Glimmer of the truth

Maybe the truth isn't as far out there as we thought.

X-Files creator Chris Carter is promising an end to the alien conspiracy that agents Mulder and Scully have investigated for six television seasons.

It has confounded, frustrated and excited fans for the same period, taking the show to phenomenal worldwide success.

Still, Carter is apparently not scared to take away some of the mystery.

"You're going to understand the conspiracy after the end of the two-parter," Carter said at the recent winter meeting of the US Television Critics Association, where he also indicated that the next season would very likely be the series' final one, at least on television.

Instead, Carter would like to extend the show as a movie franchise, with the second X-Files movie likely to show up in 2001 or 2002, depending on his schedule, and those of stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

But he's not absolutely ruling out an eighth season.

"Things have a way of changing," he said. "It has to do with enthusiasm, it has to do with contracts."

It's not impossible, he conceded, that the series could continue with actors other than Duchovny and Anderson, "because I don't have to consider it, I don't."

For now, at least, he's working on a new pilot Harsh Realm, based on a comic book of the same name, and tailoring his plans for The X-Files to fit one more season. "As a storyteller ... I want to know where I'm heading," he said. "I don't want to have the rug pulled out from under me."

In the two-parter, which will air in the US on February 7 and 14 "a lot is going to be explained", Carter said, including the relationship of Mulder's father to the X-Files.

"I can tell you that the Cigarette Smoking Man is all but stripped of mystery," he said.

But just as he offered some answers in last year's movie, only to raise still more questions, Carter's not giving it all away.

"You will get answers here, but there will be questions, too," he said. "That's the nature of the show."

Six seasons of conspiracy theories haven't tamed Carter's inner paranoia. In fact, his paranoia has increased, he said, citing the Internet, erosion of privacy and "ridiculous laws".

"The politics of this country are sort of alarming to me," he said.

Any chance that the current goings-on in Washington will find their way into the show?

"I could never do anything that twisted," Carter said.