one breath | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 2, Episode 8 (“One Breath”)

Posted on December 2, 2016 by Darren

Just a quick link to another recent guest appearance over on The X-Cast, a great X-Files podcast run by the prolific Tony Black.

In my final appearance on the show’s second season, I had the pleasure of an extended conversation with Tony about One Breath. Readers of the blog will know that One Breath is (along with Never Again) one of my absolute favourite episodes of the show, so it was an honour and a privilege to be invited to talk about it on the show. We got to talk about all sorts of fun things, from Mister X’s grouchy demeanour to performative masculinity to just how carefully Walter Skinner sets up his stylish dead drops. Check it out the episode here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: one breath, podcast, x-cast, x-files | Leave a comment »

X-Over: The X-Files & Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Darren

It goes without saying that The X-Files was a massively influential television show. As early as its second season, the show had launched all manner of imitations and copycats, both inside and outside the Fox Network. It seems quite likely that Fox invested two-and-a-half million dollars in the failed Doctor Who relaunch of 1996 in the hopes of spinning off another cult/mainstream science-fiction hit like The X-Files. It was launched as a two-hour television movie, failing to earn the rating necessary to spin it off into a weekly series.

However, although the 1996 telemovie provides an obvious point of intersection between The X-Files and Doctor Who, the influence of The X-Files can perhaps be most keenly felt in Steven Moffat’s work on the relaunched television series. Moffat is credited as the producer who helped the show to “break” America during his second year as showrunner, and he did so in a number of ways. Perhaps the most interesting is that he leaned rather heavily on The X-Files as a point of cultural intersection.

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Filed under: Television, The X-Files | Tagged: a good man goes to war, amy, conspiracy, Darkness Falls, doctor who, Forest of the Dead, nixon, one breath, scully, silence, Silence in the Library, steven moffat, vashda nerada, watergate, x-files | 2 Comments »

The X-Files – One Breath (Review)

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

If there were ever any doubt that The X-Files is fundamentally about faith in the nineties, One Breath should put the matter to rest.

An astounding, moving, staggering and thoughtful piece of work, One Breath not only wraps up the arc that opened the second season, it also provides closure to the themes that writers Glen Morgan and James Wong had been seeding throughout this first stretch of the season. One Breath bookends the meditation on faith that began in Little Green Men and serves as a counterpoint to the paranoia of Blood and the nihilism of 3.

One Breath is a tremendous piece of work, the best episode of the season and one that deserves to be mentioned among the very best the show ever produced.