The Mythology?!?! Well it's... good?

[Guest ZeusFaber]

(continued from previous)

When talking of the final episodes on the BBC, the blurb explained: 'There was a time when missing an episode was sacrilege, but sometime around the mid-90's, the public get fed up with the adventures of the two FBI agents...' I'm paraphrasing somewhat, but the siginicant lines that I remember nodding in agreement with was 'the mid 90's).

Well, my first point in response to that would be that a brief blurb in a TV guide giving a very rough time-frame of "mid-90s" is hardly very specific or reliable or well-calculated, but besides that, the show didn't even make it across the Atlantic until the mid-90s! It first aired over here in 1994.

95-96 was about season three unless I'm mistaken?

Season 3 was part of the 1995/96 television season in the US, but it didn't even start over here until late 1996 (about the same time S4 was starting up in the US). Mid-19995 saw the end of S1 on BBC2, so unless you're saying that it was already becoming unpopular at this point, I don't think we can put much weight behind that blurb.

Again, this is just horses for courses without figures, but I am very intrigued about your reaction to the film. The Ratings and Review site was a 'hardcore' site. There was never any real surprise in what the people there liked and disliked, as they very much followed the sci-fi fans trend. So Morgan and Wong were gods, Chris Carter was heavily criticised, John Shiban was the devil himself etc. Pretty much the only Carter episodes people liked where the obvious classics like Paper Clip etc. The film was roundly bashed in people's reviews.

That tells me a lot about this review site. In my experience, there is a portion of TXF fans who are gushing fans of M&W and/or DD who unilaterally deride anything post-S4 (coincidentally the last season to involve M&W), and anything with Chris Carter's name attached. So yes, these kinds of people are very harsh about the movie. But this is not representative of all fans. There are many such as myself who are just a strongly fans of the series, and who still appreciate the movie. It's just a matter of individual tastes, opinions, and reactions.

The snarling bloodlusting creatures that came out of people annoyed me because there had been an ambiguity over the actions of the aliens themselves up to that point... the emergence of the aliens use of some kind of frenzied, tear em apart, monsters (or that this is actually the real face of the aliens themselves) was very annoying.

I feel I ought to say that these creatures were only the initial, new-born form of the aliens. As "The Beginning" shows, they later develop into the smaller, less fierce "grays".

As a qualified student of film, I feel entirely justified in critiising Triangle. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because directors don't use visual tricks like in Triangle, that they can't. They simply know that to place such undue pressure on actors and crew alike, is simply not on unless you have a very good reason for doing so. The story such as it was in the episode was simply an excuse to do this kind of camera trickery (to make it seem more like a bizarre dream). I do not approve of this kind of gimmickry.

I'm not saying that directors who haven't use these forms of elaborate film-making aren't talented or can't, but just the same I am saying that you do have to be talented in order to pull them off. An inept or poor director just couldn't manage it. You may dismiss it as gimmickry, that's entirely up to you, but I don't think you can subsequently dismiss Chris Carter as a director because of it. It takes a lot of ability, organisation, planning and orchestration to make it work. It may not appeal to you personally, but I don't think the feat of execution can be denied.

[Guest ModernDayMoriarty]

The song does not demonstrate the show being in the public consciousness at all. It shows that it was in Cerys Matthews' consciousness, and without further study, that is all it shows.

The X-Files started to do well over at the end of Season Two. The BBC start thinking about making it mainstream, as it appears to have gone public. But it is too late by then - the time has passed. Shows like this stay mainstream in Britain for extremely short periods of time. The BBC had no control over how the show was made or what its content was, so they took a big risk pitching a sci-fi show to a mainstream audience. They waited until it already had gone mainstream to act, and by then the support was fading. This kind of boom and bust is typical of the UK's attitude to sci-fi shows. Where will Heroes be in a years time in the British consciousness? Forgotten, that where.

You cannot criticise the whole of the X-Files Ratings and Review site, because it was a huge, huge site. It had a clock on the front page keeping track of the numbers of visitors it had, and it was truly staggering. The site had viewer reactions on every single episode and this constituted a unbelieveable amount of feedback. Yes, they were dyed in the wool sci-fi fans mostly, but that is what you get with sci-fi on the internet.

The argument we made with Millennium cannot be made with the X-Files. TXF appeals strongly to sci-fi audiences and the INternet reflects very accurately in this case, the feelings of the fans of th show towards the various episodes. There is no large viewing mass who haven;t had their opiniions heard on the film. People either watched it as fans, or watched it as a sci-fi action flick. The film community has passed judgement on it (i.e they think it's unremarkable in the extreme) and it is nothing more than a curiosity now. The show's fans regard it as slightly disapointing, and not the great event they were waiting for.

Television shows which are then put on film are almost never any good. By using the same writers and directors, same actors, they basically just put a television show on a cinema screen. TV actors simply don't perform well on the big screen for the most part, as they don't command enough screen presence. Martin Landau has had a fine career, but he's far from A list these days is he? As a TV show, the XF looked more like a film. As a film, it looked more like a TV show.

The aliens may have only been early versions, but it marks the end of the aliens as potentially interesting entities in their own right. The repopulation angle is abandoned almost straightaway in S6, with some backtracking to explain why the Syndicate are now working with the aliens again, despite resolving to fight them. The rebels come along and that;s that - the black oil story is barely seen again. By Season 8, the aliens are simply evil, as the lack of communication from the hunter and the more vicious experiments show.

[Guest ZeusFaber]

The song does not demonstrate the show being in the public consciousness at all. It shows that it was in Cerys Matthews' consciousness, and without further study, that is all it shows.

I disagree. Do you really think that such pop-culture references would be made in such a song today, when the show is off the air and no longer present in the public consciousness? Do you think that, if such a song were released today, that it would be performed on a show like TOTP to giant Mulder & Scully backdrops? I think not.

Then there are other examples of music at the time that referenced The X-Files, such as The Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch" in 1999. Again, it's because the show is in the zeitgeist at the time, and such a thing wouldn't (and indeed doesn't) happen today when the show is no longer en vogue. These things surfaced because The X-Files had cultural currency at the time, whereas today it no longer does.

The X-Files started to do well over at the end of Season Two. The BBC start thinking about making it mainstream, as it appears to have gone public. But it is too late by then - the time has passed.

Are you now saying that the show was already starting to become less popular in Season 2? All the evidence I can see points to the contrary. It became more popular in Season 3, not less.

TXF appeals strongly to sci-fi audiences and the INternet reflects very accurately in this case, the feelings of the fans of th show towards the various episodes. There is no large viewing mass who haven;t had their opiniions heard on the film.

I must strongly disagree here. It is inaccurate to make any kind of generalisation about public opinion, or fan opinion. The internet does not reflect the entirely of the audience, no matter what the genre of show. It actually encompasses a relatively small percentage of it. Moreover, one single website, no matter how much traffic it gets, can be considered representative of the definitive viewpoint of the fanbase. There is a large viewing mass whose opinions on the film are not documented anywhere online. There are more viewers of TV shows and movies who don't post their opinions online that those that do.

The film community has passed judgement on it (i.e they think it's unremarkable in the extreme) and it is nothing more than a curiosity now. The show's fans regard it as slightly disapointing, and not the great event they were waiting for.

Again, this is a generalisation. I am far from convinced that there is a clear majority of fans who were disappointed with the film. Some of them were, yes, but by no means all. Individual fans have individual reactions. There are many different opinions, there is not one single position that is "the fans' position". It is not a contest or an election. Majorities and minorities have no significance, not that these can ever be accurately measured anyway. Fans are not a unified body. They are comprised of many different standpoints and critical positions.