By
Pike on
Thursday November 2, 2017 05:02 pm
I also agree that One Son/Two Fathers was the end of the series in terms of the mythology. I can understand Carter saying that the mythology had become so overly complex that it was time to put an end to it. But new mythologies were created anyway, and still tried to be connected to the main mythology.
To me, that's the proof that any story (and so any tv series) must have a beginning, a middle and an end. You cannot try to milk it forever. We have seen how this translated with "My Struggle" and "My Struggle II". "I have alien DNA, I'm sure of it!", the Spartan virus, the "by looking at Mulder, I know he needs stem-cells from his son!" (audience: whaaaat?!).
Also, I think that the conclusion to the Samantha arc was a complete disaster. Sure, it was very touching to see Samantha being dead and appearing as a ghost. But the all quest of Mulder was into finding his sister. We all remember the Alien Bounty Hunter saying "she is still alive... can you die now?" in the excellent "End Game" (first episode written by Frank Spotnitz).
The show should have ended after five seasons, ideally with something related to Samantha coming back. And maybe Mulder being exchanged, hence the best of all time cliffhanger. Mulder being abducted. The end of the series. For all.
But since season five, we heard about Duchovny, Anderson and Carter renegotiating their contracts all the time. Season 7 was supposed to be the end. And then suddenly Gillian signs for two additional seasons?!
Chris Carter always says that The X-Files is the property of FOX and that they decide what they want to do. In reality, he should have had the guts to simply say "This is the end."
Even today, 25 years after the beginning, Chris always says that The X-Files still has lots of stories in it. But does it? What more can you tell?
If we analyze the new trailer. What can we see? The Cigarette-Smoking Man trying to convince Skinner to work for him for the hundredth time. Mulder and Scully confronting Skinner for the thousandth time. We have already seen two hundred hours of the series. We have seen everything. And courage is about closing something, even though you know it can still produce money.
Sure, maybe it would have been possible to reboot the franchise in an intelligent way. I respected J.J. Abrams for the reboot of Star Wars. This was fresh but still true to the original.
The X-Files season 10 is just taking the same characters and putting them into the same environment. But this isn't true to the characters. And every writer will tell you that, as an author, you need to stay true to your characters. You cannot just dictate where they need to go (i.e. at the FBI at 50+ years old).
If you think about it for a second, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would never ever go back to the FBI together. We could understand Mulder, as this is the only thing he knows and he will always be obsessed by it. But not Scully. Scully would never ever come back to the FBI. There could of course have been a real reason (her son!), but this was never properly managed. At the end of "My Struggle", she says "I don't think there is a choice", but then in episode two they simply investigate on a murder case. This is not true to the characters at all.
So, to go back to the original point. I definitely do think that The X-Files has jumped the shark, but I will always say as well that the show was always carefully produced and I will never say that Chris Carter or the actors do it for the money. I'm sure they are multi-millionaires and do not need to more millions to live well. I'm sure they have a true bond between each others and love reuniting.
To summarize, I think that The X-Files was the victim of its own success. It was such an international phenomenon that of course it continued and continued and continued. I will be the first one to watch the new season, but I don't have high expectations to say the least.
