I saw Mulder and Scully today. It was like catching up with old friends. Not that I haven’t seen them in the six years since The X-Files went off the air. I still watch my dvds fairly often. But it was fun to see where they were six years later. I won’t analyze the just-released movie for fear of spoilers. But watching it made me think back to my first acquaintance with a series that had and still has a great influence on me as a writer.
I can’t remember the first X-Files episode I saw. My friend jim (who helped design this website) was into the show, and we’d watch it in syndication when he visited or we traveled together. I remember a couple of nights moving our dinner reservations later so we could finish watching an episode. I came back from one trip hopelessly confused about the story (I’d seen half of “Dreamland” and half of another two-parter) but hooked on the characters. The paranormal and aliens don’t particularly interest me. But Mulder and Scully fascinated me. I wanted to know more about them, the secrets they had yet to uncover themselves, their complicated, changing relationship (at this point the show was in season six in real time, so their relationship was definitely changing). I started watching the new episodes as they aired and catching up on the old episodes in syndication (which meant the order was all over the map).
Though on the surface, the modern day FBI and alien abductions couldn’t seem father from Regency Britain, there’s a lot of The X-Files in the Charles & Mélanie books. The intricate, multilayered conspiracies, the secrets of the older generation, the couple who express their emotions in a sort of code. I learned a lot watching the show about the Chris Carter school of telling a love story–cut way back and a twining of fingers, a brush of lips to a forehead, a statement like “I won’t risk losing you,” has intense resonance.
In addition to the over all influence the series had on me, there are conscious X-Files reference in the books as a sort of homage. Lines like “The old instinct to trust no one” (Beneath a Silent Moon), Mélanie saying “I’m fine,” (Secrets of a Lady), the motto on the Fraser family crest, “Veritas est Alicubi,” which was as close as I could get to a period Latin version of “The truth is out there.”
Did you see The X-Files movie this weekend or are you planning to see it? Are there other television shows you’ve discovered late in their run and caught up on in syndication? If you like The X-Files, what are your favorite episodes? Writers, are there television shows that have influenced your own writing?
In honor the The X-Files, this week’s Fraser Correspondence addition is letter from Charles to Mélanie questioning the nature of truth 
.
July 28, 2008 at 8:43 am
Yes, I loved the X-Files, for a time (sorry, I seem to be stalking your blog, don’t I?) I can’t remember which episode I saw first, but it was close to the beginning – I used to buy the videos (videos!), and beg friends to tape the new series on satellite for me. Totally hooked. And I cottoned onto the strong UST between Mulder and Scully immediately – it’s as you say, friendly gestures that reveal so much more. I stopped watching long before anything developed between them – in fact, what *has* happened? – but I loved how they seemed to be two solitary, vulnerable figures (Mulder is his basement office) slowly turning to each other and relying on each other. I watched the first film, but have moved on since then.
July 28, 2008 at 3:42 pm
It’s great to have you comment, Sarah! It’s a bit disheartening to put up a new post and then have no one comment, so it’s lovely to have you visit the blog and leave comments.
I had videos too, before dvds, and I taped all the episodes I didn’t have on video. I too loved the lonely, vulnerable finding each other and the strength of the bond between them.
As to what’s happened between them, they became lovers sometime (it was handled subtly and the timing is open to debate) in season seven. Scully had their baby at the end of season eight. In season 9 she gave the baby up for adoption to keep him safe (a storyline I never thought worked). Season 9 ended up with them on the run together. In the movie
(spoilers in case anyone really doesn’t want to know anything about the movie)
they’re living together. I had mixed feelings about some aspects of the movie (notably the villain), but I thought the way their relationship had evolved was lovely and organic the story.
July 29, 2008 at 2:00 am
Unfortunately, I’ve never seen an episode of “X Files” so can’t comment. The series I did watch because I thought the writing was so wonderful was “Homicide: Life on the Street”. Plus it had Andre Braugher, who was totally awesome (I know that sounds like a teenager gushing, but I don’t know quite how else to put it). Part of the fun of living in DC while Homicide was on was that it took place in Baltimore, so I’d sometimes see one or more of the actors, either in Real Life (the actor who played one of the major villains lived in my neighborhood) or in a local stage production. But, while I’ve liked other series since, it’s been a long time since I was so addicted to a TV show as I was then.
July 29, 2008 at 3:49 am
Thanks so much for posting, Susan! I saw “Homicide” once or twice and thought it was very well done but never got hooked on it (probably because with scheudling I didn’t watch it enough). nd “totally awesome” sounds like precisely the right way to put it
. Isn’t “The Wire” also set in Baltimore? That’s another show I keep hearing wonderful things about. “The X-Files” is set in D.C. (though Mulder and Scully traveled round the country on various cases), but it was filmed first in Vancouver (where the new movie was filmed) and then in L.A.
I think it’s fascinating whihc tv shows we come addicted to. The main ones I’ve been completely obsessed with through the years (the ones I’ve taped, read spoilers about, the ones that I think couldn’t help but influence me as a writer) are “Hill Street Blues,” “The X-Files,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” (and “Firefly” too if it had lasted longer), and “Sex and hte City.” Hard to find a common denominator except that the acting and writing, and I really cared about the characters in all of them (they all had good relationship arcs).
July 29, 2008 at 4:30 am
p.s.
And “Alias,” despite my intense frustration with the ending. There are several tv shows I watch now, but none I’m as into as any of these.
August 6, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I loved the new movie dearly. The investigation was secondary; I liked that the movie was about Mulder and Scully and the home that they’d built together and they love they share, two people with nothing but each other in the fight against the future. Carving their little slice of happiness out of tragedy. It was such a beautiful movie. “The truth is out there,” but the movie was about the truths within: faith, conscience, hope, and love in the face of darkness and doubt. Wow. Loved it.
August 8, 2008 at 5:12 am
Thanks for posting, John! I had a number of problems with the mystery–the villains, their motivation–and I thought some of the Mulder/Scully conflict was forced, but I loved the glimpse of Mulder and Scully having built a home together, in a way that seemed very organic to the original series. Watching the evolution of their relationship has always been my favorite thing about “The X-Files.”