X-Files mythology, TenThirteen Interviews Database, and more

Author Archive

19th birthday + Hello Fediverse!

EatTheCorn.com is officially 19 years old as of today! It is, with a difference, the world’s oldest X-Files website that is still actively maintained. (English-speaking website I should specify, as there are still some non-English old-timers too.)

This website is now also federated via the ActivityPub protocol, so you can follow and interact with me in the Fediverse (e.g., Mastodon) at: @orodromeus@www.eatthecorn.com. This appears to be the best option going forward, considering the all-encompassing enshittification. I will also be testing bridges to other things (like BlueSky bridge). This will take some experimenting. Over the past few years I had taken the habit of posting updates in Facebook and updating the website itself only occasionally; this will change from now on, expect more frequent website updates and links to those updates in other social media.

Finally, some fun! With this “Muldle” app, you can test your X-Files knowledge! Only the “High Score” tab works for me: try to identify which episode screenshots come from, identify ten in a row to get one point, and compete with fans worldwide. I am currently at number 75, which is no small feat.

Muldle.app website screen capture. Rules for the High Score game: name 10 episodes from 10 screenshots to win a point.

Duchovny/Anderson podcast

Last week the star-struck fandom discussed to death Gillian Anderson appearing in David Duchovny’s podcast. Although we hardly learned anything new on #TheXFiles themselves, it was a perhaps unprecedented insight into the actors’ personalities, a bit like listening in on an old couple’s therapy session.

As I was listening to their conversation, the following exchange came to me, from “Small Potatoes”:

Mulder: “We never really, uh, *talk* much, do we?”

Scully: “What do you mean like, really talk? No. No, we don’t.”

This could really be the actors talking. For all their on-screen chemistry and their off-screen banter in public appearances, they don’t seem to really know each other much, or be much on the same wavelength. They have the sort of familiarity you have with a childhood friend but with whom you have grown apart over the years and you now only see once every few years, and your being comfortable with each other just comes from the fact of having spent so much time in the presence of the other in the past.

Their conversation plays exactly how they describe themselves to be: DD deals with his issues by talking about them and holds remorse about things in the past, while GA deals with her issues by not talking about them and filling her life with new work and experiences, living in the moment. As such, DD mentions, very candidly, several experiences of shame and regret in his life, including how he acted like a presumptuous movie star on the set of the show — while GA doesn’t remember much in terms of specifics or is more reserved and would rather talk about issues that are close to her heart today.

That’s what I got from it. I enjoyed it, but I’m not much of a person who follows actors closely.

I got zero hint of them trying to spur up excitement for a continuation of the series, and that’s fine by me.

Other than that, some TXF-related stuff:

  • As is well established, DD & GA were not particularly getting well along on set, and sometimes spent weeks without talking to each other.
  • This got to the point where Carter advised them to go to couple therapy but as their characters (in season 1!).
  • Being in their 20s-30s and have the show become such a success while at the same time dealing with their personal lives (pregnancy, divorce) was huge, huge stress.
  • DD wanted Mulder to be more action-hero-like, as Mulder was not traditionally masculine (losing his gun or fist fights).
  • DD remembers strong shame in being rejected by Vancouverites when he forced the move to Los Angeles.
  • As DD left the show in season 7, GA left the show in season 11 — and DD now felt that he should have apologized for leaving originally, because her leaving now hurt him.
  • GA approached the revival as a one-time special event, not a return for an on-going series.
  • GA specifically mentions the ending of season 11 as problematic for her, “particularly for Scully”: “it felt like Scully’s trajectory was no longer one of strength and agency it felt like it was beholden to an old idea of of what a woman is, and that’s [William/pregnancy] all she could talk about”; DD didn’t react to that ending in the same way.

Podcast and transcript here:
https://lemonadamedia.com/podcast/catching-up-with-gillian-anderson/

RIP Tony Todd

RIP Tony Todd, an excellent actor that made memorable anything he was in, known in #TheXFiles as Augustus “Preacher” Cole in “Sleepless”. But surely you have seen him in loads of other things: Candyman, Platoon, Final Destination, Babylon 5, Star Trek TNG (Worf’s brother), Star Trek DS9 (The Visitor!)…

https://www.darkhorizons.com/candyman-star-tony-todd-has-died

Election cycle

Millennium in HD/upscale

It’s Halloween! Another #Millennium-related update, this time on the series’ *other* #Halloween-themed episode: “The Curse of Frank Black”. Millennium is available only on DVD, and it’s getting difficult to find them for new fans (if new fans have a DVD player to begin with). Now, a fan is upscaling it into HD. Is this legal? Well, considering how difficult it is to find MM legally these days…let’s say this is a one-off. Disney/Fox should rescue this show from oblivion.

In the link below you will find a link to download “Curse” in HD — it’s just A Click To Save the file… Warning: it’s a 2.5 Gb file! Here are some HD/SD comparisons. It’s not the best upscale quality work but it is still an improvement. The photography of that show was sumptuous and the DVDs rendered that quite well already.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DBjXaKDvYvR

Interview: Michael R. Perry

It’s #Halloween! Here’s an all-new #millenniumgroupsessionsredux interview with Michael R Perry, writer of the weirdest Halloween-themed episode that Ten Thirteen produced, “…Thirteen Years Later”, in #Millennium. Perry joined MM during season 2, his first episode was “The Mikado”, followed by four episodes in season 3. Some highlights:

  • Before working on MM, he saw Carter in the Fox lot and congratulated him for making the MM pilot, he was impressed.
  • Unmade “Dirty Snowball” episode: during s2, Morgan & Wong had an idea to focus on a suicide cult like Heaven’s Gate, have Frank Black investigate it, have Roedecker be in love with a girl in the cult. The episode got approved, he did the outline and wrote the script, then they decided to do “Owls” & “Roosters” instead. As a result, he did “The Mikado” to write a banger quality script that he could show as proof even if it got cancelled.
  • At the end of s2 everybody thought the show would be cancelled, everybody had moved on, were surprised it was renewed.
  • The writers room was just a construction trailer in the Fox lot.
  • They had an office assistant that would answer the phone in the voice of Frank Black.
  • Nothing but praise for Chris Carter (the importance of forcing writers to produce their episodes, he would go to Vancouver for casting, locations, tech scout), for director Tom Wright (meticulously prepared with a shot list with drawings in the script, thinking of lenses, involving all production departments in preparations), for Mark Snow’s music.
  • On “Thirteen Years Later”: it came to him just by the rotation of scripts among writers. A Fox executive decided on doing a Kiss-themed night and put Kiss references during many shows. Hilarious stories of Kiss behaving like rock star divas. If he were to change one thing: if the whole episode were the ravings of a lunatic, they had the opportunity to kill the main characters. Lance initially was not into doing the episode, eventually he came around when he saw it was going to be a break between serious episodes. Standards and Practices were worried that they were violating all the norms!
  • MM cancellation: happened despite good Lance/Klea chemistry, they probably learned about it after the sweeps (March/April).
  • During the recent writers strike he saw Glen Morgan (who probably still hasn’t watched s3!) and Chip Johannessen.

Millennium after the Millennium