The X-Files: Paperclip

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

No, you were just taking a chance to bemoan how horrible human beings are. The posters before you merely pointed out, that the name of the character is an odd choice and that it's nice that this is a 3-episode arc being reviewed in a 3-episode review.

That last part was me btw.

[Rocketboy1313]

I am torn on the mythology of the X-Files.

That doesn't make you sound torn at all and are in the camp I'm in, that the X-Files was wonderful being what it was, as a monster of a week show befitting it's Nightstalker inspiration, and the mythology often added little and ultimately was a detractor (and it's prominance in the shows return is why I quickly gave up on it).

You know what, I got so caught up in writing out my detraction I forgot to write the rebuttal that explains what I liked about the mythology that makes me conflicted.

What I do like about the mythology was that it did get really wacky. It takes a lot of chutzpah to write something out with a big narrative scope and have no ultimate answer planned from the beginning and allowing that sort of thing float around in the background gave more weight to the show in general... and if they had wrapped it all up with the first movie, giving a satisfying explanation to everything as best they could then I think I would look back on it with reverence.

That is, I guess, where the conflict comes in. I liked it when they managed to pull it off... I grew to loath it as they just kept pulling and pulling when there was nothing left.

I hated the come back stuff for all of the mythology stuff in it. AND I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOATH THE COLD CASE PRODUCTIONS FROM AUDIBLE, those things are all mythology and just comically bad rehashes of the material to the point of it being crass. That series undoes everything the series did in the most fan-fictiony ways, the Lone Gunman come back having faked their deaths, the Cancer Man comes back as a clone, and Krichech comes back... via time travel. PICK 1 HACKY WAY TO BRING PEOPLE BACK AND HAVE THAT BE THE STORY.

So, yeah, I am conflicted because of what the mythology became, as opposed to what it could have been.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I feel like some of the widespread criticism of the mytharc in its entirety (most fans seem to loathe it at this point) is 20/20 hindsight. We all know that it ultimately had serious problems, but it was churning along pretty nicely at this point in the show's run. They don't necessarily make perfect sense if you examine the plot closely, but they're exciting and generally present good dramatic situations for the heroes to work their way through.

And as Chuck pointed out, these episodes actually do have make some progress, giving the audience some revelations while advancing new mysteries. Fans disagree about when it goes off the rails, but through at least, say, the opening of season four, a character could give a monologue run-down of the story up to that point and it would still make decent sense. My contention has always been that the mid-season six myth episodes provide a resolution that kind of works, but after that it turned to crap and tainted a lot of what came before with constant retcons and the writers literally losing track of what happened. If myth episodes work past season six, it's purely on an emotional level (e.g. the resolution of the Samantha arc).

What's really unforgivable for me is that Carter had years to work this stuff out before doing seasons 10 and 11. At the very least, he could have made choices about what to ignore and what to retcon in order to have a simple, coherent finish to the story. Instead he made things even worse.

[AuRon]

I feel like some of the widespread criticism of the mytharc in its entirety (most fans seem to loathe it at this point) is 20/20 hindsight. We all know that it ultimately had serious problems, but it was churning along pretty nicely at this point in the show's run. They don't necessarily make perfect sense if you examine the plot closely, but they're exciting and generally present good dramatic situations for the heroes to work their way through.

These "mythology" episodes were generally good in the early seasons. Still flawed, but compelling in their own right. Many seem to feel it got noticeably worse after the first movie. It became clear that they were just making stuff up as they went along, and didn't really have an end game in mind. I remember reading that Chris Carter was developing a show for Amazon Prime, and they wanted him to have a series bible. He refused, because he likes to just make it up as he goes. So, Amazon cancelled the project before it even began.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually thought season 8 was the best place to end it. It was actually a good return to form after the previous few seasons focused largely on silly comedy and fantasy stuff. Season 8 brought the emphasis back on mystery and horror. And Robert Patrick as Doggett was actually a good addition to the show. But then season 9 ruined things. Season 8 obviously still left a bunch of things unresolved. But those things were never going to be resolved anyway. The season ended with Mulder and Scully together with their newborn baby, which was probably the best ending this show would ever have. That should have been it.

The main reason people turned against the myth episodes is because nothing was ever really resolved. People probably could have been more forgiving of the "making stuff up as they go" aspect if they had resolved at least some things. That's why a lot of people still seem to have a relatively high opinion of Lost. That show obviously made up a lot of things as it went, but it made at least some effort to have resolutions. It ended after six seasons, and had a real ending. Whether it was a good ending or not is debatable, but it was an ending.

Even when the X-Files did try to resolve something, like Mulder's sister (as mentioned above) it was done badly. They spent years building up that his sister had been abducted, and that she was still alive out there somewhere, or at least survived into adulthood. But then in Closure they say "actually, she was dead all along, she was never abducted by aliens, and she just suddenly turned into a ghost one day". Like Richtofen said, it was well done from an emotional standpoint, but that's all. Of course they even ended up going back on this. In the final episode they say "actually she was abducted by aliens a few times while the government was holding her, before she did". And then in the second movie they imply she might still be alive after all.

I didn't even bother watching the new seasons, since I figured they wouldn't be very good anyway. And from what I've heard about them, that was the right choice.

[Darth Wedgius]

In TVTropes they have "If the fans conclude that the writing team will never resolve its plots, then they will probably stop following the work." It's called The Chris Carter Effect.

[Fianna]

At this point in the series, the mythology was really quite simple:

Aliens regularly abduct people to perform experiments on them. A government conspiracy is helping the aliens cover this up so that they can reverse engineer a bunch of alien technology. That's about all you really need to know; the details of a specific mythology episode are more like side-quests.

A key flaw, I feel, with the mythology episodes is how self-contained they are. No matter what goes down in a mythology episode, once the next monster-of-the-week episode rolls around, it's like none of it ever happened. Despite Mulder & Scully repeatedly antagonizing a murderous government conspiracy, mythology episodes always have to end with them back at their old jobs at a government agency. And despite Mulder's dad and Scully's sister both dying during this three-parter, our heroes will be back to their usual routine next episode with no indication that anything that happened in these episodes had an effect on them.

[FaxModem1]

At this point in the series, the mythology was really quite simple:

Aliens regularly abduct people to perform experiments on them. A government conspiracy is helping the aliens cover this up so that they can reverse engineer a bunch of alien technology. That's about all you really need to know; the details of a specific mythology episode are more like side-quests.

A key flaw, I feel, with the mythology episodes is how self-contained they are. No matter what goes down in a mythology episode, once the next monster-of-the-week episode rolls around, it's like none of it ever happened. Despite Mulder & Scully repeatedly antagonizing a murderous government conspiracy, mythology episodes always have to end with them back at their old jobs at a government agency. And despite Mulder's dad and Scully's sister both dying during this three-parter, our heroes will be back to their usual routine next episode with no indication that anything that happened in these episodes had an effect on them.

Welcome to the cardinal sin of 90s television. No matter how much the storyline of one episode changed the setting, they already have written, filmed, and edited a bunch of stories to pad out the season, so it won't really matter because we have to have something to air this Sunday. See how major events in Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, Hercules, Xena, Stargate SG-1 etc. and X-Files took a backseat so that they could tell a funny story next week. It's why for a lot of those shows, the audeince came for the adventure of the week stuff, not the serial stuff, because in the end, it didn't really matter.

After all, as praised as Deep Space Nine is for it's serial storytelling, you knew Quark was never in serious danger of losing his bar, that Sisko would be in command, and the Federation would still be standing by the end of the episode. Even in the middle of the Dominion War, they had time to play Ocean's 11 to help save their holographic buddy's nightclub.

Stargate's the worst of the bunch with this, I think. The galactic politics that they tried to say mattered never really seemed to, as they could spend the next week encountering some ancient culture or odd aliens, and not have to worry about Ra/Apophis/Hathor/Osiris/Anubis/The Ori's invasion.

[AuRon]

Welcome to the cardinal sin of 90s television. No matter how much the storyline of one episode changed the setting, they already have written, filmed, and edited a bunch of stories to pad out the season, so it won't really matter because we have to have something to air this Sunday. See how major events in Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, Hercules, Xena, Stargate SG-1 etc. and X-Files took a backseat so that they could tell a funny story next week. It's why for a lot of those shows, the audeince came for the adventure of the week stuff, not the serial stuff, because in the end, it didn't really matter.

I can see what you're saying, and you make some good points. But I do feel that combining stand alone stories with serial stories can actually be effective in its own way. Stargate SG-1 had some really good, memorable stand alone stories. 1969, Window of Opportunity, Revisions, 100 days. Stories you wouldn't have been able to tell in a fully serialized format. I actually think some modern shows could benefit from this hybrid format. Like the Marvel Netflix shows. There's the show Jessica Jones, where she's supposed to be a private detective, but is rarely shown doing P.I. stuff because she's so busy dealing with her personal drama. Seems like kind of a waste.

Both formats have their advantages and disadvantages though. There doesn't seem to be a perfect formula.

[Fianna]

Some 90's shows were better at that than others. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had my favorite approach, where it mimics the mythology/monster-of-the-week structure of The X-Files, but the characters' relationships and personal development were more consistently ongoing. If something significant happened to a character one episode, you'd see them dealing with the aftermath of it the next, even if the main plots of the episodes were completely unrelated.

With The X-Files, it often feels like the mythology episodes and the monster-of-the-week episodes are two separate series that happen to have the same lead characters.

[Beastro]

I feel like some of the widespread criticism of the mytharc in its entirety (most fans seem to loathe it at this point) is 20/20 hindsight.

Not for me. All that's happened is age has allowed me the words to explain why I never liked it to begin with, or at the very least, ideas as to why I didn't.

I only watched these mythology episodes as a kid with family, typically when they were new episodes. Rewatching on my own I always skipped them. They always rubbed me the wrong way, even if I never understood why or even thought of them being made up as they went along.

I had the same feeling about Lost. By the 3rd or so seasons I enjoyed it's mythology and questions raised for that sense of wonderful and mystery it evoked. I sensed on a deeper level that that was all to enjoy as the people behind the show could never deliver on it all. How it turned out wasn't surprising, all that was was how bad the answers and their delivery were.

To me the X-Files is a monster of the week show and nothing more. People use that term negatively, but it did it wonderfully than any other show and is good for what it was.

It makes me wish the show had turned into something like the RPG setting Vampire: The Masquerade, where the end of the world is set in stone and is just a few years away from happening, but is never the central focus and is there to establish a foreboding sense of doom to everything done within the setting.

For me, it would have been best to leave the great conspiracy as unwinnable. Mulder and Scully can't stop it, nor can anyone else. Mankind and Earth are doomed, but let's see what freaky stuff comes out of the woodwork as the world plunges into free fall, shall we?

Welcome to the cardinal sin of 90s television. No matter how much the storyline of one episode changed the setting, they already have written, filmed, and edited a bunch of stories to pad out the season, so it won't really matter because we have to have something to air this Sunday. See how major events in Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, Hercules, Xena, Stargate SG-1 etc. and X-Files took a backseat so that they could tell a funny story next week. It's why for a lot of those shows, the audeince came for the adventure of the week stuff, not the serial stuff, because in the end, it didn't really matter.

Looking back, the 90s were the shifting period between older episodic series and the continuity heavy ones we have today. As such it was both and neither and largely suffered from the negatives of both benefiting little from their strengths. Episodic theme seems to have lost its flow as seasonal, or series wide, themes have taken more of a predominance as each episode contributes to them with little room to stand on their own.

Take a look at a show like Game of Thrones ask which episodes really have self-contained ideas to them that don't lend to the great scope of the story? Too often they are a simple step in the wider story that pushes them along without being anything to watch for in and of itself, even if you understand what is in them. The typical reason to do that is to see a cool moment, like a battle or dramatic scene, something I recall rewatching Bablyon 5 series arc episodes for.

After all, as praised as Deep Space Nine is for it's serial storytelling, you knew Quark was never in serious danger of losing his bar, that Sisko would be in command, and the Federation would still be standing by the end of the episode. Even in the middle of the Dominion War, they had time to play Ocean's 11 to help save their holographic buddy's nightclub.

Stargate's the worst of the bunch with this, I think. The galactic politics that they tried to say mattered never really seemed to, as they could spend the next week encountering some ancient culture or odd aliens, and not have to worry about Ra/Apophis/Hathor/Osiris/Anubis/The Ori's invasion.

But that wasn't the point of DS9. In spite of its different take, it was still a Star Trek show, and one very clearly rooted in the 50s/60s episodic theme style that TOS was born into. While they solidified continuity and added season/series arcs, the bread and butter of the show remained the episodic ideas and themes explored.

Stargate lacked that legacy to build upon or be constrained by. It was free to take its own path, but despite taking the modern form of TV story telling further than any other, it remained wedded to the episodic premise when it's soul wasn't that as it was with DS9.

The bigger issue was it didn't know what it ultimately wanted to be, as can be seen with how the people behind it grew sick of the Goa'uld and threw them away not realizing so much of what made the Stargate setting revolved around them. One can see that with how Anubis technically remained a Goa'uld, he was so different he lost the spirit of them as an enemy as well as their appeal.

SG should have remained focus on the war with the System Lords, as it fundamentally established in the pilot that being the central thing to the show. Once that was done away with they scrambled to find stuff before finally providing a resolution TV movie that was, surprise surprise, the death of the final System Lord.

Something similar happened to Farscape as it went from resolving the central issue (Crichton getting back home) to trying to establish a wider theme around the problems of wormholes. That was then resolved in a terrible, and typical way, opened ended fashion which alludes to nuclear weapons: "These are bad and make things unfun. Put the genie back in the bottle and ignore them so we can all enjoy a world without them, please", only they had to contrive a way to worm out of the reason why people were driven to look for and use them, the overwhelming threat of the Scarrans.