Things Are Getting Strange

Looking past the less than subtle "borrowing" of John Carpenter's back-catalogue, we end up zeroing in on the actual theme of Scotch Mist! Doesn't have much to do with xenophobia, fog, mist but is very prevalent in the episode! Inevitably we also talk a lot about Stephen King... Support the show

We reach the infamous episode! The one with Garth Marenghi's attitude to subtext... Also his questions no one else asks... Despite the very obvious Planet of the Apes styling, we talk more about Avatar, Star Wars and Rawhead Rex and have fun trying to get back to the point as usual. Support the show

Content warning: mentions of sexual assault We're not wild about this episode of Darkplace, but as discussed it contains some of the more quotable lines. Also the episode has the absolutely incomprehensible production mistake of Thornton Reed actually acting in the episode! Otherwise, as is our way we meander off into other avenues of the 80s and in particular 80s horror... Support the show

Episode 2 of Darkplace has perhaps one of the more obvious inspirations from a famed horror author's work and perhaps quailing from the maddening reality of that we talk about why where horror is set seems to dictate what kind of horror you wind up with. More fake lost media and horror projects that intend to hide their actual horror nature and how thin the border between horror and comedy is; all derived from Mr. Marenghi's work. Support the show

In a surprising move, we change our focus to something quite different: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace! A comedy, sort of horror series from the early 2000s. We get into how it all works and talk about how it belongs to the weird sub-genre of fake lost media. Also the bewildering cloud of comedy projects the various cast are involved with. Support the show

A wrap up now we're done with The X-Files for now. A whole franchise overview, out top comedy, top serious, worst episodes and best villains! Next time: Something Quite Different. Support the show

Or at least, there are a surprising number of British people and accents in this series continuation! We discuss the implications and... probable influences on the direction of travel the book is taking. We're quite taken with the writing and how Scully is depicted. (and realised after the fact - while we note that the timeline feels off in this book and comment that it has to occur within about 4 months of My Struggle 4 as per human biology, there are some references that are suspect... What...

Somehow, Nick forgot the gore-fest of Nothing Lasts Forever existed at all, but is now painfully aware of the strange choice of penultimate episode. Not least that the original intent was much more meaningful, touching and appropriate at this late stage. And not involve nailing back-street doctors to the floor with fence posts for reasons the episode never bothers to even try to justify. And My Struggle 4 suffers greatly thanks to My Struggle 2. We struggle to talk about the finale and how mu...

It's man vs machine in Rm9sbG93ZXJz, though the robot wait-staff are also determined to make Scully pay. One way or another. We discuss the motive of the antagonist and how Scully could be plausibly tracked through her personal massager... Familiar feels very old-school The X-Files but we get hung up on plot weirdness and suspect character design. Also why Mulder and Scully got involved in the first place. Support the show

We get really hung up on the implications of Jackson Van De Kampf's life in Ghouli and how people just ignore the less than great series of events that would have lead to this episode's events. Not really helpful that Jackson clearly used to have a quite different and significant name. We get heavily into how what was clearly a monster of the week episode morphed into something else... Kitten feels a bit Wetwire, a bit Blood and a lot another Skinner episode about his time in Vietnam. Despite...

*if you want to end the series in the best possible way... Plus One is a fun episode, possibly a little overshadowed by the sterling guest-star turn and the efforts of the make-up department. Also suspect the entire point of the episode was less doppleganger hangman game and more getting Mulder and Scully into bed together... The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat is not actually the final episode of the series, but like Sunshine Days, the perfect note to go out on. An episode that at last uncovers t...

We reach Season 11 and find that the chosen way to resolve the massive, massive cliffhanger season 10 left on is.... lacking. My Struggle III spends a lot of time undoing some of Season 10 but not all of it and as a result leaves some weird debris behind. We talk retcons and wave goodbye to the nominal replacement Mulder and Scully... This is one of Kim's most hated episodes, and its hard to ignore that being written and directed, the thoroughly nihilistic episode is being inflicted on Langel...

Don't promise us the Lone Gunmen being back and then do... that. Babylon was quite notorious on first broadcast and the intervening years have done little to aid the fact it feels the wrong fit for The X-Files in general and specific for Mulder and Scully. We also get into what the whole point of Einstein and Miller probably was... My Struggle II uses the phrase "alien DNA" way too many times (we counted) and made Kim quite angry with its rather flippant - if typical - attitude to how medicin...

We struggle to say much about Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, broadly because the episode is an absolute delight and revisiting it has not diminished how starkly it contrasts with the rest of season 10. It is still a fantastic episode. Home, Again on the other hand is part fantastically acted Scully drama, part serious Arcadia remake and part mystifying Candyman-a-like. One of these things feels distinctly out of place and we struggle to make sense of why the episode is formed like t...

Welcome to season 10! And plots we could swear we saw in Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'. And Gethesmane... Still! The X-Files is back. Skinner is back! Cancer man... is somehow back! And now we're trying to retcon seemingly 9 seasons of plot out of the backstory. We discuss how strange the apparent project to discredit Mulder is and how odd some of the choices with the revival are. Founder's Mutation is at least a better episode. Though all these mentions of William are concerning. They're n...

We reach the second The X-Files film and are beset by questions. Many of them "Why this?" and "Really?" While the acting is fine, we are not so taken with the plot or the any of the new characters. We also learned a fair amount from the synopsis we are not sure we even got hinted at in the film itself... Somehow we can even pick fault with the end credits... Support the show

So here we are. What once was the end of The X-Files is a bit too much like how Seinfeld ended for its own good... We end up talking about Franz Kafka for hopefully good reasons as well as continuing to observe that Mulder should never be allowed in any kind of court-room. We also get to our best and worst episodes of the season. Support the show

Release wraps Doggett's running backstory up perhaps a little too fast and a little too without warning (and that's not getting into Reyes' questionable decision re: seeing people taking bribes). But. There is an answer - its bleak and awful and does not involve whatever happened to Samantha. We are however obliged to point out that supernatural force continues to drag its feet in these kinds of episodes... We disagree on just how supernatural the episode is and discuss the implausibility of ...

A strange description of Jimmy Bond, but accurate nonetheless. After our hiatus, Nick is trying to be more positive about The X-Files. Each episode must have some positive points. Unfortunately, he is trying this on Jump the Shark and William of all things. Jump the Shark does have a lot of sharks and Morris Fletcher. We get into why concluding a series in a different series feels like a terrible plan and how most of the regular X-Files lot seem to be largely absent. Still a shame to say good...

At least, we're pretty sure guest star Burt Reynolds is God in Improbable at any rate. A rather stunning surprise from Chris Carter, this episode is tremendous fun, though unable to escape more questions about why Reyes isn't fired for this sequence of events. We talk about our own life-path numbers and how relevant they are; also how Mulder crazy contrasts with Reyes crazy... Scary Monsters sees the welcome return of Leyla Harrison to the series in a amusing if still grisly episode that can'...