the show’s most comedic hours in later seasons, and Syzygy marks a starting point of that trend. It is not an auspicious beginning.

Reading the signs...

Reading the signs…

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