The Betrayal of Dana Scully: “The X-Files” Has Been Terrible to Its Lead for a Generation
villagevoice.com/2018/03/14/the-betrayal-of-d...
villagevoice.comPosted Mar 15, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC
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villagevoice.comDon't get me wrong, I love a lot of post Fight The Future X-Files episodes, but if the show ended in season 5, it would have a even bigger reputation, Scully would end in the place she needed to be, the series would have a smaller but extremely consistent legacy of episodes, more people would rewatch it because it's only 5 seasons....
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At one point, I believe Chris Carter was hoping that the series would end with season 5, and the first feature would be the first of a planned series of films. But Fox did not want to risk giving up a very profitable TV series, so the film turned into a bit of a standalone mythology story and the main syndicate arc was wrapped up in season 6 instead.
I would regret losing a lot in seasons 6 and 7, but not so much seasons 8 and 9. And nothing mythology oriented after Two Fathers One Son. To me, that's basically the end of the story that was being set up in the previous seasons. But in terms of MOTW episodes, there's quite a bit that I really liked in both seasons.
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I’m always surprised when I look back and realize how many great MOTW episodes there were in season 6-7. “The Unnatural,” “Arcadia,” “X-Cops,” “Triangle,” “Monday,” and more.
Maybe it’s because the show really peaked in season 3, and the mythology dissolved into a mess after season 5 that I forget about this. But 6-7 has a lot of adventurous writing. Even some of the episodes that fell short or didn’t quite fit the show’s tone were interesting or fun, like the one William Gibson wrote, or “Hollywood A.D.”
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Yes, I’ve been rewatching the show after getting back into it with this latest season (the first episode last year turned me off initially for the reboot)..and I’ve rewatched the mythology and the good MOTWs. I’ve come up to season 6 and realize that when the mythology eps get real old. I was thinking about when the mythology took a final downturn and it's in the mid 6th season, and in the 6th and 7th seasons it’s the MOTW and ‘creative’ episodes like Triangle, Unnatural, Field Trip, Dreamland etc that really shine. It just didn’t become worth it to be interested in the mythology after a while. When I saw the first MS episode I was so disappointed but I should have just waited for the MOTW. The reboot would be great if we just pretend all the MS eps just didn’t exist.
It gets tiresome when the one latest case or element is the new “key to everything” blah blah and previous findings were overlooked. MS started w that old tired trope.
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I agree with much of this article. It is no wonder why Gillian Anderson wants to escape this train wreck.
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Totally agree.
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Hey remember that season where Scully grew as she became a believer who’s whole existence was turned upside down? Remember that season that everybody hated? Remember how people just wanted ‘old Scully back’?
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I read this earlier and almost posted it but halfway through I thought the writer was sounding too extreme feminist, which makes me gag.
There's a lot of valid points regardless. But I didn't fully agree with some of the more extreme points. If you look at the show for what it really is- CC being uber Mary Sue, a lot of what happens makes sense.... Sad sense but it adds up a lot more than "Omg her reproductive rights! Wah!" pfft.
CC sees himself as Mulder and gets off on the idea of being needed and rescuing his dream woman to make him feel complete.
But I do agree about constantly shitting on her character. It's like good God, get some therapy and leave the poor woman be.
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I don't really understand the complaints about Scully being abducted, and all the experimentation done to her. It really isn't gratuitous. That's part of "real life" UFO lore (even if it was later revealed that in her case it was really human scientists). According to people that believe they were abducted by aliens, the aliens would poke around (insert anal probe joke here), do weird medical procedures, remove fetuses from pregnant women, and the sort.
Maybe the show needed to have more male abductees to balance things out. There was Duane Barry. Oh, and Mulder was abducted too, and tortured, but that was so over-the-top-silly it's not really worth mentioning.
Now, retconning En Ami, to say that CSM impregnated Scully with science is just stupid. It was stupid when it was first suggested during the hiatus between season 7 and 8, and it's stupid today. It's even worse when I can't imagine My Struggle IV not ending with it confirming that Mulder is William's real father. So, the "big" twist: CSM Is The Father! will only last for less than the duration of a mythology episode.
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Whoever has followed the series and is still stupid enough to take CSM's statement at face value has only him/herself to blame.
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For all we know, CC could be doing just that...
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The CSM isn't the "father" of William any more than a medical doctor performing artificial insemination is the "father" of the resulting child. CC was quite clear that the "father" term was used figuratively, and the CSM has no biological relation to William (other than being his granddad, as he is the biological father of Mulder).
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My comment was more a facetious remark on how CC has lost the plot over the last couple of seasons—particularly the mythology episodes during the revival.
I'm confident that he at least remembered to make sure CSM can't be trusted...just less confident in his skill at writing the character nowadays.
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The complaint is not that her abduction itself was anti-feminist, but that the way the character was allowed to deal with the aftermath was superficial compared to what that would look like in reality.
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As for the male abductees. There was also Max Fenig, who was a multiple abductee. And Billy Miles. Fenig was killed and Miles was almost killed and turned into a supersoldier. (The same happened to guys like Knowle Rohrer, who we know as villains, but they are victims nontheless). Mulder was even buried alive. There were also plenty of men experimented upon by Syndicate scientists. Like Dr Secare in Erlenmeyer Flask.
And we even had female doctors medically raping women. Remember Sally Kendrick?
So I don't quite get the outrage over the CSM "scientifically" impregnating Scully - quite likely with Mulder's sperm, what she wanted to do herself earlier, but failed. People make it sound like CC suddenly did something to Scully that turned her character upside down. Given Scully wanted a kid with Mulder, the removal of her ova was a far worse violation.
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The betrayal??
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The problem is that Scully, after season 6, was not allowed to grow. The franchise kept her frozen in place. She was allowed to briefly be awesome in season 8, but that season set up a new type of frozen Scully: Scully the dour and depressed mother, forever obsessed with father and son. Gillian Anderson is such a funny, lively actress and person, that this robbed Scully of other nice dimensions; witness how she comes alive during comedy episodes. But the franchise's format doesn't let her break from her "role" (sad mom and skeptic) often.
To Carter's credit, from the second film onwards he increasingly wrote Scully as an independent chick who is tired of sh*t (let's be honest; Scully is a rape victim and has had to endure countless other incredible traumas) and tried her best to keep Mulder at arm's length. But with the franchise's mythology becoming so convoluted, a conventional Mulder-and-Scully living-happily-together boyfriend-girlfriend romance might have played better. It would have allowed Scully to have some fun.
Where I disagree with the article is in its bashing of Scully's feminist street creds. The modern trend of kick-ass alpha women is dull. With her ordinariness, weaknesses, reset-buttons and with her spiritual hangups, Scully's much more interesting. Give me the Scully of Ice and Detour over Wonderwoman any day.
It's sad that Gillian is leaving the franchise. She deserved a few well written episodes which save the Scully character. Go back and watch Season 1: that Scully had agency, was funny, skeptical in a believable way, vulnerable and kicked so much ass. As good as season 11 has been, its version of Scully is sadly still a shrill, dour thing obsessed with her ovaries. The fans want a happy Scully.
Well said. I would take the Scully from the pilot episode (medical doctor, FBI agent and professional, competent foil to Mulder’s weirdness) any day over what we’ve gotten with season ten and eleven.
The last thing I need is for Carter to revert Scully into that despicable bitch from IWTB, who goaded an unwilling Mulder into getting involved in that investigation, then dropped him like a hot potato when the result turned out too inconvenient for her tastes.
For the better part of Season 1 Scully was a naive little girl who clung to her textbook wisdom and cowered in the face of bureaucracy, because she was too insecure to do or think something that wasn't by the book. It's no coincidence both of her prior relationships we know of were her instructors.
Only in the later seasons she became an independently thinking woman I'd call "strong".
Really? Because for the first few episodes she came across to me as professional, smart and independent from Mulder’s craziness. She struck me as the competent FBI agent while Mulder felt like he constantly might be about to slip into a psychotic episode.
Yes, really. She was the X-Files equivalent to Potterverse's Hermione Granger. Booksmart, citing textbooks and rules and regulations, unable to think out of the box/books. The early Ltd. Saavik from Star Trek II comes to mind as another kindred spirit.
Being a scientist myself, I know the difference between a textbook follower and an independent thinker. First season Scully was the former, doing it all by the book.
Like I said, it's no wonder her first "boyfriends", or whatever you'd like to call them, were her professor and her FBI instructor. Men who told her what to think and what to do.
Fair enough. I guess we have wildly different interpretations of her character.
IWTB? Which one is that?
I want to believe, the 2nd movie.
I only ever watched it once, and then promptly wanted to forget it. It was not good.