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what episode had the WTC airline terrorism plot?

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Guest Second Coming

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Guest Second Coming
Sorry not Millennium but Lone Gunmen. It's pretty unbelieveable. This happened before the WTC disaster obviously. But it shows that someone has hacked into the computer system of a airliner and it is headed towards the WTC towers and the Lone Gunmen hack in and overide the controls to avert the disaster. And this episode aired in the spring or summer of 2001. I have a clip in Kazaa of a little of it but I would like to know what episode. Thanks.
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It was, in fact, the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen (entitled, fittingly, as all 1013 first episodes are, "Pilot").  As a result of the horrific coincidence, this first solo adventure for the Lone Gunmen will likely never be seen again.  It's almost certain the episode will never be televised again.

Misguided Angel has an interesting article written by Bruce "Byers" Harwood on the subject.  I'll see if he can post it here.

It certainly was an outright shocking coincidence, one worthy of conspiratorial investigation by our favorite trio themselves.  It's almost eerie.

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Guest Second Coming

Yeah, it's pretty strange. And the fact that it happened in 2001. Chris Carter and 1013 are always ahead of things and really research stuff. It just made me wonder for a second if they heard something beforehand or heard of a possiblity of terrorist doing that or if they are just really created and gifted writers. I showed that clip to my wife and she had this shocked look on her face. And she said "Did they talk to them(1013) or investigate this?" I said "I don't know."

p.s. "Pilot" was a very ironic name for the episode.

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It's sad because of politics that this episode will never be seen on TV again because it is great episiode.  I'm glad I still have the pilot on tape.    The pilot to the TV show The Agency got hacked on due to the events of Sept 11th, 2001 (oddly enough my 27th birthday on that same day) and I'm not mentioning the other eerie connection I have to Sept 11th because once mentioning in another forum is enough for now.   I do wish Millennium characters crossed over to the Lone gunmen series though.   Too bad it didn't catch on.  Have a better one.

Be Seeing You,

David blackwell

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Guest LauraKrycek

Yeah, some foolish person a few months back wrote an article after the LGM\9-11 thing was pointed out to them, talking about the eerie similarities.  It was all done in a poor light, of course, as if it was 1013's fault that it happened in the first place.  It's my personal opinion that had the show been renewed and\or had more people, gov't or otherwise, watched it, things might have happened differently.  I heard it said on a lot of newscasts that it was completely unforeseen by anyone that a plane could or would be used as a weapon -- my response was HELLO?!  I wondered that it didn't make it into the news more.

And while I absolutely loved TLG series, I don't know that I'd rave so much about how good the pilot was.  The series had an okay start, but not the "boom" that it really needed.  XF and MM both had it, but LGM strove and didn't quite reach it right off the bat.  Oh, they certainly had it soon enough, though!

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I have to jump in on this one.  First of all, I absolutely love the Lone Gunmen!  I love every episode of the X-Files in which they appear, and that I have seen.  The humor of 1013 in all the shows is really amazingly funny.  The writers always seemed to tap into some subtle, off beat, and/or classic moment, facial expression, situation, or characters in general that are just hilarious.  And the Lone Gunmen are a perfect examples of this.

I also want to speak to the sort of fore-thought or insight of the 1013 writers, etc.  I am often amazed - whether I am watching TXF, TLG, or MLM - at the almost prophetic nature of either an entire episode, as the in the case of TLG Pilot, or in the case of the pig farmer/serial killer near Vancouver (A la The Judge) with bodies buried about his farm, or in the case on one line from the one of the first three episodes of TXF.  In one of the those episodes, Mulder and Skully are interviewing some stoned teenagers, which they encountered while they are "staking out" a restricted airfield.  Yet another extremely humourous encounter/moment!

Anyway, the red-headed teenager is describing the strange crafts, which he and his girlfriend have seen above that airfield.  He goes on to speculate, in an extremely "narly" manner  :laugh: , that these craft might be some "new fangled" military aircraft.  He then offers an example of what they might be used for.  He says, "like", they could stealfully/silently fly into Iraq and pay Sadam a visit!  He actually refers to this as Desert Storm II!

I was watching that episode again with my Dad (who is a HUGE Scully, eh-hem, "enthusiast"  :love: ) some months ago, a while after Bush had annouced this whole "Axis of Evil" belief system  (there has got to be a MLM joke in here somewhere about that! :rofl:  ), and everything was starting to look like we were going to be heading for war with Iraq.  And my jaw almost dropped when I heard this line!  I looked at my Dad and said, "Well, looks like the writers made yet another prediction..." or something to that effect, explaining that this episode was originally aired in 1993.  His eye browns went to the top of his forehead and he shook his head, and said, "Interesting..."

There are so many of these.  This is just one that really stuck out at the moment, for obvious reasons.  What other 1013 episodes or moments can any of you think of that are like this?

Wide Angle Upbeatness,

:ouro: Scott

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Guest Second Coming

Psycho,

There a tons of stuff like this in 1013 shows. I'll think of some later but in the X-Files finale "Truth", CSM refers to the date of the end of the world. He says that it's December 23, 2012. I didn't think much about it at the time. Then one day I thought "You know how 1013 is, there's probably something behind it." So I typed in the date and found that that's the date the Mayans think the end of the world will be. And they have been dead right about other things predicted in their calendars. Not really anything prophetic, but just interesting. When I think of the other stuff I will post it.

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Yes, I knew about the Mayan calender date 2012.  I thought it was cool that they worked that into TXF mythology, etc.  

Actually, I think the implication of the Mayan calender ending around Dec 23, 2012 is that it is the end of a cycle of time, not really the "end of the world" itself.  More like the "end of the world as we know it."  I believe what is predicted by the Mayans, and other ancient systems, is that there will be the beginning of a great transformation of the earth and all life and existence itself at that time.

With this interpretation in mind, I always thought that 2012 would have been a good time for the Owls prediction/scientific prophecy to be fulfilled.  That is sort of what I imagined that the "rip in the fabric of space-time" would bring about... "the beginning of a great transformation of the earth and all life and existence itself."

Gooptalations to You,

Scott

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Misguided Angel has an interesting article written by Bruce "Byers" Harwood on the subject.  I'll see if he can post it here.

...and lo, it was done! :angel:

Indeed, the article to which Brian alludes is a letter that appeared in the December 2002 edition (#165) of Fortean Times, the self-titled "Journal of Strange Phenomena", a publication I've always thought of as closely related to the less mainstream and altogether more underground publication of the Gunmen. Whilst perusing the pages of the aforementioned issue, the author of the following poignant and melancholic missive caught my attention:

"Having just finished your article on 9/11 conspiracy theories [FT162:30-33], I thought I'd share with you my own peculiar relationship between the conspiracies and the events. I was one of the lead actors on a short-lived television series that aired on the Fox network in the United States. It was called The Lone Gunmen and intended as a spin-off from the popular Fox series The X-Files. The so-called Lone Gunmen are three conspiracy geeks who publish an underground newspaper named The Lone Gunman (hence our show title).

Although our series aired in the spring of 2001, we had shot the pilot episode in March 2000. The plot was fairly simple: the Lone Gunmen uncover and defeat a government conspiracy to fly a commercial jet plane into one of the towers of the World Trade Center via ground-based computer control of the jet's auto-pilot. The intention was to blame a foreign, 'terrorist' nation for the bombing, and thus encourage the US to enter into a war against it - all to guarantee weapons sales for the US military-industrial complex. In the TV episode, of course, our characters save the day in the nick of time, regaining control of the plane just as it soars over the towers.

We shot 12 more episodes over the winter of 2000-2001, and they all aired on Fox that spring, but in the end our series was not renewed for a second season. I continued to work on The X-Files, and I was in Los Angeles on 11 September, having just finished working on an episode of that show. I was supposed to fly home to Canada that very day. I was woken about 8:30 by a phone call from the limo company contracted to drive me to Los Angeles Airport (LAX). 'This is your limo driver,' the voice told me. 'You won't be flying home today.'

'Why not,' I asked, groggy from sleep.

'All the airports in the US have been shut down.'

It took a moment or two to process this statement. I could believe that LAX had been closed for some reason. But all the airports? In the whole country? 'What? Why?'

'Some one has flown a plane into the World Trade Center.'

They say that most people thought it was a joke when they first heard of the attack. You can understand why that was my first thought. Luckily I was too sleepy to laugh out loud. (Actually, I thought it was a pretty poor joke.) I can only add that once I learned the truth, I experienced an eerie terror, as if I had seen the future, and not understood it until it was too late.

Assuming the idea for flying a plane into the Twin Towers by the remote control of a secret government agency was original to our writers, it had been floating around for a year and a half at least before the actual attack. Not a lot of viewers saw our show (several million maybe saw the pilot), but I have no doubt that the idea - or cultural 'meme' - was immediately available once the shock of the attack wore off.

Of course, it also means that the idea of terrorists flying a jet into a New York landmark was not so unthinkable as it seemed in the days afterwards. As far as news items being 'scrubbed,' I think it's safe to say that our pilot, if not our entire series, will never be seen on network television anywhere. Ever. A strange, awful confluence of pulp culture and reality..."

BRUCE HARWOOD

aka 'Byers' of the Lone Gunmen, Fox Broadcasting, Los Angeles

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Thanks for the exerpt, Misguided Angel!  It was great to hear Bruce Harwood's own words on the subject.

A strange, awful confluence of pulp culture and reality..."

I don't think anyone has put it better than that.

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