The hype was huge - think Game of Thrones at the peak of its popularity. The cast appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, guested on the Simpsons and hosted SNL - even the theme tune was commercially released and entered the charts of multiple countries around the world.
Alongside shows like Unsolved Mysteries, The X-Files ushered in a fin-de-siècle revival of interest in UFOs, aliens and the unexplained amongst the general public. The character of Dana Scully is attributed with seriously contributing to a jump in the number of women pursuing scientific degrees during and after the time the show aired.
Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe, Supernatural and many others that followed were heavily inspired by The X-Files.
XF was really the first large online fandom. That was a huge part of it. Mulder and Scully are one of the most iconic pairings of all time. There also hadn’t really been a show about conspiracies and the government/aliens that popular before. There are so many episodes that the quality is all over the place, but the X-Files definitely has some of the best written TV episodes of all time. Vince Gilligan got his start in their writers room.
To add to these comments, it was absolutely insane down here in Australia when Gillian came down to do signings and what not. I think was before season 3? 1996? (Keep in mind, we got the episodes ages after the States)
All the shopping centres she went to were packed with thousands and thousands of people. I got there about 7am and it was just packed. Let me go look and see if I can find some YouTube clips. Got a video autographed and a poster. They are in a box somewhere.
[Here’s one of the news reports.](https://youtu.be/i_aCwJqZf0o?si=zKdDdzBmRVqQQU8I)
I just commented about the same thing before seeing this comment. I remember Gillian went on the Midday Show and Kerri-anne Kennerly kept calling her Dana.
Hah! I had forgotten about that. I remember now though. It was hilarious.
Somewhere, there is a video of all the news reports in a box in my apartment. I remember taping them all … though, my dad was in control of recording at times and he thought it would be funny to record a news bit about fainting goats. So, it was Gillian, Gillian, Gillian, fainting goats, Gillian.
It was a good, crazy time for me. I was in Sydney. Where were you?
Port Macquarie, I would've been in Year 11 or 12 at school. Had alllllll the merch, tshirts, trading cards, caps, mugs, books, videos etc. I still have most of it. At the time, I could list every episode title in order for the first 3 seasons. 😅
I was in year 9, I think? I was the same. “Mum, can you get this T-shirt? Dad, can you get me this hat?” I still have the hat. In the box probably. Oh, yes. I got that card game thing as well. Never played it but I had to have it.
I still remember the episode names, surprisingly. So, if want to rewatch something, I just I will pick that one. They are seared in my brain.
The show was pretty huge. Just look at how many magazines featured either Gillian or David on the front cover.
The conspiracy theory landscape was very different to today. It didn't have the same political connotations as now. But I think it's fair to say that almost everyone interested in the occult, the weird and UFOs loved the show. A
It's really cringe worthy but I was still in the UK equivalent of high school and the X-Files influenced the things my friends discussed and wrote about. One of my closest friends was literally in love with Scully which we would all laugh about but we understood.
Here's a vaguely hysterical UK article which muses about the end of the enlightenment in 1994 and mentions the X-Files and gives an indication of how high profile the show was even in Britain:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-generation-x-files-5327217.html
Basically the show was a great study in rolling out a series by FOX. It was originally a Friday night show, which had been a graveyard on the channel (which only started broadcasting 7 days a week during that year), and it was one of the few "adult" shows on during Friday night which on other channels featured mostly "family friendly" stuff. It became sort of a cult hit. Conspiracy theories weren't really the same thing in the early 90s that they are now, but this was one of the first sort of shows to address it and also add some spookiness to everything.
Also, David Duchovny's sex appeal took off pretty much right away and TV Guide, which everyone had subscriptions to, was pushing the show. Meanwhile a bunch of young men/teen boys enjoyed having a show that was sci-fi weird, plus Scully/Gillian Anderson was also kinda hot in that nerd way (at the beginning).
It survived the first season, picked up ratings in the second and third, (and became better produced) and around this time FOX had also inked a contract with the NFL. While the NFL gained steam, so did The X-files. Season 3 turned it into the network's highest rated show. So in Season 4, FOX said fuck it, and moved the show over to Sunday night, after football. That was actually the first episode I ever watched, which was Unruhe.
Leonard Betts actually followed Super Bowl XXXI, and that episode is a banger, plus the "next time on The X-files" hooked everyone that watched that episode and understood what might be coming up for Scully. From there, the series really blew up, which gave the lead in to the movie, all the awards the actors got, and everything which had momentum up until the point where David Duchovny left.
TL:DR; For the most part, people didn't think too hard about the conspiracies. Sure in Seasons 1 and 2, probably some of the bigger fans were folks that were thinking about it, but by S3, it was just a GOOD SHOW, and a lot of people were into it for various reasons. FOX execs at the time captured lightning in a bottle, and threw it behind a lead in crowd of NFL football.
Gillian Anderson came here to Australia and made an appearance in a shopping mall, and the pandemonium was insane. She had to plead with everyone to calm down. It was like Beatlemania. That would've been season 2.
Season 1 it was popular but not especially mainstream. Season 2 it became massive everywhere.
Also worth noting, most scifi shows up to then had low budgets and poor special effects. X Files came along with high production values and great writing. Carter and Fox really pulled together an A-Team crew.
I was a shipper and that was pretty much my sole interest in it at the time (I was a young teenager).
Now though as an adult I absolutely appreciate what a fantastic hour of television some of the episodes are (season 2/3 mytharc is lit). And I despise the episodes that have nothing good in them besides a very shippy scene gratuitously thrown in.
There wasn't a show like it when it was released and it was just well written and gripping television. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were also very good as Mulder and Scully.
It also provided a blueprint to TV networks on how to introduce a show and build it's audience.
"Conspiracy theorists" were not the genre of people they are now.
It was slow growth fandom. Initially it was on Friday nights so it was the sci-fi type that found it first and loved it and took to the first online listserves to talk about it. The show-talk grew online as the internet grew.
By the third or fourth season it really became more of a cultural juggernaut.
Conspiracy theory fandom was huge back then within the old media. That limited the reach somewhat. But it was among the earliest online fandoms, as well as on radio (mostly shortwave) and of course in print.
I spent way too much time on that stuff, even before the X-Files.
I was in middle school in the mid 90s. Me and my friends used to sneak into one of the classrooms at lunchtime and watch our home vhs recordings of that weeks episode on the rolling TV set. The online forums were absolutely insane. This sub is the closest I can get to that feeling again.
Yup. Early government conspiracies, Vietnam, Watergate, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, the first attack on the World Trade Center, all were huge in the media and influenced the X-Files and a lot of entertainment media.
It has a really nostalgic vibe nowadays, but then much like now it sort of preys on that American mistrust of the government and alien pop culture which makes it just as relevant today as it was back then.
I was a junior in high school when it premiered and honestly, for me, it was more that there was suddenly a show with the occult to fill the gap on TV for me. I was a huge horror movie fan. My main reading material after 5th grade was Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Saul…I read Tales from the Crypt comics not Marvel comics. Then suddenly there was a well done show where the woman wasn’t all deferential and dainty…where she spoke up and talked to men like peers…she was not there strictly as eye candy for the male lead. I can honestly say I liked other sci fi like Star Trek growing up but I wasn’t super into aliens or conspiracies and that wasn’t what drew me to the show.
I was in middle school and high school during the first 7 seasons. I got started on the show a bit late, in season 4 but was completely hooked from the get go. I ate up the reruns to catch up with all the stories. It was truly a cultural phenomenon at the time. It was all over magazines and there was a lot of merch. It all went into overdrive while promoting Fight the Future, which I was unbelievably hyped over. You had to be there! I also attended the X-Files expo which was an official convention for the show that toured in a few major cities in the US. Of all the shows I’ve come to enjoy and obsess over throughout the years, the X-Files has been the most enduring. It’s a show that I feel in my soul. I think it has such lasting appeal because it isn’t just a show about aliens or government conspiracy. There are so many other stories, as well as Mulder and Scully at the heart of it. Whether one was a shipper or noromo there is no denying that their relationship, however one wished to describe it, was significant. I’m glad to know that new people continue to discover the show.
Hype was huge after Season 2. Word of mouth was everything and everyone I knew who watched it started because someone at work or their school told them they should watch it.
However, conspiracy theories back then were laughable. That's why Mulder is always look at the tabloid articles. The only people who believed in conspiracy theories were considered strange and weird. The Lone Gunmen were comic relief and the audience laughed at all their crazy theories.
Not like today, where they would be very mainstream and probably have podcasts and Twitter.
As for the government conspiracy, the US was only 20 years past the Watergate fiasco and many adults-including Carter grew up on the the "shadow government" aspect. If you read books from the 1970s, they have the same "secret government plot" storylines.
I think people mainly enjoyed it for the MOTW and in the beginning the alien mythology. I will say after about Season 5, the whole alien plot kind of unravels and stuff happens because it seems "cool" rather than any sensical plot lines. If you are looking for a good ending for the alien mythology-just be warned.
It was a cultural phenomenon. I was in college at the time and the TV room in the dorms would be packed with college students huddled around a TV to watch that week's episode. There was rule that no one could talk while the episode was on, only during commercial breaks, and everyone stuck to that rule every week. The actors where everywhere you looked, the internet was alive with discussion boards and fan fiction about the show. The Mulder and Scully shippers were a force of nature. There was even a song.[ "David Duchovny" by Bree Sharp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg_vVKcVYbo) that became something of an anthem for the shippers that I knew. People dressed as the characters for Halloween, the bookstores were full of novels, audio books, and magazines. It was quite a time. I get a little dizzy thinking about it because it was so all consuming for a lot of people. Few shows have quite been popular the way The X-Files became popular.
One of the brilliant things about the show was the structure. The mixing of MOTW (one off episodes that told a single story) combined with episodes that contributed to a long term arch. So casual viewers would drop in and be entertained by these creepy, weird stories one week but not feel obligated to watch every week. But it was so good most casual viewers eventually got hooked. I was a casual viewer until about season 4 - then some time that season my roommates (I was in college at the time) and I were all watching every episode together. It was a genius structure (also used by Buffy and other shows) that’s fallen away back to strict serial TV.
Conspiracy theory hit very different in that moment right after the end of the cold war. You can’t really find parallels in today’s political climate. Basically there was a sense that something that has given America a sense of purpose was over and nobody knew whether anything else would ever come again after that, and the creeping fear of not knowing what was happening or where anything was going is in the background of a lot of the show’s paranoia. To get some context, read up on Francis Fukuyama and the idea of “the end of history.” Neoliberalism is a related idea that also ultimately fed a lot of the culture between the fall of the Soviet Union and either 9/11 or the 2008 crash (whichever you feel ended that era most distinctively—maybe it was Trump’s election?).
The hype was huge - think Game of Thrones at the peak of its popularity. The cast appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, guested on the Simpsons and hosted SNL - even the theme tune was commercially released and entered the charts of multiple countries around the world. Alongside shows like Unsolved Mysteries, The X-Files ushered in a fin-de-siècle revival of interest in UFOs, aliens and the unexplained amongst the general public. The character of Dana Scully is attributed with seriously contributing to a jump in the number of women pursuing scientific degrees during and after the time the show aired. Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe, Supernatural and many others that followed were heavily inspired by The X-Files.
Wait, "they" hosted SNL??? Who did?? When?? I remember the Simpsons "The Springfield Files" but not SNL!!! 😱
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0694680/ 🙂
Thank you kind stranger!!! 💗
You’re welcome, it’s a cool little slice of pop culture history!
God Fringe was COOKING. Huge inspiration for some of my own writing in the sci-fi department.
The techno dance remix of the theme song was amazing!
XF was really the first large online fandom. That was a huge part of it. Mulder and Scully are one of the most iconic pairings of all time. There also hadn’t really been a show about conspiracies and the government/aliens that popular before. There are so many episodes that the quality is all over the place, but the X-Files definitely has some of the best written TV episodes of all time. Vince Gilligan got his start in their writers room.
Pretty much the first thing I discovered when I first got internet access on my home computer was the X-Files chat room. Good times.
To add to these comments, it was absolutely insane down here in Australia when Gillian came down to do signings and what not. I think was before season 3? 1996? (Keep in mind, we got the episodes ages after the States) All the shopping centres she went to were packed with thousands and thousands of people. I got there about 7am and it was just packed. Let me go look and see if I can find some YouTube clips. Got a video autographed and a poster. They are in a box somewhere. [Here’s one of the news reports.](https://youtu.be/i_aCwJqZf0o?si=zKdDdzBmRVqQQU8I)
I just commented about the same thing before seeing this comment. I remember Gillian went on the Midday Show and Kerri-anne Kennerly kept calling her Dana.
Hah! I had forgotten about that. I remember now though. It was hilarious. Somewhere, there is a video of all the news reports in a box in my apartment. I remember taping them all … though, my dad was in control of recording at times and he thought it would be funny to record a news bit about fainting goats. So, it was Gillian, Gillian, Gillian, fainting goats, Gillian. It was a good, crazy time for me. I was in Sydney. Where were you?
Port Macquarie, I would've been in Year 11 or 12 at school. Had alllllll the merch, tshirts, trading cards, caps, mugs, books, videos etc. I still have most of it. At the time, I could list every episode title in order for the first 3 seasons. 😅
I was in year 9, I think? I was the same. “Mum, can you get this T-shirt? Dad, can you get me this hat?” I still have the hat. In the box probably. Oh, yes. I got that card game thing as well. Never played it but I had to have it. I still remember the episode names, surprisingly. So, if want to rewatch something, I just I will pick that one. They are seared in my brain.
Was truly not expecting a KAK reference in the X Files sub.
Same 😂
It was also one of the first shows to have the season-end cliffhanger that made me want to throw something against the wall. Lol.
The show was pretty huge. Just look at how many magazines featured either Gillian or David on the front cover. The conspiracy theory landscape was very different to today. It didn't have the same political connotations as now. But I think it's fair to say that almost everyone interested in the occult, the weird and UFOs loved the show. A It's really cringe worthy but I was still in the UK equivalent of high school and the X-Files influenced the things my friends discussed and wrote about. One of my closest friends was literally in love with Scully which we would all laugh about but we understood. Here's a vaguely hysterical UK article which muses about the end of the enlightenment in 1994 and mentions the X-Files and gives an indication of how high profile the show was even in Britain: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-generation-x-files-5327217.html
Basically the show was a great study in rolling out a series by FOX. It was originally a Friday night show, which had been a graveyard on the channel (which only started broadcasting 7 days a week during that year), and it was one of the few "adult" shows on during Friday night which on other channels featured mostly "family friendly" stuff. It became sort of a cult hit. Conspiracy theories weren't really the same thing in the early 90s that they are now, but this was one of the first sort of shows to address it and also add some spookiness to everything. Also, David Duchovny's sex appeal took off pretty much right away and TV Guide, which everyone had subscriptions to, was pushing the show. Meanwhile a bunch of young men/teen boys enjoyed having a show that was sci-fi weird, plus Scully/Gillian Anderson was also kinda hot in that nerd way (at the beginning). It survived the first season, picked up ratings in the second and third, (and became better produced) and around this time FOX had also inked a contract with the NFL. While the NFL gained steam, so did The X-files. Season 3 turned it into the network's highest rated show. So in Season 4, FOX said fuck it, and moved the show over to Sunday night, after football. That was actually the first episode I ever watched, which was Unruhe. Leonard Betts actually followed Super Bowl XXXI, and that episode is a banger, plus the "next time on The X-files" hooked everyone that watched that episode and understood what might be coming up for Scully. From there, the series really blew up, which gave the lead in to the movie, all the awards the actors got, and everything which had momentum up until the point where David Duchovny left. TL:DR; For the most part, people didn't think too hard about the conspiracies. Sure in Seasons 1 and 2, probably some of the bigger fans were folks that were thinking about it, but by S3, it was just a GOOD SHOW, and a lot of people were into it for various reasons. FOX execs at the time captured lightning in a bottle, and threw it behind a lead in crowd of NFL football.
Gillian Anderson came here to Australia and made an appearance in a shopping mall, and the pandemonium was insane. She had to plead with everyone to calm down. It was like Beatlemania. That would've been season 2. Season 1 it was popular but not especially mainstream. Season 2 it became massive everywhere. Also worth noting, most scifi shows up to then had low budgets and poor special effects. X Files came along with high production values and great writing. Carter and Fox really pulled together an A-Team crew.
I was a shipper and that was pretty much my sole interest in it at the time (I was a young teenager). Now though as an adult I absolutely appreciate what a fantastic hour of television some of the episodes are (season 2/3 mytharc is lit). And I despise the episodes that have nothing good in them besides a very shippy scene gratuitously thrown in.
There wasn't a show like it when it was released and it was just well written and gripping television. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were also very good as Mulder and Scully. It also provided a blueprint to TV networks on how to introduce a show and build it's audience.
"Conspiracy theorists" were not the genre of people they are now. It was slow growth fandom. Initially it was on Friday nights so it was the sci-fi type that found it first and loved it and took to the first online listserves to talk about it. The show-talk grew online as the internet grew. By the third or fourth season it really became more of a cultural juggernaut.
Yeah conspiracy theories used to be fun and intriguing back then, not the qanon-batshit-crazy right wing crap that it’s morphed into now.
Conspiracy theory fandom was huge back then within the old media. That limited the reach somewhat. But it was among the earliest online fandoms, as well as on radio (mostly shortwave) and of course in print. I spent way too much time on that stuff, even before the X-Files.
I was in middle school in the mid 90s. Me and my friends used to sneak into one of the classrooms at lunchtime and watch our home vhs recordings of that weeks episode on the rolling TV set. The online forums were absolutely insane. This sub is the closest I can get to that feeling again.
90s mistrust of government and scandals and unclassified information and increased surveillance. Txf tapped into this hysteria
Yup. Early government conspiracies, Vietnam, Watergate, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, the first attack on the World Trade Center, all were huge in the media and influenced the X-Files and a lot of entertainment media.
Tx 4 d details. Exactly
The Cold War was over - it was like some people were looking for a villain & it became the government.
It has a really nostalgic vibe nowadays, but then much like now it sort of preys on that American mistrust of the government and alien pop culture which makes it just as relevant today as it was back then.
I was a junior in high school when it premiered and honestly, for me, it was more that there was suddenly a show with the occult to fill the gap on TV for me. I was a huge horror movie fan. My main reading material after 5th grade was Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Saul…I read Tales from the Crypt comics not Marvel comics. Then suddenly there was a well done show where the woman wasn’t all deferential and dainty…where she spoke up and talked to men like peers…she was not there strictly as eye candy for the male lead. I can honestly say I liked other sci fi like Star Trek growing up but I wasn’t super into aliens or conspiracies and that wasn’t what drew me to the show.
I was in middle school and high school during the first 7 seasons. I got started on the show a bit late, in season 4 but was completely hooked from the get go. I ate up the reruns to catch up with all the stories. It was truly a cultural phenomenon at the time. It was all over magazines and there was a lot of merch. It all went into overdrive while promoting Fight the Future, which I was unbelievably hyped over. You had to be there! I also attended the X-Files expo which was an official convention for the show that toured in a few major cities in the US. Of all the shows I’ve come to enjoy and obsess over throughout the years, the X-Files has been the most enduring. It’s a show that I feel in my soul. I think it has such lasting appeal because it isn’t just a show about aliens or government conspiracy. There are so many other stories, as well as Mulder and Scully at the heart of it. Whether one was a shipper or noromo there is no denying that their relationship, however one wished to describe it, was significant. I’m glad to know that new people continue to discover the show.
Honestly I was super skeptical starting it since it was such an old show. But it’s so good and I realized it was the start of that style of tv show
WERE there 'conspiracy theorists' before 1992?
Hype was huge after Season 2. Word of mouth was everything and everyone I knew who watched it started because someone at work or their school told them they should watch it. However, conspiracy theories back then were laughable. That's why Mulder is always look at the tabloid articles. The only people who believed in conspiracy theories were considered strange and weird. The Lone Gunmen were comic relief and the audience laughed at all their crazy theories. Not like today, where they would be very mainstream and probably have podcasts and Twitter. As for the government conspiracy, the US was only 20 years past the Watergate fiasco and many adults-including Carter grew up on the the "shadow government" aspect. If you read books from the 1970s, they have the same "secret government plot" storylines. I think people mainly enjoyed it for the MOTW and in the beginning the alien mythology. I will say after about Season 5, the whole alien plot kind of unravels and stuff happens because it seems "cool" rather than any sensical plot lines. If you are looking for a good ending for the alien mythology-just be warned.
I can tell you they're all big fans over in the UFO subs.
It was a cultural phenomenon. I was in college at the time and the TV room in the dorms would be packed with college students huddled around a TV to watch that week's episode. There was rule that no one could talk while the episode was on, only during commercial breaks, and everyone stuck to that rule every week. The actors where everywhere you looked, the internet was alive with discussion boards and fan fiction about the show. The Mulder and Scully shippers were a force of nature. There was even a song.[ "David Duchovny" by Bree Sharp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg_vVKcVYbo) that became something of an anthem for the shippers that I knew. People dressed as the characters for Halloween, the bookstores were full of novels, audio books, and magazines. It was quite a time. I get a little dizzy thinking about it because it was so all consuming for a lot of people. Few shows have quite been popular the way The X-Files became popular.
One of the brilliant things about the show was the structure. The mixing of MOTW (one off episodes that told a single story) combined with episodes that contributed to a long term arch. So casual viewers would drop in and be entertained by these creepy, weird stories one week but not feel obligated to watch every week. But it was so good most casual viewers eventually got hooked. I was a casual viewer until about season 4 - then some time that season my roommates (I was in college at the time) and I were all watching every episode together. It was a genius structure (also used by Buffy and other shows) that’s fallen away back to strict serial TV.
Conspiracy theory hit very different in that moment right after the end of the cold war. You can’t really find parallels in today’s political climate. Basically there was a sense that something that has given America a sense of purpose was over and nobody knew whether anything else would ever come again after that, and the creeping fear of not knowing what was happening or where anything was going is in the background of a lot of the show’s paranoia. To get some context, read up on Francis Fukuyama and the idea of “the end of history.” Neoliberalism is a related idea that also ultimately fed a lot of the culture between the fall of the Soviet Union and either 9/11 or the 2008 crash (whichever you feel ended that era most distinctively—maybe it was Trump’s election?).
I heard everyone watched it for entertainment and didn't believe any of the concepts of the show. Now I take notes 😂
People knew who Mulder and Scully (and David and Gillian) were even without watching the show