Below he shares his initial thoughts and some questions on the announced return of the X-Files.
When FOX announced that The X-Files would return for
a six-episode miniseries, one question popped to mind: where? Where would they
film it?
This might seem like an odd question. Sure, it will be great
seeing Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny reprise their roles as Scully and
Mulder. There is no show without them, but let’s not forget the other star of
the show—Vancouver.
In my recent interview with X-Files writer and
producer Frank Spotnitz, I asked him about the inspiration behind some of his
writing for the show. He certainly saw his fair share of scary movies and
horror television as a kid. When faced with writing a new episode, though, he
often started with a simple question: “What is the scariest thing to me?” The
idea for “Detour”—one of the great “monster-of-the-week” episodes about a pair
of Mothman-like creatures that have learned to camouflage themselves almost
perfectly after hundreds of years of surviving in the woods—was twofold. As he
explained, “the show was hugely expensive, and I was trying to think of an
episode we could do where there would be no sets. And one of the questions that
always occurred to me when I was in the woods was: ‘What are all those
sounds?’”
There are plenty of scary sounds in the woods, and Spotnitz
makes expert use of them in the episode. But the budgetary consideration about
filming outdoors reminded me of the other great love of The X-Files—the
place it was originally filmed.
Next
to Scully and Mulder, I think the most important character in the show was
Vancouver. No offense to Skinner, Cancer Man, and those inbred brothers, but
its gray skies, rainy forests, knotted trees, misty hillsides, muddy fields,
gusty winds, damp streets, and cold air were integral to what made The
X-Files so captivating and downright scary. At the time, very few shows on television made the landscape
as central to its cinematic vision and atmosphere. But The X-Files transported
us to creepy towns, vile sewers, lakeside cabins, remote outposts, and an array
of places where the setting announced imminent danger. And when those dark
skies lingered at the end of the episode, you were reminded that evil isn’t so
easy to vanquish.
Sure, there are plenty of scary things about Los
Angeles—like the traffic, the earthquakes, and the fact that everyone talks as
if they’re on a first-name basis with movie stars—but The X-Files lost
something vital after moving to L.A. Despite the momentum generated by the
first film (which was released the summer after Season Five) and the
exceptional writing of Season Six, the sunshine and blue skies of Southern
California felt like an uninvited guest, like someone who wears a suit to the
beach. The truth is that the move killed off one of the show’s great characters
and one of the great loves that drew people to it—Vancouver.
So I hope Chris Cater will return to the place where it all
started. It will make a fitting conclusion to his defining contribution to
television, and it will remind us of the other reason why we fell in love with The
X-Files to begin with.
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