Ihave a vivid memory of the premiere of The X Files. It was September 1993 and I was thirteen years old. That summer I would discovered horror movies and watched The Thing and The Silence of the Lambs I would also read Communion Whitley Striebers best selling memoir about being abducted by aliens. Like a lot of people back then I was fascinated by U.F.O.s in the late eighties and early nineties alien abduction was a thing. Whole episodes of The Sally Jesse Raphael Show and The Maury Povich Show were dedicated to it. I could not wait for The X Files. I was so certain that the series would be great that when the pilot aired I taped it a rarer more labor intensive undertaking in those pre DVR days.
The weaknesses of The X Files tendentious dialogue, an alien conspiracy that made no sense were obvious from the beginning. Still the show had two real strengths, and they grew with time. The first of course was the gentle intellectual romance between Mulder and Scully. The second was a vibe of improvisational zaniness that remained undiminished for nearly nine years. Foxs advance publicity had made The X Files look like a straight faced alien themed procedural. What a drag that would have been. In fact the show was sly, hilarious and unpredictable it was in a word unprofessional in the best sense. Often it achieved that rarest of artistic virtues a genuine feeling of spontaneity. Using the same basic setup The X Files could present all sorts of stories a gross out episode about a giant humanoid flukeworm The Host a satirical Rashomon style retelling of an alien abduction Jose Chuns From Outer Space a B movie story about a possessed tattoo voiced cheekily by Jodie Foster which urges a man to commit murder Never Again even an episode filmed in the style of the reality TV show Cops X COPS.
Against this material Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny turned out to be ideal straight men. They could carry the show anywhere even as they communicated through a slight strain in Mulders voice or a small twist in Scullys lip that they were in on the joke. Nine seasons of flying saucers would have been unbearable. Because of its playfulness the show was a joy.
The main problem with the two X Files movies Fight the Future (1998) and I Want to Believe 2008 was that they were formally incapable of capturing the series madcap diversity they could tell only one story at a time. But the new six episode X Files miniseries which premières this Sunday is as weird and spontaneous as the original show. The first episode My Struggle is not good its all leaden paranoid exposition a too accurate evocation of the show in its ponderous alien conspiracy mode. Perhaps as with Karl Ove Knausgaards opus we will find out why its called My Struggle in the sixth installment. The next two episodes however recall vintage X Files. The second Founders Mutation is a gothic mashup of Rosemarys Baby and Carrie in bad taste to just the right degree the third Mulder and Scully Meet the Were Monster is a meta farce in the tradition of Jose Chungs.
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