Column // Was the return of The X-Files a good idea?

When The X-Files went off the air after nine seasons and over two hundred episodes, the story of two FBI-agents investigating the inexplicable had become a zombie: dead and yet still walking.
I mean, look a the facts.
The conspiracy arc had been resolved in season 6. Agent Fox Mulder had made peace with the death of this sister, back in season 7. By the time season 9 started, David Duchovny had departed from the show and Gillian Anderson (who plays Dana Scully) played second fiddle to two new X-Files investigators, Doggett and Reyes.
The actors were fed up, the characters looked exhausted, the attempts at creating a new conspiracy proved unconvincing and anyway, who gave a damn? It was 2002: HBO was showing The Sopranos, The Wire and Six Feet Under, all in that very same year! 

Fifteen years later, there they are again, The X-Files, for a 10th season, consisting of 6 instead of the usual 20-plus episodes. Was this a good idea?

No attempts were made to continue the story where it stopped fifteen years ago. In fact, several plot strategies from the later seasons are treated as if they never happened. All that talk about genetically mutated super-soldiers? Erased from memory. Mulder convicted by a military tribunal? Never happened. The X-Files investigated by new agents? Forgotten. The death of Mulder’s nemesis and biological father, known as the Cigarette-smoking Man? Undone. (The man, who died in the fire blast caused by a grenade explosion, has had a tracheotomy and now smokes through his neck. Because that's what happens when you are killed in a grenade explosion.)
Instead, Mulder and Scully are inexplicably working for the FBI again. Mulder is convinced his earlier discoveries were false. Government-created smoke screens all, to hide experiments with alien DNA. Fewer little green men and more immoral men: it seems a wise choice.
Whereas most of the events of seasons 8 and 9 are glossed over, X-Files creator Chris Carter does acknowledge the emotional scars those later seasons left on Mulder and Scully. So yes, Scully had to give up her son. Both she and Mulder still look weary and beaten. In fact, they seem almost cynical. They know the drill: any investigation will inevitable lead to frustration, it’ll be one step forward and two backwards, and nobody is ever willing to cooperate.

An unhinged Mulder leans against the tomb of
deceased "X-Files" director Kim Manners,
in the self-spoofing third episode of the new series. 

It doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Forget about the plots that went nowhere, just focus on the characters. However, the first two episodes of the new series disappoint, mainly because the scripts are clunky beyond description, the conspiracy nonsense harder to sell than ever. But there's a problem with the characters as well. All they exude is pain. In seasons 8 and 9, Scully in particular had taken on the allure of a martyr. This hasn’t changed and frankly, it drags everything down. I’d like to see these characters get angry. Strike back. Wreak havoc. Instead they go through the motions like office workers counting the days till retirement - which seems further away than ever.
Only in the third episode, the self-spoofing "Mulder & Scully meet the Were-Monster", does the series prove that there was a reason beyond nostalgia to bring it back. Very funny and full of surprising twists, the "Were-Monster" gives the main characters and the audience a reason to smile. If you have plans to illegally download a new X-Files episode, this is the one. However, with only 3 more episodes left to go, The X-Files still has to show it can pull off this trick in some serious episodes as well.

None of this is worth losing any sleep over. The 6 new X-Files episodes are an indulgence, a trip down Memory Lane.  It’s just that when I watch The X-Files, I can’t help but wonder how awful the Twin Peaks reboot is going to be. Twin Peaks, another iconic series that went off the rails spectacularly in the second half of its second and final season. Another series that almost surely will have to pretend certain things never happened. And then create a new story in that very same universe, not for a limited run of 6, but for 18 episodes. That is... massive.
Of course, David Lynch is an artist and Chris Carter a screenwriter with a knack for catchy pulp. So there is hope. Hope that, if not the truth, then at least a successful reboot should be out there.