The X-Files
Australian Conne-X-ion
Australian Media
June 2001

The ex factor

Move over, Mulder ... (from left) Doggett (Robert Patrick), Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). Below: The new Scully and Mulder? ... (below left) Reyes (Annabeth Gish) and Doggett ponder life's little mysteries.

Can The X-Files go on without Mulder and Scully? Michael Idato knows the truth is out there.

Creator and executive producer Chris Carter has always played The X-Files as something of a jigsaw puzzle. What no-one anticipated, however, was that for its eighth season Carter would tip the pieces back into the box and start again.

Sitting in his office, a curious blend of old-Hollywood leather meets modern Californian surfer, Carter admits last year's finale - an episode titled Requiem - was a turning point for the series. Not just because it returned to the same small American town in which the 1993 pilot was set, but because it closed a chapter of the show's life.

"That's what you do, you have to close doors, end chapters," he says. "Last season we didn't even know if we were coming back for an eighth season so that episode had to function as not just the season finale but possibly the series finale.

"We always leave enough room and opportunity to continue, but we do reach conclusions ... It can be very easy to have beginnings, middles and no end, but that isn't really fair on the audience."

Originally The X-Files was about two agents - Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), a believer in the paranormal, and Scully (Gillian Anderson), a sceptic sent to work with him, with the unofficial brief to debunk his work. To comprehend the scope of the arc over which the series has travelled, you need only look to Scully's testimony in the aftermath of Requiem. "There are things I have seen," she told the FBI investigation committee, "which I cannot deny."

The show now features an ensemble cast, which includes Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), Agent Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea), Deputy Director Alvin Kersh (James Pickens jnr) and Agent John Doggett (Robert Patrick), who has replaced Mulder as Scully's partner.

Doggett, for obvious reasons, has become the focus of attention. His motives are uncertain and hardcore fans of the show - a virtual crowd who dissect the series in Internet chat rooms - aren't convinced he won't turn out to be another villain.

Patrick, sitting in his trailer between scenes, rubs his chin at the suggestion Agent Doggett isn't all he seems.

"It's not something I am doing deliberately," he says. "But I think it's the nature of this show, and any new character in it, that you're going to be suspicious.

"I always played Doggett this way," he adds. "He was a New York City police detective, he's a former marine, a fast climber in the FBI and he's assigned to find Mulder ... He ultimately tries to get the job done. He's a guy who's got a lot of honour, but he is suspicious."

(For trivia buffs, Doggett's name follows Carter's tradition of calling characters after real people. In this case, baseball announcer Jerry Doggett. Mulder was Carter's mother's maiden name and Scully comes from Doggett's fellow announcer Vin Scully.)

The X-Files has been renewed for a ninth season, but possibly without either of its original leads. Contracted only for series eight, Anderson has hinted she is ready to move on. Even Carter has suggested he may step back and allow another executive producer to run the show so he can concentrate on the spin-off series, The Lone Gunmen.

One thing is certain - Duchovny will not return. He appeared, briefly, this season but the experience wasn't a good one.

"Other ideas, other stories, had come to the centre stage," he told the US media earlier this year. "When I came back, I felt somewhat peripheral. Mulder's story was one of three or four stories ... and it didn't feel like the same show to me."

Carter is reluctant to say precisely how the series will step into its ninth year, but fans - a fairly reliable source when it comes to The X-Files - are putting even money on Doggett pairing with Agent Reyes to become the co-leads.

"It's not like the show has to prove itself," Patrick explains. "It's got a great fan base; the production value, I think, is the best on television. There is not a finer piece of television made than The X-Files week to week. The look of the show, the writing, I think, is some of the best on television and certainly up there with The West Wing and The Sopranos.

Yet contemplating The X-Files without Mulder or Scully is enough to give a TV network programmer the shivers. And in the world of TV, when programming sneezes, people like Chris Carter and co-executive producer Frank Spotnitz catch a cold.

"All of us are aware of how crucial the character of Mulder has been to this series, and how much he and Scully and their relationship have been central to everything that has made the show successful," Spotnitz told US media earlier this year.

"You can't take a bigger gamble in television."

The X-Files' season finale, Existence, screens on Ten over two weeks, from Thursday at 9.30pm.

Food for Thought

The report: The National Enquirer reports that David Duchovny and his wife Tea Leoni, are secretly scouting LA locations for their own resataurant. Meanwhile,Duchovny, who is pasionate about cooking, has been testing exotic recipes at home and inviting mates to act as guinea pigs.

The Truth: "I never, ever, ever cook, and I would never eat anythinhg I might cook, " says the actor. "However, I might be interested in opening up a restaurant with a friend of mine from Vancouver."

The laughs are out there
THE former Agent Mulder from TV's The X-Files has always been convinced that "the truth is out there". And it's the ultimate truth about the character that his alter ego, actor David Duchovny, is dying to learn.

"I'm as curious as any fan of the show how they're going to get me out of there, because I'm not there." Not even in a cameo, he insists: "I'd be surprised if I was on The X-Files at all next season."

Eight years have passed since Mulder first appeared on the small screen and Duchovny confirms it's all over for the character – despite a longing kiss he shared with Scully in the final episode of the eighth season, which is airing in Australia. (The ninth goes to air in the US later this year).

But he might consider "being open to the idea of being in a movie, but obviously I'd have to look at a script first".

There's more than a touch of irony in the fact that David Duchovny is back fighting aliens in his latest film, Evolution. He plays a community college science professor who finds himself eyeball-to-eyeball with oozing, dripping aliens that arrive via a meteor crash. It's intended to stir laughs rather than screams of terror.

So what is it with the former Agent Mulder and aliens?

"I really don't know," the actor smiles. What he does know is that he wanted "to do a broad comedy" and circumstances allowed him to get involved: "I was able to take a year off from The X-Files, pretty much to do a big comedy with (Ghostbusters director) Ivan Reitman."

There are key moments in the film in which one gains the distinct impression that the actor is poking fun at himself.

Though Evolution is a sci-fi comedy, Duchovny went out of his way to keep his performance real and not overplay the film's comic elements.

"I think this movie's deceptively simple, because the science fiction has to be real and the reality undercuts the comedy and the comedy undercuts the reality, so you have to constantly keep the reality and comedy in check."

It is also Hollywood moviemaking on a grand scale, full of elaborate special effects.

Duchovny says working on such a project was "nerve-racking, because you really do have to deliver yourself into the hands of the director, who is going to keep the tone right.

"There's a lot of trust involved. In a drama, you pretty much know how to keep it real, interesting and be true to my character; it's a drama, so people are either going to believe it or not.

"But in a comedy, if there are no laughs it doesn't work and if they don't laugh because you didn't do your job correctly, then you'd feel like an idiot, so it was terrifying.

"Doing comedy, I decided, is so exhausting, because you just never know how something is going to turn out."

It was The X-Files that put Duchovny on another whole level.

He was still a relative unknown prior to The X-Files, and remains as surprised as anyone that this singular television show not only became such a cult phenomenon, but changed his life.

"It's crazy when I think about it," he muses. "It's a defining event in my life, but one that I think I take for granted, like a car accident."

Duchovny never made a conscious decision to be an actor, but recalls just having backed into it.

He could well have become a teacher had he finished his doctorate in contemporary American literature.

"I would have loved to have done it but it's two or three years out of your life and the acting thing took over. I mean, I would have loved to have stopped time and devoted that time to writing this thesis, but I felt I didn't have it."

Another aspect of Duchovny's life that has changed is marriage (to actor Tea Leonie) and fatherhood, but he is not allowing either of these momentous events to change the way he chooses a project.

While his family is his first priority, when it comes to travelling the world promoting Evolution – a tour which takes in the Australian premiere in Sydney on Thursday – the family will not be joining him, "because it's going to be so quick and my daughter's only two, it's not like she would gain anything out of it except severe jet lag".

Evolution opens on July 12.

By PAUL FISCHER

While shooting the sci-fi comedy Evolution with Julianne Moore, David Duchovny, who arrives in Australia on June 14 to spruik the film, amused himself by tormenting their 24-year-old co-star, Seann William Scott. Duchovny's favourite prank was to sneak into Scoott's tralier and hide food in his street clothes. A few morsels sat in one jacket for a week before Scott discovered them while on a date. He reacched for his wallet and came out with nothing but gunk.

Now that he's put The X-Files behind him -for now- David Duchovny is dying to get back into fishnets again, reports Empire magazine. Duchovny admits to fond memories of his role as a transvestite FBI agent n Twin Peaks. "I loved creating the character", Duchovny said. "I was only on it for a few days, shaving my legs, surounded by the strangemness. I wish I could do something like that again."