“The X-Files” is returning to FOX on January 24, 2016, and Mieke Zamora-Mackay can’t wait to jump back in. Follow her as she reacquaints herself with the past seasons with a series of recap posts leading up to the release of season 10. Today she shares why “The X-Files” occupies a special place in her fangirl heart.
It was sometime in 1994 that the TV show, “The X-Files” came to the Philippines. I was just 22 years old, fresh out of college, finding my way in the corporate world. Every Monday night, I’d sit in our family room at 9:00 pm to watch Mulder and Scully raced around the United States searching for aliens and investigating unusual, and down-right weird phenomena.
In the pilot episode, we found FBI agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) as she was being briefed about her new assignment to work with well-educated and decorated fellow agent, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). “Spooky” Mulder was believed to have gone astray, choosing to concentrate on matters the bureau deemed to be of lesser value to the organization. Scully, a medical doctor and a cynic, was assigned to debunk or give credence to the bureau’s belief that Mulder’s work was a waste of its time and resources.
My favorite episodes were the ones that furthered the show’s main story arc (the “mytharc”), which was Mulder’s quest to prove that aliens existed and had been interacting with humans, and expose the US government’s involvement and its attempts to cover it up. Other episode themes such as the ‘Monster of the Week,’ in which strange, supernatural, and at times, murderous creatures (either natural, or man-made) play a pivotal role, and those involving religion, paranormal phenomenon, and the occult established the realm of stories that recurred throughout the course of the show.
A hallmark of the show was the introduction of a varied but iconic group of secondary characters: Cigarette Smoking Man/Cancer Man, Deep Throat, X, The Lone Gunmen, and my personal favorite, Assistant Director Walter Skinner. No other show has created such memorable characters that you can’t help but think of when you hear the show’s theme song.
I stayed with the show for as long as I could. At that time, there were no DVRs or online streams – nothing was available to play the show on demand. As life went on, the show lost its allure to me, but I always I hoped that someday Fox and Scully would find the truth about the existence of aliens and extra-terrestrial beings; that Fox would finally find his sister; that Scully would just finally believe; and that they would simply fall in love. (Yes, this was the show that made “shipping” a thing.) Eventually, the show disappeared from the air in the Philippines. I believe it stopped airing in the Philippines earlier than when it was cancelled in the United States.
Enter 2015… After reading about the revival of “The X-Files” as a mini-series in January 2016 on FOX, I thought fondly to my dear Fox and Dana. I wondered if they ever did get together. I dropped by the Wikipedia page, and lo and behold, it says they did. What? I missed that? Did Fox ever find his sister? How did they finally come together? I had missed so much. I missed the creatures, the cover-ups, the conspiracy theories. All of it. I made it a point to keep an eye on when the show would air.
This show made me want to be a bit more suspect about things beyond what is being presented. To this day, I love reading about conspiracy theories, alien abductions, and the existence of mythical creatures. All the “what ifs” that cultivate in my mind, I attribute to this show. So I decided I would prepare for the revival. I wanted to get all caught up, and since we are in the era of Netflix, I can! All 202 episodes and two feature films of it. Anyone else care to join me?
If you’re not inclined to sit with me and re-watch, you can catch my series of season recap posts and reviews, right here on Biff Bam Pop!. I’ll continue my review series on each episode of the mini-series too!
I’ve never let my geek flag fly so high before, but it’s up there now, flapping in the wind.
Can’t wait to follow along with you. We just started watching season 1