The X-Files Season 11 Premiere Review (Hint: It was a Shadow of its Former Self)
So I finally got around to watching the premiere of the second revival of the X-files, known as Season 11, and I have a few thoughts. I was a big fan of the show in the 90s where we religiously watched it first on Friday nights and later on Sunday nights when it became more popular.
I was disappointed with the premiere. Not because of the CSM (Cigarette Smoking Man whose name it turns out is Carl), but because of, well, the pacing, the script, the acting, the alien scenes, etc. I felt it was a shadow of its former self.
There are some reviewers who say that they like the creature-of-the-week episodes and didn’t care for the premiere because it was part of the mythology/history part of X-files. I’m the opposite — while i appreciate the. Reature of the week episodes, I actually like the mythology episodes better because that’s what the show is about — UFOs, government cover-ups, alien abductions, alien plagues, cloning, the syndicate, etc. Also, given more than a passing interest in UFOs myself (see The X-Files Revival, 5 Things You Need to Know about UFOs and Hacking UFO Tech, SETI, and the Boundaries of “Respectable Science” ), I tend to watch these episodes more closely.
If you look at the X-files series premiere (season 1, episode 1), you’ll notice that it starts with, “The following story is inspired by actual documented accounts” and series creator Chris Carter encouraged his actors to not treat the show as “science fiction” and kept an attitude that the “Truth is out there”. I actually met Chris Carter at a “secret space program” conference in San Mateo 2 years ago, and it was interesting how some of the things at the conference ended up in the season 10 re-vivial of the X-Files.
So given all that, you think I would have loved the season 11 opener. Not so — and here are my major problems with the episode:
It was trying to be too dramatic and action-packed, and failed. The central event for Mulder seemed to be a … wait for it …a car chase! Hello, the X-files is best when it is creepy and slow, hinting at things and uncovering things. Not when Mulder is trying to be James Bond driving a sports car being chased by another car, to slam on his brakes and skid the car around. The whole episode felt like an episode of “24” — dramatic music trying to amp up the action in real time. Mulder isn’t at his best when he’s an an action hero — he’s at his best when he’s the sole believer and others doubt what’s going on, or when he’s interacting with Scully (see next point). He also was pretty scruffy for the whole episode and I couldn’t get over how much older he looked! One of the great things about x-files is the courier font labels at the beginning of new scenes. This is usually done in some far away location — like this: “Navajo Reservation, Two Grey Hills, April 9” with a slow shot to set the mood, or with an odd time in the middle of the night. Here’s an example:
Instead, the premier showed us the typewriter font with “7:07 pm” to show us where Mulder was on his dramatic car chase. Basically, this episode didn’t take the time to set the “mood” of X-files for me.
Storyline, storyline, interaction. The things that make X-Files great include storyline and interaction between Mulder and Scully. The storyline of this episode, if there was one, was kind of silly. Scully ends up fainting and having visions of the CSM in South Carolina and Mulder doesn’t totally believe her, then chases the guy to South Carolina to find … well spoiler alert here, but not the CSM. Scully starts off the episode in the hospital, and then while Mulder is doing his car chase, she leaves the hospital, goes back to his office, faints again, then tries to drive, gets into … a car accident! (cars and accidents and chases seemed to have an inordinate amount of importance in this episode!). This leads Scully … back to the hotel room where she started! It seems like they didn’t know what to do with scully in this episode so they had to give her something to do while Mulder was off playing The Fast and The Angry.
Talkie Talkie. There was an intro scene with the Cigarette Smoking Man telling us about his background with the various presidents and footage playing, confirming both his name and the things he’d been involved with. I actually didn’t mind this back-story — it was kind of mysterious and interesting, very X-Files like. It was Mulder’s voice-overs while he was driving, fighting Skinner, and otherwise not acting like Mulder that got annoying. Also, the switching back and forth between “CGB Spender talking to Monica” and the action as if they knew exactly what we had just seen was kind of annoykng too.
It might seem odd that I would complain about “too much talk” and “ too much action” in the same episode but those two pretty much sum up my take on this premiere!
I’m not commenting on the actual mythology at the moment — just the episode itself which was disappointing in many ways, especially after such an intriguing season 10 finale. They did advance the mythology in several ways in this episode, including a scene where there was an actual alien in a flashback which also had something about “The aliens aren’t interested in a warming planet with diminishing natural resources”, which was kind of interesting.
Since Gillian Anderson has said this will be her final season, and most of the remaining episodes this season (except for the last one) will be creature of the week episodes, this means that we won’t get much more on the X-files mythology.
Oh well, perhaps the Truth Will Still Be Out There after this season, and Trust No One May have to be expanded to include the X-files writing staff!
