POSTED IN TWO THREADS FOR THOSE WHO IGNORE SEASON 9 POSTS

Found this:




http://www.thedigitalbits.com/rumormill.html

I wonder why they're waiting until November and not the usual May release schedule?

Since I only saw one or two episodes of Millennium, what can I expect? I only heard good things about it. Does it actually "end" at the end of season three? Or is the Millennium episode of XF the actual conclusion of the series? Any thoughts and/or insight into MILLENNIUM would be greatly appreciated....

I really liked Millenium. Lance Henriksen is a great actor and the character of Frank Black is interesting. It has a very dark tone, even darker than the X-files. I didn't much care for the actress who played his wife though, but there are lots of HITG's in Millenium. And yes, the X-files epi was intended to conclude the Millenium storyline.

I could only stand to watch a few eps of Millenium, it was a tad too grisly for me. High quality show, I just couldn't quite stomach it.

I watched the series when it first started, but after a half-dozen episodes I kind of lost interest. As others have mentioned, the show was really dark, and it didn't seem to have the same sense of humor or character relationships that made The X-Files worth watching. However, there was an episode with Charles Nelson Reilly as Jose Chung in the second season. I had stopped watching the show by that point, but I might rent the DVD's just to finally catch it.

There is a Millennium forum here.

That episode pretty much encapsulates the differences between the two shows. Leave it to Millennium to kill Jose Chung.

If the reason is putting more work into the extras? Me = happy. If the reason is not wanting to put out the last set of what I assume is a pretty decent cash cow so soon? Me = PISSED. And I love the idea of Millennium coming out (which I've never seen but am very interested in watching), and the rest of the Harsh Realm episodes could be interesting (I saw the three that aired and thought it was okay), but waiting for the two of those to see if they should release the Lone Gunmen? How does that make sense? The Lone Gunmen is a part of the X-Files franchise, whereas the other two are far more untested properties... you'd think they would realize that the completists in all of us would definitely buy what amounts to season 8.5, in a way. They should have put out S9 in May and then followed up with the Lone Gunmen in November as a sort of S10, or the other way around, even. As it is, now our X-Files collections won't be complete for a while, sniffle. (I realize I keep talking from a collectors point of view instead of about the quality of the actual episodes... I actually liked the Lone Gunmen series a lot, especially by the end of it, hence me wishing they would put that out with/after season nine instead of jumping to Millennium and Harsh Realm and using those to make the call... especially since none of us have any idea how they might do.)

I think it will be interesting to see what happens if they do release TLG on DVD, in light of the pilot episode and its content. I would be intersted in hearing the commentary on that one.

For news on the MILLENNIUM and HARSH REALM DVD sets, go here and scroll to bottom to see the official advertisement (which looks to me to be the XF Season 9 DVD set insert): (the page doesn't allow copying)

http://www.davisdvd.com/news/daily_news.html

ETA: Even more official information on the Millennium DVD set:
http://www.dvdanswers.com/index.php?r=0&s=...=3799&n=1&burl=

Just read this on E!online:

Didn't Spielberg already make that movie? And wasn't it already crappy?

What could this mean for XF II, this notion that CC is getting back into action? Does that mean a XF II announcement may be soon forthcoming?

Yes, it does sound a lot like Minority Report...

And hopefully that's only the working title.

Clearly, this is the source material:

http://www.mysteryguide.com/bkKerrInvestigation.html

More info:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...nvestigation_dc

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.ht...7/13/10.30.film

I think he was a liar when he said that he wanted Mulder and Scully's partnership to be *only* platonic. I believed it then, but now I realize that he was lying.

I believe that he did not consider romance at all until he saw the first few episodes and saw that Gillian and David had amazing chemistry. The show was in trouble, so what did he do? Well, I think he smartly used their chemistry to his advantage. A good number of his scripts were more shippy than those of the other writers. Why did he lie about it? Ugh.

Anyway, if there is a second X-FILES movie and Chris has written it, do you think the script would be good? Carter is an uneven writer. There is a middle ground rarely: ('Irresistable', 'Redux II' vs. 'Space' and 'Fight Club').

Yeah, it's kind of a toss-up, isn't it? He can be great when he wants to... and then, well, choose-your-own-word. But I'm hoping now that he and everyone else has had some time off from the show, they've had a chance to look back and see what really made it all work. And that this will increase our chances of getting a Carter gem instead of a Carter... well, choose-your-own-word. ;)

I'm going to go with "overly reliant on boring, convoluted voice overs."

ITA - if this is not the case, then there is no defense for 1013, really...

I had to double post - simply editing/adding information failed to bump it up.

So I'm watching HARSH REALM and it's quite good - I'm a little bummed because I know it's going nowhere and there is not even a "What was that all about?" conclusion to look forward to - but it's been fun so far. Lots of XF touches to enjoy - my favorites so far (of course) is GA's narration of the game intro video in the PILOT. Oh, and Scott Bairstow looks good in a tight t-shirt, but, apparently, he's got some real problems:
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,13303,00.html

I can certainly understand why CC was so pissed when it was cancelled after only 3 episodes. Can you imagine if that had happened to XF? Well, actually we can't because then we wouldn't know about show to miss it but...you get my point.

I liked HARSH REALM. I thought the concept was cool and interesting.

Yeah, but you can't go so long with just a friendship. He was merely going with what the fans wanted. I mean, you know it was leading up to something more. One more thing, I think Chris Carter must have had writer's block in Season 8 + 9. I still hated the idea of Scully having a baby, it shouldn't even happened.

I can understand CC did not focus the show on MSR because it is a SCI-FI show but I think we, audience, deserved a better treatment. If she was going to have a baby why couldn't we just see/know/be sure a little bit more about this rellationship??? I mean they could just confirm M as W father.
This really bothers me.

Here's something I've wondered about. I think I read, (or maybe I just made it up) that there was a conscious decision by CC not to have a show bible? Can that be true? I imagine a conversation about it going something like this:

VINCE GILLIGAN, aka Mr. Continuity: "You know, Chris, maybe we ought to start writing some of this stuff down. The mytharc's getting awfully complicated..."

CHRIS CARTER: "Got it all up here, dude." *taps forehead* "Pass me the bong, wouldja?"

I mean, did the idea come up, and get shot down? Does anyone know of any rumors, or quotes from old magazine articles? Something to explain it? Or am I completely off-base, and they did indeed have a show bible?

Nah...

No, Carter has stated that he did not have a show bible. I don't know the details, though.

A little off the forum path here but after seeing Seasons 8 and 9, what was Carter thinking? The whole baby thing was one flop but Super Soldiers? It make the show so tacky. They should have ended when David wanted to leave.

I remember reading about him saying something like "We want the show to be organic and flow naturally without worrying too much about a show bible". But I have nothing to back that up except my all-too-often faulty memory.


I think he wanted to give Doggett his own "quest/conspiracy" and hoped the super soldiers fit that bill. We've seen examples all along of the government's super soldier program and I think he wanted to bring that to the fore. I know people hate the very name "super soldier" but if you do a Google search you'll see that it's a term used with some frequency within the real-life military itself and the media.

As to why they didn't end the show when DD left, I understand it was all about contracts and money; the show wasn't going to end if CC left as GA still had contract time left and I imagine CC didn't want to leave until she could. I wonder what a CC-less show would have been like?

From reading between the lines and speculation on my part, I think everyone wanted to end the series with REQUEIM, but business made that impossible so they did the best they could.*

*"the best they could" is used solely as a common phrase and not meant to imply that I strongly believe Seasons 8 & 9 accurately represent "the best" 1013 could do...

Yes, I recall him saying something like this too, but I wondered if I was wrong. I can't help but translate that remark this way, "We're too damn lazy and high to bother with all that. Deal with it, audience."

Me, bitter? Why do you say that?

Here's something I found:

http://www.scifi.com/xfiles/chris2.html

Well, that makes perfect sens...wait a minute. What?

Sometimes he is the most obtuse person who ever walked the planet. I'm so glad that along with using the camera filmically, they also didn't squelch new stories with new stories.

What better way to kill new stories than with new stories themselves?!

Seriously, although he can be maddeningly obtuse, no doubt about it, I take that to refer to 1013's tendency to be as vague as possible - by doing so they can tell new stories that don't make other new stories out of the question. As an example, I point to Scully's abduction - they tried to tell it in such a way that the project could be strictly alien, strictly government, or a combination of the two. In fact, most of the major plotlines have been left open to some degree and, using his "logic", it would appear that's because if no plot doors are definitely closed, they can continue to be walked through. Or something like that...

I can appreciate all that. I certainly understand that a storyteller does not want to feel constrained in his or her options. However, there comes a point at which decisions must be made. And 1013 sucked at that. I think they squandered a lot of audience goodwill by failing to ever make anything concrete. There's a fine line between intriguingly vague, and maddeningly indecisive, and for me, they absolutely crossed that line in the last two seasons of the show.

I completely agree - you can only leave so many doors open before you have no idea where you are. I think they fell into a trap that to give a definitive answer on anything meant, by extension, answering lots of other questions that they weren't ready or prepared to answer. For example - William. We can't know exactly what he is, because that would reveal too much about the "true" nature of the aliens/super soldiers/whatever. So in order to keep the necessary holes of information alive, our characters end up not doing the sorts of things and asking the types of questions that might actually bring about some resolution. For example - Scully and William. Why not give him a DNA test and at least see if his DNA is, in fact, part Mulder's? Maybe she did but we didn't see it. I don't know about you, but my son starts moving shit with his mind and I'm checking him out to make sure he's at least, on the DNA tip, who I think he is. And how about the Lucy Lawless character? "Gee, how will we ever see if she's really what she says she is?" Oh, I don't know - have her breathe underwater or show you her superstrength?! Instead, Scully looks at a bump on her neck and declares her otherwise "normal". If it were you or I we'd be all like, "Oh, you can breathe underwater? Well, show me!" But Scully can't do that. It would answer questions that would bring the whole XF house tumbling down. Mulder comes back from the dead? Oh, we can't even discuss an autopsy or the results of a FBI agent's resurrection because that would be like pulling the loose string on a sweater! It would all unravel.

Yes, the last two seasons found the show eating itself, tumbling down onto and around its own foundation in a desperate attempt to not tell the viewers too much. The mytharc simply got too big and, without resolutions, had no choice but to become like Frankenstein's fabled monster and turn on its creator and try to destroy him. Of course, masochist that I am, I still loved the shit out of it!

Hee --- I think the fact that we all sit around and bitch about it years after the fact says something, no? And I really do think that your attempts to make the mytharc work are cool. I just can't muster up the energy for it much past season 6.

I can remember the good ol' days of seasons 3 and 4, when little things would suddenly make their importance known. I actually leapt off the couch in excitement when the bees came up in Herrenvolk, because there had been a shot of a bee in Victor Klemper's greenhouse in Paper Clip. The two things were connected! Paying attention paid off! Hurray!

But once the Syndicate got fried in One Son, and things started getting all wonky, I started losing my ability to care. Call me a bad Phile, but Mulder's brain problems in Biogenesis/Sixth Extinction made me yawn. The contrast between how I felt at the end of season 4 ("Mulder's obviously not dead -- I wonder what's going on? Who's the dead guy? How will Scully cope? Does Scully know he's not really dead?" And on and on...) and the way I felt at the end of season 6 ("Mulder's in the loony bin. Ho hum. Scully's in Africa. I bet she didn't have time to get all her shots. Is she wearing linen? The hell?") is telling. Things were already unraveling.

That's how I feel about it, anyway. And the reason I kept watching the show was because of the characters, and the fact that CC steadfastly denied that the characters were what the audience cared about makes me want to, I dunno, poke him with a sharp stick, or something.

Aw, shucks. But I fear my obsessive mytharc machinations say much more about me then it does about the work of 1013/CC, if you know what I mean. And I totally agree with you - if they'd ended the series with Season 4/5, it would have been the opportune time to do so and much of the creativity integrity would have remained intact. It's always better to leave on top, then wait until they pull you off. Still, since the show was still on, I was going to watch and enjoy it - it was a very conscious decision on my part to do both...

I'm able to do that with certain episodes. For example, I really love "Closure." I know that there was much gnashing of teeth about it, and I actually thought it was lame when it first aired. But subsequent viewing has changed my opinion.

And I just realized that this line of reasoning means that I should probably watch s8 and s9 again. Damn!

I'm still not going to accept that Scully gave William up for adoption, though. No amount of watching will ever change my mind about that.

I used to find Chris to be really cute.

Now, his years of tanning have caught up with him. Yikes. Pic of him and Duchovny at FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS Premiere

Oh my God! He looks like Lindsay Lohan (without the fake tits)! Someone hand that man some sunblock.

On the other hand, good DD pupil shot.

My husband keeps trying to make sense of the mytharc. I just keep telling him that he'll enjoy the show a lot more if he just gives up on that little project. We're still on Season 7 and I'm trying to save him a lot of future angst.

My eyes. Are bleeding. Oh, God...crispy CC is going to be taunting me in my nightmares.


tenzo, your poor husband is in for some serious bitterness. Does he know that seasons 8 and 9 are when everything goes all to hell?

He's in denial. The poor boy, he keeps trying to make it work and he's got a real big brain with lots of synapses firing so he'll go on for a good half hour trying out all the what-ifs and attempting to jam those ill-fitting pieces in to place. I still have a little time to work on him before s8. Here's hopin' he sees the light.

Was CC wearing his daughters T-shirt or what? DD I like you more with shorter hair!

Wow. They look like negatives of each other. DD with the dark hair and pale face, and CC with the exact opposite. Weird.

I was thinking the same thing, Kanel. And Carter looks like he's on Happy!pills.

Oh, that's not Chris Carter! It's clearly a wax figure of Chris Carter! Note the frozen expression, the lifeless eyes, the strangely inhuman skin color, the slightly askew pupils - it's a fake, I tell ya! Silly x-philes...

Seriously, I love seeing them together. If only GA were there, too...

double posting is bad. very bad. but the server has not been my friend lately.

MILLENNIUM SEASON 2 INFO:
http://www.dvdanswers.com/index.php?r=0&s=...=4981&n=1&burl=

New UK (I believe) Interview and the interviewer would, clearly, be VERY welcome here:

http://www.carterphile.com/Info/SFX1104.html

In the end, did The X-Files alienate its own audience? Did it haemorrhage viewers by dwelling on its own, ever so convoluted mythology, all that impenetrable guff about black oil, bees and bounty hunters? Carter refutes the idea that the show ultimately choked on its backstory.

"I would argue that point, but I sympathise with it," he confesses. "When a show runs for nine years there's a tremendous amount that you have to be honest and true to. I think we were probably the first show to actually refer to its story as a mythology. Yes, it becomes complicated, but I think we worked very hard, with every episode, to make sure that no one was left behind, to help everyone catch up. I think if you watch the show casually, it seems convoluted, but if you watch the show regularly, as a dedicated viewer, it's less complicated.."

Come now. You were making it up as you went along. "I had an idea where I was going. I just didn't know how I was going to get there. And that was the fun part, because if your ideas are too clear or too set, you find that you force your way there.

"There was a point in years four and five where we'd set up so much mythology that the stories started to tell themselves. Suddenly everything started to add up to its own sum. We stayed honest to the facts that we created and these stories actually turned out rather beautiful, like a ..." Carter laughs, almost embarrassed by his choice of metaphor. "A beautiful maths equation!

"Now with the DVD box sets people will have a chance to see the proper shape of it all. And I hope that in so doing they'll have a finer appreciation for what we were doing."

Wow. Do you think he actually believes that shit?

Stop bogarting the bong! Hand it 'round!

Well, Mr. Carter, I just finished, last night, watching every single episode on DVD from start to finish, and I'm not really sure I'm discerning any "shape" at all.

Excpet that I finally got to see M & S totally make out, and I guess that's really all that matters. Hee!

Sure. But I'm awful nice to ol' CC so there's that...


I guess I'll forever be in the minority but I still think the show, no matter how clunky at times, still managed to deliver enough substance for me/us to find lots of overreaching themes and ideas, hence a "shape". Sure, it's weirdly oblong and full of holes, but it's a shape nonetheless. /This ends your CC public service announcement.

So, you made it all the way through, tenzo! Congratulations! Any other thoughts you'd like to add? What did you hate/love the most overall?

Phew! Yes, we did it. It took almost a year, but it was a year in which the rest of the world was pretty much sucking ass and I'm glad I found some sanctuary in a TV show that has been off the air for 3 years.

I'm just feeling snarky. There was indeed some sort of strange amoeba-like shape. It's there. If it wasn't, none of us would have been watching. I think that really the overarching theme of the show was actually not all the mytharcy alieny trust-no-one-y stuff but all the moopy gooey life-lessony stuff that various characters kept hinting was what the truth really was in the last season or so. You know, heroism, tilting at windmills, true love, the importance of honesty with oneself and others, that sort of thing. And I love it.

In fact, I always felt that all the various reviewers and culture watchers had it all wrong when they started analyzing the popularity of the show. Everyone kept talking about how Americans must be really interested in aliens and government conspiracies and all that. But really, Americans are just interested in integrity and heros and unconditional love and tight behinds. Notice all of the various XF immitation shows fell flat. I myself actually am not a sci-fi/fantasy type person. I just like a good story.

Hm. I actually wasn't going to give my show recap in this thread, but I guess this is as good as any, since we don't really have a "Whole Damn Shebang" thread. I'll get more detailed about the finale, I'm sure, in the S9 thread.

Anyway, I quote Mr. Tenzo: "Well, now that we've gotten through all that, we can just go back and concentrate on all the episodes we really loved."

Word, my friend (my hallmark, my touchstone). Word.