Month: January 2016

When it came time for Chris Carter to write “The Truth,” what was then the X-Files series finale, he must have felt two competing forces in himself. He must have felt compelled to give viewers a finale that revealed the truth, one episode that laid everything out in the open, the entire byzantine architecture of the mythology he had constructed over the years. He also needed to satisfy his own desire, both creative and financial, to keep the finale open-ended in a way that allowed for future story potential. The result was a finale that spent all of its time rehashing the past, while once again opting to kick the can of the alien colonization down the road—way down the road.

I remember the media campaign for the finale promising that the episode will answer every question. The problem is that most questions about the alien conspiracy had been answered for years, namely in “Fight the Future” and “Two Fathers/One Son.” So most of Mulder’s trial in the first hour of “The Truth” is a recap of things we already knew, a clip show. Sure, these answers had never been presented all at once in a sequence of exposition scenes. But were viewers—or even fans—really craving this? Isn’t that what fan pages are for, to research all the details if you are so inclined?

We did learn a few new facts about the mythology, but they are minor details that aren’t that important, nor do they add much to the over-arcing story. For example, Scully tells us that the government learned of Colonization plans from the salvaged “data banks” of the Roswell UFO. Embarrassingly, some information revealed in the trial is simply inaccurate. Spender testifies that the Samantha clone was “part of the cloning experiment done by the conspiracy. She herself died in 1987” by the hands of Smoking Man. The Samantha clone was the product of renegade aliens, not the Syndicate. And the real Samantha disappeared without a trace in 1979, taken by God or some other mystical force, not the Smoking Man.

All of this to say, how could Carter have ended his series differently?

The problem lies in Carter’s approach to writing the mythology, which I characterize as a failure to commit. For all his strengths, one major flaw is his fear of clarity and endings. It is one thing to pepper viewers with intriguing questions and creepy doubts, but eventually there has to be clear answers and closure to some storylines. In the three worst examples, listed below, Carter failed to provide this, in part because he must have been worried that he might not be able to continue the story once he goes on record with those answers. Clarity can be intimidating because once you definitively depict a truth about a plot line or character, this becomes a millstone that you must carry forward. The problem is that when you give into this fear and avoid clarity, you undercut the dramatic impact of your stories.

In contrast, consider how Mathew Wiener of Mad Men describes his approach to writing. He says that each season when planning stories, he always “goes for broke” every season: never hold off on a good story idea for some future season, because that may never come; put it on screen now, and figure out how to top it or add to it next year.

Carter does not follow this approach, and here are three examples that prove The X-Files would have been better if he had:

Mulder and Scully’s Romance:

Their explicit flirtation was strung along from the start of Season 6 with an endless series of teases that got to be pretty annoying by Season 8. Their first kiss—and I believe it was their actual first kiss as characters—did not happen until the very end of Season 8. But even with that, we don’t see them as a couple until the very end of Season 9; and their domesticity is blink-and-you-will-miss-it subtle in the second movie.

Mr. Carter, why not go for broke and fully explore their blossoming romance? Why must it happen off screen? If you are going to put them together, why not use all the narrative tools at your disposal to fold their romance into the dramatic themes of family, faith, love and loss that you have so expertly woven into the tapestry of this show from the beginning? This could have been one of the great TV romances, and we would have known such a richer, more interesting Mulder and Scully than we saw at the end of Season 9.

If your answer is: We can’t show that level of detail about their romance because it would have changed the dynamic of the show—you would be right! Then either don’t put them together, or decide that you want to change the dynamic of the show and go for broke, make it work! But don’t try to have it both ways.

By the way, Gillian Anderson agrees with the idea that the dynamic of the show cannot be sustained with Mulder and Scully as active lovers. In a recent interview during the filming of episode 5 of the new season she said: “Part of what is enticing about the duo is the fact that they are against each other [Laughs.] at the same time they are for each other. It’s just too domestic a scenario to have it being that they live in the same house, and they go home every night to the same house while they’re doing The X-Files during the day. It leaves a much more intriguing and interesting dynamic to have us still maybe be in love and have that spark going, that question mark.”

William’s Origins:

William is the major element of the mythology that closed out the series. It was an incoherent mess from beginning to end. Despite being repeatedly told ad nausea that he is a “miracle child,” we still have no verified truth about how Scully came to be pregnant by him, or why he was so special. After two seasons of speculation, the series finally seemed to land on the explanation that William is a kind of Alien Jesus, a savior who will bring about colonization. But Carter never committed to this explanation. Forget whether or not the Alien Jesus idea is inspired or silly, it is the writer’s job—especially in sci-fi—to make us accept outlandish ideas. I could get behind William as a human-alien baby growing up to lead Colonization as both a mythic and epic story—but the writers have to sell me on it. Carter never tried. In fact, he seemed so eager to get Scully’s baby out of the picture. When William was supposedly cured of his miracle-ness and then given up for adoption in late Season 9, we were still being told that colonization will only happen because of William, and now that the aliens no longer have access to him colonization has been stopped. Yet, three episodes later in “The Truth” we are told that colonization is absolutely going to happen on December 22, 2012, and William is not mentioned at all in relation to this.

Which brings us to…

Alien Colonization of Earth:

Hey, I get If the end game of your mythology is that every human will gestate an alien in their belly and then be ripped open by said alien, and this is how the human race will go extinct and be supplanted on Earth by aliens… it is hard to actually depict this battle on screen without altering your TV show into Independence Day (Remember the gag in “Fight the Future” when Mulder is in an alley behind a bar and pees on an Independence Day poster?).

But if that is where you have set up your mythology to go, you eventually have to go there. You don’t have to have the UFOs blowing up the White House. Maybe colonization is halted, as it was by the rebels for a brief period in Season 6. Maybe Mulder has a sit down with an alien and convinces them to call it off. Or maybe the screen fades to black just before the world ends. Or maybe you do have UFOs blow up the White House. Eventually you have to decide. As a story, by stacking more and more elements and pushing the payoff further away, the mythology falls apart under its own weight, as we saw in Season 8 and 9.

Carter has recently admitted that he wrote a third X-Files film script just so he could know how the mythology plays out. He has also said that the story in that script is too big for TV, and could only be realized as a big budget blockbuster. That may never happen, even if the new season gets good ratings for FOX. The lure of a future film franchise—which must have seemed like such a sure thing after the success of “Fight the Future”—has exacerbated Carter’s commitment issues. He should have used Season 8 and 9 to end the mythology, but he assumed he would get more movies. He should have used the second movie to end it, but he assumed he would get more movies. Now that the show is being resurrected again, Carter probably should have used these 6 episodes to end the mythology, but all indications are that he hasn’t. And now he is dropping hints to 20^th Century Fox that the next film script is ready for filming. I hope it happens, but I’m prepared for the reality that the X-Files may never get a proper finale.

 

For the last time… Implications for Season 10:

On the first two commitment issues, Carter has apparently landed on a firm resolution. Mulder and Scully are no longer a couple, and they are still mourning the loss of their son. While this part of their past isn’t ignored in the new episodes, it is not teased out in new directions with some tantalizing climax kicked down the road.

But with the mythology, not so much. Carter has admitted that the last episode of Season 10 is a mythology show and a big cliffhanger. Concerning, since there is no guarantee there will be a Season 11. When Anderson was asked whether Season 10 is the end of the X-Files, she said this: “From what I hear it’s a good beginning [Laughs.], which I guess in the end can be an equally good ending. You know, if the question mark is so big…”

We may be forced to agree. In the end, a question mark may not be the best way to end this series, but it will likely be the only way Carter will end it.

It is a puzzle that many of the stand-alones of Season 8 and 9 were considerably more entertaining than those of Season 6 and 7, and yet the last two seasons saw ratings decline, long-time fans like me not even giving them a chance, and finally cancelation.

I used to scoff at the quote by Chris Carter from the early 2000s that The X-Files could have continued for another ten years without Mulder and Scully. But after watching Season 8 and 9, I see what he meant. If you doubt that this show still had juice, go watch “Release,” the penultimate stand-alone episode of the series, which contained as much conspiratorial intrigue, paranormal psychology, and emotional punch as any episode. Go watch “Hell Bound” from late Season 9, which was so scary I had to pause Netflix, harkening back to the first X-Files I ever saw, “Squeeze” when I had to walk out my grandparents living room and seek refuge in the kitchen. Watch the finale stand-alone, the sweet send-off “Sunshine Days” and the chemistry between Doggett and Reyes is undeniable.

The writers, directors, and actors pulled out all the stops in these episodes. There is no sense of anyone phoning it in. There is a lot of energy from the beginning of Season 8 until the better end. “Release” in particular could be an early first season episode of its own series.

So what was the problem? Carter’s dream of further seasons died because there was none of that energy in the latter mythology episodes—which is also proof that the mythology is the most essential aspect of the show. Without the mythology, even though most of the other episodes are not serialized with it, the series unravels.

From the Season 7 finale through the end of the series, the mythology episodes were either incoherent, or slapped-together contrivances. Few of them achieved intrigue, thrill, or even melodrama. I can imagine how casual viewers or new viewers watching these as they aired would have had no idea what was even happening in these episodes. I’m a fan who literally studies this show, and I’m not sure what is happening. In Mid-Season 9 there is a two-parter that reveals that Scully’s baby is basically Alien Jesus, but seeing it for the first time last week I missed this reveal. I didn’t understand the episode until I read the teleplay on the Internet and scrutinized bits of dialogue like I was back in one of my English Major courses in college (which was when I stopped watching this show, now that I think about it).

So many “answers” are given off hand in mumbled lines, or put in the mouths of extremely unreliable characters, like all the UFO cultists that pop up in these seasons. (What the hell is a UFO cult anyway? Do these exist anywhere in reality?) Most of the answers we are given are spoken in riddles, lines of dialogue that could have come out of the Oracle of Delphi. The leader of the alien cult tells Scully that William is “a miracle child. A future savior coveted by forces of good and evil.” An FBI agent who infiltrated the cult tells Scully that if William lives “all Mankind will perish from the Earth.” Krycek presumably believed this too, but also contradicted the idea when he told Mulder that the aliens are “afraid of [the child’s] implications. That it is somehow grater than them.”

Well, which is it? And how could either be true? How will William bring about colonization? How is he greater than the aliens? The mythology episodes never tells us.

All we can conclude from this is that the writers are mumbling the answers to us because they don’t really believe in them and are somewhat ashamed of the story corner they painted themselves into. It’s like they are saying, ‘Ok, after dragging this out for a year and a half, Scully’s baby IS Alien Jesus, now can we please move on to our Spring block of stand-alones.’

They also frequently commit the writer’s faux pas of telling instead of showing. The early mythology episodes depicted striking sequences of creepy images and creepier ideas, exciting cliff-hangers, and memorable villains and oddballs. In Season 8 and 9, we were told to believe that Scully’s baby was so important, but all we were shown was that he moved his mobile with his mind. And the more we saw of the super soldiers, the less interesting they became.

Another sign of the decay is that the latter mythology trafficked in glorified cameos of past favorites: Deep Throat; Albert Holstein; Michael Kritschgau; Jeffrey Spender. But these characters were not given anything to do that was nearly as interesting as their original roles. And no new memorable mythology characters were introduced, unless you count Toothpick Man. Toothpick Man!? Please.

In a non-serialized procedural like The X-Files, a strong mythology is essential because it conveys the message that there is more to the show than meets the eye. There is more at stake than the monster of the week. It allows for the regulars to form deep emotional bonds with one another (and the viewers), and it allows the show to develop deeper, more meaningful themes than it could with a string of stand-alones. But to work as narrative, a mythology has to be depicted in personal terms, shown not told. This is why Mulder’s family has multiple connective points to the conspiracy, and to a lesser extent Scully’s family. This is why the shadowy men of Season 1 and 2 were eventually depicted as a Syndicate of Elders by Season 3—another kind of family. The Syndicate put a face on the conspiracy and clarified what it was all about.

So it is no wonder that Smoking Man became so important to the show, and such a pop icon. Remember that smash hit 90s pop song with the lyric: “Watching X-Files with the lights off/ Hope that Smoking Man’s in this one.” I remember that feeling of watching episodes in anticipation that C.S.M would appear in the corner of the frame shrouded in cigarette smoke. It happened so rarely, three or five times a season, but when it did, it was always awesome. I once attended a lecture by William B. Davis and he said that he had to watch every episode because he would find that his character was in episodes that he never filmed a scene for. Some important document would be mysteriously burned, he joked, and the implication was the Smoking Man did it.

The reason we wanted Smoking Man to be in the episodes was not just because he was a classic villain played by an amazing actor. It was because he symbolized so much of what the show was about: the dark forces at work in the world that we cannot see but that pass us on the street; the forces that control the world but will never make it onto the front pages, that appear as obscure stories in a small notice in the back pages; dark forces that commit terrible crimes, but that we just might need in order to save us. The alien conspiracy was akin to an unstoppable God-like reckoning, and the old, white post-WWII men were doing all they could to control the planet’s fate—these are analogies with all manner of interpretations and implications.

The mythology is the bigger story that encompasses all other stories. And if the mythology doesn’t work, then the show will fail no matter how good the stand-alones are. You can probably think of other shows that have struggled getting their mythology right. It makes a big difference for the entire show.

Implications for Season 10: Well, we are getting the mythology back in full force, and with a new, presumably updated twist. I’m excited to see what they will do. The baggage of Season 8 and 9 doesn’t trouble me because, more than anything, those episodes were the product of the headspace of the writers at that time. Carter has had many years to think about how to do this right. And besides, the Smoking Man’s in this one!

The X-Files mythology usually did a good job of setting its ducks in a row before the big season finales. A mystery was built up piece by piece, to be knocked out in an “answers episode,” which either resolved the mystery or spun it off in a new direction.

So how did Chris Carter and his team set up the Season 9 finale? What was this last big mythology two-parter, titled “The Truth,” going to resolve? Considering that the alien-Syndicate conspiracy was completely resolved by Season 6, and its role in Mulder’s family was fully explained by Season 7, where was the new trail of breadcrumbs through Season 8 and 9 leading us?

I am going to withhold editorial comment until later. But it is important to consider the headspace of the writers at this stage in the show’s lifecycle. They knew the show was ending with “The Truth.” Like any series, they certainly must have felt the need to send it off on a positive note that was representative of the entire series. They were also confident that the franchise would continue in films (similar to what Star Trek: TNG had pulled off eight years earlier). But unlike TNG, and unlike the first X-Files film and the Season 5 finale that preceded it, there was no film script and no film deal on the horizon due to Carter’s lawsuit with 20^th Century Fox. And we cannot discount the effect of burnout in the writer’s room. Frank Spotnitz said about Season 7—two years earlier: “There was a pretty strong sentiment inside and outside the show that it was time to call it a day.”

But with this series, hope springs eternal. They made the decision that the finale had to be a mythology episode that was open-ended, with the promise of more to come.

Which brings us back to that episode’s title, “The Truth.” The truth about what? The writers are saddled—I realize that is an editorial term, sorry—with what they gave us in Season 8 and 9. The various mysteries of the last two seasons—if they can be called that—are all the writers have to work with.

Below is a list of the top 3 open questions of The X-Files just before “The Truth” does its job of closing out the series—I mean, closing out Season 9:

• There is a “new conspiracy”—according to the third episode before the finale—that evolved after the Syndicate was destroyed, which involves alien/super soldiers, who are humans transformed into indestructible alien-human facsimiles who have infiltrated the U.S. Government, from the FBI to deep within the ranks of intelligence and national security.
• The alien colonization plan is still underway—despite the rebels attempt to thwart it in Season 6—but they need Scully’s baby, William, to succeed—for reasons that have yet to be explained.
• Mulder is in hiding because his life is in danger. He had to hide because if he stayed with Scully and raised his son, he would raise his son to fight the aliens and not allow William to be their messiah (my phrase—but this connotation is strongly implied in several episodes). In any case, William is no longer carrying whatever special powers would allow him to aid the aliens, and through the anonymity allowed by Wyoming’s closed adoption laws, he is no longer able to be found by all the various forces out to get him.

This is where “The Truth” picks up. I have never seen it, until this week. My editorial comments will follow shortly.