Feat of Clay by Sarah Stegall copyright © 1997 by Sarah Stegall Written by Howard Gordon Directed by Kim Manners From the first season onward, The X-Files has had three major themes: conspiracies/UFOs, “weird science”, and the paranormal. But now and then the series delves into an area rich with story potential: folklore. The pioneering entry into this territory was Chris Carter’s script for “The Jersey Devil”, which explored a legend about a monster that dates back to the founding of New Jersey. Later in the first season, Marilyn Osborne used the spirit-possession legend of the Manitou as a starting…
The X-Files: “Paper Hearts”
The Ace of Hearts by Sarah Stegall Copyright ©1997 by Sarah Stegall Written by Vince Gilligan Directed by Rob Bowman The FBI is made up of border guards, agents who are usually called into a case only when a state or national line is crossed. They are also called in when the line crossed is a matter of degree–excessive violence, excessive complexity, excessive difficulty. And Fox Mulder is the ultimate border guard, called in to explain the excessively strange. Little wonder, then, that eventually his researches must take him beyond the borders of consensual reality into the capricious landscape of…