so spud...what do you think about the assertion that x-files went awry when it put the aliens out in the open, so to speak?
Well actually Series 8 was not bad and that's where it happened, there's some great episodes in there, and the initial super soldier episodes were well done (and they spent the budget making them look like films, whereas in series 9, it looks really cheap).
Series 9 just didn't have anything going for it, all the mythology episodes were really cheesy, they relied on CGI to tell stories, or rather so the audience instead of suggesting to the audience and other such fatal flaws. I think it was a mixture of really bad writing, and self-indulgence that screwed it up in the end.
I still by the idea that it was the mythology that got the best of the series, because its quite clear they had no idea where it was going in the begining, and although they got it to work most series, it came to be that they lost the plot in the end.
They made a series of fatal mistakes, killing off people they never should have (or it would seem, the last episode was really cheesy... that's not how it should have ended, with flashbacks and shit... should have ended with a really big bang).
It wasn't so much the aliens that killed it, it was saying of no its a government conspiracy and downplaying the aliens to a degree where they didn't really appear towards the end.
The super soldiers, after all, were man made and this was all what it was about in the end. Sure they were hybrids, but the aliens just dissappeared in the end.
So I think the writing, producers and everyone lost the plot, or what little plot there was. Still the episode with God in was good and the odd standalone in the last series were okay.
I would never have ended it like that, I think a lot of series 9 was a big creative mistake, self indulgence if anything, but the problem with that is no one can possibly like that tripe since when a director/writer is over the top or self indulgent in this way, the shows are normally crappy and whilst the director thinks its great, its a shallow piece of work thats totally subjective (The George Lucas effect).
Now i've seen them all, its a shame people started to tune out, because a lot of the best episodes are in series 6, 7 and 8. As far as the mythology episodes go, they were far better early on.
And what was the biggest mistake of all? No Mulder! They should have cut the cgi budget and put it on paying his fee. Okay he asked for a lot of money, but the show dwindled without him in it given that he pretty much was the xfiles. That's not a dig at Doggart et al., they were all pretty good charaters, but the xfiles was all about mulder, his character gave the show focus.