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The X Files is coming back! (1 Viewer)

MaxMorrow

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TravisR said:
I couldn't be happier that the show is back but only having 6 episodes blows. Smaller episode orders have nothing to do with telling a better story, it's entirely related to the budget.

Better not enough than too much, says I. And there are plenty of stories that don't need 22 episode seasons (or a trilogy of movies, or whatever) to tell. Perhaps this will be one of them.
 

TravisR

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MaxMorrow said:
Better not enough than too much, says I. And there are plenty of stories that don't need 22 episode seasons (or a trilogy of movies, or whatever) to tell. Perhaps this will be one of them.
Looking at that EW article, they're guessing that these are standalone episodes so I can't believe that after 13 years that Chris Carter and whoever else comes on the writing staff couldn't come up with 12 rock solid scary episodes. Maybe if they were doing 6 mythology episodes (that were completely independent of the original mythology so it's accessible to a new audience) that could work because it would basically be a quick serialized story and unlike the series' mythology, it wouldn't have time to get bogged down in itself.
 

joshEH

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I hope the invasion happened on schedule, and the new episodes are about Scully and Mulder trying to raise their kids in a deep-cave shelter near an underground river while the aliens colonize the surface offstage.


It'll totally be like Little House on the Prairie, but with cave-crickets threatening the fungus crop.
 

MaxMorrow

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I too would find it hard to believe that they couldn't come up with more than six good stories--if I hadn't been let down by any number of movie or television series that couldn't pull off similar goals with all the money in the world to make it happen.


Regardless of whether they're standalones or mythology based, I'm fine with six. If they're great (and successful), they'll be likely to at least get an opportunity to make more. And if they're not, it's only six rather than twenty-two. It's win-win for me, though I can understand that other fans have other views :)


Either way, nice to have it back!
 

Jason Charlton

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TravisR said:
I couldn't be happier that the show is back but only having 6 episodes blows.

I'm not so sure I agree. I really liked the limited, 12-hour format of "24: Live Another Day" - I thought it forced the writers to avoid all the "filler" that had always been needed to expand the core story to 24 episodes.


Also, consider how much was crammed into just 8 episodes of Agent Carter. The limited run necessitated a faster pace to the story that I really appreciated.


Honestly, it's been so long since I last watched X-Files (and I don't think I even watched the last season or so with Robert Patrick) I don't even remember what story threads were answered and which were left to our imagination.


Either way, at only 6 episodes, it won't take up much DVR space either way, so I'm in.
 

joshEH

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The X-Files featured a Murderer's Row of writing talent, so the only way to get me excited about this would be to secure the returns of at least a few of them. Guys like Gilligan, Spotnitz, and Shiban have all moved on, but seeing as it's a limited-season thing, maybe some of them could still take part in some capacity.

I'd adore Morgan and Wong returning, but that seems pretty unlikely, considering their professional fallout with Carter after Millennium.
 

Radioman970

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Mulder in a wheel chair? Scully using a walker? I'd still soooOOoo watch that! Very excited! And seriously they both look great and this is a great time to do this. I hope they get it right like the Trek movies did mostly (well, i'm still saving enough money to have the brains cells with STV removed from my head). I do hope all the stories are like Night Stalker again. There's some outrageous stuff they could do if they stepped away from aliens and conspiracies and such.
 

TravisR

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Jason Charlton said:
I'm not so sure I agree. I really liked the limited, 12-hour format of "24: Live Another Day" - I thought it forced the writers to avoid all the "filler" that had always been needed to expand the core story to 24 episodes.
I thought 24 worked great with 12 episodes too but that was a show that by its nature always had some filler so by dropping to 12, they lost a lot of the junk. The X-Files isn't in real time so it doesn't need filler episodes, they can all be killer.


Since there's no one happier than me that The X-Files is returning, I realize that I sound like the guy who wins a $300 million lottery and then bitches about the taxes but I can't help but want more. On a positive note, based on last summer's 24, I fully expect Fox to give The X-Files a first class budget so the new episodes will all be a top notch production.
 

Sam Favate

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Glad to hear it. Maybe 6 episodes are to test the waters and more episodes will be ordered in subsequent years if warranted. I liked the 2008 movie, and I hope the story continues from there.
 

Oliver Ravencrest

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I'm both excited and leery, especially after the last movie. I wouldn't mind some closure to the Aliens Mythology but would prefer stand-a-lone stories. I wouldn't mind seeing a Werewolf episode.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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I think the six episode order is less about budget and more about what David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were willing to commit to. They're shooting this during the summer, when most shows are taking a production hiatus. Considering that Duchovny is the series lead on NBC's upcoming "Aquarius" and Anderson is a series regular on both the BBC's "The Fall" and NBC's "Hannibal", it probably wasn't logistically feasible to do any more than six episodes.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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joshEH said:
The X-Files featured a Murderer's Row of writing talent, so the only way to get me excited about this would be to secure the returns of at least a few of them. Guys like Gilligan, Spotnitz, and Shiban have all moved on, but seeing as it's a limited-season thing, maybe some of them could still take part in some capacity.

I'd adore Morgan and Wong returning, but that seems pretty unlikely, considering their professional fallout with Carter after Millennium.

In an interview with XFilesNews, Carter confirmed that "we've lured Darin Morgan and Jim Wong, we're very excited about that and we're working on the rest." Morgan's older brother Glen will apparently be an executive producer on the new run.


Mark Snow will also be returning as the composer. The involvement of Bill Roe and Rob Bowman, as cinematographer and director respectively, will apparently depend on how much overlap there is with the shooting schedule for "Castle".

joshEH said:

I see this same argument made when it comes to Clear Channel and radio. Yes, this revival is about re monetizing the "X Files" brand, and yes Clear Channel's customers are the advertisers and not the listeners.


But just because those facts are true doesn't mean that 20th Century Fox Television doesn't care about the show's fans or Clear Channel doesn't care about its listeners.


Ultimately, the fans' experience (and the experience of the new fans to come) will determine the show's value to companies like Netflix. Because the viewers matter to the streaming services, the viewers matter to Fox.
 

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