without | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 8, Episode 2 (“Without”)

Posted on April 19, 2022 by Darren

The X-Cast is covering the eighth season of The X-Files. This is one of my favourite seasons of television ever, in large part because it’s a season that manages to build a convincing narrative and character arc around a very challenging production reality, and in doing so forced the show itself to evolve and change. I’m thrilled to join Sarah L. Blair for a discussion of the second half of the season premiere.

Without is a very meditative piece of television, which is a bold and interesting choice for the second half of a season premiere. It is essentially an episode about absences, about the lack of resolution or even meaningful linear progress. It’s an episode that is about confronting the reality that The X-Files no longer has one of its two leading characters available to it. What does that version of The X-Files look like? Without is essentially a story about wandering through the desert.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: Arc, doggett, Fox, mulder, Robert Patrick, sarah blair, scully, season, the x-cast, the x-files, without | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch – Episode #83 (Within/Without)

Posted on December 16, 2017 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be a part of The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch, a daily snippet podcast rewatching the entirety of The X-Files between now and the launch of the new season. It is something of a spin-off of The X-Cast, a great X-Files podcast run by the charming Tony Black. Tony has assembled a fantastic array of guests and hosts to go through The X-Files episode-by-episodes. With the new season announced to be starting in early January, Tony’s doing two episodes of the podcast per day, so buckle up. We’re in the home stretch.

You’ll be seeing a lot of me in these final two seasons. I’ve made no secret of my deep abiding love for the eighth season of the show. So I was thrilled to get to discuss the season premier with Tony Black himself, the two-part Within and Without. The eighth season might just be my second-favourite season of the show, and it was a thrill to get to talk so much about it.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: doggett, mulder, the x-cast, the x-files, tony black, within, without | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Without (Review)

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

Taken as a whole, the eighth season of The X-Files is remarkable.

It is not a perfect season of television, by any stretch. The eighth season doesn’t hit as many highs as the fourth, fifth or sixth seasons. As great as Robert Patrick is as John Doggett, and as skilfully as he is introduced, it is impossible to replace the easy dynamic between Mulder and Scully. The actual mythology of the season feels overcrowded and convoluted, with “supersoldiers” feeling a tad cliché and Mulder’s terminal illness going nowhere of note. The season’s recurring motifs of darkness, death and body horror are not for everybody.

I bet David Duchovny really missed working on The X-Files…

At the same time, there is a staggering consistency and reliability to the season. From the outset, the eighth season seems to know what it wants to be and where it wants to go. There is a stronger sense of purpose to the eighth season than to any other season of the show, with the possible exception of the third. Even the lead-up to the release of The X-Files: Fight the Future did not feel this single-minded and focused. In terms of consistency of theme and imagery, this is the closest the show ever came to pulling off a season-long arc.

It is tempting to credit this renewed vigour and energy to the absence of David Duchovny; the search for Mulder provides a solid and compelling hook for the season ahead. However, there is more to it than that. Mulder’s disappearance is a part of it, but the big thematic bow wrapped around the eighth season is Scully’s pregnancy. After all, David Duchovny returns to the show two-thirds of way through the season; it is Scully’s pregnancy that provides the season’s finalé.

“Thank goodness we all wore different ties. That might have been awkward.”

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: 2000, Al Gore, body horror, david duchovny, doggett, george w. bush, gillian anderson, mulder, pregnancy, Robert Patrick, scully, the x-files, themes, within, without, x-files | 2 Comments »

The X-Files – Within (Review)

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Darren

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

What is The X-Files without Mulder? Can it even exist without Mulder?

The show entered its eighth season facing an existential dilemma. David Duchovny had renewed his contract with Fox at the last possible minute, three days before Requiem consigned his character to limbo. However, it was not necessarily the renewal that Fox would have wanted. Duchovny had agreed to reprise the role of Mulder in the eighth season of The X-Files, but only for eleven of the season’s twenty-one episodes. This meant that the character of Mulder could only actually appear in just over half of the season’s episodes.

Eye see…

This was a pretty significant blow to The X-Files. The title of the show referred to the procedural cases investigated by Mulder and Scully, but the series had long abandoned any pretense of focusing on those cases ahead of Mulder and Scully. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson had elevated the characters to pop culture icons, with any pop savvy person capable of easily slipping a reference to Mulder and/or Scully into casual conversation. The chemistry between the two was so strong it forced the global conspiracy to second billing in The X-Files: Fight the Future.

Attempting The X-Files without Mulder (or with “just under fifty percent less Mulder”) was perhaps the most daring and ambitious decision of the show’s entire nine-season run.