How The X-Files changed television

By Keith UhlichFeatures correspondent

Today’s TV landscape was shaped by the long-running supernatural show, which just finished a new miniseries run. Keith Uhlich looks at its impact.

The finale of the six-part revival of The X-Files on US TV closes out another chapter in the paranormal adventures of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. The long-running science fiction series has conditioned viewers to expect the unexpected. The series premiered on 10 September 1993 to little fanfare; the network suits had their hopes up for the Bruce Campbell steampunk western The Adventures of Brisco Country Jr instead. But over time, The X-Files built a sizable audience until, in peak viewing years (around 1998, when the blockbuster feature film The X-Files: Fight the Future was released) it was a bona fide global sensation.

Ratings began to decline after that high point, until it concluded its nine-season run in May 2002 – by which point it was an afterthought for most viewers beyond a cultish few (this writer included). A much more intimate and character-driven second film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, followed in 2008, and had the misfortune to open the week after Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. X-Files fever had dissipated. And it seemed the last glimpse we'd ever have of our intrepid agents would be I Want to Believe's cheeky post-credits dream sequence in which the bathing suit-clad duo waves at the camera while rowing across a tropical ocean.

Expect the unexpected: in April 2015, in large part because of fan demand stoked by the show's new life on streaming platforms, it was announced that The X-Files would make a brief return in early 2016. When the episodes finally began airing this January, both critical and fan reaction were mixed, though the ratings soared to highs rarely seen these days in the streaming and binge-watching era. (At this point, more episodes in the future are a certainty.) Perhaps the biggest surprise of the six new instalments was how, for all the ways in which the show acknowledged that time had passed, it still remained quintessentially itself in terms of structure and approach. And as likely as ever to frustrate, intrigue and inspire because of that.

What's the secret to The X-Files' success? Or, at least, its ability to maintain some long-term hold in the zeitgeist?

The truth is out there

The original series aired during a fascinating transitional period for television. Shows like Miami Vice and Twin Peaks had already laid the foundation for series that were more aesthetically and thematically complex. The X-Files embraced that new freedom – creator Chris Carter often noted that he and his collaborators aimed to make a mini-movie every week, a tall order in a 20-25 episode season – while still utilising plenty of television's tried-and-true techniques.

There was an ongoing story arc, which was something of a novelty at the time. These so-called ‘mythology episodes’, usually timed to sweeps weeks, involved an alien invasion of earth, which spanned all nine seasons and mostly came about because of Anderson's unexpected pregnancy toward the end of season one. These instalments, with their labyrinthine plots and rogues gallery of recurring characters like the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B Davis), anticipated the strict serialisation of the binge-watch era, though the narrative convolutions frequently tended to the nonsensical. This was a high-wire act with a fair share of dramaturgical stumbles, but the valleys were rarely dealbreakers because the plateaus were pleasurable enough, and the peaks were resoundingly high.

Despite the serial elements, the series still frequently hit the pause or reset button so that Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) could investigate, in a number of standalone episodes, some cases in which new monsters were presented from week to week (such as a man-sized flukeworm) that were far removed from any space oddities. In story terms, there's a stop-start sensation to The X-Files that's very much a product of the era before DVRs, Hulu and Amazon series, when there was no guarantee that episodes of a favourite show would be replayed, or that viewers would keep up week to week. The goal was to find a simple formula – one easily distilled to an hour-long chunk with commercials – and stick to it.

The Mulder-Scully dynamic leant itself to this formula. He was the believer, she was the sceptic. Just put those personalities in a strange situation and see what happens. Repeat as needed. What couldn't have been anticipated was the very real and mysterious chemistry between both the characters and the actors who played them. Even when the overarching narrative seems like it's going off the rails or is at a standstill, the Mulder-Scully relationship (and by extension the Duchovny-Anderson kinship) is always developing, always moving forward.

This is one of the great love stories, one where even a sidelong glance or a slight touch feels epochal. Theirs is the kind of magical interplay that happens mainly because of timing and luck. (The show’s unproven creator had to fight to hire Anderson for the pilot.) And it gives a series already preoccupied with mysteries of varying sorts its enigmatic heart – one that a rotating group of writers and directors freely interpreted over the course of more than 200 episodes.

What’s old is new

This is, indeed, what distinguishes The X-Files from almost every other US television series. So many shows are afflicted by a sameness of tone and approach, even more so in the current moment when a single director or TV executive is often viewed, and acts, as a series' guiding force, sublimating the contributions of others. The X-Files was something of a bridge between eras, utilising what came before while developing new narrative and aesthetic approaches that became de rigeur on programmes like Lost or Breaking Bad, the latter of which was created by the X-Files alumnus Vince Gilligan. Carter provided the template, but his creation allowed for a number of other distinctive voices to emerge. The very unevenness of the show's approach eschewed homogeneity.

An episode penned by Gilligan (such as season three's intense psychic-assassin tale titled Pusher) differed tremendously from, say, an installment by Darin Morgan, who wrote five mortifyingly hilarious and astonishingly layered efforts, including the new miniseries' delightful and deep Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, a study of the human condition as viewed from the exasperated perspective of a lizard-man. Then there were frequent directors like Kim Manners, Rob Bowman (who directed the first X-Files movie), David Nutter and Tony Wharmby whose very specific styles helped expand the show's aesthetic template and won them unexpected fans. Perhaps most famously, the great French New Wave director Alain Resnais effusively praised Manners in an interview with the Gallic cinema journal Positif.

Almost every element of The X-Files stands out in some way while still contributing ineffably to the whole. There's the moody beauty of Mark Snow's synth scoring. Or the colourfully noirish cinematography of John S Bartley, who shot seasons one through three, aside from the pilot. Or the inventive guest-casting: depending on the episode, an imposing character actor like JT Walsh and a comic icon like Charles Nelson Reilly could seem equally at home.

Perhaps the boldest choice Carter and company made for the new miniseries was to keep the basics of The X-Files essentially unchanged. There are still serialised elements, though they don't necessarily follow each other from week to week. And the tone of each episode varies wildly by writer or director. Series veterans Glen Morgan, Darin Morgan and James Wong each wrote and directed an episode. Carter did the rest, one of which, Babylon, is a thrillingly bizarre and provocative standalone in which the agents try to get inside the head of a Muslim suicide bomber. (Somehow it also makes room for Mulder line-dancing to Achy Breaky Heart.) The episode is a prime example of how the series remains vital to this day, taking a story of the moment, marrying it to the series' time-tested template, and letting Mulder and Scully, and their ever-tantalising partnership do the rest.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And within that sturdy frame, imagine and invent with abandon.

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