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

midnightmurmurations.substack.com

161–170 of 232 posts

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

#161
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let's be honest, that is also partially Clinton's legacy. Him and Tony Blair, with their "Third Way" triangulation bullshit, effectively moved the Overton window to the right for good. And here we are.

As a layman in politics, why did that shift things right in a bad way? Reading a summary of "third way triangulation" makes it sound good.

> As a layman in politics, why did that shift things right in a bad way?

Whether it's good or bad is subjective, and depends on your perspective on both major parties being "Fiscally conservative"

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then there's Babalyon 5.

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

#164

I think it's pretty funny to call out the clothing as stylish. As far as I remember, Mulder's suit was meant to look like the cheap and ill-fitting suit that a low-level, young government employee would buy for a dress code and because he didn't want to think about clothing. And so much of the environment was slightly strange to US viewers, I think, because it was mostly filmed in the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver,…

I agree with most of that, but disagree about the "road warrior" bit. Laptops and cell phones and email existed, but not pervasively when the show started in 1993. It was around 1998 or '99 when work issued me my first cell phone that didn't require me be careful how I used the minutes. A powerful laptop of the time had a 250MB hard drive, a 486, and 2 hours claimed battery life (but in reality the battery was more l…

It would be interesting to hear anecdotes about whether FBI agents were being issued or were finding it worth purchasing their own notebooks, cell phones, for use in the field back then!

Anecdotes about what we thought was affordable or common place in our neighborhoods isn't very relevant to whether the tech was available for enterprises and workers who needed it.

With no insider knowledge, I can only guess whether a federal agency like the FBI was aggressive with such options or lethargic and stuck in their legacy methods. Likewise, the writers and show producers may have made choices based on what they thought the audience would relate to rather than what was actually possible or in use. Or maybe they didn't have any insider knowledge either..?

However, the term "road warrior" was jargon for a category of business travelers in PC advertising by the late 1980s. There were various portable computers back then, and "notebooks" became idiomatic in the early 90s. PowerBooks and ThinkPads were already around when this show launched, and being used by companies and individuals who saw the value. It's hard for me to imagine that a Hollywood writer wouldn't know about these things if they did any background research at all.

People had modems and various forms of dial-up interface with larger enterprises. You likely dialed a modem bank specific to your employer to access some kind of mainframe app or terminal server within the enterprise. But the transition to things like SLIP and PPP was also happening at this time in some enterprises. And CompuServe and Prodigy were more retail focused. You could imagine agents using something like this in the field much like people today use unofficial social media and personal phones. It's hard to prevent it...

The first 2G digital cellular networks were rolling out in the US around the same time this show launched. But, yeah, coverage was not as universal as it is now.

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

#165

I was there and I can tell you that it was genuinely better times. The 80s and 90s were peak western civilization. Tech was exciting, futuristic. Politics - whilst certainly always grubby and adversarial - had not descended into lies and manipulation and misinformation and attempts to destroy the democratic systems. People talked socialized read books. Dating hadn’t been turned into a high volume marketplace in which…

> The 80s and 90s were peak western civilization. Only if you consider west "civilization" as the US. I enjoyed things in the 80s and 90s, but many things about it sucked too. In many ways I like the current times a lot more than this idealized past.

> Only if you consider west "civilization" as the US.

Not just the US, it was pretty peak for the UK as well. Probably even moreso, considering the deleterious austerity policies that followed. The 90's were great for Germany, and formerly eastern-bloc countries.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of that, but disagree about the "road warrior" bit. Laptops and cell phones and email existed, but not pervasively when the show started in 1993. It was around 1998 or '99 when work issued me my first cell phone that didn't require me be careful how I used the minutes. A powerful laptop of the time had a 250MB hard drive, a 486, and 2 hours claimed battery life (but in reality the battery was more l…

It would be interesting to hear anecdotes about whether FBI agents were being issued or were finding it worth purchasing their own notebooks, cell phones, for use in the field back then! Anecdotes about what we thought was affordable or common place in our neighborhoods isn't very relevant to whether the tech was available for enterprises and workers who needed it. With no insider knowledge, I can only guess whether…

I can't speak to the FBI, but I was in the military at the time and almost no one had a personal laptop. Our department got one in 1994 that we could share around the office. I would be gobsmacked to hear that the FBI were given the budget for laptops and cell phones back then.

Remember also that 2G didn't meaningfully have data until the very late 90s. Its first "data" offering was SMS, which was pay-per-message. Not that it mattered, because a phone couldn't do anything with data at the time, and if laptops and cell phones were rare, cell modems were unicorns. In any case, cell coverage outside cities sucked until 2010 or so. My wife had to commute to a nearby city once a month to run a medical clinic, and she lost signal about 5 miles outside our town and picked it up again when she could physically see the other. Those tiny towns in the middle of Washington state forests were probably busy upgrading to IP over Avian Carrier during X-Files times.

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

#167
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…

People used books a lot more and it was fun to sit on the floor at Barnes and Nobles.

I remember planning trips with Lonely Planet books. I just really don't miss the pre-GMaps era. I don't think I'd ever drive now without one a phone.

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

#169
If you enjoy The X-Files, you really should check out Millennium, by the same creator (Chris Carter) and broadcast at roughly the same time.

It's very intense, with an Emmy-deserving performance by star Lance Henriksen (whom you may remember from the movie Aliens). It mixes Christian theology and eschatology, mythology, horror, and serial killers, leavened with delightful humour.

The first season is mostly "serial killer of the week", but is important to establish the characters and long-running story arcs.

The second season is a delight, with some of the best writing of any TV show I know, and a lot of complex situations with no easy answers.

The third season changed (and cheapened) everything, and is only worth watching for completists.

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

#170
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

If it's anything like the animated Babylon 5, no thanks :(

If you love animated stuff I guess it might be fine.

Damn, now I want to binge-re-watch Firefly.

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