How I would write THE X FILES

Why I need to be writing TV.

I’m part of a big X-FILES fan group over on Facebook. One question that shows up pretty often is:

How would you write a new episode/season?

Usually, the replies are quite short, and quite clever too.

But you know me, I’ve been rewriting the endings to X-Files episodes ever since I first crept downstairs to watch it in the early 2000s. And I write Sci-Fi myself, so I’ve got a lot of material to mine.

So here is how I would do a six-episode return for the X-Files.

EP1 - Turn and Face the Strange

Mulder would investigate an old conspiracy that Scully remembers from her pre-FBI days in the 1980s, mainly, that David Bowie was an alien shapeshifter, or multiple alien shapeshifters. The two agents, finding this theory as hilarious as it is interesting, will not expect to discover it has some truth to it.

Whilst Bowie was very much human (the lesson in this episode being that humans can and will do extraordinary things without alien help), other people he met in his musical career were not. Scully uncovers an unreleased photo of Bowie on a niche fansite, discovering CSM in the background of a restaurant photo.

The Cigarette Smoking Man we knew from the original seasons is indeed dead, and the one from season 11 was an alien shapeshifter taking his place. Mulder and Scully work out that these shapeshifters are not the same ones Mulder has battled before, but an entirely different sect who are casual observers on Earth. Only that the CSM one himself was killed and replaced by the usual big bads.

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EP2 - Gene Genie

A title stolen from my own Earthloop series, this episode would delve into the genetic experiments done by the government on the American people. A child with superhuman strength and gecko-like pads on his hands would be an unusual ‘monster of the week’ whilst the episode would be heavy with callbacks to past episodes with similar themes.

In the end, turns out the kid is the child of Eugene Tooms, indicating there may be an entire ecosystem of human mutants the government keeps hidden in blocked-off cave networks. As the episode draws to a close, Scully asks Mulder if he’s ever considered geocaching.

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EP3 - CaveGame

With a title alluding to Minecraft’s original name, this episode follows on from EP2, as Scully brings to Mulder’s attention a geocaching group that vanished all on the same night, all at different locations.

Mulder and Scully discover each of the geocachers vanished within a mile of a sealed cave, and that all five caves were from the same network.

Mulder mentions to Scully that you can track the last whereabouts of missing people to nearby closed cave systems, and that he believes people are being taken by predatory creatures the human species has evolved to remember, as a defense mechanism against the psycho-active effects of it. Armed with the agent’s knowledge, local police attend all five sites.

At one site, a police officer goes missing and is found the next day with an arm missing near the cave entrance, his gun emptied of its ammunition, having been fired at an unknown assailant.

Mulder and Scully check the CCTV of the town, and see the officer running at midnight away from the forest the cave entrace is within, firing into the forest as he limps backwards. A large, snakelike thing is seen following him, but it is wounded and eventually slithers into a nearby storm drain.

Mulder supposes it is a relative of the Mongolian Death Worm, capable of injecting venom that causes memory loss.

In a surprise twist, all five geocaching people show up right after the police officer’s injuries are broadcast on TV. They claim to have no memory of how they got out of the caves.

Mulder supposes the same worm caused their memory loss, but Scully remains skeptical. It turns out the case was a hoax, aimed at getting their Youtube channel a larger following. But, with an injured police officer taking them to court, the group doesn’t get the type of attention they wished for.

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EP4 - Fluke

Mulder and Scully investigate the case of a woman taken to court by a Las Vegas casino for constantly winning card games. Despite no evidence against her, she was barred for life from gambling.

But she didn’t win at every casino, and she didn’t know she was cheating.

Mulder runs the psychic test used on Gibson Praise on her, but she fails spectacularly. Now, believing her to be nothing more than a clever criminal, Mulder considers dropping the case.

In the middle of the investigation, the agents are invited to an unusual genetic engineering clinic run by a man who is eerily familiar. This appears to be a clone of the Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM), who serves as a front for the operation. From this, Mulder and Scully have their proof that the CSM we saw obliterated in the X-FILES movie was indeed the original, and did indeed die. Any CSMs from now on are shapeshifters or clones.

The man reveals he is a shapeshifter, but not from any group we are familiar with. His purpose on this planet is to merely observe, but he has been forced into action when the government began experimenting on the population. Performing his own counter experiments since 1957, this shapeshifter is responsible for some of the mutants Mulder and Scully have encountered in their careers.

In one scene, the agents are taken into the man’s eccentric office, where he keeps clay sculptures of his favourite ‘children’, including Flukeman.

Interestingly, he also has a sealed terrarium filled with that hallucinogenic mushroom from the S6:E21 FIELD TRIP.

The shapeshifter tells Mulder and Scully to continue their investigation into the woman who beat the casinos.

Shapeshifter: “Have you checked the CCTV?”

Mulder: “Yes.”

Shapeshifter: “I mean really checked it.”

Mulder looks again, and discovers that at the casinos where the woman lost, the CCTV was facing away from the tables. Turns out the woman can see what the cameras see.

The episode ends with Scully looking at the mycelium in the terrarium and wondering,

“How many of our adventures happened? How much is real?”

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That’s as much as I’ll squeeze into this email, but please do show up for part 2. Subscribing is free, unless you decide to be a paid subscriber but that’s very hard to sign up to by accident.

How would you write an episode? What mythology would you cover? Would you invent your own new antagonists, or return to a fan-favourite?

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EXTRA STUFF

In my trilogy of dark science fiction novels, EARTHLOOP, each chapter is set out like an episode of a TV show, because it would be a TV show if I had the budget.

I’m working on it.

In EARTHLOOP, the episode titles themselves have hidden meanings, alluding to episodes later or earlier in the trilogy. For example, S1E1 is called PILOT, and S3E1 is called PASSENGER. The idea is that the titles rhyme and will take place at the same time, from different angles.

Lax Morales loops back in time twice, with each of the three books showing us another version of him as he tries to save Earth.

Three books, three seasons.

69 chapters, 69 episodes.

23 chapters per book, 23 episodes per season.

I’m pitching it to Netflix when I get the first draft done.

Below you will find my plans for the first two Earthloop episodes, if you’re a paid subscriber. If not, you’ll find out when the books come out.