Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
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"Imagination called up the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth — only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness."
 

catalog

Well-known member
you are right about the egon quote, for which i am truly sorry. you are wrong about milves. it is milfs. things like this are important for search. no one says milves.
 

version

Well-known member
I've only just realised that was what Tea was talking about. I thought he was going on about some Lovecraftian thing.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
the true enemy of Mulder and Scully seems to mostly be...FBI bureaucracy
Just to pick up on this - I love the idea of a reprised final series where it's revealed that the actual end-of-game boss, the true author of all conspiracies, is some trans-dimensional HR department.
 

luka

Well-known member
i'd really like to watch the later x-files. i was watching at the very start but i dont think i got past series 3.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the first season (as many shows back then) is really uneven, then it's good up until season 7, after which Duchovny quit

instead of doing the sensible thing and ending the show, they carried for 2 more years, replacing him in fact with the guy who played T-1000

so those last 2 seasons are not worth it. I didn't watch the new episodes a few years ago but I heard they weren't very good.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
where it's revealed that the actual end-of-game boss, the true author of all conspiracies, is some trans-dimensional HR department
this would have been infinitely better than the actual ending (ghosts! after all that it's...fucking ghosts are real. 20+ years later, I still can't)
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
it's interesting actually how apolitical The X-Files is for a show that seems to be all about attacking deep state structures

the true enemy of Mulder and Scully seems to mostly be...FBI bureaucracy

I'd always read that as an American reflex to be against the Federal state. Mulder and Scully positioned as mavericks etc. We don't have it the same way in the UK.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
but luka I think those good seasons would be right up yr alley

it's essentially a perfect American pop culture distillation of 90s conspiracy thinking, pre-millenial dread, etc

and the writing was about as good as TV got back then, and they pioneered a bunch of breaking the 4th wall kinda stuff

"Jose Chung's From Outer Space" is basically surreal comedic Rashomon for TV, featuring Alex Trebek (!) and Jesse Ventura as Men In Black
 

luka

Well-known member
im really keen to watch them. its a key vector for the spread of a whole range of ideas
 

catalog

Well-known member
yeah im not keen myself. i dont like how they ghettoise 1xtra for 'urban', then 6 just does a bit of soul now and then, fuckers
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I'd always read that as an American reflex to be against the Federal state.
that exists, but since they're FBI agents they're also at the heart of the state, law enforcement, the intelligence apparatus

I understand what you mean about Britons not having a similar tradition, but X-Files is close to all of those 70s paranoid political thrillers - Parallax View, Manchurian Candidate, and especially All the President's Men - their first big informant is nicknamed Deep Throat. And those thrillers are mostly (I think) coming from a (liberal) left critique of authoritarianism, rather than John Milius-style libertarian fantasies.

it's a tension - Mulder is a government agent who spends most of his time fighting the government - the show doesn't really examine too closely

that's what I mean when I say it's surprisingly apolitical. it's voicing the nameless fears of that brief true Pax Americana - it began shortly after the end of the Cold War and ended a few months 9/11 - but it doesn't really get into "politics". everyone good and bad is basically part of the deep state and the conflict is all taking place among an unsuspecting public.
 
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