Mediocrity at its Finest

Still, as much as The X-Files typically leaves volumes unsaid, after eight years no one should underestimate the strength of the bond between Mulder and Scully. “I think they mean everything to each other,” affirms Spotnitz. “They love each other, on a profound level such is rarely found in life. I think people sense that, and that’s why they love these two characters and they love them together. They’d do anything for each other. They’re soul mates.”

{April 2001}

Q: What has Mulder and Scully’s journey meant for each of them?

Spotnitz: The final scene addresses this head-on. You can’t get the truth. You can’t. There’s a larger truth, though: that you can’t harness the forces of the cosmos, but you may find somebody else. You may find another human being. That may be kind of corny and all of that, but that’s really it: Love is the only truth we can hope to know, as human beings. That’s what Mulder and Scully found after nine years. And that’s a lot.

{May 2002}

Spotnitz found the final episode’s treatment of the elusive truth in turn served to highlight the long road Mulder and Scully traveled together. The two, he says, are intertwined. “More importantly, the show talked about the journey Mulder and Scully had been on,” he says. ” To me, the theme of the episode and the series was that you can never find the truth. The truth is out there, but you can never hold it in your hand. But you can find another human being, and Mulder and Scully found each other, and the believer and the skeptic were able to say at the end of the day that they believed the same things. That is the most powerful truth that human beings can hope for is finding another kindred spirit and not being alone. And that to me was the perfect end to the journey that they had begun nine years earlier.”

one of the biggest is the switch from genocide to sex trafficking (which i will not compare the importance of), but i don’t think the genocide storyline is as well written as people portray. the concept of oppression by one group against another is only really portrayed on the first planet (blues vs. purples), and it’s really cheapened by the brigands being the actual perpetrators. it’s then made worse by the fact that we see afterwards that the brigands would have killed indiscriminately no matter the circumstances as long as it was convenient. it was a pretty good portrayal of how perpetrators carry on After a genocide, but the rest felt weak at best.

another thing i see is talk about her characterization, which i think was actually better in the movie 🫣. in the comic she’s supposed to be 21, actually younger than the movie, but i think the movie does better to show that she’s still an unhealed twenty year old girl (my opinion as a professional in the field). just because her experiences have forced her to become responsible it doesn’t necessarily mean she has to be mature. a lot of the dialogue in the comic brings her way too close to sounding like ruthye’s mother in a very un-feminist way, and i say this as someone who loves the accidental child acquisition trope. there are also many moments when she’s speaking to the victims of the brigands that are weirdly diplomatic in what should be a triggering situation for her, even if she’s trying to put on the role of the responsible superhero.