In 2002’s series finale of “The X-Files,” the Cigarette Smoking Man reveals that an extraterrestrial invasion of Earth will occur on Dec. 22, 2012.
Well, Mulder and Scully return to Fox in January for a six-hour miniseries, and the colonization appears not to have occurred. How come?
The Los Angeles Times attended the New York Comic Con screening of the first 2016 episode and tells us this:
Mulder soon comes to believe that the aliens were not a colonial threat after all but a ruse by humans for a more insidious plot, hinted at in a montage suggesting everything from Patriot Act surveillance to mall-and-McDonald's consumerism.
Ah.
Other interesting tidbits derived from the event:
* Despite Mulder’s misgivings, there are apparently extraterrestrials in the 2016 episodes. The miniseries begins in 1947, with a spacecraft landing in the desert.
* The first and final episodes of the 2016 mini will be “mythology” episodes while the four that come between will be “standalone.”
* While Mulder and Scully are no longer with the FBI (she’s working as a surgeon these days), the miniseries begins with their former supervisor Walter Skinner asking them to meet with popular conspiracy theorist Tad O’Malley, played by longtime “The Soup” host Joel McHale. O’Malley, in turn, introduces the duo to a woman claiming to have been abducted by aliens.
* Series mastermind Chris Carter suggests studio execs are to blame for the failure of the most recent “X-Files” movie, which he wrote and directed. “We did a little movie in 2008 because that’s what Fox asked us to do,” Carter told reporters covering the event. “I took at it as a lesson learned -- that if you do an ‘X-Files’ movie it has to be big.”
Find all of the Times’ story on the matter here.
