"Mulder, it's me." - The Truth is Back Out There.

I am so, so excited I can't tell you! I LOVE the X-Files. I was totally obsessed with it for years and years.

Although, I'm so over the Samantha storyline. Alive, dead, alien puppet, shallow grave, I don't give a shit. Just give me more Scully, more creepy monsters and keep Carter away from the purple prose and we're golden.

And yes, bring back the Lone Gunmen! And Skinner. It's not X-Files without Skinner.

Ha! Yeah, you're right. It wouldn't be the X-Files without at least one wandering, half-incomprehensible monologue.

I'd like to see Darin Morgan write one of the episodes. And if they can come up with something as gruesomely disturbing as "Home" I shall be absolutely delighted.

Six episodes. We need to prepare a drinking game. "Drink the whole bottle when Scully gets ditched." (You know it's going to happen at least once.)

For me they can just forget the entire mytharc thing. Just give us monsters of the week.

My fave ep of all time was "The Post-Modern Prometheus".

MM

It would be nice if they put a little distance between them again. Near the end it was like they were of one mind, which actually didn't lead to them talking out the problem. Scully questioning his logic forced Mulder to say stuff out loud, which was part of the chemistry.

But that said, I'll still watch whatever they do!

I'm tentatively thrilled.

I cut my writing chops on XF fanfiction along with gaining a husband who sent me a fan letter about said stories...

But I'm leery about CC coming through with good stories. The second movie was a clustermess that shouldn't have made it for a single episode never mind a whole movie. Even though it's only for six episodes I hope it's a strong MOTW theme and less mytharggggh.

And does GA look faboo or what???

I'm thrilled. Personally, I just want a few monster-of-the-week episodes, not too much of the tangled, deep conspiracy stuff to lead off with.

Shows don't exist in a vacuum. Esp cult shows – they are so intertwined with the times in which they are being written and aired that doing a reboot years later, even with all the same actors and writers, seldom strikes the right note.

I hope I'm proved wrong but I'm prepared to be disappointed. Of course, getting to spend some more time with Scully and Mulder not to mention Skinner will still be great fun, even if objectively the shows themselves are a little off.

I'm skeptical.

The mytharc should have ended at season 6.

Though season 7 still had some good monster-of-the-week episodes.

But I'm tentatively holding my breath.

I'm deeply skeptical. Like M. Night Shamalamadingdong, Chris Carter fell into the trap of believing his own hype. So. Much. Wrong. With the movies and the last few seasons.

I love X-Files and hope for the best.

I am SOOOOOOOOO waiting on this!

Not that I've ever been a fan of either GA or DD, but they did work well together and the show was a blast.

I'm also wondering if they'll give some hints or closure to Mulder's sister's disappearance. Or if certain happenings will be revealed. And yes, if they get rid of ANY mention of that rotten second flick, then the world will be better for it. (Loved the first movie, left the theater during the middle of the second flick).

Gotta watch this. One of the best episodes: 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space'.

And now millions of Hunger Games fans will finally realize that Rue's "song" is actually made of the sound cue notes for the X-files. The truth indeed.

One of these days, I think I'll get a fishing boat, and christen it The Truth. Then I'll lend it out so can tell people "The Truth" is out there, and point mysteriously to the water.

I want to believe...

Unfortunately, the more I look at it, the more skeptical I find myself becoming.

First off, as rugcat mentioned, the lightning's out of the bottle; it's not the 90's anymore, and the magical chemistry of time and place and talent and storylines just can't be recreated. Especially after they irretrievably destroyed any hint of logic in their great mytharc with those later seasons. (IMHO, it happened the moment Carter decided to bag the invasion... after that, they had to scramble to come up with another point of the whole thing, and then they stayed on too long and wound up tripping over their own feet. Anyone who claims they can actually make sense of The Truth now has to conveniently omit several episodes' worth of revelations to do it. And this doesn't even count whatever they did in the "10th season" comics... are those canon? Yes? No? Anyone but a true die-hard phile know or care?)

Secondly, this is FOX, home of the rabid right-wing fearmongering birther bigots since Obama's first term (at least.) They always were a little off, but these days, I'm honestly not sure I can bring myself to tune in to the channel at all anymore. The only reason they green-lighted this was to play the nostalgia card in order to lure back viewers: Hey, remember when we used to run good programming? Unfortunately, many in the X-Files original demographic probably do not align with the network's current reputation. (Save the guvmint conspiracy crowd... but The X-Files tried to create an intelligent conspiracy, not ridiculous crud about chem-trails and raw hatred over the elected president. If the scripts measure up to the original run, it'll go right over their heads.)

And thirdly, this really reeks of testing the waters for a reboot... which, frankly, is the only way they'll ever make sense out of the Gordian knot that is the series mytharc. And, given the state of the country today and the stance of the network it's airing on, I'm almost afraid to see what a FOX show will pin on the government Conspiracy this time around...

What I think will happen is this: DD and GA return, probably doing a good job stepping back into their iconic roles because they're competent actors who have good chemistry. There may be a nod to Doggett and Reyes, but only a cameo, because so many of the rabid philes FOX is hoping to attract blame the duo for the show crashing and burning (which isn't fair at all, IMHO, when they really should've been given a spinoff instead of being expected to carry a self-destructing franchise. But I digress...) Likewise, there will be cameos/nods involving Skinner and other series staples, basically there to wave and smile to the audience with a "doesn't this bring back fond memories?" wink. There will be mytharc episodes, which will basically wipe the slate clean and establish Conspiracy 2.0, a new and "improved" version without all the impossible-to-reconcile contradictions and logic holes that appeared in the original series. And there will be a pair of new, younger FBI agents - possibly including William (a.k.a the baby they dropped faster than a hot potato when they couldn't figure out what to really do with him), all grown up now and ready to step into his parents' shoes, possibly without knowing who his real mom and dad are. Depending on audience reactions to the new agents, FOX may or may not order a whole new series, which will only involve DD and GA in cameos, if then. (I could see them killing off Mulder and/or Scully as a catalyst to the new series, especially if Baby William's one of the new-blood agents to pick up the torch.)

And somehow FOX will find a way to blame Obamacare for the aliens.

That said, I expect I may try one or two episodes... more out of fond memories of my days as an X-phile than out of any genuine hope that the magic can be recaptured in 2015.

Cyia said:

And now millions of Hunger Games fans will finally realize that Rue's "song" is actually made of the sound cue notes for the X-files. The truth indeed.

One of these days, I think I'll get a fishing boat, and christen it The Truth. Then I'll lend it out so can tell people "The Truth" is out there, and point mysteriously to the water.

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Really? Most of them will probably scream about how The X-Files is ripping off the hunger games.

I'm definitely excited to see it back and see what they do. The sci-fi/horror angles were a great influence on my writing back then, though I never crossed into the realms of fan fiction.

I think as long as they accept in the new episodes that a lot of time has passed, they'll be off to a good start. Just don't jump back into the new episodes like the last season or movie just ended.

There are a lot of ways this can go wrong. Bringing back Reyes and Dogget isn't one of them. (One of them could run the FBI by now.)

I liked most of the characters they brought in later. My favorite was Leyla Harrison. (Now, that would have been a spin-off I'd have loved to see. Leyla coming across accounting irregularities that keep leading to uncanny mysteries? Writes itself.) Actually, thinking about it, she should be running the FBI now.

Ways it could get wrong: They could give into the Zeitgeist of dragging one case out over six episodes, True Detective style. (Yes, I realize I'm probably alone in hating that kind of stuff.) Unless they really did it True Detective style, interviewing present-day Mulder and Scully about some of the stuff that didn't make sense in the Nineties, in which case I'd accept it as a trade-off.

But, really, I for one want Monsters of the week, embedded in an arc that connects it beck to when the show ended. X-Files was best when they toyed with their own premise, alternating between MOTW and mythology as well as horror and sheer silly fun.

Also problematic: Conspiracy theories aren't as innocent as they used to be, now that Fox News are spouting them. (Not to be confused with Fox's fiction department, btw, although they try real hard.) Unless they have an episode where they're ALL real in an over-the-top, hilarious way, there may be some dangerous territory there.

They could also be TOO careful about all that, which in my book is what was wrong about the second movie. (Which was alright and underrated, but it just wasn't an X-File.)

There is no Morgan without Wong!

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Yes, there is. His name is Darin.

I heard an interview with X-Files Files host Kumail Nanjiani that confirmed they're bringing on a lot of seasoned writers including Darin Morgan. So at least one episode will be worth watching the whole run.

I cut my writing chops on XF fanfiction along with gaining a husband who sent me a fan letter about said stories...

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Okay, forget about the reboot news. This just made my day.

cornflake said:

I meant Morgan and Wong generally cowrote, so I was saying they should write together.

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No, there were two Morgans writing for the X-Files. Glen Morgan usually wrote with Wong, you're right. But younger brother Darin - he of Humbug, Clyde Bruckman, etc. - tended to write alone, IIRC, and he wasn't as prolific.

I was always guaranteed to love a Darin Morgan episode.

It'll be interesting to see what might be done with the characters after the passage of years.

I found the stand-alone episodes good, sometimes great; but the overall mythology was tedious.

But it had one really clever aspect that wasn't often remarked upon -- the show exists in a topsy-turvy mirror-image of our world, in which "skeptics" are people who willfully ignore abundant evidence, and the burden of proof is on the person who doubts an extraordinary claim. (This was laid out in some dialogue early in the show, when the CSM asks Mulder something like "Why, in spite of all the evidence against it [alien contact concealed by a huge conspiracy], do you still believe?", and Mulder says, "Because the evidence is not entirely dissuasive.")

Just make it awesome. Is that too much to ask for?

I'll probably be disappointed, but I want to believe...

I'm guessing

2 mythology episodes
3 monster-of-the-week
1 silly/absurd episode

Just to give people a taste of the whole gamut the show runs, since we've all pretty much agreed this is likely a tease to see how much interest there would be in restarting the show.

I think it would be a mistake to hinge more than two episodes on the mythology, since newer viewers wouldn't be aware of it all. I also think the mythology episodes were better spaced out, unless they were something like a three-part episode, ala Anasazi-The Blessing Way-Paper Clip.