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3.5.7

How the X-Files Killed Ufology
(As we know it)

Cut to Agent Mulder, in repose and helpless as a band of the undead (all victims of a rogue Millenium group member’s failed attempt to resurrect a prophecy), swarm around him. He could have called out to God. He could have called out to his mother. But he didn’t. He called for Scully. Oh Scully so fair with the red, red hair. His knightess in shining armor.

And so it was for nine years. Two of the most popular agents on television, hand in hand, solving some of the worlds most bizarre mysteries. Some say it ushered in a new dawn of thinking. Others say it gave ufology a fresh face for another generation of UFO enthusiasts. I beg to differ.

The X-files became my favorite show fairly early on, and so this is not going to be a disgruntled viewers account of its shortcomings. This is actually a love letter. The X-files killed ufology (as we know it), and I am going to tell you why.

Roswell

In 1947, something crashed in the desert at Roswell, New Mexico. Some say it was a saucer from space, others say it was a government experiment gone wrong. Books have been written, movies have been made and TV shows have been syndicated, but no one did more for the story than the X-files.

The crash at Roswell was a major part of the shows myth-arc. It was the basis for all the nefarious deeds committed by aged, learned men in high places. It was why Mulder once said, “ The devil is one man with a plan, but evil--- true evil, is a collaboration of men.”

Indeed it is.

The X-files inspired an entire mythos behind the Roswell crash and to this day, no matter what anyone says about what may or may not have happened there, those of us who got the lowdown from the X-files will forever have a one-track mind on the subject.

They came, they saw, they manipulated, they plotted…and in 2012, they would conquer.

Hybrids

In 1987 Budd Hopkins wrote Intruders. It was a seminal work on the abduction phenomena. In its pages were tales of alien/human hybrids and no one added more to this anomaly than the X-files.

Mulder lived with the burden of his sister Samantha’s abduction. It was a dirty secret his father kept to his death. A plan to create alien/human hybrids to survive an oncoming plague of catastrophic proportions. The story goes that a deal was made between the EBE’s (a term made famous by the X-files), and the shadow government to allow a certain number of humans to be abducted for experimental reasons.

This idea has permeated throughout UFOLOGY for decades. People who are not people, infiltrating the government all the while avoiding detection because of their uncanny ability to assimilate.

Mulder was told that his sister was one such hybrid. In fact, he came in contact with various clones of Samantha throughout the shows reign. Later he would come to discover that his sister never survived the experiments and instead died at the tender age of twelve.

Nonetheless, we came to see that not only were there hybrids, but they weren’t of the test tube variety.

During Scully’s pregnancy we lay witness to a small co-op of doctors who were instrumental in assimilating EBE genetics with those of human women. The episode THE GIFT is a perfect example of this symbiosis.

But throughout the show, the true hybrids were able to shed their skin and become something else entirely. Never mind the nine months it took to gestate and take form. Billy Miles gestated in his dying, decaying body. The hybridization scenario on the X-files was never a simple one.

There was the black oil, which invaded its host via the pineal gland, turning the victim into a kind of alien zombie. But this was only step one. There was also the ‘mean’ stage in which we all lay witness to during the X-files-Fight the Future, motion picture.

In the ‘mean’ stage, after the host has been infected by the black oil, a fully adaptable EBE---using genetic material from the host---begins to grow within the torso, in an H.R. GIGER-eque vision. The creature that is created then goes through a period of gestation in which it shed its skin and become what we know as the GREY.

It is clear from the onset that our original idea of the alien/human hybrid was simple at best. Woman meets alien, woman is impregnated by alien, women gives birth to alien/human fetus aboard alien ship. In the X-files however, the hybrids, although they could pass for humans, were few in number. The rest were clones.

This invention of the ultimate alien/human hybrid, well within the minds of the X-files creators served as a basis for many theories therein, regarding the human/alien hybridization theory.

Conspiracy

Conspiracies abound everywhere you look. And no one made us more paranoid about big brother than the X-files. Not only were extraterrestrials attempting to enslave us and colonize our planet, a corrupt group of powerful men were behind the plot.

Ufologists by trade are a paranoid lot.

Now before I get enough hate mail to persuade me to move to Alaska, please consider my explanation.

As Ufologists we are constantly delving into the unknown. We are faced with the ever-nagging probability that we are treading on someone else’s territory. Many Ufologists have come to believe that they are being silenced, albeit not in the obvious sense, but when your papers are missing, you can’t leave or enter a country, and your on the FBI’s watch list, then…well, someone is watching you.

As the saying goes, ‘Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aint followin’ me.’ And no one perfected this ideology better than Agent Fox W. Mulder. Mulder was a marked man, but he was also a favorite. He was helped along the way much like many people engaged in the field of Ufology have been helped. Some people have what they consider ‘contacts’ in high places, and Mulder had DEEP THROAT and X, to name a few.

The X-files forever branded us with the idea that GOVERNMENT is bad, especially a shady government that denies everything and gives nothing, by way of fact or explanation.

Alien Implants

The X-files even went to so far as to maintain a probability that alien implants acted as a sort of beacon between abductees, drawing them en masse to remote abduction locations. It was like a hive mind; something not too farfetched in this day and age of technological advancements, on the cusp of creating microchips to enable sight for the blind, etc.

There was also the idea of the chip being a sort of genetic manipulator. It gave Scully cancer and it cured her. In the episode En Ami, CSM makes it clear to Scully that he, with the help of alien technology, can cure the ailing and become mankind’s savior.

Dr. Roger Leir has been removing implants from Abductees since 1995, and the X-files did much to hype the idea of humans being tagged by extraterrestrial visitors. But it also made room for a form of hypochondria that is present to this day.

In Closing

The X-Files was a show. It can be found in syndication around the world. You can pick up special collectors DVD’s of every season, from 1-9. Mulder and Scully spawned a lexicon that was popularized by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its contemporaries. It is a cult classic, but it is also a time capsule for the evolution of Ufology.

Prior to the X-files, Ufology was seen as a hobby for learned old men, searching beyond contemporary science, for the truth behind flying saucers. It was not something hip or intellectual, until people like Jacques Vallee espoused theories wholely different from the pack. The X-files was a landmine of what-ifs that turned into could-haves.

It killed Ufology as we know it because gone are the mere speculations aliens from outer space, flying around in advanced technology. Who needs that explanation when we can delve into far more esoteric explanations that may be all the more probable? Sure, they can be from Outer space, but they can also be from inner earth, the moon, another dimension…or the deep sea. Sure, they can be little grey men, but they can also be tall Nordic giants, reptilians, human-like androids, cat people, chupacabra’s, Bigfoot…or faeries.

And on and on and on.

The fact that the X-files killed Ufology (as we know it) isn’t such a bad thing. Infact, it was probably a necessary thing. No one was really paying attention before. No one really cared. Prior to the X-files, Ufology was christened by the Roswell crash and a few scattered sighting here and there, and after the X-files, Ufology became a motherboard for every weird, anomalous, esoteric thing left to discover. It became essential. It became pop-culture. It became hip.


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