• Armand1@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Well, I’d summarise the X-Files as (no spoilers):

    • Mulder has his sister (purportedly) kidnapped by aliens as a child.
    • As a result, Mulder is an occult nut who wants to spend all his time investigating supernatural stuff.
    • For some reason the FBI lets him spend all his time doing that. (Kind of nepotism maybe?)
    • They send Scully to go watch him, but she does a terrible job of that.
    • Every episode there’s a different monster or paranormal thing. Mulder says something like “It’s Bigfoot”, Scully says “That’s silly, Bigfoot isn’t real”, then they see it is Bigfoot but Scully tries to rationalise it away.
    • At some point Mulder gets tangled up in government conspiracies.
    • He makes it his side job to try and crack those conspiracies, but continues his monster-of-the-week formula of normal paranormal investigations for the most part.
    • As time goes on, there’s more and more conspiracy unwinding stuff, but they never fire him or kill him because one of the secret cabal members has a soft spot for him.

    More stuff happens in the later seasons, but I’ll leave it out for spoilers.

    TLDR; Mulder is not anti-government / FBI, he’s anti-secrecy and anti-conspiracy. He’s an occult nut who just wants to engage in his hobbies on the government dime.

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      i stopped watching when scully got pregnant and it was implied it was an alien baby. that was too far. they should have made it bigfoot’s baby

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      You forgot the part where Mulder losses his gun. It’s a plot point in like half the episodes.

    • wuffah@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      It’s been awhile since over watched the series, but I’m pretty sure Mulder and the X-files are allowed to exist because it provides a conspiracy theory sink that gives the establishment an excuse to wave away and discredit inquiry.

    • NABDad@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      For some reason the FBI lets him spend all his time doing that. (Kind of nepotism maybe?)

      Nepotism definitely I thought. Wasn’t it established eventually that he was really the cigarette smoking man’s son? Or am I remembering a plot line that turned out to be another false lead?

      I thought that’s who was protecting Him. Hindering his work certainly, and telling his co-conspirators that he was controlling him, but also manipulating them to keep him safe.

      • village604@adultswim.fan
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        2 hours ago

        That would be more applicable to the last point that someone in the cabal is protecting him. It doesn’t really speak to why the position exists in the first place.

        If smoking man’s goal was to protect Mulder, creating a department that directly puts Mulder in danger would be a bad way to go about it. There are dozens of other divisions in the FBI that would keep him busy and safe.

        spoiler

        Although, iirc, he wanted the conspiracy to be uncovered.

        I think it was mentioned that the department existed so the government could say they were investigating stuff while sweeping it under the rug.

      • homes@piefed.world
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        5 hours ago

        And his direct supervisor seems like the world‘s biggest hard ass, but is really just the world‘s biggest pushover.

      • matelt@feddit.uk
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        6 hours ago

        Yeah I’ve done that and I highly recommend it, purely for the time travelling experience - I mean in the first season there were hardly any computers around and certainly no mobile phones, absolute mad lads! It also made me realise how well-researched the stories were, like there’s an episode about an evil AI and they use jargon we use on a daily basis today. Great stuff all around.

    • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      It was a cover for the very real cover ups that were happening where they convinced people aliens were real rather than admit to classified information leakage.

      Google Paul Bennewitz for more info.