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Radiographie d'une série culte
The X-Files

(X-ray of a Cult Series: The X-Files)

by

Alain Bergeron et Laurine Spehner


(excerpt from the introduction, p. 11-13, followed by the Table of Contents)



X-raying the X-Files

This book is for everyone who follows and loves the X-Files series and would like to learn more about the complex world created by Chris Carter. It was borne from the passion of two fans, two "X-philes," as they are often called. Alain Bergeron and Laurine Spehner first practiced together for a long time, through an abundant electronic correspondence, speculating about the behaviour and motivations of the series' characters, elaborating a taxonomy of the extraterrestrial creatures, putting some order into the secret plans and conspiracies, delving more deeply into the various aspects of the relationship between the two heroes, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Although all these themes have been endlessly discussed among fans all over the world, there's never been a book dedicated to them as detailed as this one. To expose the X-Files TV series to what would be the intellectual equivalent of X-rays may seem like a bad pun, but it describes quite well what the authors have been aiming to do: to analyse, to dig deeper, to read through layers of meaning, to reveal, to understand.

We wanted to publish neither a simple guide, since these already exist, nor a dictionary, nor an encyclopedia, even less a work aimed at experts with academic pretensions. We believe that the X-Files phenomenon can be handled in a serious manner and looked at from all angles while being written in an interesting way, accessible to all, without sounding like a PhD thesis. The reader will, however, find an appendix with a brief analysis of the one hundred and forty episodes of the first six seasons, as well as the most extensive bibliography ever compiled in French on the subject.

Writing about our passions is a source of pleasure for us. We hope the reading of this book will make this obvious, because we really enjoyed writing it. This is fortunate, since the scope of this task might have transformed a delightful experience into an extremely tedious chore. Watching, over and over again, each of those one hundred and forty episodes, while endlessly working with the remote to scrutinize each shot, each scene, each line of dialogue, taking umpteen notes, going through each script with a fine-toothed comb, organizing all that material and going through several versions of each chapter are activities that could end up being extremely trying.

Passion and enthusiasm do not mean we abandoned all critical distance. Quite the contrary. We do not deny that The X-Files has its flaws. Even though our interest in the series convinced us to dedicate the time and energy necessary to write a book, we no more intend to disregard its weaknesses than to refrain from praising its admirable qualities of ambiance, intelligence and technical production. For such is the beauty of being a fan: you can still love your idols, even after knocking them loose a bit from their pedestals.

We wanted the various parts of the book to form an integrated whole, rather than a collection of unrelated texts. Although they have been written by different authors, the reader should be able to read the thirteen chapters as a logical series of articles. The first one is an introduction to the world of the series and its creator, Christ Carter. The second is a quick overview of the first six seasons and their most important plot elements. Chapters three and four are respectively about Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, while chapter five examines the relationship between the two characters. Chapter six provides quite an extensive gallery of the secondary characters. Chapter seven suggests a lexicon of the various genres X-Files episodes could be seen as belonging to, illustrating their diversity with a more detailed commentary on eight selected examples. Chapters eight and nine deal with what is commonly referred to as the X-Files "mythology," i.e. the extraterrestrial species (8) and government conspiracies (9). Chapter ten examines the very peculiar type of humour of some episodes. Chapter eleven looks at the more technical aspects of the series' production. Twelve and thirteen deal with adaptations made for other media, film, with the movie Fight the Future (12) and interactive CD-Rom, with the game The X-Files (13).


Table of Contents

    X-raying the X-Files 11
    Notes on conventions followed in this book 15
    1. Chiaroscuro: the world according to Chris Carter 17
    2. Mysterious trajectories: a retrospective of the first six seasons 37
    First season (1993-1994) 38
    Second season (1994-1995) 41
    Third season (1995-1996) 43
    Fourth season (1996-1997) 45
    Fifth season (1997-1998) 46
    Sixth season (1998-1999) 48
    3. Fox Mulder or the quest for a truth that is out there 51
    The centre of gravity of the series 51
    A family affair 54
    Samantha's kidnapping 57
    Mulder before Scully 60
    Quests and investigations 63
    Portrait of an anti-hero 67
    Agent Mulder's paradoxes 75
    4. Dana Scully or the art of cultivating contradictions 81
    A gifted woman trapped by the rules of the game 81
    From one dogma to another 86
    From conformity to the joys of insubordination 88
    An almost flawless heroism 91
    The fragile iceberg 94
    The infertile mother 96
    A foot in the grave, eternity right ahead... 100
    5. Mulder and Scully, a story of balance 105
    A functional association... against all odds! 105
    The dialogue of heart and reason 114
    They love each other, but... 119
    The fight between the shippers and the noromos 122
    6. The human comedy: a small gallery of the series' secondary characters 131
    Unstable, but fascinating 131
    Walter S. Skinner: flexible morality 133
    CSM (The Cigarette-Smoking Man): a slightly sulphurous smell 137
    WNM (The Well-Manicured Man) or the gentleman conspirator 142
    Alex Krycek: a career in opportunism 146
    Deep Throat or the cat-and-mouse game 150
    Mr. X: Deep Throat's dark side 154
    Marita Covarrubias or the beautiful liar 157
    Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley: Anti-Mulder and Anti-Scully 160
    The Lone Gunmen, musketeers for D'Artagnan-Mulder 165
    7. From the normal to the para-normal: standalone episodes in the series 171
    Science fiction 1: Ice [1.07] 175
    Science fiction 2: Kill Switch [5.11] 178
    Paranormal 1: Pusher [3.17] 182
    Paranormal 2: Mind's Eye [5.16] 185
    Supernatural 1: Miracle Man [1.17] 187
    Supernatural 2: Die Hand die Verletzt [2.14] 191
    Horror: Grotesque [3.14] 193
    Noir: The Pine Bluff Variant [5.18] 196
    8. The creatures of X-Files mythology 201
    The Greys 203
    The black goop or oil 205
    The hybrids 209
    Shapechangers 213
    9. The Secret Government 219
    Between JFK and Roswell 219
    The engineers of the future 225
    The hazards of collaboration 232
    10. When the paranormal becomes parody 241
    Mulderisms and other gags 242
    Dark humour, gallows humour 244
    The Darin Morgan Case 246
    Parody according to Vince Gilligan 255
    Parody according to Chris Carter... and others 259
    The lighter episodes 262
    11. Zeus's fury or How to put together an episode of The X-Files 265
    Filming 267
    The actors 270
    Camera work 262
    Sets 274
    Editing 275
    Sound effects and music 276
    Colour and lighting schemes 278
    Special effects 280
    Quest for the truth 283
    12. Fight the Future : the highs and lows of a movie version 285
    13. Let's play with Mulder and Scully 295
    Annex 1 : List of episodes 303
    Season 1: 1993-1994 304
    Season 2: 1994-1995 316
    Season 3: 1995-1996 327
    Season 4: 1996-1997 337
    Season 5: 1997-1998 347
    Season 6: 1998-1999 358
    Annex 2 : Biblio-X-Graphy
    International bibliography of studies (books and articles) on the X-Files 371
    Indexes
    General index 387
    Episodes index 391
    Characters, creatures and organizations index 394


© 1999 Éditions Alire & Les Auteurs

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