Don't Mess With The Mothership.

WE DO NOT WANT A SEASON 11 IF CHRIS CARTER IS WRITING IT. 

Spread the word every time and everywhere you can.

Gillian Anderson on her character - Stella Gibson - in the Fall 

I have seen some posts asking if there is anything that X-Files fans can do, at this point, to see if we can communicate to the beancounters at Fox the necessity of taking creative control of season 11, should such a season exist, away from Chris Carter.

I have been considering this question and I have these thoughts about it.

1) Talking to Chris Carter is useless. If Season 10 proved anything, it’s that he never listens, never learns, and never changes, unless it’s to deteriorate.

2) Agitating, specifically, for more MSR is a losing strategy. The suits do not care. Men think that fulfillment and happiness are vulgar and uninteresting–someday I will review Carol, and this will be my theme–and the more you make it about MSR the more they will dismiss your feedback. This is life under patriarchy, for the moment we must accept it.

3) Nearly all the media critics I have seen responding to the finale agree that a) “My Struggle II” was terrible and b) that’s largely because Mulder and Scully were kept separate until literally the last minute. I think if the suits are taking the professional critical response into account at all–and this is not something we can take for granted–they have received the message that the X-Files works when and only when Mulder and Scully work well together.

4) So what I would say is: do not ask for MSR. Ask for a season 11 of the X-Files without Chris Carter at the helm, and if we get that, then MSR will follow.

5) How do we ask? Who do we ask? Well, it’s the execs at Fox who will make the call, and there are two ways we can communicate with them: a) by buying/not buying the product and b) using social media that they track.

6) So these are the ideas I had about how to do this: 

* Do not rewatch any of Chris Carter’s episodes. Watch the FUCK out of “Home Again,” “Were-Monster,” and “Founder’s Mutation,” and do not ever again have anything to do with a single second of “My Struggle I & II” or “Babylon.”

* When the season is available through Netflix or iTunes or whatever, view/download the Good Three and do not touch the Chris Carter Trilogy.

* When you talk about the revival on twitter, etc., talk about how ready you are for a season 11 and how much you will watch the fuck out of it as long as someone else is running the show. Make this your theme, every time you post about the revival where someone can see you. I will watch (the fuck out of) S11 if someone else runs it but if CC is given the reins again, then I will not. Over and over, in every place you can think of. Start #freethexfiles or whatever you gotta do. But keep the message consistent: we want The X-Files in whatever form you want to give it to us and we want it bad, but ONLY without Chris Carter. With Chris Carter we DO NOT WANT.

7) I wouldn’t even bother typing up this post were it not for the fact that by doing this we would be telling the suits to do something they probably are already starting to want to do based on the professional critical response. In that situation, it is just possible that fan response might allow the suits who want to dump CC to win an argument against the people who don’t.

But the hard truth is this: a.) if Chris Carter wants to run the show;  and b.) if we want a show that includes David and Gillian; then c.) Chris Carter will run the show. They are extremely loyal to Chris. I cannot fathom a scenario where Chris has been removed and David and Gillian continued on. They just wouldn’t do it. 

This is just history repeating itself. The show did well. It’s extremely profitable. Nobody gave a shit about the hideous storytelling in S8-S9, as long as TXF kept making money. FOX has nothing to gain by ditching Carter; it would only put the show in jeopardy by pissing off him and the two leads. 

And, I agree with you, unfortunately. Chris Carter will never change. He won’t voluntarily step down. There will always be excuses why the show was reviewed poorly (”That’s just the shippers! The vocal minority!”), just like IWTB didn’t do well because of The Dark Knight release (let’s just ignore all the negative reviews for IWTB as well, right Chris?). 

After Babylon, I was chatting to one of my oldest Phile buds and said, “I don’t even know if I want more XFs.” And because she is my friend and she always tells me the truth ;), she said, “It really doesn’t matter what you want. It’s going to happen. Without a doubt.” She’s right. There will be a Season 11 and Chris Carter will run it. The question will just be whether or not we choose to watch it.

But the fact is, CC will always helm this show. And I’m actually fine with that. I would love it if he doesn’t write, and maybe he won’t. But Fox doesn’t really have any kind of financial incentive to give him the boot or wrest creative control from him. On top of that, Dana and Gary, not to mention David and Gillian, have very real relationships with Chris and that loyalty means something.

Also, fans and critics have been panning CC for years. And yet…they still watch. The real hit to XF came when the show lost half of its duo, so I’m confident that’s the one thing they won’t do again.

@perplexistan

“But other than that, I just feel like these social media campaigns and letter writing and whatnot are just kind of small. It is what it is. I think we just have to make peace with it.”

I have been thinking about your response for several weeks. I must disagree. 

When it came to the original series, there was still plausible deniability for what alien colonization and the government conspiracy really stood for. We’re in a different situation now. In Ted O'Malley, Chris Carter created a Glen Beck clone to be his prophet of doom—and made it so that O'Malley was right—about everything! In Carter’s updated X-Files universe, small pox vaccination wasn’t about saving millions of human lives, it was a weapon of the rich and powerful to be used against ordinary people. Portraying vaccination as a weapon of mass destruction was bad enough but Carter crossed the line when he turned Dana Scully, the show’s voice of reason and a role model for a generation of young women, into a conspiracy-crazed spokesperson for the anti-vaxxers. That was unforgivable. O'Malley’s internet science expert describing the new plague “as a fast-moving AIDS without HIV” is almost as dangerous and just as unacceptable. Whether this nonsense is representative of what Carter actually believes, or if he is cynically cherry-picking the worst of the ultra-right wing conspiracy theories to use for their entertainment value, he’s made The X-Files into a mouthpiece of the Fox News Network.

I don’t see how I can make peace with this. It’s horrifying that these harmful ideas are being given traction by The X-Files, and as the showrunner, writer, and producer, Chris Carter is directly responsible. He needs to be stopped. 

Since reviving The X-Files was all about the financial rewards, we have to make it clear that unless Carter is removed from The X-Files, we won’t give them our money. I’ve decided that I won’t buy the Blu-rays of season ten when they get released. In fact, I won’t re-watch his three episodes on any platform, including my DVR, and I will tell the executives at Fox Television why.

I do love Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, and I loved the original series. Nothing is going to change that, not even more bad episodes by Carter. But if season 11 is announced, and that man is still producing, directing, and/or writing for the series, Fox Television will hear from me.

No that’s not okay! Jesus I’m so sorry.

This is what The Witches had to say about it:

Then there was the fic that ate your mailbox: TANTRIC by Char Chaffin and TBishop.   After reading it, all the witches could think was:   “Either somebody’s got a new hobby or somebody got some sex books for Christmas!”

Synopsis:  (to prove we read it) 17 couples have disappeared at a (SURPRISE!) Tantric sex resort in the Bahamas.  As an excuse to get the characters to be along in an open atmosphere, the authors have Mulder accept the case and drag Scully along.  They go “undercover” as a married couple  for the seminar and after first fighting their instincts to boink like minks, guess what?  They have sex!  They have sex everywhere!  And guess what again? It’s TANTRIC sex!   They shag and shag and shag and we discover in a weird twist that Scully, who up to now in the series, seems strong and in control, likes it when Mulder dominates her, ties her up and gets generally rough.  In the first nine chapters, covering their first week at the resort, they do nothing but make the beast with two backs and attend live sex seminars demonstrating Tantric Techniques.  (No, we’re not making this up.) Part Two doesn’t get much better, as the Swami wants Moose and Squirrel to consider staying longer to become Swamis themselves.  He believes they have the gift to fuck themselves straight to Nirvana.  Scully gets all mystic on Mulder’s ass, embraces the philosophy in total.  Mulder, in the meantime, inherits his mother’s estate and is a multi-millionaire.  However, our heroes decided to further their training to “further the investigation” and go to a private island run by a shady, wife abusing guru.  Mulder sees through him, but Scully takes a truckload of hallucinagens and is almost raped by the guy.  He wants her to join his harem and asks her to sign over all her worldly possessions to his Church and stay on the island to achieve spiritual harmony. Being totally out of character, she agrees!  Mulder gets mad and  protects her from the evil guru, who turns out to be a petty thug from Ohio named Vinny (because that’s what guys that go wrong from Ohio do, apparently).  Scully learns some interesting techniques while whacked out of her head, Vinny kills his wife then tries to kill Mulder to keep Scully, his “red-headed woman”.   Needless to say, love conquers all, Vinny gets his come uppence and our heroes fly home, safe and sound.  And best of all, Scully retains the ability to be able to deep-throat an entire penis and ball sac at the same time.   And no, we’re not making this up.   We couldn’t review it all for fear of going blind.  If you want to read the whole thing, go here.