The X Files

[Lost Highway]

I always felt Fringe had the opposite problem of The X-Files. The ongoing storyline was compelling and I wanted it to get back to that during the stand alones, which I found mostly underwhelming.

[domino harvey]

I disagree. Indeed, that's what I love most about Fringe before it started focusing more heavily on its overarching mythology. It's hard for me to watch the X Files now as an adult, as I've grown out of being Fox Mulder and am firmly in the Scully camp (or rather, far past her in the cynic direction). Yet the show doesn't really play it fair, and I'm constantly expected to side with Mulder on the most ridiculous of notions, and accept all manner of silly things. I get that it's part of the show's internal logic, but it no longer works for me. However, Fringe built in defenses to these kind of problems, with each menace the team faced in the first season a direct result of something Walter did in the past, and subsequent "scientific" explanations for every bizarre encounter. Eventually the show branches out, but never in a direction in which my suspension of disbelief was in peril.

[Lost Highway]

I disagree. Indeed, that's what I love most about Fringe before it started focusing more heavily on its overarching mythology. It's hard for me to watch the X Files now as an adult, as I've grown out of being Fox Mulder and am firmly in the Scully camp (or rather, far past her in the cynic direction). Yet the show doesn't really play it fair, and I'm constantly expected to side with Mulder on the most ridiculous of notions, and accept all manner of silly things. I get that it's part of the show's internal logic, but it no longer works for me. However, Fringe built in defenses to these kind of problems, with each menace the team faced in the first season a direct result of something Walter did in the past, and subsequent "scientific" explanations for every bizarre encounter. Eventually the show branches out, but never in a direction in which my suspension of disbelief was in peril.

I should agree with that as I've always been a Scully, but Fringe still never gripped me the way The X-Files did at the time. Fringe may have been a more sophisticated update of the formula but maybe by that point I'd simply grown out supernatural procedurals. Just as with The Omen or The Exorcist I had to accept that heaven and hell are for real, I had to suspend my disbelief for the upside down universe of The X-Files where every crazy theory of Mulder's turned out to be real. If I now find it more difficult to sit through The X-Files, it's because after the many shows of the "new golden age" of TV drama it now looks creaky. That's not counting the odd Darin Morgan episode, which always are genius. Why didn't they just let him write the whole season !

[domino harvey]

On your last point we can most definitely agree! Did anyone watch Tower Prep, Those Who Kill, or Intruders? Can't say any sound like something I want to sit through just to see Darin Morgan's episodes, especially since I don't believe any he wrote for those series are freestanding

[Adam X]

I’m curious to see The Intruders for it being an adaptation of my one of my favourite author’s novels (Michael Marshall (Smith)), but so far that curiosity hasn’t led to hunting it down. Sorry.

As for the whole X-Files vs Fringe discussion, I easily side with the former. It started showing when I was in my late teens, so I guess there’s a nostalgia factor; but I’ve always enjoyed the Mulder/Scully/Skinner(/Doggett) dynamic far more than what the heavily CSI-influenced Fringe provided. Even though by the time the season after the first X-Files film began airing showed that the overarching conspiracy storyline was never going to be resolved, I still found it ultimately more memorable than Fringe. For me the whole hard-edged style full of, on the whole, grating characters, made it hard to become attached to it. It’s main throughline showed real promise but it eventually seemed to collapse under the weight of itself, with the resolution being, for me, quite underwhelming.

With that said, I wouldn’t say Fringe outstayed its welcome, unlike The X-Files from season 9 onwards. I’m not surprised Gillian Anderson announced the current one to be her last; she’s been working on far more interesting & challenging things of late.

[domino harvey]

Ryan Coogler is rebooting the series

[JSC]

I can't think of anything more utterly pointless.

[Mr Sausage]

That was my first thought, but then, this is such a conspiratorial age that The X Files makes a lot of sense. I just wish a more compelling filmmaker was helming it.

[knives]

I’d rather no filmmaker touch it. The best qualities are uniquely television which is just a separate set of skills.

[The Curious Sofa]

At the time and in the wake of Twin Peaks, The X-Files was one of the more cinematic TV series. Admittedly, it's a procedural, but each episode was like a short horror or sci-fi film, often with more style than comparable series.

The X-Files is a concept that can be easily reinvented and has already been copied many times. And I'd rather have Ryan Coogler give this a shot than Jordan Peele, who I find increasinly overrated and whose reboot of The Twilight Zone was a disaster.

[brundlefly]

Himesh Patel, Danielle Deadwyler. For the Station Eleven-heads.

[Monterey Jack]

#MakeNewShit

[The Curious Sofa]

When it comes to TV series, there is new shit all the time. Talking of genre shows, I recently watched Pluribus and The Beauty and I'm now halfway through Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Apple TV in particular releases a lot of highly acclaimed, original science fiction shows. My pick of the bunch is For All Mankind, which has just launched its 5th season.

And old shit doesn't have to be bad, I thought Andor was the best Star Wars iteration so far.