Twenty five years ago, The X-Files changed my life.
September 10 marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of The X-Files, but for me, The X-Files really began two weeks later, on September 24. On that Friday night, I came home from a long day at work, followed by a long train commute. I fed my family, set the kids up with homework and toys, and sat down in the living room to channel surf and numb my mind. I was tired and overworked, and I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do: writing. I had started a half a hundred short stories and a couple of novels, and they had all fizzled out. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be more than an office drone, didn’t think I would ever finish anything I could be proud of.
Then the channel landed on Fox Networks, and there was Eugene Tooms, looking down a chimney. Okay, no big deal. I had heard about some UFO show, on a struggling fourth network that half the country did not even receive. I loved science fiction, but not lame alien abduction stories. So I had passed on the premiere and the second episode.
Then Tooms’ arm reached down the chimney towards the camera…and kept reaching…and kept reaching, until it was unnaturally extended. My hair stood on end, I sat up straight in my chair, and my jaw fell open. I came back the next week, and the week after that.
For the next nine years.
I jumped online and found a community of like-minded TV fans, and soon was engaged in long, late-night discussions about the show. Somewhere during that first season, I wrote my first review. I had to know why I found these stories so compelling. Why was I obssessing over this show? Was it the actors? The lighting, the sets? I knew it was the stories, but why were they so riveting? Answering that question took me the next nine years, in review after review, all of them devoted to answering one question: why did this story work, or not work? To that end, I brought everything I knew about storytelling, theatre, and drama.
My undergraduate work had included theatre, creative writing, and fine art, on top of years of theater work. I had been to some of the great writing workshops, studied under masters. But analyzing these stories, figuring out what combination of story, acting, lighting, even music drew me in and kept me fascinated, was not just a hobby but a whole education. This fanatical attention to detail was new to me, and I kept seeing connections. (Nor was I deluded: the number of “Easter eggs” and fan shout-outs buried in episodes is legendary.) One day, I posted a review to alt.tv.x-files. I don’t remember which one it was, probably “Ice” or “Conduit”, and they are lost now. But I got a response, and then another, and then another. So the next week, I wrote another review. And another.
For nine years.
I made friends–the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade is still together, still emailing practically every day (although we rarely even mention David any more. Sorry, DD). One day Chris Carter called me at work to discuss my review of “Humbug“. I worked with Ten Thirteen and HarperPrism to research and co-write the first Official Guide to the show, then the next one, and the one after that. I wrote trivia questions for Fox Network and TV Guide Online for four years. Trivia was my middle name.
I got phone calls in the middle of the night from writers who refused to identify themselves, whispering questions: what was Mulder’s birthday? What was Scully’s middle name? They called me because they didn’t have a show bible, and I had the answers in my notes. Or in my head. I met and interviewed many of the behind-the-scenes artists who created the show (the only time I ever went completely fan-girl was when Mat Beck introduced me to David Nutter, my favorite director). I sat in the edit suite to watch the late Kim Manners edit “Grotesque“. I saw footage that hit the cutting room floor (so to speak) and was never seen again. I went to the conventions, the Creation exhibits, I even went on location in Vancouver to watch the show being filmed.
And all the time, I was analyzing and dissecting, and writing.
Eventually, I wrote a script. Then I wrote another one. Then I wrote a story. I burned it and wrote another. I started out writing about Mulder and Scully but then started writing my own stories. And, for the first time, finishing them. Pulling apart The X-Files taught me about plot, pacing, and dialogue. I learned story beats. I learned story arcs. I published, but more importantly, I never stopped writing. Since the night Eugene Tooms’ stretchy arm scared the daylights out of me, I have never again suffered from writer’s block.
I am going to do something I’ve never done: I’m going to quote myself. I said it in 2002, and it is still true today:
“The X-Files changed my life: it spurred me to reclaim a writing career that was moribund, to change my profession, my residence and my friends. Without it I would never have discovered the Internet in 1993. I would not be a professional writer. I would not have friends all over the world I have never met. And I might have allowed myself to forget that, perhaps, there is something out there that we don’t understand, that we may never fully comprehend, but that reminds us life is more than what we see, more than what we touch, and far, far more than we believe.”
Maybe the show has reached its end. David left–and came back. Gillian has left–and probably won’t. Some of the best writers and directors in television are off on their own careers, or retired, or dead, but in any case not coming back. Can the show go on? Should it?
I think The X-Files, as a concept, will never run out of stories, because we as humans will never stop looking for something hidden behind the mundane, even if it’s just a shadow cast on a wall or a fleeting glimpse of something that cannot, should not be. We need the numinous, and The X-Files gave it to us better than anything else.
For that, again, thank you Chris Carter.
Happy anniversary.