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The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

midnightmurmurations.substack.com

131–140 of 232 posts

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#131
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure I second that. Please, for the love of all good things, do not remake the X-Files, or Firefly.

Fringe was kind of a remake of The X-Files. It wasn't an exact copy but clearly derivative. Still a decent show. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119644/

I wouldn't say it was "derivative", although it was clearly made by people who had enjoyed The X-Files, and Twin Peaks.

I loved the trick with the colour grading. Won't say more because spoilers, if you know you know.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#132
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure I second that. Please, for the love of all good things, do not remake the X-Files, or Firefly.

The upcoming Firefly series will be animated, seems like the right choice

I hope they pick up on the thing in the last episode of Firefly, where River hears everyone's thoughts except for one person.

There was someone else on the ship like River.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#133
post #99
post #24

The X-Files was the right show at the right time; a "bubble" of the '90s, if you will. The internet and mobile technology was nascent. The world was getting bigger, but was still quite "small". I definitely feel quite privileged to have lived through this time, and enjoy all things '90s quite a bit. Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure, and I wish they would just stop. Now, if you wil…

I wrote an essay for a private journal last year about how the X-Files mainstreamed anti-scientific and anti-government conspiracy thinking and thereby led to the downfall of American democracy in the 21st century. It valorized the fringe, presaged "do your own research" and consistently told us that the skeptic is always wrong, the believer is always vindicated. It wasn't a bubble of the 90's, it was a prescient blu…

I think it’s simpler than that, the internet makes it easier for conspiracy people to reinforce each others beliefs in a space where no one is going to challenge their fallacious reasoning.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underworld / Second toughest in the infants NIN / The Fragile Radiohead / OK Computer Daft Punk / Homewerk All of these are generation defining albums.

I would like to add, all the jungle/dnb of the 1990’s and Rhythm & Sound.

The R&S / Maurizio / Burial Mix records are absolutely timeless.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DS9 is also great. I don't go through it as often but it's definitely in rotation.

I learned to love Sisko a lot more than Picard tbh. I find him much more relatable than some pretentious english-frenchman who gets weird around kids. I never understood why he’s such a jerk to Wesley in the beginning.

Over the course of a few years, my wife and I did TNG, DS9, and VOY in order, back to back, without missing an episode. Such great TV.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism. Technology was going to make our lives better and unlock opportunity, not take all our jobs and render us irrelevant. To me, the weirdest thing about the AI hype cycle is the inherent nihilism of it all. If there's one thing I miss, it's the optimism. I used to be enthusiastic about what the tech industry was doing and where it was going. > The larger…

The optimism died a long time ago. I’m a Millennial, the 90s flew by as I was growing up, but one of my formative experiences was playing Deus Ex in 2001, after 9/11. It gave me healthy distrust of technology, governments, big corp, and what the world is going through today only reinforces this vision of the world. Of course I am nihilistic about AI: when I read about Altman and Karp, I see Bob Page. These are NOT th…

> I feel the older generations still believe that technology will set us free.

I still have my original copy of High Noon on the Electronic Frontier[1] and still hold out hope that computer technology will ultimately end up on the positive side of the scale rather than the negative side, despite how our current tech leaders are racing as fast as they can toward the negative side.

1: https://www.amazon.com/High-Noon-Electronic-Frontier-Concept...

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theories were a lot more recondite back then, less accessible to what people today would call "normies." Before X Files you would rarely encounter them unless you subscribed to the Loompanics catalog, or ran into a LaRouche activist on a college campus, or shopped at the kind of used bookstore where an old guy woud talk your ear off about the FEMA secret government or something.

I don't really agree. I remember getting books from the library in the early 90s that talked about UFO conspiracy theories. There was a lot of weird stuff on TV, before the X-files, like In Search Of (which I think was from the 70s).

Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World was a thing among such things. It was present in popular culture, it wasn't obscure, but it did culminate with X-files for sure.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#140
post #24

The X-Files was the right show at the right time; a "bubble" of the '90s, if you will. The internet and mobile technology was nascent. The world was getting bigger, but was still quite "small". I definitely feel quite privileged to have lived through this time, and enjoy all things '90s quite a bit. Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure, and I wish they would just stop. Now, if you wil…

> Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure I second that. Please, for the love of all good things, do not remake the X-Files, or Firefly.

They're going to, because there is no property that will not be milked for nostalgia.

Although honestly, it could work if they played into the cynicism and uncertainty of the modern UFO phenomenon. If the "conspiracy" is a hall of mirrors comprised of psyops, lies, grift and folklore and the truth is something very weird exists but the government doesn't know what it is. Establish a "post-truth" narrative where the only thing we know is that everything we thought we knew (Roswell, Area 51, Dulce, Majestic 12) was a lie.

Maybe at some point have the in-universe version of Northrop-Grumman (or pick whatever defense contractor you like) actually make a breathrough in reverse engineering alien technology (or say it's China, to play on American xenophobia) and now the enemy isn't some vast government conspiracy but dark capitalism. Have an Elon Musk analogue, AI death cults around weird alien artifacts, SV startup culture, UFO grifters within the government, creeping fascism, all of it.

Someone could make an intelligent and interesting show that studies the nature of hyperreality, the evolution of UFO folklore as a mirror of generational fears, and the embrace of metaphysics as a trauma response to the dehumanization of modern technological society. The problem is, that wouldn't be the X-Files. Something closer to Lone Gunmen, maybe, as written by Grant Morrison, without cops being protagonists, but the vibe of the 90's and the Smoking Man and all of that is just too quaint to be plausible nowadays.

They'll do it anyway, and they'll do it badly, and they'll probably do it with AI.

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