The (E)X-Files makes a comeback

They’re baaaaack.

That pair of ‘90s icons who brought us ever deeper into the paranormal and the alien (and who provided a name for my column), Mulder and Scully, have returned to television for a “six-episode event” helmed by the show’s creator, Chris Carter.

Carter, it turns out, has not run out of conspiracy theories. Nor have the legions of Comic-Con attendees who have already weighed in on this reboot as a “cash grab” and a “deal-driven exercise” to go one more round with the nostalgia-crazed and the geeks among us.

The X-Files was iconic in its day for various reasons, introducing an ironic, eyebrow-raised tone to American television well before 9/11 (and afterward). Much of the tongue-in-cheek, knowing tone of shows to follow — like CSI, NCIS, etc. — owes buckets to Carter and The X-Files. (The show also spawned Vince Gilligan, who went on to shanghai one episode’s featured actor, Bryan Cranston, for his future show, Breaking Bad.)

The decision to bring X-Files back for a limited run was the buzz of the geekernet for over a year, and now it’s here… and of course, the fans are not happy.

The spoof is out there: Mulder meets up with a “were-monster” in the top-form third episode.

Isn’t it strange that we live in a time when people dwell in nostalgia for large chunks of their lives, instead of creating their own mythology in the here and now, to dwell upon later when they’re old and gray? When did nostalgia become something we do in our 20s instead of our 70s? We buy old vinyl records to remind us what music sounded like before CDs, we watch cheesy ‘80s movies ironically (but also, we insist, fondly), we try to resurrect manual typewriters and handwritten letters and we even bring back coloring books for adults to doodle away their present-day lives.

And yet, when they actually do bring TV shows back from the dead — like Arrested Development, Veronica Mars, The X-Files — fans are quick to snipe and poop all over them. What do people really want? A time machine?

As it happens, not much has changed with The X-Files, except for the technology. And natural aging, of course. Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) agreed to sign on for a reboot, and fans will have to grapple with the reality that their favorite kilig couple from the late ‘90s has gotten… well, older. Yet there still remains that familiar chemistry and dynamic, changed only by the years: Mulder is grumpier, more grizzled, but still thinks he’s in charge of the pursuit for “the truth”; Scully is better preserved (Botox, my wife ponders?), and just as dismissive of her former partner’s conspiracy theories. As fans will recall, they even had a kid together, though they never married. (Scully reveals in the first of six episodes that Mulder was “impossible” to live with.) That kid was given away to rural parents to raise (shades of Superman) to protect him from the nefarious forces of government.

Carter today has the same bugaboos about government intentions, surveillance and interference that he did back then, though the show updates them. We get long stretches where Mulder speechifies about the horrors of government deception over the past 50 years. (Spiels left over from the original show, which folded its tent in 2002.) And there are now plenty of jokes and bits about modern technology (Mulder at one point uses a dead guy’s thumb to unlock his iPhone), and the two no longer tote around non-functioning super-large cell phones with conspicuous antennae. (They do, however, still enter lots of spooky buildings where lights apparently don’t exist.)

The premiere episode (“My Struggle”) brings back the two, plus their old FBI boss Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), to try to find out if the government conspiracy to create an alien-hybrid race starting with Roswell in 1947 was with aliens… or with other governments. (This was apparently the last un-explored option in the rotating Wheel of Conspiracies.) Carter, with returning writers Darin Morgan and Glenn Wong onboard, tries to inject the same sense of foreboding, interspersed with bits of humor, and it feels like old times, at times. But perhaps that’s the problem.

Like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Carter’s reboot has to tread carefully between old fans’ expectations and rock-solid loyalty to the past, and the unceasing demands of a new generation. (But I’m sure Carter would be the first to say he’s doing this revival “for the fans” and because there are “still stories left to tell.”) Some have even suggested J.J. Abrams would have been a better choice to reboot the series, judging from his polish-up of Star Trek and Star Wars.

At any rate, Mulder contacts Scully out of the blue to meet up with a right-wing TV host (Joel McHale) who claims to have fresh evidence of a government cover-up of aliens. Mulder discovers, in a remote facility, a snazzy spacecraft that operates on “limitless, clean fuel,” which the government has hidden from public knowledge since the Roswell crash. The twist here is who’s colluding with whom, and more pieces are laid out in the second episode (“Founder’s Mutation”), where yet another familiar face from the past makes an appearance.

More successful, by far, is the third episode (“Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”) which is a throwback to the self-parodying humor that The X-Files mastered by its third season, with writers Morgan and Wong clearly having a great time with the werewolf genre, as well as the technology updates, not to mention the always-amusing presence of Flight of the Conchords’ Rhys Darby and Kumail Nanjiani from Silicon Valley.

All in all, if you were a fan of the original series, you will probably follow along out of sheer curiosity. Will there be enough newness in the mini-arc to justify bringing back the old gang? Will there be the same level of freshness that made the original series such a hoot from week to week? Will the truncated nature of this six-episode deal feel too bitin, not allowing enough time to explore the nuances of a reunion? Will fans cry out for more?

So far, the results are promising enough. It proves that even if you can’t really go back to the past, you can at least look at it through a different lens and call it new. Though if there is such a thing as a time machine, that might be something Mulder and Scully should start looking into.