The trailer for the next ten-episode season of “The X-Files” has been released and can be seen below. Once again Mulder and Scully are the only two people standing in the way of the secret government conspiracy, as personified by the Cigarette Smoking Man, and its nefarious plot to destroy the world, killing all seven billion of us. That is a pretty substantial burden for a couple of aging federal agents. One wonders if they are up to it?
‘The X-Files’ was the perfect series for the 1990s
In many ways, “The X-Files” was the perfect series for the 1990s.
It’s initial run started in 1993, the year after the fall of the Soviet Union, and ended in 2002, the year after 9/11. The show was therefore neatly scheduled between the Cold War and the War on Terror when we didn’t really have an all-powerful enemy to deal with so the series made one up. The big bad that Mulder And Scully had to deal with was an alien invasion, aided and abetted by a cabal of rich white men, who had been behind some of the iconic events of the 20th Century, notably the JFK assassination.
Of course, the premise behind the series did not stand up to close examination. If a group of aliens has the technology to cross interstellar distances, why do they need scuzzy people like the Cigarette Smoking Man to conquer our planet?
They would just show up, in the style of the aliens from “Independence Day,” and start blowing things up. Indeed, advanced nanobots would dismantle our civilization and ourselves without a fuss and hope of resistance.
On the other hand, why would aliens want to conquer our planet?
The one thing that most alien invasion stories fail to explain is why ET wants to come to our planet packing heat and acting big and bad, as Will Smith might say.
Do they want our resources? Resources exist in abundance among the asteroids and comets of any solar system. Do they want us as slaves? One would think that robots would make more pliable workers? Does their religion require them to enslave and/or kill us? That is possible, but something that is never brought up in any of these stories.
One would like to think that the aliens are outraged that our civilization allows the progressive tax system and Harvey Weinstein and Bill Clinton to remain at liberty, so they are really trying to liberate us from these and other foibles.
In any case, “The X-Files” is due to air its latest series of episodes starting in 2018. Whether or not its alien invasion scenario makes any sense or not, it will likely be vastly entertaining.