{"id":5383,"date":"2015-12-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-x-filesa%c2%80%c2%99s-chris-carter\/"},"modified":"2016-01-27T09:41:27","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T14:41:27","slug":"the-x-filesa%c2%80%c2%99s-chris-carter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/the-x-filesa%c2%80%c2%99s-chris-carter\/","title":{"rendered":"The X-Files’s Chris Carter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the sea of reboots, remakes and sequels in the TV drama landscape today, perhaps none is more hotly anticipated than The X-Files<\/em>. The series, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as a pair of FBI agents investigating paranormal phenomena, premiered quietly on FOX in 1993 and eventually became a cult hit in the U.S. and abroad. The series ran for nine seasons and spawned two films, the first in 1998 and the second in 2008, well after The X-Files<\/em> had wrapped its FOX run. In the intervening years the show\u2019s cult popularity has lived on, driven in part by its availability for binge-viewing on streaming services across the globe. In January, FOX is bringing The X-Files<\/em> back as a six-part limited series, with Duchovny and Anderson reprising their roles as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. The show\u2019s creator, Chris Carter, has also assembled a number of other returning cast members\u2014including Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner and William B. Davis as the Smoking Man\u2014as well as original production staff and writers for the miniseries. The first episode was screened at MIPCOM to a packed Grand Auditorium. Carter sat down with TV Drama Weekly<\/em> to talk about how the new season came together and weigh in on The X-Files<\/em>\u2019s enduring appeal.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV DRAMA:<\/strong> How did the idea for a new limited series of The X-Files<\/em> come about?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> I got a phone call one day and it was from Dana Walden [co-CEO and co-chairman of Fox Television Group], who said that FOX wanted to do a short series of episodes. I guess it wasn\u2019t exactly unexpected, because you see they brought back 24<\/em>, and other shows were being, for lack of a better term, rebooted. The call was unexpected, but the idea wasn\u2019t necessarily unexpected.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What can you tell us about the story you plan to tell in these six episodes?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> We decided to do what we\u2019d always done, which is have some mythology episodes and then some stand-alone episodes, which people sometimes call monster-of-the-week episodes. We decided to bookend the six with mythology episodes, so episode one and episode six are really a two-parter. And the ones that come in the middle all stand individually.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Having done more than 20 episodes a season for so long, was it liberating to just do six, or was it constricting to have to pack in the story you wanted to tell in such a small number of episodes?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> I felt it was not dissimilar to our original approach to the show, but we just did it in a tighter arc. Emotionally I think the story makes a really nice sweep through the characters\u2019 lives. Every episode owes something to the \"***Image***\"one that came before it and illuminates the one that comes after it. So I think we hopefully have done something satisfying through and through.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Why do you think these characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, have remained so popular?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s that relationship. It\u2019s simply David [Duchovny] and Gillian [Anderson]. If it weren\u2019t for them and that relationship, this show wouldn\u2019t be what it is. It\u2019s about Mulder and Scully.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Getting to nine seasons is pretty unheard of today. Very few shows have that kind of longevity now.
\nCARTER:<\/strong> We talked about this when we were ending the show. We were saying that there were still so many other X-Files<\/em> stories to tell and yet we were bringing the show to an end. We were bringing it to an end in a changed television landscape and a changed cultural landscape in America. We all said that there were plenty of X-Files<\/em> stories to tell, and it was a shame to have to go.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Do you envision doing more episodes after this initial six?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> I think that if we do well on this outing, that will bode well for those prospects.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> There are a lot of shows being rebooted, a lot of older movies being mined for TV potential. Why do you think that\u2019s happening so frequently?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> [Broadcasters and studios are] trying to capitalize, I believe, on titles that have immediacy and a familiarity with an audience. It\u2019s intellectual property; it\u2019s taking advantage of your own library. You see the same thing happening in movies. It\u2019s not uncommon to see [studios] remake something. Everything has its time, and everything has its time again.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> And thanks to Netflix, Hulu and other platforms, it\u2019s so much easier to access shows that are no longer on the air.
\nCARTER:<\/strong> It\u2019s amazing. Streaming now has opened up a whole new approach to our business. Take a show like Breaking Bad<\/em>\u2014they say it wouldn\u2019t have been the hit it was without Netflix.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> The X-Files<\/em> was a slow build too, wasn\u2019t it?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> It was a slow build. It wasn\u2019t until we moved to Sunday nights that we really got what I would call a mainstream audience. I still say it was a cult show\u2014it was just a very big cult show.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> How many of your original crew members were you able to bring back?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> I brought back three of the original writers of the show, which was really exciting. I brought back the production designer who had done three years of Millennium <\/em>and the second [X-Files<\/em>] movie. I brought back the director of photography who had done the last few years of The X-Files <\/em>in Vancouver. As far as the writing staff, I brought back some people who had written the best X-Files <\/em>episodes from the early years.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> The television landscape has changed so much since the show went off the air. Was the process of making the series different today than it was in the 1990s?
\nCARTER:<\/strong> No, it wasn\u2019t exactly different, but it is a different landscape and a different time, and we\u2019re older and wiser now, hopefully! We\u2019re making the show with Mulder and Scully and we\u2019re being honest to the passage of time, so that\u2019s different. And we had to be honest to where they were in their relationship, and that\u2019s different. But is it a different experience? Not exactly. It\u2019s been hard work, with some different people but also with some of the same people. There were people who had actually worked on the pilot episode of the show who came back to [work on the new episodes].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The X-Files creator Chris Carter talks to TV Drama about how the new season came together and weighs in on the show’s enduring appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":5384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[107,108,106],"class_list":["post-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","tag-chris-carter","tag-reboots","tag-the-x-files","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nThe X-Files\u00e2\u0080\u0099s Chris Carter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The X-Files\u00e2\u0080\u0099s Chris Carter. The creator shares how the new season came together and weighs in on the show\u00e2\u0080\u0099s enduring appeal.. 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