x-files | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 7, Episode 11 (“Closure”)

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Darren

The X-Cast is covering the seventh season of The X-Files. It’s an interesting and divisive season of the show, a season that seems to have been intended to serve as the end of the show’s run, but is now closer to the middle of the series’ run. Although the sixth season had wrapped up a lot of the mythology in Two Fathers and One Son, the seventh season still had some tidying up to do. I was thrilled to join Carl Sweeney and Chris Knowles for an episode doing some of that tidying up: Closure.

Samantha Mulder had haunted the show since the very beginning. In The Pilot and Conduit, Samantha’s mysterious disappearance was positioned as the reason for Mulder’s quest. Over the years, in episodes like Colony and End Game or Redux II, Samantha remained pivotal to the show’s central mythology. She was perhaps the biggest remaining plot thread as the show entered its seventh season. Closure is an attempt to wrap up that dangling plot thread, and to provide a satisfying answer once and for all to one of the show’s biggest remaining mysteries.

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

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: cigarette-smoking man, conspiracy, Fox Mulder, mulder, mystery, mythology, podcast, resolution, resolved, Samantha Mulder, the x-cast, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – “Chris Carter’s Harsh Realm”

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Darren

With The X-Cast moving on to coverage of the seventh season of The X-Files, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about Chris Carter’s Harsh Realm, the short-lived series that Carter launched in the wake of Millennium.

Harsh Realm is an oddity. The show was hyped as the next great American television show, developed by Chris Carter under a lucrative production deal with Fox. However, with the arrival of Doug Herzog, the network’s priorities shifted and Harsh Realm was effectively dead on arrival. The result is an interesting and disjointed run of episodes, brimming with potential that is never fully realised. In some ways, Harsh Realm is the forgotten Chris Carter television show, which offers an interesting snapshot of his sensibilities at this moment in time.

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

Continue reading →

Filed under: Harsh Realm, Podcasts! | Tagged: chris carter, harsh realm, podcast, teh x-cast, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Spookies Podcast – “The Legacy of The X-Files”

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Darren

I was thrilled to be invited to join the wonderful Michael and Stephanie Black for an episode of their new podcast, The Spookies Podcast.

It was a fun conversation, in which I got to chat a little bit about the legacy of The X-Files. In particular, we basically speedrun the X-Files filmography of writer John Shiban, who is perhaps the most controversial and divisive of the “classic” writers on the show. It’s an interesting and playful discussion about how the show has aged, some of its blindspots and why it feels so strange to revisit it today.

You can listen directly to the episode below or by clicking here.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: badlaa, john shiban, michael black, podcast, stephanie black, the spookies, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 6, Episode 22 (“Biogenesis”)

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Darren

Coinciding with The X-Files‘ move from Vancouver to Los Angeles, there has also been a shift at The X-Cast. Tony Black is no longer running the show, but it is instead now being run by Sarah Blair, Kurt North and Carl Sweeney. I was thrilled to join Carl to talk about the sixth season finale: Biogenesis.

Following Two Fathers and One Son in the middle of the sixth season, Biogenesis is a very odd season finale for The X-Files. It’s the only season finale that doesn’t have the luxury of hanging on the central mythology and which isn’t designed to serve as a potential finale for the series as a whole. As a result, it’s a very odd episode of television, and offers an interesting prism on the tropes and conventions of The X-Files.

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

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: belief, carl sweeney, chris carter, kurt north, mythology, religion, the x-cast, the x-files, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 5, Episode 14 (“The Red and the Black”)

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Darren

Continuing on from our discussion of Patient X last week, I was thrilled to join the sensational Kurt North on The X-Cast to discuss the second half of my second favourite mythology two-parter, The Red and the Black.

This was a fun and wide-ranging discussion of the two-parter, which really leaned into the sort of goofy epic stuff that I loved about The X-Files at its peak, the sort of free-wheeling “all ideas at the wall” approach to plotting that managed to fold in concepts like an existential “war in heaven” while recycling ideas from Millennium for a blockbuster adventure that seemed to be as interested in setting up Two Fathers and One Son as it was in lining up with the pending release of The X-Files: Fight the Future. There’s an enjoyable ambition to the two-parter, which has largely been missing from the mythology since Talitha Cumi.

As ever, I hope you enjoy. You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: kurt north, mythology, patient x, the red and the black, x-cast, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 5, Episode 13 (“Patient X”)

Posted on February 17, 2020 by Darren

Anybody who has heard me talk about The X-Files knows that Patient X and The Red and the Black are comfortably my second-favourite mythology episodes, behind Nisei and 731. So it was a huge pleasure to be invited on The X-Cast to discuss them with the sensational Kurt North.

I get into it a lot on the podcast itself, but I think a large part of what I love about Patient X and The Red and the Black is that there is so much to it. As a two-parter, it’s the rare X-Files mythology episodes that manages to blend the propulsive blockbuster aesthetic of stories like Colony and End Game with the more existential musings of episodes like Biogenesis, The Sixth Extinction and The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati. It has both big ideas and an epic scope, offering one of the strongest overlaps between The X-Files and Star Wars, which has always been bubbling away in the background as a key influence.

As ever, I hope you enjoy. You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below. Kurt and I will be teaming up again next week to discuss The Red and the Black.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: conspiracy, mythology, patient x, podcast, the x-cast, the x-files, war in heaven, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 5, Episode 8 (“Kitsunegari”)

Posted on January 11, 2020 by Darren

Last year, I was extremely privileged to get to discuss the wonderful Pusher with the sensational Tony Black on The X-Cast. For those who don’t know, Pusher is Tony’s favourite episode ever – and comfortably sits around the edge of my top ten. So no pressure.

As such, it was a delight to get to join Tony for Kitsunegari, the fifth season sequel to Pusher. Outside of the mythology, it was relatively rare for The X-Files to do direct sequels to earlier episodes – even popular ones. Kitsunegari is an entry in a very select club that includes Tooms and Orison. However, it is also an episode with which I’ve had a very complicated relationship. It often feels like a parody of a sequel to Pusher rather than an entirely earnest follow-up, and as such as always felt like it belongs to the fifth season’s broader preoccupations with monstrous progeny as a metaphor for the show’s unexpected evolution and direction. Of course, I’ve always worried that I read too much into it.

As ever, you can make up your own mind. You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: kitsunegari, podcast, pusher, Television, the x-cast, tony black, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Not Another X-Files Podcast Podcast #717 – “all things”

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Darren

Last year, I stopped by Not Another X-Files Podcast Podcast to discuss Vince Gilligan and Rob Bowman’s all-time classic, Drive. So I was thrilled to be invited to join Carolyn and Vanessa to discuss all things.

Positioned towards the tail end of the awkward seventh season of The X-Files, all things is an interesting beast. It is written and directed by series star Gillian Anderson. Unlike Duchovny, Anderson had never really expressed an interest in writing and directing beforehand and hasn’t really embraced that career subsequently. As such, all things is a very strange piece of television, primarily a way for Anderson to explore themes and ideas that were clearly of interest to her.

I’ve always had an awkward relationship with all things. It is not, on its own terms, an especially strong episode. However, it has a strong central vision and an interesting approach to its material, produced with an energy that is largely lacking from the season around it. It’s an oddity in many ways. It is not entirely successful, but it is interesting. It was great to get a chance to hammer it out with Carolyn and Vanessa.

You can check out the podcast here, and past episodes here. Or click the link below.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: all things, buddhism, gillian anderson, moby, new age, scully, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 4, Episode 15 (“Kaddish”)

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Darren

Always a delight to stop by The X-Cast again. This time discussing a (relatively) underrated fourth season installment, Kaddish with the fantastic Russell Hugo.

Kaddish exists at a very weird point in the fourth season of The X-Files. It arrives following a blockbuster run of episodes, including Leonard Betts, Never Again and Memento Mori. Those are big episodes in the context of the show’s larger run the kind of stories that people have very strong opinions about. Kaddish follows those episodes, and so tends to be overlooked. In fact, it explicitly avoids dealing with any of the fallout from those episodes, at least directly. However, on its own terms, it’s a very lyrical and abstract story, a tale that is perhaps more timely now than when it was broadcast, a gothic fairy tale that hints at the big themes of the stories around it: about life, love, mortality, and loss. It’s beautiful in its own intimate way.

As ever, you can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: antisemitism, crown heights, death, golem, hatred, Howard Gordon, kaddish, mortality, racism, the x-files, violence, x-files | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 4, Episode 13 (“Never Again”)

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Darren

I had the pleasure of popping by The X-Cast again, this time to discuss Never Again with the wonderful Deana Ferrer.

Long-time readers of the blog will know (or at least suspect) that Never Again stands out as one of my favourite episodes of The X-Files. Most days, it’s a toss up between that and One Breath. There are a lot of reasons for that, but I think the most obvious is that – as I’ve gotten older – I’ve found myself identifying more with Scully than with Mulder. Scully’s anxieties and uncertainties here, her self-doubt and her insecurity, all resonate with me more and more as I get older. More than any other X-Files episode, I understand the feelings that drive Never Again.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. It is also a fantastically constructed episode of television, an interesting illustration of how continuity is an external construct in long-form narratives, and something that pushes very strongly at certain ideas of what The X-Files is and what The X-Files is about. So it was a pleasure to join Deana to discuss the episode, to break it down and to try to make sense of it all. I know it’s a controversial episode, so I simply hope that we make a relatively coherent argument for it.

As ever, you can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.