The X-Files

The X-Files (known as The secret X files in Latin America and as The X Files in Spain) is an American science fiction and mystery television series, broadcast on FOX and created by Chris Carter, focused on the cases investigated by two FBI agents, classified as "X-files": paranormal phenomena, UFO sightings, strange creatures, etc. The first episode was released on September 10, 1993.

The series is one of FOX's biggest hits and is one of the most awarded series in history, being nominated for 141 awards, of which it won a total of 61 individual awards from 24 different agencies, including Emmy Awards, Globes Gold, Environmental Media Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards. His characters and phrases have become icons of popular culture by exploiting and inspiring a large number of theories about conspiracy and the existence of extraterrestrial life. The popularity of the series prompted Carter and his partners to produce the 1998 film The X-Files: Fight the Future, directed by Rob S. Bowman. On October 29, 2007, it was reported that filming for a second film about the series titled The X-Files: I Want to Believe would begin in Vancouver on December 10, 2007. The film premiered on July 25, 2008. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Chris Carter stated that if I Want to Believe was successful, he would consider making a third film focused on the plot of the series and focused to the extraterrestrial invasion that was pending in this one.

At the time of the airing of the final episode of the ninth season, The Truth (9x19), The X-Files was the longest-running science fiction series television in the United States, a condition that was soon lost in favor of Stargate SG-1. The program was considered by TV Guide as the thirty-seventh best of all time, and the second in the classification of cult series, only surpassed by Star Trek. In 2007, magazine Time included the series in a list of the "100 Greatest Television Shows of All Time." In 2008, Entertainment Weekly named it the fourth best work of science fiction and the fourth best television series of the last 25 years.

On January 24, 2016, FOX premiered a tenth season that continues the plot of the original series. The eleventh season of the series premiered on January 3, 2018, continuing the plot that began with the tenth season premiered in 2016.

Production

Chris Carter, a Californian who had had limited success writing for television, was given the opportunity to produce new series for the Fox network in the early '90s. Tired of the comedies he had been working on, Inspired by a report that 3.7 million Americans may have been abducted by aliens, and drawing on memories of the Watergate scandal and the horror show Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Carter He came up with the idea for The X-Files and wrote the pilot episode in 1992. At first he had to fight for its novel concept and the cast. Executives wanted a more experienced Scully, "taller, long-legged, blonde and big-busted" than 24-year-old Gillian Anderson, a theater veteran with very little on-camera experience who for Carter was the only possible choice. after seeing the castings. Even so, the pilot episode with Anderson and David Duchovny was successfully filmed in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in early 1993, and the series began to air on American television on a Friday in the fall, in the 9 p.m. time slot. Carter founded a new company inspired by his own birthday, Ten Thirteen Productions, to oversee The X-Files.

Carter's idea was to show FBI agents investigating extraterrestrial and paranormal events, but he also wanted to work on the characters' beliefs.

"I consider myself a non-religious person seeking religious experiences. That's why I think, in a way, the characters do the same. »

Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files

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Dana Scully, being a skeptical scientist and an experienced medical doctor, was presented as a practicing Catholic. Fox Mulder, for his part, is the believer in the UFO phenomenon, which his colleagues nickname "spooky" — sinister in the Spanish version and tenebrous in the Argentine version.

« Scully's point of view is the view of the series and that's why it had to be built with a solid scientific base, so that Mulder could take off from there. If science is really good, Scully has a valid point of view. Mulder has to convince her that her arguments no longer serve and she has to accept the unacceptable. There's the conflict. »

Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files

Carter thought that Scully's role as the rational one of the couple and Mulder's penchant for hunches and intuition inverted traditional sex roles on television.

In the pilot episode, Scully is assigned to the X-Files as Mulder's partner, to provide a scientific point of view in Mulder's investigations in the field of the paranormal; In reality, she is assigned to that position to discredit Mulder's work, which threatens the plans of "the conspiracy." The shadowy and powerful man from the shadow government known simply as the Smoker or 'Cancer Man', appears without speaking in the first and last scenes of the pilot - the importance that the character was going to gain was not yet established—. The "unresolved sexual tension" between Mulder and Scully was also a central theme from the beginning.

"I didn't want the relationship to be in front of the cases."

Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files

That's why Mulder and Scully, with rare exceptions, address each other in a professional manner using their last names.

Carter's superior at Fox, Peter Roth, brought in very experienced members of the production team from the beginning, many of whom had already worked with him at Stephen J. Cannell's production company. Two of the The most respected screenwriters were Glen Morgan and James Wong, screenwriters of some of the best episodes of the first four seasons, they participated in films such as Final Destination and were also screenwriters of other series such as Millenium i> and The Lone Gunmen, also created by Carter. His contributions to the first two seasons, such as the episode Beyond the Sea, were popular with fans, television critics, the series' actors, and even Carter himself. Morgan and Wong returned in the first half of the fourth season. Before joining The X-Files, Wong and Morgan had worked with David Nutter, Rob Bowman, and Kim Manners on crime dramas such as The Commish and 21 Jump Street. Other notable screenwriters include Vince Gilligan writing his first scripts in this series, standing out immediately; he was later the creator of the award-winning Breaking Bad. Nutter, Bowman and Manners became frequent directors of The X-Files. Wong and Morgan played an important role in hiring many of the supporting actors. John Bartley, the director of photography, gave The X-Files its dark atmosphere, which earned him an Emmy Award in 1996. Bartley left the team after the third season and was replaced by cinematographers Ron Stannett, Jon Joffin, then Joel Ransom and finally Bill Roe.

Filming of the series moved completely to Los Angeles starting with the sixth season. Carter said: "We were scheduled to film the pilot in Los Angeles. When we saw that we couldn't find a good forest, we made the quick decision to come to Vancouver. In the end it was three weeks that turned into five years. The benefits of being in Vancouver were tremendous." The temperate climate of the Vancouver forests was crucial for the series, because it allowed the directors to create that mysterious hazy aura somewhat similar to the hit series recently released by that then on television, Twin Peaks —where David Duchovny appears as a DEA agent—. Responsibility for casting fell to Randy Stone, who recommended the leads to Carter, and Rick Millikan. Among the reasons for moving filming to Los Angeles was David Duchovny's desire to be closer to his wife, actress Téa Leoni., whom he had married in 1997.

Types of episodes

Each episode begins with an introduction where some mysterious event is presented that triggers the plot and sets the tone for what Mulder and Scully will investigate. It is followed by the famous opening theme composed by Mark Snow and the credits (with the exception of the pilot episode). These usually ended with the phrase "The Truth Is Out There", but sometimes other phrases appeared (see Important Phrases below). The series followed the American four-act format, punctuated by commercial breaks for each episode after the introduction. Each act lasted approximately 10 minutes and the average length of an episode is between 43 and 45 minutes.

The series is considered unique in its kind, for combining dramatic episodes with many other individual episodes, which do not require prior knowledge on the part of the viewer to understand them. Because of this, the episodes can be divided into the following categories:

"Mythological" o Main plot

Episodes that relate the development of a government conspiracy related to aliens. They were mostly presented at the beginning and end of each season, as well as interspersed during the course of it. They made up about a third of the total episodes per season and were usually broadcast as double episodes.

The success of The clear and in which there is no conclusive evidence to support or refute them. In addition, Carter reinvented the theme of extraterrestrial invasions, given that traditionally films and series of this genre follow the scheme: "Open contact / destruction of everything / battles / final human victory." In "The X-Files" The idea of a secret invasion is presented and agreed with powerful and organized people, who work covertly through the use of a biological weapon: a virus known as Purity or "Black Cancer" to enslave the human race without destroying the Earth.

• Season 1: Pilot, Deep Throat, Conduit, Fallen Angel, E.B.E., The Erlenmeyer Flask
• Season 2: Little Green Men, Duane Barry, Ascension, One Breath, Red Museum, Colony, End Game, Anasazi
• Season 3: The Blessing Way, Paper Clip, Nisei, 731, Piper Maru, Apocrypha, Wetwired, Talitha Cumi
• Season 4: Herrenvolk, Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, Tunguska, Terma, Memento Mori, Tempus Fugit, Max., Zero Sum, Gethsemane
• Season 5: Redux, Redux II, Christmas, Emily, Patient X, The Red and the Black, The End
• The X-Files: Fight the Future
• Season 6: The Beginning, S.R. 819, Two Fathers, One Son, Biogenesis
• Season 7: The Sixth Extinction, The Sixth Extinction II: Love Fati, Sein und Zeit, Closure, In Ami, Requiem
• Season 8: Within, Without, Per Manum, This is Not Happening, Deadalive, Three Words, They're coming., Essence, Existence
• Season 9: Nothing Important Happened Today, Nothing Important Happened Today II, Trust No. 1, Provenance, Providence, Jump the shark, William, The Truth
• Season 10: My Struggle, My Struggle II
• Season 11: My Struggle III, This, Ghouli, My Struggle IV

Two non-mythology episodes introduced characters that became elements of subsequent mythological episodes later:

• Sleepless: Alex Krycek.
• The Host: X.

Independent episodes

They relate situations that frame paranormal events and creatures, generally unrelated to the main or "mythological" plot. Some of them explore the relationship between Mulder and Scully; others focus on supporting characters such as assistant director Walter Skinner or The Lone Gunmen. Carter commented that he tried to avoid the "monster of the week" syndrome, although some of these episodes also involved aliens and government conspiracies, to try to give them some continuity and meaning even during breaks in the main plot.

Some even fall into the realm of comedy, parodying the series itself and its main characters:

• Humbug (2x20)
• War of the Coprophages (3x12)
• Syzygy (3x13)
• Jose Chung's From Outer Space (3x20)
• Small Potatoes (4x20)
• The Post-Modern Prometheus (5x05)
• Bad Blood (5x12)
• Dreamland I and II (6x04 and 6x05)
• Arcadia (6x15)
• X-Cops (7x12)
• Je Souhaite (7x21)
• Hollywood A.D. (7x19)
• Lord of the Flies (9x5)
• Improbable (9x13)
• Sunshine Days (9x18)
• The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat (11x4)

Episodes without a paranormal theme

Around twenty episodes can be considered a break from the main plot since they deal with topics far from the "paranormal." Examples are: Irresistible" (2x13), which addresses the theme of a serial killer with necrophilic tendencies; Home (4x02) and Hell Money (3x19), among others.

Main plot plot

Beginnings

Fox Mulder (in charge of the X-Files since 1990) is an FBI special agent fascinated by paranormal events and the UFO phenomenon since his sister disappeared at the age of 8. After studying psychology in England he joined the FBI in 1986 (having finished at the top of his class). In the X Files – forgotten until he finds them – he discovers unsolved cases of a grotesque nature: inexplicable disappearances and deaths, sightings of UFOs, presence of strange beings... He has contacts in the Senate and with the occasional help of a trio of eccentric computer and communications experts who call themselves The Lone Gunmen.

On the other hand, there is Dana Scully, a young agent with a promising career. She is a forensic doctor and rules out the paranormal nature of the X-Files. She is a scientist and because of this condition she tries to find a valid explanation for everything. While it may seem strange that Dr. Scully works on files of these characteristics, the fact is that she is assigned by her FBI superiors to the department under the pretext of providing scientific validity to the cases investigated by Mulder; but the hidden objective is to discredit the work done on the X-Files.

Scully begins working with Mulder in 1993. Around that time, he comes into contact with a curious informant: Deep Throat. Thanks to him, Mulder confirms his suspicions that there is a government conspiracy to hide evidence of extraterrestrial life from the public. The two agents begin to unravel the tangle, while stumbling upon cases involving mutant creatures and paranormal activity. By solving these cases, Dana and Fox gain trust until they have a romantic relationship, although due to the nature of the series it is a subtle platonic love. She begins to believe a little in the inexplicable and he does not feel bad about confronting his obsessions with his partner's dose of science. In a short time they form a great team.

Seasons 2-6

Deep Throat dies during an adventure at the end of the first season. His last advice to Dana is: Don't trust anyone. As a confidant, she is replaced by X, a guy who continues to provide information to Mulder, in an even more paranoid way than her predecessor. At the same time, the figure of a fearsome antagonist is emerging: the Smoker, a man of immense political power who has access to the Pentagon, the FBI itself and, in general, all the secrets of the United States Government. In 1994, this guy managed to close the X-Files and separate the two protagonists.

Months later, Dana is kidnapped by Duane Barry, a madman who claims to have been abducted by aliens. Despite the betrayal of an agent destined to help him, Alex Krycek, Mulder discovers that The Smoking Man and the military are involved in the Ascension affair (2x06). After three months, his partner reappears without explanation and half dead in a Georgetown hospital. When she recovers, Deputy Director Walter Skinner – his immediate superior – reopens the X-files.

For several years, Mulder and Scully return to their increasingly dangerous investigations. In fact, they lose close family members: Fox's father, William Mulder, and Dana's sister, Melissa Scully, are murdered. Two years later, X is discovered and executed, giving way to a new Mulder confidant: Marita Covarrubias, UN bureaucrat.

As a result of experiments carried out on her during her kidnapping, Scully falls ill with cancer. It would seem that Skinner has been playing double duty to deceive Mulder, so he fakes his suicide to find out what is behind the conspiracy and get a cure for his partner who has fallen ill with cancer due to her past kidnapping. He obtains it, but it does not prevent Scully from becoming sterile. We then discover that Skinner has always been on his side and that the smoker works not only for him. government but for a secret group: the union. These are very influential people who have negotiated with the extraterrestrials to ensure that future colonization is carried out while safeguarding their own interests. Among them stands out a sybarite, known only as "The Manicure Man" (Well-Manicured Man), determined to develop a vaccine that immunizes against the alien virus that the colonizers will use to subdue planet Earth. Mulder comes to seriously doubt the usefulness of his work and his fight before embarking on the investigation related to 'Patient X-Files, destroying the work of many years.

After these events, both agents, who have been reassigned, face their most difficult mission The X-Files: Fight the Future (the movie). After this adventure, Agent Mulder is unable to prove his findings, an extraterrestrial experimentation base at the South Pole); so the X-files are reopened but without Mulder and Scully. In his place, the smoker places his own son in the office: Agent Jeffrey Spender, whose mother is Cassandra Spender, Patient X. Mulder and Scully are reassigned for a time dedicated to trivial matters.

When a group of alien rebels—the Faceless Men—confront the colonizers and exterminate the union, Mulder and Scully return to their office. We learn more about the smoker's past and his connection to Mulder's father: they both worked together in the conspiracy and sacrificed their family as part of the deal with the aliens. Bill Mulder had to choose between handing over his son or Samantha. The smoker shoots Jeffrey, accusing him of having failed him.

Seasons 7-9

Mulder's personal crusade seems to end when he accepts that his sister is dead. At this point, his relationship with Dana has clearly acquired a romantic character: on the occasion of the new millennium they have their first kiss. Another case takes them back to Oregon, where the series began seven years ago. On this occasion, people who have been abducted before are disappearing. The key is in a crashed spaceship in the forest, which is surrounded by an invisibility shield. The smoker, very ill, sends Krycek to find the ship. Mulder fears for Scully, who hasn't been feeling well lately. Both are quite affectionate in this adventure, which takes a turn when Mulder is abducted. Skinner brings the news to Scully, who in turn surprises him with the news that she is pregnant.

It must be taken into account that, when Requiem was released - the episode that closes the seventh season - the producers were not sure that the series would continue and they made an episode that served as a closing but at the same time allowing the series to continue.

A new character appears: Special Agent John Doggett, who is assigned to lead the search for Mulder. Scully's pregnancy progresses and we discover that her child will be "special". In one episode, there is a group of people dedicated to collecting the "returned" by the aliens and heal them with the powers of an alien who calls himself Jeremiah Smith (actor Roy Thinnes, star of the late 60s cult series The Invaders). When Mulder is returned, agent John Doggett and agent Mónica Reyes, whom he has asked for help in the case, unknowingly prevent Mulder from being healed, so he is presumed dead and they decide to bury him. Chapters later they discover that perhaps is not really dead and that there is a way to save him and so they do it.

Denouement

In the last episode of the series, everything seems lost, when Mulder is arrested, accused of killing a soldier at a facility he sneaked into to discover the date set for the invasion. In this episode, a kind of summary of the series is made in the form of a military trial, in which all the important events that occurred in the 9 seasons regarding the main plot are explained. Because the military court trying Mulder is influenced by the conspiracy, Mulder is found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Doggett and Skinner help Mulder escape and flee with Scully. The fugitives drive to some Anasazi ruins in New Mexico, where they have told him that he will find the last link in the chain that leads to The Truth: a 'wise man'. The agents can't believe it when they find the 'Smoker' there. He reveals to them the government conspiracy and that the alien invasion is scheduled for December 22, 2012, as Mulder had already discovered before. After the conversation, the place is destroyed by helicopters, but Mulder and Scully manage to escape.

Six years later in The X-Files: I Want to Believe Scully is shown working as a doctor in a Catholic hospital and Mulder in complete isolation. The FBI decides to drop the charges against him if he decides to help the recovery of an agent with the help of a pedophile priest who claims to have divine visions. The plot of the film takes up the paranormal spirit of the “Monster of the Week” episodes.

Years later Scully and Mulder are called by Agent Skinner when an Internet journalist seeks to reveal a government "conspiracy" involving aliens. The X files are reopened.

Influences of the series

Television

Chris Carter mentions Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Tales from the Darkside and especially Kolchak: The Night Stalker as his biggest influences on the series. Actor Darren McGavin who played Carl Kolchak in Kolchak: The Night Stalker appeared in two episodes of the series as Special Agent Arthur Dales, a character who was described as "the father of the X-Files."

Carter commented that the relationship between Mulder and Scully (platonic but with sexual tension) was influenced by the chemistry between John Steed (Patrick MacNee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) in the British television series The Avengers from the 1960s. A possible influence of the series documented by the press was Nigel Kneale's Quatermass series and his various television and film projects. It was proposed to Kneale write for The X-Files, but rejected the offer.

The cult hit of the early '90s, Twin Peaks is considered the series' biggest influence in terms of its dark atmosphere and frequent mixes of drama and irony. David Duchovny appeared in Twin Peaks, and a Mulder-like character was seen in the series as FBI agent Dale Cooper. Both series were filmed in the Pacific Northwest.

Cinema

Producers and writers cited All the President's Men, Three Days of the Condor, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rashōmon, The Thing (The Enigma of Another World), The Children of Brazil, The Silence of the Lambs and JFK as influences on the series. Gangster films such as The Godfather trilogy are also referenced in conspiracy dialogue, especially in union conversations. For example, a scene at the end of the episode "Redux II" (5x02), directly reflects the famous baptism scene at the end of The Godfather. In Triangle (6x03) Chris Carter uses various shots in homage to Alfred Hitchcock's The Rope. Other episodes written by him make many references to other films, as does Darin Morgan.

Literature

The series bears many similarities to the cosmic horror universe created by H. P. Lovecraft in his series of stories about the Cthulhu Mythos. Many episodes of the series have enormous similarities in their narrative structure with these stories. In them, the protagonists (generally educated people who face the unknown) have to follow a series of clues, in the purest detective style, to find a horror that surpasses them. In most of Lovecraft's stories, the protagonists frequent psychiatric institutions due to the loss of their sanity when faced with the unknown. Mulder and Scully are those two sane characters who face a world of enigmas plagued by alienated characters. If we take any episode of the series, we will see that same "Lovecraftian" repeated, especially in the mythological chapters of The X-Files. In fact, Mulder is a studious young FBI agent involved in unknown things that overcome him and sometimes push him to temporary madness, encouraged by the search for the truth, which leads him to unmask a hidden truth and encounter extraterrestrial beings.. This is the typical plot repeated in the novels of "Cthulhu mythology" of Lovecraft and his followers. Works by H.P. Lovecraft with which the plots of The X-Files are related in their structure are, for example, "The Call of Cthulhu", "In the Mountains of madness" or "The Ceremonial", which can be unequivocally compared with series chapters such as "Pilot", "Gethsemane" or "Demons".

Changes in the series

In recent seasons the series showed several changes both in the characters and in its direction, in addition to registering declines in its audience.

One of the main themes of the series, Mulder's search for his sister was resolved during the seventh season, as already mentioned. The expectation about the possible relationship between Mulder and Scully was closed at the end of the eighth season, when they are shown as a couple, although they do not live together. For several years, it had been a topic of conversation whether or not they should consummate their relationship.

Even after the end of the series, it still retains a large number of followers. It has been said, however, that The composed of those who approached the series due to its high popularity, especially after the 1998 film was released.

The Lone Gunmen, a trio of geeks who throughout the series help Mulder and Scully on various occasions, even had their own series, a spin-off that was canceled after airing 12 chapters. As the cancellation left its story unresolved, The X-Files was used to make a closing episode. This is equivalent to what was done to close another canceled Chris Carter series, Millenium, which had its closure thanks to The X-Files, taking advantage of the circumstance of the imminent arrival of the year 2000; This crossover episode is much more memorable for containing the first kiss between Mulder and Scully.

With the idea of taking advantage of his popularity on television to make the leap to the big screen, David Duchovny stopped being a regular actor after the seventh season.

Self-references and cultural references

The number 42 frequently appears throughout the series, being visualized for the first time in episode 1 of the 1st season when The Smoker keeps alien evidence in a box numbered 1041 and, next to him, the box with number 1042 (Mulder lives in apartment 42, has seen the movie Plan 9 From Outer Space 42 times, etc.). In the episode "Home", the reason for the number is given when Mulder shows an old newspaper headline that says in English: "Elvis Presley dies at 42.". Also, the episode is called "Home" and the newspaper 'The Home Crier'. It is a tribute to the books of Douglas Adams, since the number 42 is considered the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything else.

"Alone", an episode from the eighth season, shows items from previous episodes: on Scully's desk is the collar of Queequeg, a dog that appears in the episode "Quagmire". There's also the keychain that Mulder gave to Dana in "Tempus Fugit". Also appearing in this episode is the character of Agent Leyla Harrison who got her name from a real life person. Leyla Harrison was a fan of the series, and a fanfic writer who died in February 2001 from melanoma. One of her friends contacted Frank Spotnitz and he decided to create the character of her (a professed admirer of Mulder and Scully) in honor of her memory.

The birthday of series creator Chris Carter is October 13 (10/13 in English notation). Thus, there are frequent references to the number 1013 in the series, and that is the reason why Mulder also has a birthday on October 13. Also, it is the name of Chris Carter's production company Ten Thirteen Productions (10 13 Productions). Additionally, 11:21 is the time that appears most often on the show. It is Chris Carter's wife's birthday (November 21 or 11/21 in the United States). The Mayan calendar predicts that the current era of our world will end on December 22, 2012 (in reference to the episode "The Truth").

Reception

Reviews

The X-Files received positive reviews from television critics, with many calling it one of the best series to air on American television in the 1990s. Ian Burrell's British newspaper The Independent calls the show "one of the greatest cult shows on modern television." Richard Corliss of Time magazine called it the series as the "cultural touchstone" of the 1990s. The Evening Herald wrote that the series has had an "overwhelming influence" on television. In 2012, [the magazine] Entertainment Weekly described it as a "paney to eccentrics, sci-fi enthusiasts, conspiracy theory buffs and pilgrims to Area 51 everywhere." Ratings continually improved over the first five seasons, while Mulder and Scully's believer versus skeptic dynamic created a television formula that remains widely used today.

In 2004 and 2007, The X-Files was ranked #2 on TV Guide in the 'Best Cult Show' category. In 2002, the program was ranked as the thirty-seventh best television program of all time. In 1997, the episodes "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and "Small Potatoes", were rated between #10 and #72 on "100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time." In 2013, TV Guide ranked it included it in its list of the "60 Greatest Dramas of All Time" and ranked it #25 on its list of the "60 Greatest Series of All Time." In 2007, Time included it in a list of the "100 best television shows of all time." In 2008, Entertainment Weekly ranked it the fourth best work in the science fiction genre, the fourth best television show in the last 25 years, and in 2009, he named it the fourth best science fiction show, on his list of the "Best Science Fiction Show" in history. Empire magazine ranked it the ninth best television show in history, further stating that the best episode was 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space'; of the third season. According to The Guardian, MediaDNA research found that The X-Files was at the top of the list of the most innovative brands on television In 2009, it was announced that the series' tagline "The Truth Is Out There" (The Truth is Out There) was one of Britain's top 60 best-known mottos.

Audience

Fandom

As The X-Files saw its audience grow from a "small but dedicated" to a global mass cult audience. Digital telecommunications were becoming mainstream. According to The New York Times, "this may have been the first show to find its audience growth linked to the growth of the Internet [...]." The X-Files i> incorporated new technologies into stories beginning in the early seasons: Mulder and Scully communicated by cell phone, email contact with secret informants provided plot points in episodes such as "Colony" and 'Anasazi', while The Lone Gunmen were shown as Internet fans since 1994. Many X-Files fans also had online access. Fans of the show became commonly known as "X-Philes", a term coined from the Greek root "-phil-" meaning love or obsession. In addition to watching the show, X-Philes reviewed episodes on unofficial websites, formed communities with other fans through newsgroups and Usenet listservs, and wrote their own fan fiction..

Prizes

Over the course of its nine seasons, the series was nominated for 151 awards and won a total of 111 individual awards from 54 different agencies, including Emmy Awards, Golden Globes, Environmental Media Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. The X-Files also won a Peabody Award in 1996, during its third season.

The series won a total of 36 Emmys; 9 for acting, one for script, and 26 for various technical categories. In September 1994, The X-Files won its first award, the Emmy for 'Outstanding Individual Achievement in Graphic Design and Credit Sequences'.

Peter Boyle later won the Emmy for "Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series" for his interpretation of the main character of the third season episode 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose'. That same year, Darin Morgan won the Emmy for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Drama Series" for the same episode. "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" It was one of the four most award-winning episodes Morgan wrote during his brief stint as the show's writer. In 1997, both Duchovny and Anderson won a Golden Globe for their performances in a drama series. Later that year, Anderson won the Emmy for 'Outstanding Actress in a Series.'

The series was nominated for 12 Golden Globe Awards overall, winning five. The first nomination came in 1994, when the show won Best Series – Drama. The following year, Anderson and Duchovny were nominated for Best actor in a leading role and Best actress in a leading role, respectively. In 1996, the series won three awards; Anderson and Duchovny for Best Actress and Actor and Best Series - Drama. In 1997 and 1998, the show received the same three nominations. In 1997, however, the series won Best Series - Drama. In 1998 the series did not win any awards and received no subsequent nominations.

Throughout its run, The X-Files also won Emmy Awards in seven technical categories: graphic design and credit sequences, cinematography, sound editing and mixing, art direction, film editing Single camera image makeup, and visual effects. He was also nominated for 15 Saturn Awards, of which he won three for "best television series", one for "best television actress" (Gillian Anderson), and one for "best television actor" (Robert Patrick). In its ninth season it received a nomination for "best contemporary music".

Merchandise

The X-Files spawned an industry of derivative products. In 2004, US-based Topps Comics and more recently, DC Comics imprint Wildstorm launched a new licensed comic book series. During the series transition, Fox Broadcasting Company published the official magazine The X-Files Magazine. The X-Files trading card game was released in 1996 and an expansion set was released in 1997. The X-Files has produced three video games. In 1998, The X-Files: The Game was released for PC and Macintosh and a year later for PlayStation. This game takes place within the timeline of the second or third season and follows Agent Craig Willmore in his search for the missing Mulder and Scully. In 2000, Fox Interactive released The X-Files: Unrestricted Access, a game-style database for Windows and Mac, which allowed users to access each case file. Then, in 2004, The X-Files: Resist or Serve was released is a survival horror game released for the PlayStation 2 and is an original story set in the seventh season. It allows the player to control both Mulder and Scully. Both games feature acting and voice work from cast members of the series. A 6-player pinball game called The X-Files was produced by Sega in 1997.

Legacy

For its part, The X-Files has inspired many other series including Strange World, Burning Zone, Special Unit 2, Mysterious Ways, Lost, The Outer Limits, Carnivàle, The Dead Zone, Dark Skies, The Visitor, The 4400, Fringe, < i>Bones and Supernatural, neither of which, except Lost, enjoyed the same popularity or following that The X-Files achieved. Some of these series had staff from The X-Files, such as Lost, whose director of photography is John Bartley; 24, which had Howard Gordon as screenwriter; Six Feet Under, co-produced by Lori Jo Nemhauser; and Supernatural, which had directors such as David Nutter, Kim Manners and John Shiban. In some cases the debt to the series is very explicit, as was reflected in chapter 1 of the second season of Fringe, where at the beginning of the chapter Mulder and Scully are seen holding hands and contemplating admired, from a television screen, an external event that was happening at the moment.

Fox also presented two related series: Millennium, also produced by Chris Carter, and the "Lone Gunmen" (The Lone Gunmen). The stories of Millennium and The X-Files occasionally crossed paths. Frank Black, the protagonist of Millennium, appeared in an X-Files episode called Millennium (7x04) to tie up loose ends after production of Millennium was cancelled. When the trio of gunfighters also ran out of series (just one season) they returned to The X-Files to have a final episode during the ninth season.

In The Simpsons, an animated and contemporary comedy from the same network, they dedicate the episode "The Springfield Files" to do a parody of the series and Mulder and Scully appear drawn investigating the appearance of an alien in the city of Springfield. Besides, in the intro when Bart appears on the blackboard he writes "the truth is not out there" in reference to the phrase we see at the end of the intro, The truth is out there. Actors Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny reprized their characters in the animated comedy, participating in the episode as guest stars. The musical influence can also be seen in the Smallville series. Mark Snow created many of The X-Files' themes, most notably in The X-Files: Fight the Future and subsequent seasons. Mark Snow worked on the soundtrack for Smallville from its first episodes, although it is difficult to appreciate the similarity of his music to that of The X-Files until its fourth season. Russell T Davies claimed that The X-Files was his inspiration for the British series Torchwood, describing it as "dark, dangerous and sexy...". Other series have been inspired by the dark tones and format of The X-Files, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which imitates these aspects as well as its sporadic mix of horror and humor. Joss Whedon described his series as a cross between The X-Files and My So-Called Life.

What has become common in television drama series in recent years, episode titles are never shown on screen. This is one of the first series in which fans searched for information, such as episode names, strictly via the Internet.

On July 16, 2008, Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz donated various material from the series and the new film to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. Items donated include the original script for the pilot episode and the poster from Mulder's office with the caption 'I Want to Believe'. (in Spanish "I want to believe").

Dubbing