The Cutprice Guignol

When watching the vastly improved second season of The X-Files revival, it is clear to see the one thing holding it back: Chris Carter. I’ve been criticising the showrunner of one of my favourite works of fiction ever for a long time now; although this is the blog in which Louise continually smashed Steven Moffat when he was running Doctor Who into oblivion, I’m coming for that dunking-on-showrunners crown. Looking at these two revival seasons of the show, not to mention the last proper series and the lousy movie in between – all of the crap stuff was written solely by Carter. The My Struggle episodes are a special kind of awful that only Carter could create, and the same can be said for his one Monster of the Week episode this season, and my last worst-of for this series: Plus One.

From a strictly monster-of-the-week perspective, season eleven of The X-Files is miraculous.

I’m not sure how successful I’ve been at conveying just how much I love The X-Files.

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The ninth season of The X-Files is not just the show’s worst season, by a country mile – it is also one of the worst seasons of television I’ve ever watched. And I’ve watched some stinkers.

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To paraphrase Jane Austen (this is off to a good start), it is a truth universally known that, when genre shows create stories based around technology, these episodes will start to look dated immediately.

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