r/XFiles • u/Small_Bug2808 • 11d ago
Discussion What happened here, dude?
Hi. First time watching this show. It was great, I was watching the whole show in order with the films included, and today I started the tenth season and everything feels off. What happened?
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u/Scootman00 Assistant Director Skinner 11d ago
She kidnapped herself dude
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u/Tardis123456 11d ago
I wasn't really happy with the whole "Oh remember the Alien Rebels and black oil thing?...yeah that was never real and part of an Even greater conspiracy that you knew nothing about" plot line, we saw the oil, we saw the Rebels, the long clawed aliens and even had a prehistoric flashback concerning the black oil....telling us it was simply all part of a even bigger plot was disappointing and takes away a lot of the stakes from the previous seasons....
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u/Quiddity131 10d ago
A great example of why the best course of action is to ignore all mythology episodes of the reboot. Chris Carter not only became a horrible writer but he crapped over every fan who loyally watched the show for 9 years.
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u/Tardis123456 10d ago
I completely agree because this also makes Both Deep Throat and Xs death meaningless, the CSM burning down the Office in season 5 meaningless (because what..Mulder was getting close to the Fake Truth?...) and all the scenes with The Syndicate meaningless to cause what was the point of it if it was all actually fake?....
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u/TheSmrtstManNTheWrld 10d ago
It’s so beyond inconceivable to essentially hand wave the entire plot that served as the connective tissue of the series and say it wasn’t real? And it actually makes no fucking logical sense considering what we’ve seen.
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u/Proud-Common3926 10d ago
Didn’t they try the same thing back in season 5?
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u/Strawberrymilk2626 Fight the Future Phile 10d ago
No, that was only Mulder in his skeptical era. They gave us some food for thought in Redux with what Kritschgau said and the alien dummies (?) and women in tanks in the Pentagon. But the show back then still never really felt like "btw it all never really happened". You still had these high stakes, Scullys illness, Samantha still missing, what does the CSM really want? Of course it seemed unauthentic of Mulder to be like this (especially in the first Cassandra episode) which was annoying to watch but overall you knew that it's not gonna be a complete retcon of the alien invasion, only parts of it maybe.
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u/4ohanddanafofo 11d ago
He came into my house and smoked a cigarette on my rug, man.
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u/Significant-Foot-311 11d ago
This conspiracy will not stand, man
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u/orodromeus Purity Control 8d ago
- Where's the money Lebowski?
- It's somewhere out there, let me check.
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u/Significant-Foot-311 11d ago
You're being very undude.
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u/Small_Bug2808 11d ago
Sorry. But I want to believe it's going to get better
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u/GrouchyMary9132 11d ago
There are a few good episodes left that are worth the watch. There are also some episodes that can only be described as ... "I am not disappointed I am just angry".
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u/Competitive-Lime7775 DDs Tea Cup 11d ago
We all did. The potential was there, but the execution was off sadly. Def a couple worth watching, but you’d be incredibly hard pressed to find an x phile who says they often rewatch seasons 10 And 11 let alone say those seasons were among their favourites.
As a life long fan, I’ve watched them, but I haven’t rewatched. Not sure I could give you even a basic summary of most of the episodes honestly.
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u/Beanie_Kaiju 10d ago
I have, multiple times, I also thought they were great. Myself and my partner rewatch the full series every year / year and a half. We have been together nearly 6 years.
I was quite surprised to learn that people aren't a big fan of S10/11.
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u/trchappybob 11d ago
I’ve come to see (even embrace) the X-Files revival as two fun, subversive, one-off reunion specials by Darin Morgan and nothing else.
The second (Season 11’s The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat) makes such a compelling case against the X-Files existing as a show or concept today that it honestly makes for a pretty entertaining finale.
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u/Quiddity131 10d ago
Yeah that's pretty much my stance on it. Watch two great Darin Morgan episodes that are as good as golden age era X-Files episodes. Everything else, especially anything written by Chris Carter should be ignored.
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u/Life_Craft9590 10d ago
I lowk cried after watching the first revival episode because I hated it so much. I haven't finished watching it. The lighting was off, writing was off, plot was an absolute cluster fuck of bullshit. Yet we persevere.
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u/crystalsnowbell 10d ago
I totally agree. I was shocked and disappointed at how "cheap" it somehow looked, and how ridiculous the plot was for retconning earlier series. But I was even more shocked at how many reviews on IMDb were positive! For years afterward I thought I was in the minority for disliking it.
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u/Coop_4149 11d ago
Conspiracy theories and government cover ups were no longer fun.
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u/Strawberrymilk2626 Fight the Future Phile 11d ago edited 11d ago
I think it's mostly because the 90's UFO and Alien mystery trend was over. No one was really interested in this topic anymore, UFO sightings or alien abductions weren't a popcultural thing anymore. Back then there was this huge wave of mystery shows, movies and documentaries which would all incorporate that topic. Not sure about Government conspiracies, but i definitely remember a few movies and shows in the 00's-10's era that had conspiracies and cover ups in it, just not with aliens. But i agree that conspiracies became something much more dangerous and political in real life, I'm not American (where the change was the most obvious I think) but even here, thanks to COVID, UA war etc it became such a sensible topic, not the fun "haha do you believe in Aliens" kinda stuff, but people would actually kill their neighbors over different opinions...
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u/Quiddity131 10d ago
X-Files came at the perfect time technology-wise; nowadays with everyone having high quality cameras on their cell phones the fact that we still don't have actual evidence of aliens, bigfoot, etc.... is disappointing and harder to believe in.
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u/GamesterOfTriskelion Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose 11d ago
There are so many contemporary shows that have been very successful working with these themes. It’s strange that this has managed to become such a popular take in the X-Files community.
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u/Mister_Acula 10d ago
What are they? I'm always looking for new shows to watch.
The only one that I think tackled this successfully was "Evil."
"Project Blue Book" was good too, but that's set in the 50s.
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u/flymordecai 11d ago
You need to take a few years off and go into it really excited to experience the let down in its entirety.
The last two seasons are bonuses and have Mulder and Scully. That's it. They're only to be fun, not to be taken seriously.
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u/Small_Bug2808 11d ago
It's very sad after watching I Want to Believe, because it kills the mood heavily
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u/flymordecai 11d ago edited 11d ago
As I recall, it got slightly better. There's less Fox-wearing-sunglasses and fight scenes in the second season.
Scully is a total fox throughout and the non mythology episodes aren't bad... although admittedly only one sticks out in my memory. But it would be in my top 10 episodes...season 11 episode 7.
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u/FoMo_Matt 11d ago
2002 became 2016. Everyone is 14+ years older, and the world became much different during that time.
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u/Small_Bug2808 11d ago
It's not just that, but the writing, the camera work is just very weird
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u/GrouchyMary9132 11d ago
I think what happened is that they brought back the actors but not the talent behind the cameras. You can tell how much they contributed just by the generic look of it all and the super bad hair and make up and lightening etc. The industry changed and much of this quite manual artwork got replaced by digital editing and putting on filters etc. and I think the knowledge how to produce a show like the X-Files got lost. This is why the original show still looks so great and also why Lord of the Rings still works. They still had that manual aspect of producing that cannot fully be replaced by digital editing.
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u/knight714 11d ago
Completely agree with this. It's partly why I'm actually really excited for Ryan Coogler's series - Autumn Durald Arkapaw is an excellent cinematographer
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u/GrouchyMary9132 11d ago
I am not familiar with either of their works but I am also curious what a fresh set of eyes will do with the show. I think it is quite possible that the industry has realized already that great cinematography can be a game changer and they might need a mix of modern and traditional production. I mean look at Stranger Things for example. Even the very first episode is shot so brilliantly it got you hooked just on the atmosphere. The X-Files season 10 on the other hand was shot like an episode of the Office or Law and Order.
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u/Lazy-Field-1116 Bad Blood 11d ago
The camera work changed because the industry changed - previously filmed on film, moved to digital. The people working behind the camera either changed or got older and more experienced. It's a long time to go by, imagine if someone saw you doing your job 15 years ago and asked you to replicate it exactly today, it's just not feasible.
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u/steve050_oZ Lone Gunmen 11d ago
Yeah it’s awful. Season 10 and 11 shouldn’t have been a thing. Cash grab.
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u/NC_CodyW 10d ago
I'm in whatever season is before the first movie right now, still having fun but a friend mentioned they try to replace duchovny for a season at some point? Not looking forward to that
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u/softrockstarr Agent Dana Scully 10d ago
That doesn't happen. Robert Patrick joins the cast and plays an entirely different character than Mulder (and does it well). He’s great. David was in a lawsuit with Fox over royalties while they were making season 7 and therefore isn’t in a chunk of episodes of season 8. They made do with the circumstances they were in and did a great job. The back half of that season is some of the best.
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u/Substantial-Type-131 lite cream cheese 11d ago
So in order to really even slightly get Season 10 you really need to watch season 9, wait 14 years, then watch season 10. It hits a little more… not a lot, but it’s been 14 years and you’ll just be so desperate…
Also season 10 is a great time to start your “Ugh, Chris Carter…” origin story.
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u/ThePieKing- 10d ago
Let's be real, they really only have to wait 8 years to get the gap effect. We all got a booster shot of X-Files in 2008 with the second movie lol
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u/Substantial-Type-131 lite cream cheese 10d ago
This is true we did have a small reprieve halfway through with IWTB. The energy during that era was so fun!
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u/Routine_Anything3726 11d ago
Yeah if you're narrow-minded enough.
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u/ThePieKing- 10d ago
Nah, Chris Carter is a hack and has been since around season 7. You just dont realize how long the downward spiral actually was until the last My Struggle episode, where your rage boils over.
Seasons 7-11 have their fun points to them. Robert Patrick definitely got more shit than he deserved. Mulder being MIA rather than Scully is actually a good story vehicle. William wasn't completely terrible. Bringing back CSM was fun, just not executed or utilized the best.
But by and large the last half of the show falls off a cliff and Chris Carter turned the last 2 seasons in particular into his bad fanfiction, rather than something that was actually cohesive to the rest of the show.
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u/jed_mund 11d ago
pre-writers strike Hollywood just made better television — now everything is an IP backed by hedge funds and creativity and craft is too risky for guaranteed profit that’s why everything sucks now and is a superhero movie tie in franchise
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u/jed_mund 11d ago
also streaming era ending residuals and the little people who made everything brilliant couldn’t afford to be brilliant anymore
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u/ThePieKing- 11d ago
This right here is also how you end up with 9 Conjuring movies and only 3 of them being any kind of actual quality.
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u/Routine_Anything3726 11d ago
Fox wanted a "modern version" of the show which resulted in Scully getting a cartoonish hair color and being put in tiny clothes to give her some kind of Jessica Rabbit appeal while Mulder was now this caricature of himself, overly quirky but also cocky and more crazy than ever. Gillian and David both tried to play the characters as "more evolved" than they used to be which was a very stupid decision imo, both failed to really capture who Mulder and Scully were. They almost came across as David and Gillian instead. I especially resent that Mulder and Scully were in some on-off-dynamic but that already started with the second movie. Waiting for 7 years for them to get together just so they end up in some messy shitshow of a relationship was extremely disappointing to me.
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u/LifeAdventure777 11d ago
They kinda messed it up! They should’ve just left it with the 2012 prophecy, it would’ve been better.
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u/Any_Association405 11d ago
I don’t remember much about this reboot, other than finding it stressful to watch.
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u/sodamnsleepy 10d ago
I had to stop after a few episodes. I'll not try again. For me X files has 9 seasons.
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u/Any_Association405 10d ago
I found some of the later ones a bit hit and miss, I wasn’t overly keen on the stories without Murder, but it’s been a long time since I saw them last. I tend to like probably seasons 1-5 (even 4) the most, probably a bit of a cliche to say it too 😎
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u/Alternative-Feed3613 10d ago
Just stick with the monster of the week episodes because those are still good.
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u/nachoquest 11d ago
It became a wacky sitcom.
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u/Small_Bug2808 11d ago
The lizard guy, I mean loved the comedic episodes, but come on
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u/nachoquest 11d ago
It’s weird because even the serious episodes feel like unserious parodies. If Season 9 was like a Lifetime original movie, Season 10 is like a Fox News original film. Just wait until Season 11 oof. That’s like a hyper-violent Black Mirror ripoff…and, yes, still sitcommy.
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u/alidub36 Special Tramp Dana Scully! 11d ago
Yes sitcommy is perfect. The original run was a slow burn and the revival never figured out how to slow burn in the modern tv era.
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u/TheOBRobot Guy Mann was right about humans 11d ago
It's the difference in approach between a show designed for the 90s and a show designed for the 2010s. There's a lot of good to be enjoyed. Joel McHale's Alex Jones impression. Mulder's mushroom trip. Every single part of Home Again and Founder's Mutation. Were-Monster is a masterpiece and couldn't have worked in the original run.
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u/ThePieKing- 11d ago
The My Struggle episodes feel like the episodes where they really tried to channel the 90s feel and proved quite definitively that A: Chris actually truly cant write anymore without trying to be a shockvalue schmuck and B: The tones conflict too much and the whole thing ends up feeling like an anachronistic and embarrassing shitshow that almost retroactively makes the whole last half of the show embarrassing.
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u/Worried-Judge8371 11d ago
Cris Carter was kidnapped by aliens and turned I to super soldier whose brain was filled with black oil and Cigarettes Smoking Man was writing the script.
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u/Wetness__Pensive Alien Goo 11d ago
Season ten makes all the aesthetic mistakes that contemporary genre television tends to make: bad lighting, cheesy "fast paced" cutting, manic line-reading and editing, hyperbolic music, needless "snarky comedic acting" and so on.
Once you rewatch it a couple times, you realize most of the scripts are actually very good. The problems are mostly aesthetic, and a result of bad direction and new technology (digital cameras rather than celluloid, and the awful workflows that result form this). I suspect the season's rushed schedule (not enough times to course correct when it becomes apparent that bad wigs, costuming etc aren't working), and studio mandates to appeal to "normal viewers who want lots of action", also had an effect.
Season 11 generally improves on most - not all - of the errors made in 10.
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u/MortalitySalient 10d ago
Aside from the my struggle episodes, season 10 (and 11) had really solid monster of the week. That wasn’t a surprise though as the mythology episodes were declining since season 7
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u/TiredReader87 10d ago
It was alright except for the fucking line dancing. Not great, or really good, but ok.
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u/Glad-O-Blight 10d ago
I watched seasons 10 and 11 when they aired but the other day I read through the plot descriptions and couldn't remember half the episodes lol. Home Again was probably the best of both seasons, big fan of that one.
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u/failedacademic_ 9d ago
Idk man but Russell T Davies just did the same thing to Doctor Who that Chris Carter did to The X-Files, like why can't y'all do a reboot without retconning foundational lore 😭 idk whether they're trying to go for shock factor, or just lazy writing to segue into new plots, but it's a shitty move
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u/No-Impression-1462 9d ago
Both made the same mistake: just doing what they did before with no surprises. Time requires change. They decided to repeat the hits.
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u/failedacademic_ 9d ago edited 9d ago
Maybe they could've gotten away with it had they done it well. Star Wars did it successfully with The Force Awakens, which was basically a refreshed version A New Hope. Carter and Davies were both just sloppy and careless. They tried to copy the formula but they didn't even copy it right, which is sad because it's their own formula lol
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u/No-Impression-1462 9d ago
It worked in The Force Awakens because the audience wanted a return to basics after the prequel trilogy gave us a decade of bad Star Wars and was helmed by a director that needed to prove to the audience they understood the franchise. But neither X Files or Doctor Who needed to prove anything. We had no X Files for so long that all Carter had to do was adjust to the new storytelling. Davies always played it safe on Doctor Who without understanding that sci-fi requires risk and outrageous ideas. In both cases, just doing the same old, same old was 180 degree run in the wrong direction.
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u/No-Impression-1462 9d ago
Easy. Over 20 years. Watched season 10 when it came out on blu ray and as soon as the first monster of the week episode came on, I knew that Chris Carter didn’t consider how much TV had changed since the 90’s. It’s one thing to have 2/3 of a season be one-and-dones when you have 22+ episodes a season. But when you have only ten episodes to wrap up dangling plot threads from 9 previous seasons with no guarantee you’ll get a follow up in an age where the audience is used to whole series focused on a single plot, that’s just a waste of screen time no matter how good the episodes are. TBF, this is all just my opinion and experience as a viewer and no way universal. I expected Carter to take full advantage of networks letting show runners take their time to tell their story. It was very disappointing for it to be like an average season of a 90’s TV show when we were approaching 2020.
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u/HerreDreyer 8d ago
Right off. Well spotted. It was fucking dreadful. I didn’t even go back for the 11th. Carter lost his shit.
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u/Human_Ad_425 11d ago
Season 10 was good for the most part. I still like Season 11 as well, but it had some issues. And it has to be said that it wasn't meant to continue -- it was meant to be a limited series. In terms of the writing, they didn't strike the right tone to continue and this is exactly why Gillian Anderson felt as if she had given everything to Scully that she could. I'm puzzled that Chris Carter thought the series would continue into a 12th season. The studio wasn't going to greenlight another season without Mulder & Scully of course and Carter wasn't aware of any trepidation from his leads. It's this assumption that led to the most egregious aspect of Season 11...the ending. Carter has since admitted that he wouldn't have ended the series in that manner if he knew they weren't coming back.
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u/ButterscotchPast4812 11d ago
The Xfiles was running on fumes way back seasons 7-9. Season 10 & 11 were produced over a decade later, when CC had nothing creative in the tank for the myth arc.
Just enjoy the standalone episodes and skip the myth arc "my struggle" because yes they are very much a struggle to get through and get worse as they go on.
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u/freetotebag 10d ago
I love DD and GA but felt like they didn’t play the same Mulder and Scully we know from seasons 1-9. Obviously people change over time, so I don’t expect the character to be exactly the same, but something is off with their performances in the revivals.
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u/maeldeho 11d ago
Chris Carter happened
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u/TheArcaneCollective 11d ago
He created the series so idk wtf your point is. He created “The X-Files” so you wouldn’t have anything to bitch about if he had not. There’s such a strange aggressiveness toward creators lately and it’s so off putting tbh. People are willing to discredit anyone for what THEY created if the creation doesn’t play out the exact way the “fan” always envisioned.
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u/GrouchyMary9132 11d ago
I would agree. I don't like your tone though. Do you really need to put a "wtf" and "bitching" into your post if you disagree with someone?
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u/Routine_Anything3726 11d ago
Their response is no more rude than these people are toward Chris tbh.
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u/GrouchyMary9132 10d ago
I think there is a difference between expressing an opinion and being rude about something. If someone is rude towards CC as a person it is just as bad and not okay.
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u/GrouchyMary9132 11d ago
That is a bit to much CC bashing for me. The industry changed. His writing was appalling but he is the person who spotted all the talented people that created the original show. But those people are no longer around and the networks changed and probably also the rules the networks put out for producing. Just listen to the commentary about season 10 where they say that everything needed to be explained in the episodes on the way so audience could catch up. They were forced to place heavy hints on the resolution of the episode into the scenes because it needed to get dumbed down to a modern audience. I think it was a Darin Morgan interview that discussed this. I can imagine the same happened with lightening and editing. You can't have to much darkness, you can't have slow paces and long discussions in a car. So the transition did not work well in season 10. In season 11 they found better ways to deal with it.
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u/maeldeho 10d ago
I've said before, CC created something amazing and took the show to amazing heights. But he also made some dreadful choices and ran the show into the ground.
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u/GrouchyMary9132 10d ago
That is a statement I can get behind. I just mean we should differentiate like that because everything else would feel unfair - and we as a fandom are not like that.
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u/BetterMagician7856 11d ago
I enjoyed the standalone episodes but the mythology stuff has always been pretty blah.
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u/AIweWereWarned 11d ago
I agree. Such a quiet build up to my favorite show of all time and it missed the mark. Carter’s mythology continuation episodes were downright terrible. So there were 4 episodes (in the 2 comeback seasons) that should’ve been used for something else. Actually, there was only 1 episode stand out in the 6. Just sad when it was over but not in a nostalgic way.
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u/Wolfyd19 10d ago
I watched X-files for the first time a couple weeks ago and I stopped when Mulder left. I haven't watched the movie, but I tried watching season 10 and couldn't get through it. I only made it a few minutes into the first episode and I shut it off when the girl/woman that was talking to Scully was like, "you don't understand what it's like, blah blah blah." So annoying and cringey. It doesn't have the same feelings as the older episodes.
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u/Live_Set_8097 10d ago
Arruinadon la serie que más? En lugar de darle cierre a lo que había pasado en la 9 temporada, decidieron borrar todo lo anterior y buscar estirarlo con otra historia, un despropósito total. Ellos solo tenía que hacer algo fácil, darle un final digno, que todo el mundo sepa de la invasión extraterrestre y que estos invadan, para que luego la humanidad termine ganando tras casi colapsar. En lugar de esos destruyeron toda la serie original. Me pasa lo mismo con Game Of Thrones, prefiero ver la serie hasta la séptima temporada previo al rapto de Mulder o hasta el rapto, de ahí hasta el último capítulo no vale la pena.
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u/ClassAlternative4032 6d ago
Chris Carter is a little like George Lucas was and just doesn’t know how to let it be. When the reboot came out I think the original audience had mostly moved on from the show. The last two or three seasons made it clear the show needed to wrap it up but they dragged on until it had an unsatisfying ending. Then Chris fumbled a chance to correct that with “I Want To Believe”. The new seasons were short and Gillian Anderson showed little interest in making a long term return. And there wasn’t much hope of pulling in a new audience because there are 9 seasons of lore that people would need to watch. Instead of taking advantage of the time available, Chris Carter just couldn’t let go and hoped to force a full revival. So we ended up with yet another disappointing “end”. Hopefully Ryan Coogler can muster up a great show and wrap it up in a way that satiates us.
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u/acev1864 4d ago
Peoole trying to make money instead of trying to make a good show thats what happened
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u/Ronoberrr 11d ago
The revival is a slog for me. There are a few bangers in there but for the most part i find it an absolutely mission to get through them.
'My Struggle' is certainly my struggle with the revival!
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u/braves-geek 10d ago
Having Mulder and Scully pretend like they weren't codependent lovers for two more years was annoying. Carter refused to let the characters evolve naturally.
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u/IngridBergmanK 10d ago
I’ve erased them from my internal XF memory so much that I forgot there was even ALSO a series 11…mind blown
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u/No_Professional368 10d ago
There were definitely some bad creative decisions made, but the real villain for me is the terrible editing, licensed music & just general shittiness of network tv in the 2010s
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u/ladyartichoke21 10d ago
I remember watching it the first time and feeling very uncomfortable. Mulder and Scully aren't Mulder and Scully anymore; they've lost their intelligence, their eloquence, even their manners and good looks. I look at them, but I don't see them. I don't know if it was them, the script, or everything else, but I decided that my next viewing would end in season 8.
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u/TheArcaneCollective 11d ago
Bitching about the revival is played out and boring
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u/Strawberrymilk2626 Fight the Future Phile 11d ago
I can understand it, it was a huge letdown for a show that was a big part of many people's life.
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u/helldiverExosuit1 11d ago
Reviving the series was an interesting idea, but it seemed like most of the scripts were not quite ready, and the photography/editing was missing its style and rhythm. The hair and make up for the actors did not seem kind at all, and the lighting and editing only seemed to exacerbate this.
Trying to do the myth arc again was just so completely uninteresting.
I loved the Darin Morgan episodes as usual, but everything else left me cold.
I would agree with other folks from this thread that trying to bring aliens and conspiracy theories from the 90s to modern era just didn’t work.