UPDATE: Fox has officially announced a six episode event series will begin production this summer. Time to celebrate!
Original post:
This is how I feel about the latest reports about The X-Files coming back to TV:
TVWise reports that a green-light is in the near future for a new episodes to fill a short season, finally bringing Agents Mulder and Scully, FBI, back to the small-screen.
The short season plan, according to TVWise, is meant to tie up lingering questions unanswered by the show’s later seasons, as well as by the 2008 film/train-wreck The X-Files: I Want To Believe. A short season will also accommodate the actors schedules, which are understandably busy. Gillian Anderson will soon be filming a third season for the BBC series The Fall, and has been a series regular on NBC’s Hannibal and may return (?) on that show in the future. David Duchovny, meanwhile, has his NBC series Aquarius to contend with, though it’s off-season slot will surely help.
Assuming it all comes together and the series goes ahead, creator Chris Carter will return to write and executive produce. Just like the old days.
The X-Files belongs on television.The big-screen has not been the show’s friend. What Carter, Anderson and Duchovny built in their seasons on Fox is the kind of universe that lives best in confined spaces; the shrunken paranoia and expanding mystery surrounding these characters and stories just makes TV the right place for The X-Files.
As a network drama (1993-2002) The X-Files prospered in the years prior to the Golden Age of Television (or whatever we’re calling it). At that time it was one of the best shows on television, offering something new in scope and mythology. Its weaving form of narrative structure, a mixture of pulsing drama, unsolved mysteries and off-kilter humor, all served to the show’s lo-fi science-fiction heart (I’m not counting the Doggett seasons, sorry Robert Patrick).
There is still plenty of X-Files mythology left untouched, plus a whole lotta Mulder and Scully terrain unexplored, that it’s possible to see dark and grisly sci-fi TV from this team yet. Just think what Carter, Anderson and Duchovny could do in these days of Hannibal and rue Detective. The truth is, a new X-Files could be really, really out there.
