It was unbelievable, Mulder, I couldn't have imagined anything like it

[nineveh_uk]

'Scully? What did you see.'

'It was an obscenity. I felt as if I were seeing something against all the laws of nature. A glimpse into another time, another world, one where we made different decisions. Wrongdecisions. You can't imagine...'

'I'll have to, if you don't tell me. Come on, Scully, don't leave me hanging here.'

'You and I were there. We were - oh God, Mulder - we were in a relationship. We had sex. We'd had a child! Why are you smiling like that? It was awful.'

'It's amazing! Don't you see? It's the proof we've been searching for. I don't care however many universes there are: that could never happen of our own volition. It must be proof that alien mind control technology exists!'

*

Yes, I've now seen The X-Files: I Want to Believe*. As a film it is unimpressive. As a double-length monster of the week episode it's fine.** Except for the fact that I haven't watched The X-Files beyond random episodes of the first three or four series and the first film, and I had somehow managed to maintain ignorance of the fact that Mulder and Scully get into a romantic relationship. And sucker as I am for UST and romance in some stories, for this one I can only quote Willow from BtVS: 'Weird? It's against all laws of God and Man!' Truly, there are things on this earth with which one should not meddle, and the epic platonic comradeship of Mulder and Scully is definitely one of them.

*And made progress with the Ironing of Doom.

**Apart from the usual plot holes, lack of sufficiently supernatural mystery, and I have no idea what they intended with the gender and sexuality issues around the villains and their evil plan, but at the most generous interpretation they are bizarre and incredibly ill thought through.

Comments

[naraht]

I do ship them, I must say, but I never found the show's version of the relationship either particularly satisfactory or particularly necessary.

As for the film, I saw it in the cinema when it first came out. Having gone in with absolute rock bottom expectations I enjoyed it well enough, all told. I just wonder what they're going to do with this upcoming miniseries.

[nineveh_uk]

I think it possible that if I'd watched 'properly' from the beginning through I might have shipped them, but my cultural osmosis and a few episodes experience just thinks it's weird. I'm definitely going to watch the new series, though!

Low expectations can be a very good thing. I rather enjoyed the film as an accompaniment to the ironing when not feeling bright. But I wasn't expecting more.

[ironed_orchid]

I stopped watching around the beginning of season 6, and I still have problems believing that their relationship is canon.

[nineveh_uk]

From my internet trawling yesterday, it sounds like even TPTB had some difficulty in believing the relationship was canon, if their failure to put it across in a convincing way is anything to go by!

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

The romantic relationship seems to have happened without anyone really noticing - it was all a bit weird. Mulder is supposed to be the father of Scully's baby, but it was never confirmed in the series as far as I remember (I had lost the will a bit at that point). We never saw the UST become RST (or just S?) and never saw them in a relationship - I think they both vanished for much of the last series of so.

I adored the early series, my first experience of online fandom, and where I first discovered others wrote their own versions of events. It was a bit of an eye opener when I discovered that some of it was really rather rude... Not something you want to accidentally open in the university computer room.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It certainly sounds as if things went a bit weird. I knew that Scully had had some sort of alien baby. But an actual baby, and with Mulder? Except the internet doesn't know if it was his. And then it's adopted for some reason. And what relationship did they really have? All very bizarre. Though not helped by my sporadic canon experience.

Not something you want to accidentally open in the university computer room.

Oh the memories! The younger generation of students don't know what they're missing.

[dbassassin.livejournal.com]

The UST (and Duchovny's inability to come anywhere close to acting) was what drove me away from X-Files pretty quickly. Because I knew the producers would end up caving and get the leads in the sack. This is always a sign that the producers have run completely out of ideas but want to keep the gravy train rolling.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

You'd think that since the rest of the population knows that long-term characters getting together late is the death-knell of a series, that the producers would learn. And yet...

(Yeah, there's exceptions. But not many. Though I do like the episode of Frasier when he sleeps with Ros, and both of them are horrified and vow to forget it forever.)

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

The X Files is a missing part of my education - though I saw some episodes, and the first film - but your write-up does not entice me.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the episodes that I saw, and the first film, and if I had watched more systematically I expect I'd have enjoyed it in general as light entertainment. But iconic as it is, I don't think it is something that calls me back to go through from start to finish...

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Excellent! One more bit of TV to cross off the list.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Yep. I will no doubt continue to enjoy the odd episode, and the first film is enjoyable as a piece of fun alien conspiracy sci-fi with high production values in terms of visuals, but really you know everything you need to know from the zeitgeist.

Also, I have fairly limited tolerance for people not calling for back-up before they go into the mysterious building etc.