Disney to reboot X-Files (Disney owns an insane amount of Fantasy/Sci Fi IP)

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

was that the one with the deformed baby and the civil war family? yeah that story still disturbs me, probably the best episode in the whole X-Files run

I saw that episode live, which was unusual for me, as I was only an intermittent viewer of the show. I think it was the only broadcast TV show to genuinely scare me. Great stuff.

 

[Tonguez]

the baby was a major plot point,

Spoiler

not only did it spark the investigation but on analysis it was discovered that the had been fertilized by 3 different fathers, it was the clue that revealed they werent looking for a kidnapped woman but rather another female member of the family who even had mutant ovum - literally a mother of monsters

…

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

I'd like to see a reboot. Some new actors. New characters. Leave Mulder and Scully out of it. It should be whole new cast. Stick to the monster of the week, and stab any writer, producer or studio head who suggest the black goo story line with a spoon right in the face... repeadtedly.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I was looking back at the Dark Matter campaign awhile ago and felt the same way. The fun has been sucked out of conspiracy theories.

Even in the 1990s, Dark*Matter was pretty off-beam because it essentially "flipped the script" on stuff like the X-Files, without saying it or making it obvious by doing the following:

1) Has very dodgy far-right attitudes to less secretive government agencies - it's really mad with the ATF, for example (even though it admits it's not a conspiracy!). FEMA is 100% as evil as the wildest far-right conspiracies would have, literally a fascist organisation aiming to take over the world if gets the slightest excuse (they even use the word "fascist"), to take away all your freedoms and put you in a camp and so on. The CDC are evil in every way you can imagine, again in ways which reflect far-right paranoia, and infiltrated by evil feminists who are going to get rid of the need for men (The Amazons of the Gynarchy and no I didn't make that up lol). The UN and the Bilderbergers obviously get it as well, in a rather shocking way.

2) Making it so that organised, Abrahamic religion, was in general capital-G Good, and fighting capital E Evil in secret. This can be okay if done right and ambiguously/weirdly enough (c.f. the Charlie Parker detective novels), but this was unambiguous, and it was weird as hell, and now looks completely insane after, for example, various huge child-abuse cover-ups (real conspiracies). A particularly sick bit is when we hear about how the Catholic church works in secret to defeat evil literally "prevent[ing] paranormal disasters", and gives a list of what are to presume are these activities - the witch hunts, the inquisition, the brutal suppression of various pagan religions, fighting the "thugees" and the Boxer Rebellion, and so on. It's a mind-blowing section because it really seems to think this a good thing. Oh bonus there's an entire powerful good-guy-oriented magic set basically only for Abrahamic religions - they explicitly list out Christianity, Judaism and and Islam, no others - including various classic D&D Cleric-esque spells, where non-Abrahamic faiths get... voodoo and shamanism. It does largely skip Islamophobia at least!

3) Made the Satanic Panic real and justified, because in Dark*Matter, there is a huge, terrifying literally-Satanic conspiracy, called The Final Church, which the sourcebook for basically aligns with every wild far-right conspiracy theory, indeed, it's a very good match for an awful lot of Qanon stuff.

4) Uses a lot of "real-world" "conspiracies", including, I kid you not, the Freemasons (painted in a pretty dark light, which is weird because they're both real and largely harmless - basically just old-fashioned corruption/old-boys-network rather than a directed conspiracy), and even names real people who were still alive when it was out (like Buzz Aldrin, an alleged Freemason conspirator in Dark*Matter), which in a really gonzo and wild RPG might be forgivable, esp. if it was small press, but seem kind of screwed up in this context. The Final Church is also the name of a real-world group, and it has ripped from the headlines stuff like Aum Shinryko, which even in 1999, felt gross as hell.

5) Is super-duper orientalist and has a ton of racism which I'm not even going to start on because we'd be here all day - this is less of a flip on the X-Files (which has at least a couple of deeply racist episodes, one of which is also possibly the dumbest episode, and just reeks of "I wrote this whilst on coke") and more "the 1990s, man", but it's pretty goddamn cursed, and it's significantly more racist than one might expect even for 1998.

I could go on but even in 1998, Dark*Matter was a deeply dodgy and questionable take on conspiracy theories.

Now, in 2023? Every really far-right Qanon-adjacent conspiracy theory is 100% true in Dark*Matter, whereas in the X-Files or Conspiracy X, that generally isn't true - very few are - more are misunderstood that flatly true, or just misdirections from other stuff.

So let's not pretend Dark*Matter was a cool product from a cool time. It was a messed-up product from a messed-up time.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I'd like to see a reboot. Some new actors. New characters. Leave Mulder and Scully out of it. It should be whole new cast.

We saw how well that worked with the National Treasure show, though. I enjoyed it, but not having all the main characters back from the films hurt it a lot in whatever ratings the streaming services use. I felt it was good enough to get a second season.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

We saw how well that worked with the National Treasure show, though. I enjoyed it, but not having all the main characters back from the films hurt it a lot in whatever ratings the streaming services use. I felt it was good enough to get a second season.

I mean, sure, it would be great to have the old cast, but that's the problem... they're old. David Duchovny is 63 and Gillian Anderson is 55. Sure, the X-files was never a show which was big on stunts and the actors weren't running and jumping through Michael Bay deathplosion dream sequences, but at their curtrent age, I think they'd come off better as department heads, if they are even in th show. Seeing two old people still doing the conspiracy thing would just make them look like 2 crazy old people who probably have a side-hustle podcast and get interviewed by Joe Rogan.

I think the theme of the X-files show was good enough that you can set up a whole new and younger cast and it can succeed. Now, it's goign to require that they do a bit more than just have the same old alien conspiracies as the original. They'll need to branch out. Maybe use some of those conspiracies, and even some of the current real-world conspiracies (space is fake) as a joke that can be tied to some other actually interesting conspiracy.

Or, they can just stop trying to bring back these shows that rely on nostalgia, and a ever decreasing viewer group (they just keep getting older and dying), and create a new show that is interesting. We've already seen what happens when you try to bring back old movies and characters that young viewers have no connection with. They don't get what made them cool. Sure, we might, but we're old (get off my lawn!!!).

I'd like to see the X-files come back. I'm just not interested in Mulder and Scully being in it.

 

[Clint_L]

Ah, yes. The corpse.

"Home" opens with the delivery scene, too. I have seen that episode many times - I bought that season on DVD specifically to get "Home," and it remains a favourite in our horror movie club. A stone classic. It is shockingly over the top for network television in the 90s. I love it.

I'd be interested in bringing back Mulder and Scully as older advisors, similar to Giles in Buffy. but not as the leads, no.

 

[MGibster]

I mean, sure, it would be great to have the old cast, but that's the problem... they're old. David Duchovny is 63 and Gillian Anderson is 55. Sure, the X-files was never a show which was big on stunts and the actors weren't running and jumping through Michael Bay deathplosion dream sequences, but at their curtrent age, I think they'd come off better as department heads, if they are even in th show.

Jerry Orbach was playing homicide detective Lenny Briscoe almost up until his death at the age of 69. But then at the age of 25 we were supposed to believe Gillian Anderson was a medical doctor and an Special Agent with the FBI. I don't think producers care about age. Not until a woman hits 40 at least.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

Jerry Orbach was playing homicide detective Lenny Briscoe almost up until his death at the age of 69.

I don't know who that is.

But then at the age of 25 we were supposed to believe Gillian Anderson was a medical doctor and an Special Agent with the FBI.

Was Anderson 25, or was the character, Scully, 25? If she was 25 and playing an older character, that's not too bad. If she was playing a 25-year old genius character, it might be a slight stretch, but it is still acceptable. Honestly, she's hot. She can play whatever she wants. I just don't want to see the Scully character in the show. They need to move on from those characters and those storylines. Keep the premise, but start fresh. New characters. New storylines.

I don't think producers care about age. Not until a woman hits 40 at least.

I've previously condoned stabbing producers in the face with a spoon for other reasons. I'm fine expanding the reasons for spoon stabbing of producers to include many other reason or no reason at all.

 

[Sacrosanct]

75% of the original shows could have been solved in minutes if they had cell phones, so they gotta fix that part