The Fractal Hall Journal

I mentioned yesterday that I prefer Cyclops to Wolverine in the X-Men, although most people can’t seem to stick him. I guess I just think he’s got a cool power. His personality is a little dull, sure, but that really is the fault of the writers. Because you need that kind of dullish leader-character, the person who keeps everything together; the Nico in Runaways, the Jack in Lost. You remove that character from the team dynamic and, like a plot-vacuum, someone else steps in to the breach, and all you end up doing is watering down that character, whether it’s a neutered Logan in X-Men 3 or an edgeless Sawyer in the latter part of That Weird Island Show.

Grant Morrison, as always, handles the character best, by realising that an uncompromising idealist in the Marvel U, one that believes completely in Xavier’s dream, that believes he will trumph in any situation regardless of the odds, must have one personality characteristic above all others. He’d have to be completely fucking barmy. The “ice-cold lunacy” Wolverine refers to in the very first Morrison issue. It’s a great spin, a way of making the character compelling while retaining the idealism, and also goes someway to explaining the whole leaving the mother of his child for the woman she was cloned from plot point of the 80s, a character twist meant to make the boring character more interesting but ultimately kind of broke him.

Morrison’s take also allowed for an interesting comparison between Scott Summers and the Hairy Short Guy, examining the way their relationship could oscillate between friendship and antagonism. It led to the Assault on Weapon Plus storyline that had him and Logan team up for a mismatched buddies on a mission vibe, like a mutant Lethal Weapon. And for future reference, I would absolutely pay cold, hard cash to watch a Wolverine/Cyclops road trip flick.

Right, what else has tweaked the radar recently? Looking forward to Hellboy 2, finally landing this side of the Pond on Thursday. I know I had a bit of a go at the original film a couple of weeks ago, but this one looks like Del Toro has more of a grip on what he wants to do. I think I’m a little more used to the idea that it is Del Toro’s world rather than Mignola’s, and with that in mind I’m interested to see what kind of original take he has on it. I watched the first one last week, and while I don’t disagree with the negative things I’ve written about it (it really doesn’t quite hold together), what it gets right, it gets very right, and ultimately it’s a fun, engaging, good natured film, which bodes well. Ron Perlman was born to play the role, and John Hurt was brilliant too. And the sequence set in 1944 is absolutely brilliant, really spot on, and I hope the second film takes its cue from that.

And speaking of live action, BBC 4’s been showing a lot of the old 60s Batman series. I keep forgetting they’re on, so I haven’t managed to catch a whole one, but I caught the end of the one with the Green Hornet and Kato in it. It is beyond strange to watch Bruce Lee turn up in Batman. I’ve also watched a few YouTube clips of Kevin Smith doing his lecture series, ones where he mentioned his abortive attempts at writing screenplays for The Six Million Dollar Man and Green Hornet. The idea of Smith doing Green Hornet is really laughable, and it’s not really surprising the pitch was based in the 90s. The infamous First Wave of John Peters-driven superhero movies led to so many crazy properties being thrown round on the grounds that any of that shit would make money, regardless of whether the world really wanted a film version of the Lone Ranger’s grand-nephew.

Of course, what’s even crazier is that now were in the Second Wave, shit is still being flung just to see what sticks, and now Seth Rogen’s on writing duties. This is how insane Hollywood is. Kevin Smith writes about Superman’s sex life, so obviously he’s the man who should do Green Hornet, regardless of suitability. And when he can’t do it, they employ another funny fat guy on the grounds that, I don’t know, he also writes films with lots of naughty words in them.

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Holy crap do I want to own an Alien/Predator chessboard. I have no idea where this sudden need for overpriced AVP tat is coming from, but boy is it intense.

I also notice io9 reporting an American live-action remake of Akira. Oh no oh no oh no. Is not going to work. Whinge whinge whinge.

In nicer news, getting through the latter half of Series 3 of Battlestar Galactica. It’s been awesome to see Dean Stockwell, Al Calavicci from Quantum Leap, turn up again, this time as a bad guy. Reminds me of how creepy he was as Devil-Al in that QL episode with Stephen King in it. Damn, I loved that show, and damn the show’s final episode was shitty. I really hope Galactica doesn’t screw the pooch when it comes to an end, because the rest of it’s been so very good.

With all the other superhero films doing so well, it’s going to be interesting to see how the X-Men franchise pans out in the next couple of years. It’s really the series that proved the viability of a new approach to rubber-trouser characters, in terms of faithfulness to the themes and stories of the original material, and a way of taking the best bits of what went before. Sure, Blade is technically the first of the successful comic book adaptations, but that really is in spite of the original rather than because. And I like the Tomb Of Dracula stuff.

If I were being pessimistic, I’d say I don’t have a whole lot of hope with the Magneto prequel. First of all, you’re not likely to find a young actor as good as Ian McKellan to take over the role, and someone of the calibre of, say, Hayden Christensen isn’t going to be able to handle what will inevitably be a pretty dark film. It was never going to be all bright pink flower-bunnies, but after The Dark Knight you can bet the message Hollywood will be taking from the public reaction is nightmarish, unrelenting grim is what’s required. There’s too much scope to mishandle this one.

Wolverine, on the other hand, had got Hugh Jackman going for it. The stupidest thing about X-Men 3 was the way Cyclops was killed off for essentially being a boring goody-goody leader type, only to be immediately replaced by a neutered Logan in the exact same role. A prequel means angry loner Logan, hopefully with a dollop of the sinister slaughter from X-Men 2. Also, Deadpool, and who doesn’t want to see a cinematic Deadpool? I just hope they use some of Grant Morrison’s take on the Weapon X programme; after all, there was a split-second shot of a “Weapon Plus” vial in The Incredible Hulk. Also, I don’t notice any stinkers on director Gavin Hood’s IMDB page, in the way that Brett Ratner’s previous convictions correctly indicated a screw-up.

Negatives? Well, Morrison aside I’ve never liked the Weapon X stuff. Gambit’s in it. The last X-Men film was poor and allegedly plagued with studio meddling, so is that going to play out this time too?

Wolverine’s a funny old character. First time I saw him was in Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends when I was but a lad. He used his claws to make an impromptu kebab. So I kind of missed out on the edgy killer persona that so captivated a generation. Then he turned up in a few places- a Hulk comic, Spider-Man, a few other things- and he was, frankly, a bit of a dickhead. I must have missed out on the nuance of his mysterious loner thing, but then he was a short-arse in yellow lycra with a daft haircut who was being a twat to Peter Parker. I couldn’t really see the attraction, and to make it worse he turned up in every fucking issue of every fucking comic during the 90s.

I wouldn’t say I ever really warmed to the character, but he certainly bugged me less as time went on. And thanks to Jackman’s performance in the first film, I finally understood where the character was coming from. It was properly surprising, really, but I ended up rooting for him, in particular during the aforementioned rampage in the mansion in the second film. Funny how things change, but that really goes to show how good Jackman did at grounding the character, leaving me more optimistic than not for the solo film.

Still prefer Cyclops, though.

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I’ve skimmed over Marvel’s cosmic heroes a few times here, but never really addressed them in the same way as, say, the horror stuff. I think that’s because, as much as the cosmic stuff fascinates me when it’s done well, there’s a lot that doesn’t interest me as much and that I don’t really know about. I mean, I don’t think anyone can really do a meaningful bit on Marvel space opera without an understanding of Jim Starlin’s work, and I just haven’t read a lot of that. In fact, I’m probably more familiar with his Batman stuff than anything else (quite like it, actually, though I know it tends to get some stick from some quarters). Oh, and also Mystery in Space from One Year Later, which I really enjoyed.

In true nerd fashion, I’ve always been one for the space ships. Despite Lucas’ best efforts, Star Wars will always be the Holy Trilogy, and I sincerely hope the new Trek will capture at least some of the majesty, scope and horror of the original series and the single-digit even-numbered films. I’d say I’m hoping the Curse has switched away from the odd-numbered ones, but I’d just rather any possible follow-ups be good instead of having to sit through an Insurrection equivalent again.

So yes, be it Babylon 5, Dune, Foundation or new Galactica I’m in deep. I only wish that comic-based Ship Skiffy lived up to its potential. That should be past-tense, actually, because with Marvel’s Annihilation and Planet Hulk sagas, they’ve been hitting the target more often than not.

Let’s look back a bit before we go there. It goes without saying that when Kirby was on, he was untouchable. But I honestly think that he and Stan Lee needed each other to do their best work. I know how well-beloved Krazy Kirby is to so many people, but the short version is chrome covered space martyr on a surfboard = good, Death on Skis = daft. The Silver Surfer shouldn’t work, but it does. But I’ve always felt the New Gods veered to much to the stupid.

I can go round and round on the question of Bestest Bad Guy, and almost always come up with a different answer depending on the day and what the last thing I read was. But in terms of a balance between fascination and design, it’s Galactus. Hence the name of the cat (which has lead to an interesting observation regarding those not familiar with the Fantastic Four, actually. Most people, including the vet, seem to think he’s called “Galacticus”, as if he were named after a Roman.) And it wasn’t even a comic or storyline that did it, either. First time I saw Galactus was on a Top Trumps card in the 80s, and needless to say his stats had him at fuckty-foot tall and unbeatable. That’s how you generate mystique for the Transformers generation.

The strength of the Kirby stuff has been in the fantastic. And that’s the weakness, too. As Paul C remarks from time to time, DC heroes are great for their gimmicks, like only an hour of power, or running really fast, or being a commie Robin Hood. A whole lot of Marvel stuff, from Thor onwards, uses an unspecified power set that usually involves firing blobby ENERGY at people. And this tendency comes to the fore most obviously with the Novas and Captain Marvels and Quasars.

Annihilation is shockingly good, and manages to sidestep the above problem either through the use of characters without blobby energy powers (like Starlord, or Drax) or making the blobby energy characters different enough to distinguish between them (the new Quasar is way more distinct to Nova than the original, for example). The series isn’t perfect; the Silver Surfer part of the first saga dragged, and Wraith is a bit of a damp squib in the second. Overall though, the stories have an epic quality that I didn’t really feel in Civil War, say. In fact, Nova returning to Earth to find out an essentially petty squabble had kept the heroes out of a war that almost destroyed the universe really reflected badly on the Biggest Summer Event Ever N’Ever N’Ever.

The biggest revelation for me, though, has been Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s writing. I’ve read some of their 2000AD and DCU stuff in the past and it left me a little cold, plus I still harbour a grudge over Abnett’s negative SFX review of Morrison’s JLA that meant that not only did I miss out on the first ten issues or so, but I advised Brother Trigg not to get it either. That’s a lot of baggage, right there. Regardless, their work on Nova and Annihilation has been great.

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M.A.S.K., M.A.S.K., nothing but M.A.S.K.

According to Matt-Trakker.com, it looks like there’s never going to be another M.A.S.K. series due to copyright problems surrounding the name, and Hasbro’s view that the large vehicle toys are hard to sell. Considering how fast new Transformers stuff gets piranhad off the shelves, I am somewhat skeptical about the latter. As for copyrights, there’s loads of workarounds. Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand is a daft name, anyway. Call it Trakker (maybe dropping the letter C in instead, though. Someone should tell these people K doesn’t bear up to repetition as much as funky cool letters like X), or Spectrum, or Strike Command. How cool would the live action round-table mask-charging be? Answer: very.

EXT. B.O.U.L.D.E.R HILL

Come on, Hasbro. Let me pitch it at least. I promise to find a use for the guy with the ‘Streamer’ mask that fired sticky glue at people, too.

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I notice Marvel’s got a Saxon poncing round with Excalibur in this week’s comics.

</Interminable Weekly Arthurian Snark>

In other news, modern design as applied to the humble drinks flask has brought the field of liquid containment immesurably further than it stood all those years ago when I had a plastic thing with a picture of M.A.S.K. on it. Speaking of which, stuff GI JOE, I want a motion picture event based around that 80s franchise, with Adam Baldwin as Matt Trakker, Hollywood’s All-Purpose Asian Guy John Cho as Bruce Sato and a darker, edgier T-BOB. Because I just can’t get enough of transforming vehicles.

And Spectrum’s got such sooh-per vih-hision. Muh muh muh muh, MASK.

My God, I think I may have found my life’s purpose; the pursuit of a faithful film adaptation of this lost gem, with Boulder Hill and everything.

But back to the flask. The heat retention ability of the Thermos® is nothing short of revolutionary, and it doesn’t leak. It’s what living in the 21st Century is all about, folks.

Anyway, I ended up bashing the smaller model and decide to upgrade. Only the 1L version is a hell of a lot bigger in real life than it looks in the box. Seriously, you could refuel a Boeing with the fucker. Plus, it means I’m getting through a litre of coffee a day. I’m not a hundred percent certain why I bring this whole flask thing up, except maybe to explain why posting is likely to get a little odd, then sporadic, then stop entirely when the palapatations assplode my heart.

While we’re waiting, let’s get our geek on.

• I’ve had a lot of good things to say about The Dark Knight, so here’s a bad thing. Comic book movies- well, movies period- aren’t really any good with their portrayal of women. The Dark Knight isn’t particularly exploitative, I don’t think, beyond Bruce Wayne’s dating habits as a cover for the Bat missions. The problem is how women are essentially an irrelevance in the film. Wayne’s mother is nothing more than an afterthought (hell, even Thomas Wayne got screen time in the first one), and Rachel Dawes is the definition of a pointless character. Or rather, a character who’s only point is to die and motivate the male characters. She’s subordinate to every man in the film, and only drives the plot by dying. They shove her right into the refridgerator, then nuke it, Spielberg-style. I know the problem’s caused mainly by faithfulness to almost 70 years worth of man-centric storytelling, but that’s just not a good enough excuse anymore.

• Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, does far better gender-wise. A little shaky when it comes to race, maybe, but points for having a Latino lead character. Veeeeery heteronormative, though. I’ve finally started to catch up, finishing Series Two and starting on Series Three. Bloody hell, this is grim stuff. And incredibly close to the bone, what with its use of insurgents, bombings and prisoner torture. I’ll probably have more to say after I’ve watched a bit more.

• I’m just finishing the sixth Rebus novel, Mortal Causes. It looks like Ian Rankin’s comics writing debut will be happening at the new Vertigo Crime imprint rather than as a Hellblazer story, which may be for the best. After all, while I’ve got no idea whether the man can do horror fiction or not, he can write the shit out of crime stuff. I’ll probably do a round-up of the Rebus series once I’ve finished with them. As Rankin himself says in the foreword, Mortal Causes is certainly the first of the “grown-up” novels, in that there’s less of an emphasis on a good-gosh-whodunnit twist than on the lives and motives of the police officers and the criminals. Pretty grim, too.

• Incredibly, it’s been over two months since I picked up any comics, and over a month since I got the first JMS Thor hardcover (have I written about that yet? Can’t remember. Anyway, very good, very epic, fantastic art and bound to be cocked up once it stops being a self-contained series and starts getting all crossovery). I still need to plug a few single issue gaps, like the last issue of Casanova and the last couple of All-Star Supermen, but apart from that I think I’m pretty much dedicated to the waiting-for-the-trade thing. Thank you, Comics Companies, for being so crap over the past year with one thing or another and making the decision so easy.

• This post has turned all too negative. Let’s go look at pictures of M.A.S.K. toys instead.

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Still thinking about The Dark Knight, but then aren’t we all?

A few more things that I realised about the film in the days after watching it:

• A crook doing an honest-to-God bank robbery (see also Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2). That’s the kind of old-school supervillainy I want to see.

• Batman beats up the Scarecrow and his criminal gang, then ties them up and leaves them for the police. How awesome is that?

• Batman doesn’t get unmasked by the bad guys. This is a seriously tiresome plot that’s been use to death everywhere else (I’m looking at you, Mr Raimi). Sure, there’s that weedy lawyer guy, but that’s a very different spin on having, say, Two-Face busting into the Batcave.

• Firstly, by not expanding on the Joker’s origin the character becomes something more (or less) than human, an agent of chaos literally created from nothing and brought into being by the Batman. Secondly, if we’re not getting all film-school analytical about it, it means that there’s no good reason why, in between scenes in the first film, the Batman didn’t chase a guy in a red hood through a chemical factory and accidentally knock him into a vat of something nasty. After all, even though standard Police procedure isn’t exactly followed to the letter in the film, when the Joker was taken into custody they would’ve taken his make-up off. Unless, of course, it wasn’t make-up. The brief glimpse of a flesh-coloured face when he’s dressed up as a copper could have been a Nicholsonian disguise.

Lots of wild speculation about the bad guys in the inevitable follow-up. What it comes down to, I suppose, isn’t just which villain will move the story on, but also which ones are most likely to be appropriately Nolanated.

Catwoman: Seems to be the favourite bet of everyone except me. A few reasons here. A) Still embued with the stench of whatever the hell that Halle Berry thing was meant to be. B) After the sheer horrific rollercoaster of the last film, a cat-burglar? Not exactly a compelling threat. C) A Nolanesque Catwoman would more than likely use the psychologically messed-up prostitute origin of Year One, and I don’t think the world needs that. There’s enough female exploitation in the world without squeezing it into the new Batman films.

Poison Ivy: Of course, if one thing has a tainted reach even greater than Catwoman, it’s going to be Batman and Robin, which is going to rule out Pamela Isley. It might not be a bad thing, considering she’s always used as the cheesecake Seductress of Doom which is boring as fuck. But, a creepy Scarecrow-esque poisoner, with connections to Crane, Arkham, maybe even the black plants that the League of Shadows used in Batman Begins, would fit in perfectly. The Swamp Thing powers she’s been using recently aren’t really going to fly, though.

The Riddler: Got to be. Do a Joker, whip up a sinister figure who’s obsessed with puzzles and codes, who ties the city up in knots with his games. Make him obsessed with the mystery of what happened to Dent, and what secrets Commissioner Gordon is hiding, and will finally let the Caped Crusader do some detective work. The only problem is he’s probably going to end up being obsessed with Batman’s identity, which is a very, very tired plot point. Also, balls to Johnny Depp. David Tennant has allegedly said he’d like to play the character, to which I say Fuck Yes.

Man-Bat: I would fucking love a big screen Langstrom, but a mutant monster isn’t going to fit into the Nolanverse.

Hugo Strange: Again, great to see, but within the confines mentioned above the character isn’t going to be much more than an Evil Weirdo rather than mad scientist.

Bane: I don’t fucking think so.

The Ventriloquist: A good background nutter, but probably not going to work as a main guy.

The Penguin: I think Nolan has mentioned that the character is a difficult one to use, and he’s not wrong. That said, I really kind of liked last year’s Fake Internet Rumour about Bob Hoskins playing a British arms dealer. The only way it’s going to work is by stripping out the umbrella motif, and who wants that? Is there any real point in having a bad guy who’s only concession to the character is a subtle bird-obsession (like Norman Osborne’s tribal mask fetish) and being referred to only as “Oswald”? Not sure about this year’s Fake Internet Rumour about Phillip Seymore Hoffman, either. Toby Jones, maybe?

King Snake, Anarky, Firebug, etc: I don’t particularly like any of these D-listers (I hate Snake, Lady Shiva and any ninja assassasins that aren’t Ra’s Al Ghul), but having them as background bad guys would really expand the film’s world.

Scarecrow, Two-Face and Mr. Zsasz: Cillian Murphy’s cameo was great, but too short. A Two-Face reappearance depends on the theme of the next movie, but I suspect he’s properly dead. It would be great if he turns out to be a behind-the-scenes manipulator, though, reversing roles with the Joker in “A Lonely Place of Dying” by being an anonymous voice behind a radio. Like the above, a reappearance by previous villains would help fill out the Gotham underworld.

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Gillian Anderson’s performance is brilliant, highlighting once again how Hollywood hasn’t found a single actress of her calibre since she was first cast as Scully. Why don’t female characters in film or TV appear to be any good? Because “acting ability” just isn’t considered to be any where near as important as finding a pretty little thing to hang off the hero’s arm. Scully’s one of the greatest female characters ever created, and played by a top class actress. Let’s face it, a character like this is never going to come along again.

There’s one bit, where Scully walks in late to a meeting where the head of her hospital is about to override her decision regarding one of her patients. For a second, I thought the scene was going to go badly south, because it looked like Scully was going to let it slide. You can see every emotion on Anderson’s face, every single missed opportunity and sacrifice she’s had to made over the past decade, every doubt that haunts her. The thing is, I’ve seen too many female characters react by letting something like this slide, then later on (for example) sneaking back to give the patient the treatment anyway. Because that’s just how women behave, isn’t it, Hollywood?

Not Scully, thank fuck. She puts her foot down, reminding all of us that she doesn’t take shit from anyone. It’s a fucking brilliant scene, and don’t try and tell me there’s a single female character in any other movie this year who gets treated with anything approaching the respect Scully does.

She’s completely the heart of the film, and it’s such a damned shame that this film is going to be dismissed just because it doesn’t have enough aliens in it. She convinces Mulder to get involved because it gives him a chance to be pardoned, for them to finally get their lives back, only to watch him get too involved, for both of them to get close to something so unimaginably dark that it taints both them and their relationship. That’s pretty heavy stuff, and something that’s stayed with me long after I left the cinema, something I couldn’t really say about the first film. I have to admit, in plot terms at the start I was a bit worried that it was looking like Carter was just doing another serial killer thing, as if what he really wanted to do was Millennium: The Movie, but when the weird-science twist becomes apparent, like a bolt of lightning we suddenly believe, absolutely, that we’re watching the X-Files once more.

There are negatives, of course. There’s a possible suggestion that being abused as a child makes you catch gay, which is incredibly ignorant. On a fannish level, Mulder gets pardoned far too easily, considering all the shit that went down in the final episode of S9. Does a low-level agent like the one who asks for his help really have that much pull with a military court? If I can get all fan-fictiony for a moment, I’m going to go ahead and assume that because the original trial was so mickey mouse he was acquitted of murder in his absence (maybe with the off-screen help of Doggett and Reyes? Oh, God yes! Fan Wank Supreme!), but was still being chased on the lesser charge of escaping from custody. I can just about believe the Bureau would let that charge go in exchange for helping them find a kidnapped agent.

But, all-in-all, this really is a disturbing, fascinating, engaging film, one that embraces the themes of the original series and takes the characters into darker psychological territory, all the while reminding us why we liked them so much, and cared so much about what happened to them. It’s a far better encapsulation of the show than the first film, and one that to my mind shows how relevant the X-Files remain.

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Before we carry on, I have to admit something. Of all the films that came out in 2007, the one I liked most by a fair distance was Transformers. I must have watched it half a dozen times since getting the DVD. The last time I watched a film this much was Terminator 2 and I was 12. And I’m pretty sure I can argue that it’s objectively a better film than, say, Ghost Rider (which I also kind of liked), although some might say that’s a bit like arguing that punching myself in the stomach is objectively better than punching myself in the cock.

I’m having trouble recalling what my point is.

Wait, what I mean is that my subjective opinion of Transformers is utterly useless to anyone, because it’s a film most consider to be utterly crap that I don’t even have to convince myself I like. Star Wars die-hards may have to convince themselves to like any of the prequel trilogy, but I don’t even have to do that. I think it’s fair to say that Hasbro’s early-age indoctrination systems are awesome and terrible in their power.

I bring this up because what you need to understand is that I know what I’m like. There are things that even I don’t trust my own opinion on. Transformers is one of them. The X-Files, despite the months-long Nostalgia Trip, is not.

And I honestly think that the new X-Files film is objectively a very good film.

Look, I know what bad X-Files episodes are like. I’ve sat through every single one of them. I know the ones where continuity is too dense, where the writers get all strung out on how fucking deep and meaningful they are, where Burt Reynolds turns up and acts like a twat. This is not a bad episode.

Problem One, perhaps, appears here. Because it is very much an episode in an ongoing story. That’s not to say it’s impossible to follow if you’re not familiar with the show, as they tell you everything you need to know and avoid any mention of the unimaginably tangled backstory. It’s not even that it looks like a tv show- they may have not had a big budget, but it doesn’t look any cheaper than, say, Gone Baby Gone. In fact, I’d say the look of the film holds up very well next to your typical serial killer/cop drama film, as that’s more obviously the vibe Chris Carter was aiming for rather than the Independence Day stylings of the first X-Files film. No, if it fails anywhere it’s in not giving new viewers, or lapsed viewers, a reason to root for Mulder and Scully.

That’s probably the wrong way of putting it. In an average adventure movie (again, like the first one), you don’t really need to know anything more than X is a bad guy, Y and Z are good guys, you can tell because Y and Z are all funny, cool and attractive and X is shooting at them. You hop on the rollercoaster, things blow up real pretty, and by the end Z has won, X is dead and Y has sacrificed themselves heroically. But, even though theres a set of horrible baddies in I Want To Believe, that’s not what the film’s about. The film’s about Scully, how she relates to Mulder, how her life has irrevocably changed over the past six years, the kind of life she wants to lead, and all the things she’s lost and sacrifices she’s made. Most importantly, it’s about her faith; religious faith, sure, but also faith in Mulder and faith in herself.

And that’s the problem. I think most people want to see her and Mulder decapitating werewolves and shootin’ down UFOs and super soldiers. I think that’s what most people went in to the cinema expecting to see. But that just isn’t the story Carter wanted to tell. That’s where the familiarity with the whole arc of the previous 9 series comes in handy, and that’s what has doomed this film. I’ve got a reason to root for Scully. I don’t necessarily think that anyone coming into the film cold does, or rather I think that because they’re expectations are not being met, they don’t give the story a chance.

Scully’s always been the main character, really. I mean, it’s great to see Mulder again, but he’s essentially a manchild who can’t ever get beyond an obsession with The Truth. The show’s really about Scully’s life, and how she deals with the drama caused by an obsessive who can’t let dangerous weirdness go.

Where the film is different from the series is how dark it gets, and I don’t mean in terms of gore (there are far gorier episodes) but rather in theme. Billy Connolly (who isn’t that bad, thank fuck) plays a paedophile who may be psychic, and the film doesn’t ever shy away from the revulsion the characters feel for relying on such a man. In fact, the way that [spoiler] Mulder wants to give the man credit towards the end shows how far his obsession with The Truth goes; it’s irrelevant to him what his crimes were, however vile. His insights helped to catch the bad guys, and no matter how unpalatable that truth is, to Mulder the truth trumps everything. I think this is an important take on the character, one they couldn’t really pull off on the show. We’ve always taken it as read that The Truth is the most important thing of all. This film confronts us with a truth that is abhorrent.

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“Release” is an episode that gives a rushed conclusion to Doggett’s story arc. I’d assumed it had been put to rest when it turns out an Evil Force killed his son (as seen in Series 8), but apparently there must have been plans to extend the plot a little, including the random involvement of Suddenly On The Take Smarmy Agent Follmer. The episode doesn’t quite hold together perfectly- there’s a serial killer plot that’s never quite explained, Smarmy Follmer’s emergence as a mob employee really does come out of nowhere, and I’m not sure there needed to be even more improbable layers to the murder of Luke Doggett. And Reyes (again? They needed to undermine her again?) is shown to have galatically poor judgement when it turns out she knew Follmer was taking money from organised crime but did nothing about it for three years.

But again, the faults can be ignored because we’re watching John Doggett deal with an unimaginable amount of frustration and pain, to finally earn some closure. Robert Patrick owns the episode, and it’s a good wrap-up for a character I’ve really, really grown to like. There’s a hopeful note regarding Reyes and Doggett’s relationship right at the end, and it’s a credit to the actors (and the creators) that we really want the characters to have a future together.

“Sunshine Days” is a piss-poor comedy effort centred around the fucking Brady Bunch, of all things, and is better off being ignored. Who the fuck thought this made a better penultimate episode for a show like this than the previous? Another example of the questionable judgement that sank the series.

“The Truth” is the biggie, the one that has all the answers. And it does, really. And to be fair, it’s not like they didn’t give us the info we’d need to puzzle it out ourselves, it’s just that with all the dead-ends and abandoned plot lines (like the old guy from the movie who ran that company and was never heard from again) we need Carter to strip out the insignificant bollocks that’s built up. That said, it pretty much all went in one ear and out the other, so if you want a comprehensive recap you should probably watch the episode. The first hour is practically a clip show, so we’re talking about a seriously laboured amount of voice-over exposition here. The final 30 minutes, surrounding Mulder’s breakout and the unnecessary reintroduction of Cancer Man, only for him to get nuked by a helicopter gunship, is exciting enough. But the important bits of the episode are in the small, quiet moments.

Like when Mulder and Scully get a decent reunion scene. Like the funny moments between Mulder and Skinner. Like the ghosts of X, Krycek and the Gunmen returning to help Mulder one last time. Like when we realise that Marita Covarrubias really was on Mulder’s side, all along, and that X hadn’t died in vain (that said, I suspect this was a little bit of a retcon on Carter’s part, but it’s a good one). And finally, it ends with Mulder and Scully alone in a motel room, echoing the conversation they had in the motel room in the very first episode that was the true beginning of their partnership. And there’s certainly hope, here. From what I remember, the final episode was criticised for being open-ended and inconclusive, even down-beat, but I don’t really think it is. Because Cancer Man hasn’t destroyed Mulder’s faith, and now we know The Truth. Yes, the invasion is going ahead, but now they know the alien’s weakness, and where to find a mineful of kryptonite. Sure, they’re on the run, but there’s every reason to believe they will find a way to halt colonisation.

Scully: You’ve always said that you want to believe. But believe in what Mulder? If this is the truth that you’ve been looking for then what is left to believe in?

Mulder: I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us, greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.

Scully: Then we believe the same thing.

Mulder: Maybe there’s hope.

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“Improbable” completes the excremental trifecta of Worst X-Files Episodes Of All Time, taking its stinky seat with “Rain King” and “Fight Club”. I think I’m at the point where it’s impossible to distinguish which one is worse. They just seem to meld into one huge effluvial turd. There’s pointless song-and-dance scenes, an utterly bollocks plot about numerology that makes the main characters look like credulous buffoons, cringeworthy dialogue and Burt Reynolds on irritating form shaking his tired old arse at the camera. And by “irriating”, I mean “like fibreglass powder to the bumhole”. But ultimately, the biggest sin these episodes commit, besides being comedy episodes that aren’t funny, is being just plain boring.

Fractal Fact: Reynolds isn’t the first film star to turn up unexpectedly. Other “wait, isnt that…?” moments on the Nostalgia Trip have included Shia LeBeouf as a dying kid, and one of the Wayans brothers as a copper.

Six episodes left of the series, and it finally gets good. Apart from the occasional decent scene, the S9 really has been inessential to say the least. By this point, surely they must have realised they were going to be cancelled, if only to give them a chance to write a suitable finale? If they’d have pulled their fingers out earlier, maybe they could’ve delayed the axe and given a Doggett/Reyes continuation a chance.

“Scary Monsters” is the first one of S9 that really feels like an X-File, a really creepy tale of monstrous crawleys attacking a family in a remote house. Every main character gets something interesting to do (even if, once again, Reyes has to be the agent who needs saving), and there’s a hilarious bit where Scully does a post-mortem on a cat in a takeaway tray. Compared to the embarrassing attempt at humour of the last episode, it shows how the show can be funny without having the main characters look like fucking idiots. “Jump The Shark” is meant to be the final episode of “The Lone Gunmen” spin-off, and isn’t very good. Every other LG episode was really good, strong enough to make me want to watch a show based on the characters. This one just falls a bit flat, with an absolutely awful performance from the British actress/assassin who was a regular on the other show, and if it’s a fair reflection of the other 10 episodes or so, I don’t think I really want to watch it. And to top everything, they kill off the nerds, which is really shitty. I mean, Mulder doesn’t even turn up at the funeral. In fact, the send-off is so poor (plus, you don’t actually see them buy it) I’m just going to get in a fanboy huff and assume they’re not really dead.

“William” is a very good arc episode, suffering from none of the unnecessary complexities of the rest of the super-soldier storyline. It’s simple and heartbreaking, a tale about family and trust, about how Scully has to give up William for adoption because otherwise he will never be safe. The central mystery- is a hideously scarred man who knows a lot about the X-Files really Mulder?- is intriguing, and the twist about his true identity is executed perfectly. Because the man is Jeffrey Spender, close enough genetically to Mulder to cloud his DNA test, and on a mission to save his nephew, by injecting William with a compound made from super-soldier kryptonite that turns him into a normal baby.

There are a few outstanding questions- when did Spender and Mulder (and Skinner, for that matter) find out Cancer Man really was Mulder’s father? It was mentioned in a dream sequence in S6, but never followed up on, so presumably the realisation and fallout happened off-screen. Did everyone think Spender was dead after his father shot him in the X-Files basement, and if so why were the two agents never creeped out that Mudler’s brother got blown away in their workplace? Or did they all assume he’d done a bunk? And finally, why does Scully think her son would be safer with people who don’t have clue about the dangerous soldiers who are hunting him? I assume that, somehow, she knows that they won’t be able to locate him now he doesn’t have any super powers. These are all minor points, however, in a really standout episode.

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