The X-files: Savior or Curse?

“I got a hundred stories, and tabloid lies

I got witnesses to what the government denies

So I headed down to Roswell to wait and see…”

            Sheryl Crow, Maybe Angels

One of the more depressing bits of news about the upcoming television season was the announcement by FOX that, based on the success of the 6-episode mini-series last season, they would be bringing back The X-Files.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved The X-Files during its original run, although I did give up on it sometime before the final episode.  It is easily the single greatest science-fiction TV show ever, running longer than any other show (well, Stargate outlived it by one episode, but who cares?) and winning more prominent Emmys than any other ten science fiction TV series combined. Unlike every other science fiction show, including the Star Trek franchise and even the Doctor Who series, The X-Files was taken seriously, winning Emmys in prestigious categories like Best Actress, Best Writing for a Drama, and Best Guest Actor and being nominated annually in the directing and writing categories along with Best Drama.

So why do I find this news of The X-files’ resurrection sad?  Because it is based on last year’s six episode run, which consisted of 3 bad episodes, 2 mediocre episodes, and one that was . . . sort of good.  The brilliant thing about the early seasons of The X-files was a sense of urgency, a demand that a show about alien abductions, secret government projects, prognostication, fat-eating mutants, and killer cockroaches be taken very, very seriously.  The six episodes from last year missed this mark entirely.

I have been reconsidering The X-files since reading an article in a recent Atlantic magazine cover story examining the explosion in people believing strange things, impossible things.  I don’t mean alien abductions; I mean claims that President Obama caused the Great Recession (which started several months before his election) or that he played golf during Hurricane Katrina (which also happened on George W. Bush’s watch). 

The basic thesis of the article was that starting around the 1960’s, we, as a society, started empowering people who believed in UFOs, or Bigfoot, or whatever you call what hippies believed in.  We sort of used to insist that young people believe in things that made sense, like US Steel, fighting Nazis, and baseball.  But then we started letting people believe that UFOs were alien visitors, or that angels watched over people (one can only assume if this is true that they are really crappy at their job, given all the bad things that happen).  We allowed people to embrace their irrational beliefs, and now several decades later people are demanding that not only must they be allowed to believe, but everyone else must believe too.

Did The X-files contribute to this?  The show threw out all these weird theories about the government conspiring with aliens to create alien/human hybrids to facilitate the colonization of Earth (note—even showrunner Chris Carter admits the show’s mythology got away from him after season 5 or 6).  While the show’s denouements were notoriously open-ended, the general message was that you are insane if you didn’t believe in every headline run by the National Enquirer or Breitbart “News.”

On the other hand, there was something refreshing in the relationship between skeptical FBI Agent Dana Scully and believer FBI Agent Fox Mulder, mainly how they actually respected the other person’s beliefs and tried to win the other over through reason and evidence instead of decibels. Okay, I’d love to re-watch the entire series and keep a running total of every time Scully said the equivalent of, “Mulder, that’s nuts!” but overall they respected each other’s beliefs and tried to engage rationally.  People who think Obama was President when Katrina hit cannot be engaged rationally.

Yes, The X-files perpetuated the belief in strange things, but that’s because in the universe of The X-files, strange things occurred.  How could Scully maintain her skepticism after seeing all the bizarre stuff she witnessed as Mulder’s partner?  Frankly, half way through season 2 she should have joined Hare Krishna or the Moonies.

One of the brilliant things Chris Carter did with The X-files was to build in conflict by establishing the skeptic/believer dichotomy at the outset.  One of the problems with the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation was that creator Gene Roddenberry insisted that in the future humans will have eliminated all conflict, and the writers tried in vain to create interesting plots featuring characters who all agreed with each other.  It wasn’t until Roddenberry left as the hands-on producer that the show dropped the idea that there was no conflict among the crew and the show improved in quality immensely.

Was The X-files a harbinger of the fake-news-believing America we live in today, or is it a model of rationality and civility?  I lean towards the latter.  People who believe in conspiracy theories don’t need a TV show to feed their paranoia, but a program with rational people talking rationally can only help make the conversation about climate change more civil.

Unless of course one side embraces irrationality, in which case all bets are off.  I believe The X-files had a positive message of rationality; but then, I’m rational.