Afterword

An X-Files story without Mulder and Scully, oh the horror, I know. Of course, Mulder and Scully are there behind the shadows, motivating everything, and I feel that makes it work. I really would have liked to tell a Mulder and Scully story, but it wasn't right for this. Mulder and Scully were off of The X-Files, in hiding and keeping their heads down. But when we see them again in I Want To Believe, Scully is living in the open and Mulder is only half-hiding. They're back in the US. It feels off and I wanted to set up a story to explain their return. For them to return, that means they have to be gone, and the last thing I wanted to do was write a Mulder and Scully romance story that neglected the things that made The X-Files work. I wanted an X-File, a good old classic mythology episode.

So the idea that Doggett and Reyes would mistake a message as being from Mulder and Scully drove the story, with everything suggesting the two agents were going to help them. Instead, all along it was an unused character, Doggett's old friend and super soldier Shannon McMahon, played on the show by Lucy Lawless, attempting to get a meeting with Doggett covertly. A bit of a misunderstanding done to get the pieces in place for the second half of the story, which was never written.

I left the end of the series very frustrated. Many things felt like slaps to the face on old fans, as far as I was concerned, and I thought the ending was awful. Not only ending the series on a clip show, and the "truth" being incoherent ramblings that never really were answers so much as a summary of the series' mysteries, it was a mess that lost sight of the series. So much weight was put on Toothpick Man, Knowle Rohrer, and Gibson Praise, while more familiar characters were paraded like cameos that never fit. Kersh's 11th hour and 45 minute conversion was out of place and out of character, and it was all meant to say "see, he's not such a bad guy!". There's so much I really, really disliked about the ending. And yet, in I Want To Believe, with Whitney's line "All is forgiven", the entire thing was swept away in a second. Just a little misunderstanding. Wow. How could that happen?

This story serves a lot of purposes, mainly as a transition between the end of the series and I Want To Believe. Since then, a new season has come out, a comic book series of Season 10 and 11, and so on. This story does not fit with the comics, but still fits with the new season (which gives me thoughts about how to write the follow-up, actually. Reyes has more story to tell). It's just a beginning, however.

The X-Files was a pre-9/11 series, and was only on in its dying breaths for a few months after the attacks. Writing a post-9/11 X-Files story presented a lot of challenge and opportunity, but that was part of the appeal. 9/11 fueled a lot of conspiracy talk, and that was the stuff The X-Files thrived on. There was a lot of interesting political stuff going on at the time, there was the beginning of two wars, and another interesting turn of events relevant to the series: a new director and restaffing at The FBI. This was perfect for the story, and it gave me a reason for all of the sudden changes that happened between Season Nine and I Want To Believe. A previous FBI administration was corrupted, the War on Terror changed the political landscape enough unexpectedly that some infiltration increased, and others were tossed out, but most importantly, the resources were being redirected toward fighting terrorism. So a new FBI director comes in, sees the Mulder incident with disbelief, and thinks it's a joke that looks bad for the FBI and for the country at a time of crisis. This led to a scene with the new director and AD Skinner discussing these things, and I wrote it almost humorously with the director looking at the series finale.

Introducing a new authority figure to an X-Files story is difficult. You have to walk a line between sinister and trustworthy. This is part of why Kersh was an awful character, there was never a second where he was trustworthy, not an effective boss. He almost felt like a parody. Adding the new director meant partially keeping him in the shadows, he had a big scene to show the changes underway and to effectively end Mulder's death sentence, as well as play catch-up on a few characters, but as a character he needs to be offscreen as much as possible. This might well be the only appearance he should have. Instead, I introduced a new character this season, perhaps a new Krycek. Or perhaps a new Doggett. His nature has yet to be shown, only that he's not around in the new Revival.

Agent Tolson is named for a famous person within the FBI: Clyde Tolson, and I reference this in the story when its implied that his name connects him to the family of that famous figure. There's something sinister any time you bring up Hoover and Tolson to begin with, but Tolson does sort of personify the FBI's role in the series. On one hand, he's an investigator with a lot of respect and confidence, but he's also secretive and may not be what he seems. He serves as a link between the old series and the aftermath and reuniting the characters. He is the FBI itself, basically, calling everyone back.

Reyes is one of the most hated characters, I think. The thing is I never hated her so much as I found the writing for her was awful. She was interesting because she had a bit of Mulder and Scully in her. On one hand, she'll tell you everything about crystal healing or energies, but she'll also scoff at people being possessed by listening to Marilyn Manson albums. She's practically born to pull out her gun and shout "federal agent!", and without being awkward doing so like Dakota Whitney. She's nuts in the way Mulder is nuts, but she's got a lot of guts and is a good investigator when she's not off the deep end. So for this episode, I took her out of the crazy element, but still needed her because there is an X-File here. There needs to be that interest in crazy to drive the plot, and Mulder is off the grid. It's a job for Reyes, and of course it's writer's bias but I think the airport scene is the best thing I've seen Reyes in.

John Doggett was a reluctant member of The X-Files, even though he was totally loyal. He never sought it out, and it wasn't where he wanted to be. I felt that he was an honorable guy, with a bit of pride, and was driven by his son's death. In Release, Doggett resolves his story arc, and in The Truth he's just a background, support character without much use. He was done, and I felt that after witnessing the farce that was the tribunal, he would have lost all faith in the FBI and government, and would have thrown his badge in Kersh's face (not to mention what he would do to the corn flakes!), and left it all. So ultimately I saw a man born for law enforcement who grew disgusted with law enforcement, going back to New York and getting a job away from conspiracies and monsters as a security guard and living alone in a small apartment. And just letting his life go on. Drawing him back was the worst thing I could do to him, and do that's what I did. So he was given a coerced return for the purposes of finding and helping Mulder and Scully. Personally, I thought Doggett was a great character, very different from the other characters and making him a lead here was very important. I thought giving him a place to shine as a character in an old-fashioned kind of episode would show that he was misjudged. In the years since the series ended, I find that view vindicated and the hate for him has really died down. He's the real main character in this story.

I found Kersh's story arc to be unbelievable as much as the character was unlikable. But I ran with it and thought about his actions at the end of the series, and what must have broken in him. To realize that you've been manipulated...by aliens of all things...to kill people and hide the truth. I would think Kersh would be devastated to see his entire life in those terms, and I hated the character to begin with and didn't want to write him in. Killing him off the way I did was in conjunction with Follmer's prosecution, and was a catalyst for bringing the Mulder incident to the director's attention. You don't lose two Deputy Directors in a matter of weeks and not ask questions. To matters worse for Kersh, Skinner reopened the investigation after Mulder's sentencing, meaning all of his involvement and dirty deeds were about to be aired.

The opening teaser is very dark, and was trying to capture something in the show, but also hits on some big fears and there have been events since I wrote this that make it even creepier. I think it hits a lot of nerves. It was the way I could introduce the X-Files in this episode, which was something along the lines of The Thinker's story in Anasazi. In this case, a young UFO enthusiast has been communicating with someone in France who might be Agent Mulder, only to be targeted with an illegal wiretap and surveillance. When local police look into the strange activity, a cop is killed which exposes this, and gets Reyes' attention. Unfortunately, there was too much story to tell to really focus on that aspect, had I written the next part it would have played out in the vein of The Blessing Way/Paper Clip probably. The point of it, however, is to indicate that Mulder is alive, and that he's still working on exposing the truth, and someone is trying to find him. Mulder is The X-File here. Mulder's location is the truth Doggett and Reyes are after, and he is out there.