The X-Files: We Want To Believe...Again

There’ll be very few people who Agents Mulder and Scully can trust when they face a new case this January. But you can rely on STARBURST to give you all the latest info on the revival of THE X-FILES…

- Kieron Moore

Younger readers of this magazine may not realise just how big a phenomenon The X-Files was in the ‘90s. From 1993 to 2002, Chris Carter’s take on the paranormal ran for nine seasons and, with a total of over two hundred episodes and a spin-off film, became the longest running American sci-fi series to that date (it’s since been overtaken by Stargate SG-1). Following a pair of FBI Special Agents as they investigated an incredible array of unusual phenomena, the show’s long-lasting appeal lied in the chemistry between David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully – Mulder was the ardent believer in the extraterrestrial, while Scully was the sceptic out to prove him wrong, and their platonic relationship gradually developed into a romantic one. We left them, however, as fugitives on the run, with an alien invasion prophesised to take place ten years later, on December 22nd, 2012.

The 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe cleared their fugitive status, but failed to do anything about that ever-encroaching invasion (and also failed to be any good). Unfortunately, plans for a third movie to deal with that loose end came to nothing, meaning everyone in the X-Files universe must have let out a big sigh of relief when they woke up cosy and intact come December 23rd that year. It took until the beginning of 2015 for Mulder and Scully’s return to be announced – not as a movie, but as a TV miniseries.

The X-Team

Earlier this year, Duchovny and Anderson reunited on set in Vancouver to film six new episodes, set to air in January. But they’re not in the same place that I Want to Believe left them; the couple have split up, and Mulder’s life is in disarray. What he needs is a good bit of paranormal investigation to kick things back into gear…