X-Files & Me

I’ve loved the X-files forever. I was in high school when it premiered, and a friend called me before Season 2 and told me I had to watch it.

I was hooked from the first episode. This was back in the day when TV shows were rebroadcast, and I never knew which episode they were going to show. I watched them all. If they overplayed a particular episode, I watched it every time.

I got in the habit of “collecting” them. I taped them, then re-taped them, putting them in order. We didn’t have a computer at home during my first year of college, so I clumsily used the search function on machines at college to look up episode numbers and names from clues given during the episode.

If it sounds time consuming, it was. But I was obsessed.

I even went to the X-files expo in New York in 1998.

I stopped watching partway through Season 6. I was a senior in college and busy, so I just lost track of it. And my video project stopped too.

When we heard the movie was coming out, in 2008, my husband and I started re-watching the show from the beginning, and I loved it just as much as I had watching it the first time.

There are episodes that leave me with a feeling of “What just happened?” and some plot lines that never quite make sense. (If you think too hard about the alien invasion thing, there’s so much inconsistency with it. Maybe someone else can piece it together, but I’m lost.)

But I still love it. I love Mulder and Scully and their on-screen chemistry. I love how their personalities complement one another, yet their respect for one another is clear. I love the idea of FBI agents investigating weird cases (I also love the Special Crimes Unit series by Kay Hooper. It involves FBI agents with various psychic powers… so good!)

I’m glad that when they decided to resurrect the X-files, they got David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson instead of trying to “reboot” it with different characters. Of course, it probably wouldn’t have worked. Season 9, anyone?

Season 10 last year was a lot of fun. I loved that the story didn’t pick up with Mulder and Scully as if no time had passed. It was clear that they’d had lives that had gone on, that they weren’t static characters, frozen in time. Mitch Pileggi reprised his role as Assistant Director Skinner, and he’d also done some changing, though not as much as Mulder and Scully. Some of his old skepticism was gone, replaced by an open-mindedness from all the things he’d seen with Mulder. It was also clear that he trusted Mulder in a way he hadn’t always in the old series, though it’s clear that Mulder has become more paranoid, trusting no one except Scully. And not always her.

Season 11 premises on January 3, 2018. I can’t wait to tune in! Until then, I’ll just be watching old episodes.

I’ve never actually watched Season 8 or 9. We just finished Season 8, and you know, it was actually pretty good. Our goal is to get through Season 9 before the new season starts. Wish us luck.

Fellow X-files fans… what did you think of the newest season? Will you be tuning into Season 11?

X is for X-Files

X-files is one of the best shows ever made.  I remember that I didn’t start watching it until about Season 4.  My friend kept recommending it to me, and I kept ignoring him.  Once I finally watched it, I was hooked.  This was back in 1997, in the days before box sets, on-demand, and pirated videos on the internet.  Since I’d already missed 3 seasons, I had to watch TV in order to catch up, and it wasn’t like they played them in the correct order.

I taped each episode I watched, and I labeled the video tapes with the episode numbers and names.  I don’t remember how I got this information, since this was in the days before Mother Google showed us the way.  I just remember painstakingly labeling DVDs.

How much different would the X-files be today?  Mulder would have a Twitter feed and a Facebook group of other believers.  He’d have an iPad and would do a lot of research on that.  He’d try to capture videos of all the weird phenomena he saw on his iPhone.  Technology is both a blessing and a curse for today’s writers, because we have to write around all this technology in a logical, believable manner.

The X-files ran from 1993 to 2002.  I didn’t actually watch the last couple of seasons, after Mulder was abducted.  I did watch the X-files: I want to believe, which came out in 2008.  I know many fans of the series weren’t please with it, but I thought it was great.  It didn’t create any new holes in the various story lines that were never resolved in my opinion (black oil, anyone?), and it felt like visiting old friends.  It certainly was easier to follow than the first disastrous movie in 1998.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, they actually do have the entire series online.  Whether you’re a new fan or old, now may be the time to watch!

I want to believe…