The Living Dead (or The X files?)

Sam · Post by **Sam** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 7:39 am

The X-Files would've done better if they'd skipped that continuing story arc and just did the self-contained episodes like The Night Stalker did. Those were always my favourite anyway.

The problem with their arc was it was not very well planned out, if it at all. It felt like Chris Carter was making it up as he went along. Maybe if he'd planned it all in advance, the way they did with Babylon 5, it might have worked better.

And yes, Kolchak was one of Carter's favourite shows as a kid, and his inspiration. He originally wanted Darren McGavin to play Mulder's father, William, but he was unavailable at the time. He did later guest-star as another one-off character.

darren · Post by **darren** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 1:08 pm

I was never a "fan" of The X-Files but it was always watchable. I only discovered later that the episodes I enjoyed most were written by a guy called Darin Morgan. He wrote his first one called Humbug about a freak show which had a avengerish touch at times. The series wasn't lighthearted that's why the black humour worked on it. I gave up watching it when I knew the arc stories would just go on and on and were unlikely to be resolved. They just got more and convoluted. The series really set itself up for a fall with the arcs, no way would it ever have lived up to all the questions it left - I gave up on Lost for similar reasons - it became obvious that they didn't know where the story was going (not always a bad thing if you come up with a great idea to finish but it just becomes overloaded and asking for trouble overwise).

The Living Dead is one of the better episodes from season 5, again I like it as it breaks with the formula more than many. It's one of those episodes where the really glib humour and playfulness works for me. It looses it a bit towards the ends but I like when the Avengers does creepy. The very surreal design for the graveyard - I love that the Avengers could be more creative in its design work certain compared with the bland rooms and locations from many of the ITC series.

frank · Post by **frank** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 3:30 pm

Ironically Gillian Anderson herself is inadvertantly responsible for the arc storylines taking such predominance on the show. During the second season her character gets abducted by conspirators/aliens/whoever which leads into a major portion of the arc stories incuding her mystery child etc etc. This all happened becuase the actress got pregnant and had to be written off for a few episodes. As a wink 1 of the later episodes is named after Anderson's child at the time. The early scripts for the arcs were generally so well done that unfortunately they took center stage too often and lead to too many stories with minimal resolution. The problem of not knowing when the show will end.

Darin Morgan is generally regarded as the show's best writer and has won a emmy for them. He generally like to slip is humor and screw with the sensibilites of the Muldar.

Lost actually learned its lessons wisely from Xfiles' situation. That show set an defined enddate (about 1 1/2 years from now). By doing that the writers have better defined each season with clearer thematic and plot points. This past season provided some episodes with great emotional impact harking back to the first season. The episode "The Constant" was the foundation which is had garnered it's best drama emmy nom this past year.