My Struggle with The X-Files

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I love The X-Files as much as any longtime fan, but when I first watched The X-Files: I Want to Believe – the second film in the long-running paranormal franchise – in theaters, something about the film’s premise felt really off-putting. I simply couldn’t enjoy the film no matter how hard I tried to get into it, and I walked out of the theater feeling extremely disappointed.

Fast-forward seven years to the first episode of The X-Files Season 10, a six-episode miniseries commissioned by the Fox Broadcasting Company to revive interest in the franchise. While it was fun to see Mulder and Scully in action again, I almost couldn’t get past that first episode, “My Struggle”. Aside from Chris Carter’s harsh rewriting of previous X-Files canon that cost him over six million viewers between that first episode and the second (regular X-Files writer James Wong’s far better critically received “Founder’s Mutation”), the initial premise of the series itself – Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigating the paranormal for the FBI’s X-Files unit again – was a massive road block I almost couldn’t overcome.

I wanted to enjoy The X-Files again, dammit! For me, The X-Files was more than merely the pop cultural phenomenon it was rightly hyped to be during the 1990s. Growing up with an insatiable interest in the paranormal instilled in me by my mother, The X-Files was foundational, a touchstone that still connects me to memories of my misspent youth. I was excited when production for I Want to Believe began in 2007, and even after that film disappointed me, I was elated when the “Season 10” miniseries was announced. Though I had misgivings — I’ve had my heart broken by reboots, relaunches, re-imaginings, and revivals before — I still hoped the miniseries would be as fantastic as the original series was, and my eyes were still glued to my computer screen as I streamed “My Struggle” from Fox’s website.

Even so, I couldn’t get beyond that initial premise of Fox Mulder working for the FBI again. Something about it kept bringing back bad memories of the film I Want to Believe like unwanted acid flashbacks. “Did series creator Chris Carter forget how to write this show?” I mused, incredulous to the terrible display on screen before me. Though I kept watching later episodes — I thoroughly enjoyed “Founder’s Mutation”, Glen Morgan’s “Home Again”, Carter’s ineffably silly “Babylon” featuring the improbably-named Agents Liz Einstein and Kyd Miller (or as I call them, “Off-Brand Mulder & Scully”), and Darin Morgan’s lovingly-penned masterpiece “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” — I couldn’t help but feel disheartened and dismayed by both “My Struggle” and the miniseries’ end piece, “My Struggle II”. (What, Carter couldn’t come up with a more creative title than that?). I loved the rich mythology of the original nine-season series run, but what “My Struggle” and “My Struggle II” had rebooted the mythology into was nothing short of a travesty, one that began with the idea that Mulder would ever be welcome at the FBI again. (To say nothing of what “My Struggle” did to the series’ previous continuity involving the Syndicate, the black oil, and the alien-human hybrid super-soldiers, all of which had become iconic in the series mythos.)

“This is what The X-Files has become?” I mused, shaking my head in dismay. To quiet the raging voices of unrest in my disheartened fanboy mind, I brought up Netflix and watched I Want to Believe again. The film was just as sleep-inducing as before, but one scene in particular — the first scene of the film featuring both Scully and a scraggly-bearded Mulder — crystallized the problems I was having with both the film and “My Struggle”. “It was right there from the start,” I said to myself (totally ignoring how crazy it is to talk to yourself like that), facepalming hard as I stopped the film and brought up the final episode of the original series, “The Truth”. The reason for my struggle with Season 10 — much like the elusive conspiracies sought by Agent Mulder — ran far deeper than I thought, far beyond one terrible sequel film.

The X-Files Season 9

In the final Season 9 episode of The X-Files, “The Truth”, set in May 2002, former FBI agent Fox Mulder — who had been fired by Deputy Director Alvin Kersh in Season 8’s “Vienen” for failure to follow orders not to investigate any further X-Files (as Mulder’s replacement, Robert Patrick‘s no-nonsense Agent John Dogget, had already accrued more arrests on that unit than Mulder ever had, thus showing more proficiency in addition to his ability to follow orders with minimal protest) — sneaks into the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center (a real world FEMA command center controlled by the Department of Homeland Security), where he hacks into highly classified documents on a secure computer system and examines classified documents he likely wouldn’t have had clearance for, were he still a Federal employee.

I paused the episode here, brought up a web browser, and started searching. In an article revisiting I Want to Believe at IndieWire, media maven Liz Shannon Miller references “The Truth”, mentioning how Mulder “maybe murdered a guy and also technically committed treason.” After chuckling at that line, I wanted to know exactly how deeply in trouble Mulder was, so I started looking into United States federal laws and what happens to those poor, unfortunate idiots who choose to break them.

From my meager research, the opening scene of “The Truth” saddled Mulder with the following three potential federal charges:

  • False Personation (18 US Code Chapter 43): when an individual misrepresents their identity, possibly by using the stolen identity of another individual or the creation of a non-existent person adopted as one’s own identity, that individual is guilty of False Personation.Of the many terrible crimes he would’ve been charged with, real life presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald could’ve been charged with False Personation for his use of the alias “Alex J. Hidell” — a fraudulent identity he created while working at a photo lab in Dallas and used to purchase the rifle he would later kill Kennedy with1 — had he lived long enough for his case to go to trial.During the teaser scene in “The Truth”, Mulder uses a fake government ID to gain access to the Mount Weather facility, thus he could’ve been charged with false personation at his trial, among the other charges he’s going to rack up in this scene. (Specifically, he would’ve been guilty of U.S. Code, Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 43, § 912 — impersonating an officer or employee of the United States.)
  • Espionage: obtaining information for the purposes of undermining governments or institutions. Mulder specifically sought top secret information for the purpose of undermining the high-level government and military officials involved in the conspiracy to cover up alien colonization; however, since those individuals run the government and — until he obtained the sought-after documents — Mulder previously possessed no tangible proof that the government was conspiring to commit a crime against the citizenry (which is what the term “conspiracy” means in a legal sense), Mulder is essentially committing espionage against his own government.2
  • US Code Section 1030 — Fraud & Related Activity in Connection with Computers: basically, the backbone of our nation’s anti-hacking laws. By hacking into the government system that contained the files pertinent to the alien takeover of the globe, Mulder knowingly violated U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47, Section 1030. The opening statement of Section 1030 itself neatly summarizes the crime Mulder commits in detail:
    • (a) Whoever–
      • (1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data […], with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States […] or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted […] or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it […];
      • (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains—
        • (A) Information contained in a financial record of a financial institution […];
        • (B) information from any department or agency of the United States; or
        • (C) information from any protected computer;
      • (3) intentionally, without authorization to access any nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the Government of the United States or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, is used by or for the Government of the United States and such conduct affects that use by or for the Government of the United States […];
    • (b) Whoever conspires to commit or attempts to commit an offense under subsection (a) of this section shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.Well, Mulder broke into a secured government computer managed by FEMA under the auspices of Homeland Security, so I’d definitely say he’s definitely guilty of Subsection (a).
  • Treason, Sedition, & Subversive Activities: anti-national or anti-government behaviors; treason is the outright betrayal of one’s country; sedition and subversive activities are activities intended to incite a reaction in society. Technically, all of Mulder’s typical “the government’s working with the aliens against us!” chatter could be deemed treasonous (as Scully rightfully points out in the Season 10 premiere, “My Struggle”), and a large case against him could be made for treason/sedition/subversive activities, when combined with the other crimes he’s racked up thus far.
  • Breaking & Entering a Top Secret Military Base.

And we’re not even into the opening credits yet…

Mulder is caught in the act by a military employee stationed at Mount Weather — specifically, Adam Baldwin‘s “Super Soldier” villain Knowle Rohrer — who attempts to arrest and detain Mulder. Mulder then attacks Rohrer, who overpowers him.3 Mulder flees, Rohrer outflanks, they grapple WWE-style, and Mulder eventually flips Rohrer off a catwalk onto high-voltage wiring (“Railing kill!), seemingly killing him. (We know Rohrer isn’t really dead because “aliens”, but bear with me here.)

Mulder is then arrested by scores of soldiers.

This gives us the following additional charges:

  • Resisting Arrest: like it or not, Rohrer — an active duty military officer commissioned to secure the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center from intruders — was within his legal rights to arrest Mulder, and attacking Rohrer only added this charge to the list of charges Mulder’s already racked up thus far.
  • Assault: any act which threatens to physically harm a person, ranging from verbal intimidation to creating situations which cause fear in the other individual, but does not necessarily involve physically touching the other person. By making a threatening motion toward Knowle Rohrer, Mulder may now be charged with assault.
  • Manslaughter: the unintentional taking of a life, including accidental killings or acts of violence where death ensues although the intent to kill was absent. Mulder didn’t intend to murder Knowle Rohrer, but flipping the guy over a catwalk railing (“Railing kill!”) onto high-voltage wiring while resisting arrest definitely counts (and this is what Mulder is actually charged with during the episode; “The Truth”, for all its truthiness, does not state whether Mulder gets charged with any of the other charges I’ve listed thus far or not, but for completeness’ sake, I shall assume that he indeed had these charges levied against him). Since (spoiler alert!) Rorher is a nigh-immortal alien/human hybrid and is later shown to have survived Mulder’s attempt at self-preservation, this would instead be downgraded to “attempted manslaughter”, which is still an incredibly serious charge.

Seriously, after Mulder racked up all these charges during the teaser, the brains behind the Evil Alien Conspiracy think they have to pin a fraudulent murder charge on him? Just hit him with any of the charges mentioned above beside manslaughter; he’ll be stuck in prison for a long, looooooooooooong time! Just ask Jonathan Pollard.

…And NOW, we’re in the opening credits.

During the rest of the episode, Mulder’s fate is made the subject of a military tribunal (since Homeland Security has jurisdiction over Mount Weather, and the Marine Corps apparently loaned Rohrer to Mount Weather) with Deputy Director Alvin Kersh presiding and A.D. Walter Skinner as Mulder’s defense. Name anybody who has ever allied with Mulder once and remained alive throughout the previous nine seasons — Special Agent Monica Reyes, Marita Covarrubias, young Gibson Praise, and even former agent Jeffrey Spender, in addition to Scully and Doggett — and they all come to testify on Mulder’s behalf. None of this matters, though, as it’s all a show trial (even though a show trial wasn’t necessary), and the verdict The Powers That Be are pursuing is the death penalty!

Naturally, Scully, Skinner, et all quickly turn their defense of Mulder into a defense of Mulder’s belief in alien conspiracy theories. It’s notable that even Mulder — in a momentary lapse of sanity — is telling them, “Guys, stahp, you’re just gonna sound really, really stupid.” Naturally, Kersh and the tribunal call B.S. on all their paranoid ravings (which all amount to a handful of clips recapping the entire nine years of the series, for anyone who apparently decided to watch only the last episode of a nine-year series).

As a longtime fan, I hate to admit this, but Kersh and the tribunal are totally right to do so: Mulder’s beliefs aren’t the focus of the trial. Whether he committed the crimes listed above or not should be the proper focus of the trial. Mulder’s paranoid beliefs, whether true or untrue, only provide motive for him to have broken into the base. By arguing Mulder’s case, his friends are inadvertently damning him further.

To reiterate: we long-time viewers already know Rohrer isn’t really dead because he’s half-alien. He’s survived far worse before. The body that The Powers That Be present as Rohrer’s corpse gets examined by Scully, who proves that the corpse isn’t really Rohrer’s at all via medical examination. That alone would mean that Mulder could levy a charge of Obstruction of Justice (when a person or persons cause interference in a legal action, including falsifying or withholding information or aiding in a criminal avoiding punishment) against the specific members of The Powers That Be that involved themselves in the military tribunal against him (including Director Kersh) in a potential counter-suit for presenting false evidence against him, and quite possibly get the entire case either thrown out or sent to a major court (provided he’s still alive to appeal the verdict), though that process would likely take years and he’d likely be denied counter-suit a few dozen times while he languishes in a federal penitentiary.

All said, it was monumentally stupid for the prosecution, the half-braindead FBI Agent Kallenbrunner, to wheel in a false corpse at all. (No, no, don’t keep that in cold storage or anything, just leave that smelly old thing anywhere you feel like.) Even if they had publicly acknowledged that Rohrer survived (stranger things have happened IRL, even stranger in the series!) and had him temporarily physically altered to look like he’d been severely burned by the high-voltage wires he fell onto, The Powers That Be could still get Mulder behind bars for a long time — or, if they make him look like enough of a dangerous kook (which admittedly wouldn’t be very hard to do), the death penalty — for attempted manslaughter alone. By bringing in that fake corpse, they’d ruined their case completely.4

However, this is a military tribunal-turned-kangaroo court in a fictional television series set in a universe where magical genies actually do grant wishes, so none of that really matters. In the end, Agents Scully, Doggett, Reyes, and even a penitent A.D. Kersh help Mulder escape military custody, and both Mulder and Scully flee for their lives. The episode ends with them together in a hotel room in Roswell, New Mexico, of all places.5

So, not only did all of the above charges stand, Mulder was actually convicted of all of them (I assume), and now has more charges added to the list:

  • Escape & Rescue: acts which lead to the flight of a prisoner or person in custody from the holding facility that detains them. Specifically, Mulder has escaped custody. Scully, Doggett, Reyes, and Kersh could all be charged with rescue: aiding the fleeing prisoner in their attempts at attaining freedom from lawful imprisonment. Since Doggett, Reyes, and Kersh all returned to work, I’m assuming Kersh covered up their involvement in Mulder’s flight, so their careers (and lives) are in no jeopardy.6 However, since Scully went on the lam with Mulder, she would still be charged with escape & rescue.
  • Aiding & Abetting: anyone who aids or abets (assists) in the commission of a crime is guilty of this. Since Scully is guilty of rescue, she could also be charged with this herself (especially now that she’s on the lam with Mulder; that alone makes her an accessory).

Now, fast forward six years to the July 2008 release of the film The X-Files: I Want To Believe.7 During the beginning of the film, Scully is shown to be working at a Catholic hospital, treating a young boy with potential Sandhoff disease.

Ignoring all the usual spooky claptrap about aliens, hybrids, psychic powers, spirits of the dead, surgically swapping heads, and the other paranormal potpourri associated with this film (and with the franchise in general), this is Wildly Implausible Thing #1: Dr. Scully has a paying job that involves her medical degree, and she is working under her own name.

Seriously?

Look, I know this series is fiction, but fiction has to be grounded in some kind of recognizable reality somehow, and there’s no way in Heaven, Hell, or Zeta Reticuli that someone guilty of aiding and abetting/rescue of a known criminal from federal or military custody8 would be able to show up at ANY place in America — not even a McDonald’s, let alone a hospital! — and get a job as a practicing doctor, at least not without coming up with a really good excuse for having disappeared to New Mexico that didn’t involve Mulder, her baby-daddy!

Even if a Catholic hospital accepted her as someone seeking asylum, they’d have to create a totally new identity for her in order for her asylum to work. It’d be like being in a Catholic-run version of the U.S. Marshalls’ Witness Protection program, and I’m certain the Vatican can keep its secrets far better than the American federal government can. Special Agent Xzibit probably wouldn’t have been able to find her as easily as he does in the opening scenes of the film because he likely wouldn’t have known what her new identity would be, and he would likely have had to have done some serious detective work to figure that out, though we could assume that was all done off-screen.9

Anyway, Special Agent Xzibit shows up and asks Scully to help him find Mulder. Given how paranoid Scully and Mulder would both be by this time — especially since Scully was not only a believer by the the end of the series, but was actively running from the Feds — wouldn’t she be way more wary of entrapment by Special Agent Xzibit than she appeared to be in the film? If I were Scully and I saw someone with an FBI badge walking down the hall toward me, I’d find a convenient bathroom or broom closet to hide in for a few moments!

Scully’s lack of justifiable paranoia notwithstanding, the FBI have yet another weird-ass, ooky-spooky case on their hands, and apparently nobody else at the FBI under the George W. Bush administration is crazy enough to take it. (I guess Monica Reyes was busy blowing the Cigarette Smoking Man at this point or something? She’s just as moon-bat paranoid as Mulder, and she worked on the X-Files Unit throughout Season 9, so she has both experience and access to known psychics whom she could have back up the psychic former priest’s eerie visions.) Logic be damned, though; we need Fox Mulder on the job! (He’s on his meds today, right?) In return for his help, the FBI will call off their manhunt for Mulder.

Excuse me, WHAT? How the hell would that even work, exactly? Again, allow me to recount all the potential criminal charges Mulder had laid against him at the end of “The Truth”, m’kay?

  1. False Personation
  2. Espionage
  3. Fraud & Related Activity in Connection with Computers
  4. Treason, Sedition, & Subversive Activities
  5. Breaking & Entering a Top Secret Military Base
  6. Resisting Arrest
  7. Assault
  8. Attempted Manslaughter
    (Downgraded since Knowle Rohrer was later proven to be alive.)
  9. Escape from Custody

That’s NINE Federal charges, one of them attempted manslaughter (though he was technically charged and sentenced for full-on manslaughter in “The Truth”; he’d likely have to go back to trial or file an appeal to get it downgraded to attempted manslaughter, neither of which are options for him, as he was tried by a military tribunal and escaped from military custody, and even attempting to file an appeal might trip a double jeopardy clause or something). Again, I repeat: one of those charges involved KILLING SOMEONE! Ending a human life, especially the life of a fellow government employee, an active duty soldier no less! Another charge involves TREASON! Willfully acting against your own government, the very people trying to (temporarily) re-hire him! Another is ESPIONAGE! People get EXECUTED for those three charges alone, and our lovable paranoid idiot managed to rack up ALL THREE well BEFORE the opening credits of the episode where he was put on trial like he was some kind of Grand Theft Auto character!

Don’t get me wrong, the FBI holds great power when it comes to investigating terrorism, espionage, criminal syndicates, and other federal-level crimes. Tim Weiner at The Guardian has written a must-read article about the numerous times the FBI has clashed with the President of the United States and won.10

However, the FBI still answers to somebody: the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), specifically. If the DOJ or the DNI orders the FBI’s director (currently the ever put-upon Kash Patel) to do something, unless those orders are illegal or somehow involve releasing the Epstein files, the FBI will get those orders done come Hell or high water. If those orders include arresting a crazy man for inadvertently tossing a soldier over a railing into heavy machinery while infiltrating a top secret military base,11 that crazy man, TV protagonist or not, is going down!12 I seriously doubt the FBI can pick and choose what cases they would like to enforce or not, and they would definitely be forced by the Justice Department to hunt Mulder down and bring him in whether the new administration likes it or not (unless George W. Bush pardoned him off-camera or something).

Even after throwing out the fake corpse nonsense, the United States Marine Corps — and presumably the overseeing organizations of the Mount Weather facility, FEMA and Homeland Security (unless Chris Carter simply forgot about them, even after mentioning both of them repeatedly during the series and the previous film) — have Mulder dead to rights on nine federal charges (plus whatever else they could nail him on from his days at the FBI; Mulder always was a troublemaker). He’s already been convicted of at least eight of them, and would be tried in absentia and convicted on the ninth purely by remaining on the lam for six freaking years. Even if they were inclined to do so, the FBI wouldn’t be able to call off their manhunt for Mulder and Scully without stepping on some fairly important, very aggressive, ridiculously litigious toes to do so. The Justice Department would have Homeland Security and the Marine Corps (I might as well just say “the Pentagon”) breathing down the FBI’s necks, screaming, “BRING THAT BASTARD IN NOW!” and the Attorney General would be screaming at the FBI to have Mulder placed on the Most Wanted list.

The FBI wouldn’t have the option of calling off the manhunt, especially not at the request of one very green special agent (Amanda Peet‘s character in the film, Agent Dakota Whitney) just to get Mulder’s expertise for her case. For all the expertise Mulder has, Special Agents John Doggett and Monica Reyes from the same unit have similar expertise and a better arrest record, and calling off the manhunt for Mulder would likely involve presidential favors, given how many higher-ups (overt and covert) Mulder has pissed off or seen killed off over the years (and as the aforementioned article by Tim Weiner shows, even that’s not a guarantee).

If anything, Agent Whitney would be getting Mulder’s expertise the same way Clarice Starling solicited Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s expertise in The Silence of the Lambs: from behind bars.13

I’m officially calling that Wildly Implausible Thing #2.

Immediately afterward, when Scully goes to meet Mulder at his snow-covered hobbity hidey-hole, even Mulder himself makes mention of this, but he also dismisses it by saying that the FBI has no interest in finding him and are simply happy to have him “out of their hair”.

Um, again, no. That’s not how the FBI works. That’s not how American law enforcement works. That’s really not how any of this works.

Wouldn’t Mulder, a former FBI agent, know that? He should be hiding under the filthiest rock in Tijuana drinking away his memories of the X-Files Unit, not slumming it in an admittedly nice-looking cabin in the snow!

As I said, the FBI would not only not be allowed to call off the manhunt, they wouldn’t be allowed to stop chasing him, either. Sure, individual agents could be ordered by their superiors — Skinner and Kersh, let’s say — to just dick around and get nothing done like WWE referees, sitting at their desks and tossing pencils at the ceiling instead of chasing down leads on Mulder’s whereabouts, but that behavior would have the then-increasingly irate Attorney General firing anyone he or she felt wasn’t performing their duties (meaning the aforementioned Skinner and Kersh, among others). Sure, we were hunting for Osama bin Laden at the time during the time the FBI would’ve been hunting down Mulder and Scully, but we didn’t stop hunting for any of the other people on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list (or their overall “most wanted fugitives” list, which has way more than just ten people on it), either, and many of them were caught or located long before bin Laden was.14 Beyond that, the FBI is actively searching for 12,000 fugitives from justice at any given moment, and you have to be in hiding for a pretty long time — say, several decades or more — before the FBI decides they’re not going to bother with you anymore and declare you a cold case. Look at how long it took for the Feds to close the still-unsolved case on the Zodiac Killer!

Compared to other long-missing fugitives from justice, Mulder has only been in hiding for six years. More importantly, THE FEDS KNOW WHERE SCULLY IS, and THEY KNOW SHE KNOWS WHERE HE IS.

Let’s compare this to another real-world example: former FBI agent Robert Hanssen spied on the US government for Soviet and Russian intelligence services from 1979 to 2001. When he was finally caught, his case went right to the media, and he was charged with — and plead guilty to — fifteen counts of espionage. He was sentenced to fifteen life terms without parole, and he didn’t even kill anyone directly with his espionage as Mulder was charged with doing!

Mulder has nine separate counts against him from one incursion into a military base, as opposed to the years of espionage conducted by Hanssen.15 His manhunt would’ve made international news. His and Scully’s photos would be in all news websites and newspapers. Mulder’s case details would be all over Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, and videos of his capture would be live streaming on YouTube before the handcuffs got cold. Unfunny late night talk show hosts would be making really lame jokes about him, he’d be mentioned on The Daily Show, parody articles about his crimes would be written at Cracked, The Onion, or The Babylon Bee, Snopes would have an entire section of their site devoted to debunking Mulder’s various cases (let alone bringing his criminal history into account)… He wouldn’t be seen as a ufologist martyr out to spread the truth, no matter the personal cost; his paranoid conspiracy theorist views would only make him seem as crazy as Bill Cooper, and they’d be used to make all conspiracy theorists — or anyone who even sounds a little more paranoid than usual, from hardcore pay-for-play kooks like Alex Jones to more mainstream critics of the Federal Reserve like Ron and Rand Paul — look like potential homegrown terrorists just waiting for a reason to kill a soldier or two (as if the mainstream media doesn’t do that to conspiracy theorists already).

Comparing Mulder to Robert Hanssen again: I realistically doubt the FBI would be willing to ask the DOJ to drop all charges Hanssen has been convicted of and free him from prison just to get his expertise on any subject at all, especially any subject he was good at (specifically, counterintelligence, though Hanssen was also known in the Bureau as an expert on computers, wiretapping, and electronic surveillance), and he wasn’t charged and found guilty of manslaughter.

Hell, there are real life individuals in or formerly with the government, in the military, or in the private sector that the FBI could turn to as viable alternatives to Agent Mulder, even! Aside from the myriad American individuals who worked for Project Blue Book who (if they’re still alive) could help out with any sort of paranormal cases or the members of the “UFO Working Group” (which, if you believe a certain old UFO novel by sensationalist investigative journalist Howard Blum, has likely been in activity since the 1980s), or the current and retired high-ranking military officers who went on air at a press conference in 2010 to admit to their beliefs in the government’s contacts with UFOs or the three government whistleblowers who testified at a House hearing on UFOs back in 2023, you also have: former US intelligence official turned UFO whistleblower David Grusch; the US State Department’s “UFO golden boy” Luis Elizondo; England’s Nick Pope, a UFO expert who investigated UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defense; and Dr. Ronald Pandolfi, a former analyst with both the CIA and DIA often referred to as the “real life Fox Mulder” who has made headlines in the post-9/11 conspiracy circuits by firing off a series of emails in 2006 about possible violations of national security by extraterrestrials. Pandolfi’s been looking into UFOs and the unique security hazards they pose since at least the late 1990s, and he’s also been linked (by hearsay) to the hilariously debunked “psychic”/illusionist Uri Geller…

And unlike Mulder, Pandolfi still has a federal security clearance!

 

Long story short (as I’m already sick of talking about this meshuggener movie): Mulder takes the case, Scully heals her sick kid, they go on vacation on some tropical island somewhere… then THEY BOTH GO BACK TO WORK FOR THE FBI AGAIN nine years later in the revival series, Seasons 10 and 11 (which I will refer to as Wildly Implausible Thing #3).

I get it, really, folks, I get it: ultimately, nobody cares about “The Truth” or I Want To Believe. “The Truth” was a terrible, terrible clip show over-bloated with exposition, recycled footage we’d all seen too many times to count by then, and excessive lunatic fringe analyses of the series as a whole and its protagonists (rather like this article, I admit) by its own protagonists, and I Want To Believe would be more accurately renamed The Sequel Film That Should Not Be (or, at least, Better as Just Another Episode). Many of us X-Philes would rather pretend “The Truth” and I Want To Believe simply didn’t exist.

As a longtime fan of The X-Files, no one is more aware of these facts than I am. However, the future of the franchise rests upon these three Wildly Implausible Things (things far more implausible than the paranormal antics regularly featured throughout the series, its two films, and its varied multimedia spin-offs and a possible reboot that I’m really not looking forward to), and I simply cannot get them out of my head every time I see Mulder on screen with a badge and a gun again!

I loved The X-Files because it was fiction that was grounded in a recognizable every-day reality. There were aspects of The X-Files‘ universe that were familiar to me, and I could mentally latch onto those for grounding as the writers hurled other viewers and I into the supernatural Unknown week after frightening week. In the post-I Want To Believe world of The X-Files, however, any sense of objective, grounded reality is as forever missing as Mulder’s alien-abducted sister.

  1. Brewslow, Jason M. “8 Things You May Not Know About Lee Harvey Oswald”. PBS Frontline, 19 November 2013: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-lee-harvey-oswald/[↩]
  2. Moreover: had he retained the documents he had broken into the facility to obtain, he would’ve had proof that the government had committed a massive crime; had he blown the whistle on the conspiracy, he would’ve had to go on the lam anyway like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange — meaning Mulder knew he was screwed the minute he decided to undertake this personal mission — but had his data leak led to any members of the government conspiracy being brought up on charges, it is highly likely that the entirely new government that would’ve later been elected/appointed would’ve cleared him of all these charges. However, without proof, Mulder still faces espionage charges, just like Snowden or Assange. Like I said, he knew he was screwed going into this, and he still charged in like a blind elephant. “LEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIINS!”[↩]
  3. Whether Rohrer overpowers Mulder due to alien DNA or advanced military combat training is up for debate.[↩]
  4. The Powers That Be are really stupid in this entire series. Must’ve been all that LSD they used back in the ’60s.[↩]
  5. I had presumed they were headed for the Mexican border, since they’re now both wanted fugitives. That’d be the logical thing to do, right? Hop the border, then head further south until you reach a nation with no extradition treaties with America, yes? There are plenty of paranormal nasties to investigate Down South, from the chupacabras hinted at in the episode “El Mundo Gira” to the “boys from Brazil”. In hindsight, however, given how fond of the Status Quo Reset Button that Chris Carter and the rest of The X-Files’ writing staff is, it’s laughably absurd how wrong I was.[↩]
  6. It’s highly unlikely, though, that Doggett and Reyes wouldn’t have been fired for coming back empty-handed, given how high profile such a case would’ve been in real life; remember repeat UFO abductee Max Fenig‘s words to Mulder about how someone in the public arena is always watching him?[↩]
  7. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably don’t want to remember it. I’m truly sorry for making you revisit it, but I swear it’s necessary for my argument, and if I have to remember it for the sake of my argument, then so do you. If you haven’t seen this film — or if you have and you’ve successfully drank enough alcohol to forget the film existed, and you’re still alive and fully functional and aren’t suffering some sort of long-term brain damage or alcohol-induced psychosis — then you’re probably scratching your head, thinking, “There was a second X-Files movie?”[↩]
  8. Given Max Fenig’s line about Mulder’s apparent celebrity status in UFO circles back in Season One’s “Fallen Angel”, plus Mulder’s habit of spouting crazier nonsense than any of the insane “gay frogs” nonsense you’d hear on the average Alex Jones podcast, I’m certain Mulder would be a well-known criminal, if not one of the FBI’s Most Wanted.[↩]
  9. Also: forget about Scully’s disagreement over her patient’s treatment; she’d be very beholden to the hospital’s administration for not only her employment, but her continued sanctuary! Would she be able to rock the boat at all under those circumstances? Wouldn’t the hospital’s administration have mentioned that to her during the course of the film? It certainly would’ve increased dramatic tension in a movie sorely in need of it![↩]
  10. Chris Carter has stated in behind-the-scenes thinks the FBI are the “middlemen” in the American halls of power. I personally would be wary of any organization that can go toe-to-toe with the American President and win![↩]
  11. I remind you: that crazy man, Fox Mulder, was former one of the FBI’s own; remember how the Feds treated poor former FBI agent-turned-UFO-nut Duane Barry from the Second Season’s “Duane Barry” and “Ascension”? Or real former FBI agents turned criminals John Connolly or Robert Hanssen? Or poor James Comey?[↩]
  12. The FBI might even get Jack Bauer or Eric Carter on the case; now there’s a crossover I’d like to see![↩]
  13. The Silence of the Lambs was even jokingly referenced by Mulder in “The Truth”, so Carter certainly could’ve used that as a plot point in I Want To Believe.[↩]
  14. I assure you: in the extremely tense, paranoid post-9/11 socio-political climate, Fox Mulder would’ve definitely been considered the “American Osama bin Laden”, an extremely domestic terrorist striking against his own government due to fringe/extremist beliefs[↩]
  15. If Mulder had taken more than just the document showing when the planned extra-terrestrial invasion would occur — say, government documents proving that the aliens exist, or documents proving long-term government collusion with said alien entities — and hadn’t yet released them to the public, he might’ve been charged with a separate count of espionage per document, if the military tribunal felt like going for broke.[↩]

About Dunebat

Sole specimen: Desmodus desertus. Judeo-Christian anchorite/scribe/scribbler. Lover of nerds, Goths, creatives, & outcasts.

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