X MARKS THE PLOT
IT HAS been described as weird, spooky and genuinely creepy. Not since Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure has a show exploited such strange storylines with such confidence.
The X-Files (Pearl) belongs to a genre of magic realism that is more linear in plot than Twin Peaks, yet more 'out there' than Picket Fences and Northern Exposure.
'Often when I read the scripts I get freaked out,' said one of the show's co-stars, Gillian Anderson, to Entertainment Weekly. Her sleep may be plagued by any number of the B-movie inspired plots: a mad scientist rejuvenates a killer with a genetically engineered 'salamander' hand; aliens conduct tests on high school students which go 'horribly' wrong; and a liver-eating serial killer squeezes through chimneys to reach his victims.
Dana Scully (Anderson) and Fox 'Spooky' Mulder (David Duchovny) are FBI agents assigned to investigate unsolved cases - cases that deal with paranormal phenomena. On paper, the idea of a detective show featuring UFOs, strange white lights and aliens seems a disaster. Yet the show pulls it off.
Its success is largely due to intelligent characterisation and direction. There is a likeable tension between Mulder and Scully on both an intellectual and a romantic level. Duchovny's Mulder is an amiable, irreverent intellectual fascinated by the paranormal. Anderson's Scully is his opposite in temperament - straight, rational, scientific (Mulder: 'Might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a possibility?' Scully, irritated: 'What I find fantastic is any suggestion that there is no rational explanation'). With poker faces they underplay magnificently through the unbelievable and their exchanges are all the more charged for the scriptwriters' laudable refusal to have them fall for each other (the downfall of many another show).
The X-Files has borrowed heavily from the innovative camera and editing techniques of shows like Twin Peaks, indeed the director for the salamander episode was on loan from Northern Exposure. It has borrowed from the past, too, with shadowy lighting that evokes the suspense of film noir. It has an eerie quality which is hard to describe.