I loved the X-Files and now it is disappearing. What happened to such a good series? Did the writers lose their interest, or the actors or director or producers? It seems to me it could have been renewed with the proper emphases.
I’m not an X-Files fan, but a buddy of mine who was a MAJOR X-oid complained to me once that the show never recovered after Chris Carter pulled back to do Millennium.
I couldn’t get into either show, other than to watch with the sound off for a couple minutes from time to time to look at Scully.
I heard an interview once with Chris Carter (I think, it may have been someone else closely involved with the production) who said words to the effect of “This show is all about the mystery … if you ever actually see an alien on The X-Files, you’ll know we’ve hit the bottom of the barrel.”
And the first actual aliens were shown in … what? … season 3? 4?
Also, don’t forget the departure of Glen Morgan and James Wong, who wrote most of the good, early episodes.
Well, there’s a school of thought (mine) that says that this is why the show died. If the main characters are never allowed to prove the existence of paranormal phenomena, then every damn episode has the same format – weird things happen and then the weird things go away. I imagine the futility of writing episode after episode like that would wear on one.
A corollary is that you have to maintain wildly contradictory world views: one in which the government conspiracy was so widespread and powerful and the aliens so wily that Mulder could never acquire any tangible proof, while at the same time the conspiracy was so powerless and the aliens so clueless that they could never get Mulder out of their hair and they kept dropping chunks of spaceship all over the place for anyone to find.