X-Files will be coming back for another season in the 2017-18 timeframe, and it can’t happen too soon for rabid X-Files fans. The TV medium seems a much better fit for the characters and the stories than the big screen approach the producers tried with minimal success following the end of the original run of X-Files . With the show getting its feet wet last year, can we hope for a return to the awesome seasons of old?
Throwback to this concert two years ago today when @davidduchovny and @GillianA brought down the house at the @CuttingRoomNYC . pic.twitter.com/qorxDDHCik
— X-Files News (@XFilesNews) May 12, 2017
TV X-Files Versus Movies
While there is no denying that the X-Files movies produced after the TV series ended had a certain charm, they felt like an abbreviated and rushed version of the show. In a two-hour or less movie, it’s simply impossible to delve into characters or create long story arcs.
It seems that the folks over at Fox have come to recognize this. Fox president David Madden said the following.
“Iconic characters, rich storytelling, bold creators – these are the hallmarks of great TV shows. And they are some of the reasons why The X-Files has had such a profound impact on millions of fans worldwide. Chris’ creativity, along with the brilliant work of David and Gillian, continue to propel this pop culture phenomenon, and we can’t wait to see what fresh mysteries Mulder and Scully uncover in this next chapter of The X-Files.”
X-Files Next Season
It’s not entirely clear what direction the show will take in the upcoming season, but we do know that its tremendous success convinced show producers and Fox to expand from the six-episode format we saw last year to a 10-episode format for the upcoming season.
How The X-Files Can Improve in Its Next Season? What do guys think? @notanotherxfpod @doubleXfiles @TheX_Cast https://t.co/d8njmMEH8e
— Ada Revere (@RevereAda) May 5, 2017
As series creator Chris Carter said in an interview with Fox News , there is certainly a great deal of interest in future episodes of the X-Files .
“There’s an appetite for more in the future; it’s just a matter of figuring out how to get it done.”
Obviously, the show runners are almost certainly going to have to pick up with the closing cliffhanger of last season in which Scully, Mulder, and Miller find themselves apparently about to be abducted by a UFO while Mulder starts succumbing to the virus.
The return of UFO aliens at that point had quite an impact on the audience – with many viewers and critics disliking it – but it will almost certainly guarantee a big audience for the first episode of the next season. Of course, cliffhangers don’t always work out well for show runners these days, as the folks over at The Walking Dead could confirm.
During its heyday in the 90s, X-Files had an enormous following of viewers who believed that “the truth is out there.” The intervening years and the mediocre movies notwithstanding, many of these same people – not to mention their children – were ecstatic when Fox and Chris Carter managed to revive the X-Files series last year.
And while the new incarnation of the X-Files didn’t garner the kind of massive ratings it enjoyed 20 years ago, it was still one of the highest ranked shows on Fox. For Duchovny, the real challenge lay in trying to reinterpret a character and how he might have changed – if any – since we last saw him.
“It was at least 20 years since I started it and maybe six, seven or eight years since I last did it so it was quite a gap. And you are playing the same person, the same character, the same man but he is 20 years older than when he started. So maybe [the] character doesn’t change but people change. It was trying to figure out… this guy because at the beginning he is so kind of youthfully obsessed.”
[Featured Image by Fox]