David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will reprise their roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for the six-part series. Original creator Chris Carter will be at the helm when production starts this summer.It is not yet known when it will air on TV.
The show, which ran for nine seasons from 1993-2002, saw Mulder and Scully investigate unsolved mysteries and paranormal cases.
More than 200 episodes of the The X-Files were made, making it one of the longest-running sci-fi series in US network TV history. Two feature films were also made – in 1998 and 2008. Carter said: “I think of it as a 13-year commercial break.
“The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories.”
Dana Walden and Gary Newman, of Fox Television Group, said: “We had the privilege of working with Chris on all nine seasons of The X-Files – one of the most rewarding creative experiences of our careers – and we couldn’t be more excited to explore that incredible world with him again.
“The X-Files was not only a seminal show for both the studio and the network, it was a worldwide phenomenon that shaped pop culture – yet remained a true gem for the legions of fans who embraced it from the beginning.
“Few shows on television have drawn such dedicated fans as The X-Files and we’re ecstatic to give them the next thrilling chapter of Mulder and Scully they’ve been waiting for.” (Source: Website, BBC).
The series had two big screen film versions: ‘The X Files Movie’ which took place between season 5 and 6 and a few years after the end of the 9th season, ‘The X Files: I Want To Believe’. Also the show span off into other TV series: Namely; ‘The Lone Gunmen, Millennium and Harsh Realm, all coming from Carter’s ‘TenThirteen’ stable.
It is an interesting time for all 3 of my favourite TV shows. ALL are returning! The X Files, Twin Peaks and Heroes Reborn!!!!
Here is an interesting artlicle, looking back at The X Files (Source: Website, http://www.mikeymo.nl)
‘Over the last few months I’ve revisited a classic TV-Series: The X-Files. No small feat mind you, as this show ran for 9 seasons consisting of a total of 202 episodes and two theatrical movies. Every weekday I watched at least two episodes which still resulted in taking at least five months to watch it all. Over these months I finally caught up with what I missed back in the 90s when this show was on TV and heard enough about it, but never watched it.
For those last few people on this planet who don’t know what this series was about here’s a quick summary: Special Agent Fox Mulder is part of a department of the FBI called the X-Files. X-Files are cases that are deemed unsolvable and as the series showed us this is mostly due to paranormal causes. Mulder is a true believer in the paranormal and hated by most of his fellow co-workers who call him Spooky Mulder. To debunk his work on these files The Bureau assigns him a partner: Medical Doctor and Special Agent Dana Scully, a skeptic who never believes Mulder’s theories when it comes to the weird cases they come upon and always seems to be looking the other way just when ghosts, aliens and monsters present themselves to Mulder, making it standard for her to exclaim “Mulder, you don’t really believe that <insert paranormal activity> is responsible for killing all these people?”. Eventually she does become a believer, but that would take at least 7 seasons and quickly after that a new skeptic agent is introduced just the keep the dynamic the same.
There are two types of X-Files episodes: the general Monster-of-the-week episodes and the Myth-arc episodes. The first are basic standalone episodes which tackle a different case every week, the second are connected episodes about a government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrial life and the abduction of Mulder’s sister Samantha, the latter is his motivation to uncover the conspiracy throughout the entire series. The myth-arc episodes were generally the episodes which would have major events happen to the main characters, like the abduction of Dana in season 2, her cancer, her pregnancy in Season 8 and Mulder’s loss of his believes in season 5. These myth-arc episodes would eventually even create a soap-opera-like storyline around Fox Mulder’s family as his entire family was part of the government conspiracy and he found out his real father was the man behind it all; the Cigarette Smoking Man or Cancer Man as he was nicknamed.
Personally I preferred the standalone episodes over the myth-arc episodes, mostly because it becomes quickly clear that most myth-arc episodes will never give any answers and at the end of an episode all the evidence Mulder has just gathered will be taken from him over and over again. Only in the later seasons will the myth-arc episodes actually receive some conclusion, though when the conspiracy is finally stopped in season 6 a new one pops up a few episodes later.
The monster of the week episodes are mostly self-contained stories and present Mulder and Scully every week with a new lethal threat of which the origins are unknown. The only time I can remember they didn’t wind up chasing after some guy with special powers was in season 2 where they went after Donnie Pfaster who was a “death fetishist” and serial killer who first desecrated corpses and then started murdering prostitutes. Most of the times Mulder and Scully where up against ‘people’ with supernatural powers, mysterious diseases, ghosts, psychics and a lot of mutants. In one episode even the devil shows up…
The first two seasons consisted of mainly episodes that played it straight and took themselves serious despite some really preposterous stories, both seasons have their share of memorable episodes, like season 2’s “Humbug”, but in retrospect I found that it never had a sense of must-see TV. That changed with season 3 which had episodes that had a more lighter approach and some of them which were even very funny. This season had some great episodes like “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”, “Pusher” and “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”. The 3rd season carefully balanced serious episodes with funny ones and the obligatory myth-arcs. This would go on with season 4 and 5, both which were regarded as possibly the best of the series. Season 6 felt drastically different as the production went from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles, California. The episodes shot in Canada had a colder feel to them even when they were mimicking being close to the Mexican border. From season 6 on this changed and a lot of episodes were set in the sun. This took away part of the creepy atmosphere but paved the way for an even lighter approach to The X-Files than just the occasional humorous episode. Though season 6 is generally regarded as the season the started alienating the fans, I found this season to have its fair share of good episodes like “Drive”, “Triangle”, “Dreamland”, “Arcadia”. and “The Rain King” amongst other. Season 7 would be the last season to feature Duchnovny as he would be abducted in the final episode of the season and had Scully become a believer as she no longer could deny the existence of alien life as well as the paranormal since she had to perform an autopsy on an invisible corpse in one episode.
Seasons 8 and 9 saw Duchovny being replaced by Terminator 2’s T-1000 Robert Patrick who played the role of John Doggett. He was introduced in a plot line where he is saddled with the task to find the abducted Mulder but ends up getting assigned to the X-Files and as a new partner to Dana Scully. His job is to do what she did before to Mulder: doubt every crazy explanation she comes up with to which she would generally respond something like “I’ve seen things you can’t imagine…” This is the same woman who was conveniently unconscious when a giant UFO came up out of the ice, flew over her head an disappeared in the ’98 movie. Mulder did have a reoccurring role in the second half of season 8 but would disappear entirely throughout season 9 sans the series finale. The last season also put Scully in a more supporting character position as Agent Monica Reyes would become Doggett’s new partner.
Despite the negativity surrounding the last seasons I still found X-Files to be very watchable up until the very end. The last Monster-of-the-week story featuring Ben from Lost who is able to use telekinesis and to transform his house into that of The Brady Bunch is one I won’t quickly forget. Now matter how weak a season is generally regarded there are gems to be found in every one of them.
With 202 episodes the series is full of guess stars who where nobodies then but since then have had successful careers. The list is long but among the guest stars are Ryan Reynolds, Jack Black, Tea Leoni, Seth Green, Brad Dourif, CCH Pounder, Terry O’Quinn, Giovanni Risibi, Peter Boyle, R. Lee Ermey, Lucy Liu, Luke Wilson, Michael Emerson, David Faustino, Burt Reynolds, Danny Trejo, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Shia LaBeouf, Bruce Campbell, Tony Todd, Bryan Cranston, Tobin Bell, Jane Lynch, Aaron Paul and many more. It’s always fun to watch an episode and see Walter White from Breaking Bad holding Mulder at gun point.
For anyone with a lot of time left on their hands The X-Files is still an entertaining series that holds up fairly well. The only thing I really kept running into was that the episodes never begged me to immediately watch the next one, something which The Shield or Dexter did, but those series tell season wide stories whereas the X-Files is more self contained. It’s not the best series out there, but I do regard it as a classic show with some brilliant episodes’.
1000 FILMS TO WATCH 