Let me preface this by saying: "Fuck your reboots."
I'm glad you've decided to be honest with us, Caity.
Why am I not jumping up and down about the resurrection of one of the most quality television series that ever graced our popular culture? *Ahem* Let me give you some background information.
Autographed postcard of Mulder and Scully, circa Nov 1998.
My earliest memory of The X-Files is seeing commercials for this brand new scary TV show that I was sure my parents wouldn't let me watch because Unsolved Mysteries already creeped my shit and I probably couldn't handle all that alien abduction stuff. I was ten years old--the same year Jurassic Park gave me delicious nightmares about velociraptors. Then I remember a few years later, watching the season three finale with my dad late one night. I was thirteen, and oh so much more adult by then. Two years after that, in March of 1998, I began writing an X-Files-centric newsletter--a one-sheet weekly publication with a circulation of approximately eight--called "Planet Vancouver" (because that's the Mecca where the show was filmed). Me and a few my of my closest obsessive friends attended several screenings of The X-Files movie that summer. We held X-Files themed birthday parties and debated the validity of the Mulder/Scully 'ship and wrote fan fictions and laughed and cried at all the inside jokes surrounding our favorite FBI agents' adventures. I wrote that newsletter for four years. I sent a letter to the fan club extolling the virtues of my favorite show, proudly declaring my fan cred, and I got a postcard autographed by Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny sent back to me, which I have framed on my wall to this day. I have dozens of X-Files books and old fan magazines from that heady era of supernatural awesomeness. I had the "I Want to Believe" poster on the wall of my bedroom for ages. When word got out the Mulder would be leaving the show, and some dumbass plebeians would be helping Scully search for the Truth, I stopped watching, because that was sacrilege. In my self-imposed exile from the now fucked up world of The X-Files, I heard some whisperings that The Lone Gunmen had been killed off at some point, and I wept. When the "final" episode was to air (and Mulder would be in it), I watched it and cried again. I went to see the second film in theaters, and I was mostly just depressed.
The first issue of Planet Vancouver, circa March 1998
So when Fox announced that they would be bringing back all the old cast and crew to make a modern-day set of X-Files episodes, I rolled my eyes so far back into my skull I could count my own neurons shriveling into oblivion. I am not having any of it.
Knowing the above information, it better be obvious why I had what I could politely call "serious reservations" about this prospect. But I'll spell it out anyway.
The X-Files, for me, is not simply a TV series that aired when I was a tween/teen. The X-Files came to me during a formative period in my life, a period during which I explored science and sci-fi, the depths of true, unconditional friendship based on shared nerdtastic interests, and my own writing talents. The values that came from this supremely fun and positive geek experience still shape my character fifteen years out of high school. The X-Files therefore represents something pure and beautiful in my mind. I want to keep the perfectly preserved mummy in a glass case in the museum of my heart, not chant an incantation to bring it back from the dead. I still have DVD box sets of whole seasons (or the streaming episodes on Netflix) if I want to revisit those days. And it is still incredible television, as dated as it may be.
So leave me alone. I am one of *those* die-hard old-school X-Philes who sits on her front porch with a shotgun in her lap and isn't afraid to use it if you try to peddle any of that new fangled updated crap.
