The X-Files: Scully’s Journey — An Introduction
On Scully. On Shipping. On legacies and mythologies and acronyms. Oh, my!
Well, it’s finally near. After years of “maybe,” “if a good script…”, “if we’re all free…” teases, we are getting more X-Files in 2016. I kind of despaired of this ever happening again back in 2008. I remember leaving a (nearly empty) midnight showing of X-files: I Want To Believe disappointed and really bummed out that that would be the last XF installment. I wasn’t alone. It was a critical and commercial flop. If it had been an episode, it would have been quickly forgotten. It was just… eh. There was no way a studio would back more X-Files movies, series, even Youtube minisodes after that. 2012 (when aliens were supposed to have colonized the X-Files earth, the perfect time for a revival to finally tie up that convoluted mythos! Possibly!) came and went with nothing.
But then that twenty-year nostalgia cycle coincided with a time when TV is rethinking the 22-episode season and giving event shows and episodic miniseries a chance and we get Mulder and Scully back for six episodes! There’s a trailer and everything!
Hair needs more red, but I’ll take it.
Of course, now I pretty much have no choice but to dive into an overwrought, gif-laden, seasons-spanning series of recaps. Much like my long looks at Parks and Recreation, I’ll be looking at the general arc and plot of each season but focusing on Scully and the other ladies that popped up over our nine seasons and two movies (with a Bechdel check-in, which is possibly doomed to fail, considering how little time Scully spent with anyone but Mulder, woman or man).
Now, this is not Mulder vs. Scully, by any means. I’m just focusing on Scully because we do love our strong ladies here at Legendary Women and Scully might even be our absolute favorite. Back in 2011, we even had an entire month dedicated to Dana Scully and all the ways we felt she and The X-Files changed the way women were presented on TV for the better.
Mulder and Scully are the protagonists, both separately and together, but I’d argue that Scully had the heavier protagonist load, all things considered. After all, Scully’s is the first face we see. Scully is the lens through which we look at these strange happenings and become slowly cajoled into suspending our disbelief. Scully starts as a skeptic on pretty much everything (her religion aside) and becomes a believer. Scully suffers just a wee bit more than Mulder does. Finally, Scully plain old booked more screen time by the end, with Gillian Anderson staying on when David Duchovny left for most of season eight and pretty much all of season nine.
Speaking of that time, it was just too weird, like a birthday party where the guest of honor skipped out and everyone does nothing but talk about when and if he’s coming back. Sure, stuff happens and people might dance or have a good conversation, but is that bastard ever coming back? We want cake! Anyway, we’ll get into that more when we’re up to seasons eight and nine.
I love Mulder and Scully. I love them both separately and together. Speaking of together — God, how I wanted them together! No show drew out the UST like this show. Just warning you: shipper on deck, like hardcore. Couldn’t even pretend to a be noromo if I wanted.
What’s a noromo, you ask? Why, it’s a term us old-timers remember from the dawn of the internet, when the X-files fandom was the first to have a huge presence on newsgroups and message boards and to require its own specialized fanfiction archives. The X-files fandom was huge, kids, and it was split down the middle between noromos, who believed a romance between Mulder and Scully would ruin the show, and shippers, first called relationshippers, who wanted them to make out like teenagers at every opportunity because, damn it, look at them!
Chris Carter never actually intended Mulder and Scully to be romantic. In fact, he fought it at every turn. The problem was, well, their chemistry was rare. And when the show’s mythology became kind of impossible to follow, a large number of viewers shifted their investment to the relationship between Mulder and Scully (romantic or platonic) as the only through-line and I think even the noromos were all…
…at a certain point, their main concern being that it would ruin the story and the story started to eat itself at a certain point. Even Carter threw his hands up and let the shippers have some grudging, badly lit kisses. Of course, shippers had their own division, as I recall, between those who wanted Mulder and Scully to keep their Last Name Basis and those who wanted them to be all “Oh, Fox, this…” and “Dana, that. Oooohhh…” *Ahem* I was obviously neutral on that.
Anyway, noromo isn’t a term that stood the test of time in our cultural lexicon, but shipper has definitely stuck with us through many future fandoms, along with many other terms and acronyms: Myth Arc or mythos to describe a show’s or season’s overarching story, MOTW (shortened from Monster of the Week, first coined in 1963 for The Outer Limits) to describe one-off shows outside the mythos, The Chris Carter Effect — when a mythos becomes so convoluted, people fear it will never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction, and UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension) to describe the series-long tease that was Mulder and Scully’s relationship.
We can also thank X-Files for inspiring shows like Warehouse 13, Supernatural, Fringe, and the relationship dynamics on both Bones and Castle. It also partially inspired Torchwood ( “The X-Files meets This Life”) and Buffy The Vampire Slayer (“My So-Called Life meets The X-Files”). Of course, everything is inspired by something. X-Files itself was inspired by Carter’s love for The Twilight Zone and the short-lived Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
I really can’t wait to delve into this show — -the crazy mythos, the fanlore, the excellent atmosphere and production. I might have a love/hate relationship with the mythos resolution, but (spoiler alert) love wins out in the end because I’ve always been a sucker for character over plot.
I’m planning to post these on Fridays as a salute to the show’s original night, where (fun fact) it remains one of the few shows in TV history to flourish in “the Friday night death slot.” I’m eager to see how I feel with a good thirteen years between now and my first viewing. There are some episodes and arcs I’ve given a second, third, even fourth look through the years, but I never did sit down and give this show a thorough rewatch. Was “she turned into starlight” planned all along? Which season had the best Scully hair? Where the hell is William? Walter Skinner: sexy bald man or the sexiest bald man? These are all hotly debated topics, but I’m told the truth is out there. So join me for definitive answers… or muddled resolutions that come long after you stopped caring. You know what? Either way, I think it’s going to be fun, if slightly broody, ride.
Next up: Season One (part one)
All images from The X-Files are property of 20th Century Fox Television and Ten-Thirteen Productions… and thanks to the efforts of tireless gif-makers all over this fine internet.
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