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Television Media

X-Files Series Spinoff? 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldn't-that-be-interesting dept.
starvo writes "Seems like Chris Carter is weighing the possibilities of an X-Files series spinoff featuring The Lone Gunmen." Normally I'm not a huge fan of spinoffs, but there's enough going on with these guys that it could be a fun show. I doubt it will have the staying power of the original though... unless Gillian Anderson does regular cameos. Yum.
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X-Files Series Spinoff? More

X-Files Series Spinoff?

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  • I'd watch them in their own series. They are, after all, the best characters. The suit, the hippie, the creepy old guy. Ah, Byers, Langley, and Frohike: hang in there. We're pulling for you.


    ---
  • "w1ll h4x0r j00!!"

    I bet they will.

    The episodes with them were always some of the best. Now, what would the focus be of their show? If they're going to hack, is it going to be realistic (heh yeah right), or is it going to be classic X-Files type stories? I doubt they'll be chasing freaks and ghosts, or aliens, but you never know...

    Maybe their Alien Episode involves one of their 'puters crunching an important signal block from Seti@Home?
  • Sure, it sounds like a good idea, but how would a Lone Gunmen drinking game work? Take one drink every time someone admits someone else's kung fu is the best? I don't know...
  • These four characters are pretty cool. There are many possibilities with a spin off series, and it doesn't have to be alien chasing all the time, either. I'd rather not see "The X-Files Part II" but something with a bit more originality.

    "You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

  • I could totally see getting into this. Imagine: T-shirts that say "My kung fu's the best" and "I don't take checks drawn from the Bank of Middle Earth". There's a huge geek potential for this show. Perhaps every week could end with a URL for a new downloadable StarCraft map or something. Producers could make this the Star Trek of our generation if they had the ideas to do it.

    Maybe not. Maybe I just want a "My kung fu's the best" shirt.


    ---
  • A show about those 3 would make an excellent place for a Slashdot.org-TV-breakout.

    Everyone ready for "The X-Dot"?

    Seriously, Slashdot would fit in nicely with those 3. There is something about them that says "Linux users", that makes me REALLY feel like a geek. They could fit it in on a screen in background at least. Whatever.
  • There are only three Lone Gunmen, but yes it would be cool!
  • I find them to be the best characters on the show... I mean, certainly they lack the sex appeal that scully has, but I think those guys just have way more character than mulder and scully...

    I think there is probably enough of a following of those guys that such a show would have some degree of success, tho prolly not nearly as much as the parent show... but I mean, come on, I've got a lone gunmen t-shirt, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who envies their life style, and hey, marketing people have had success before by marketing their stuff toward punks like me...

    heh... tho not very often... =)

  • Great Place for Linux (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday February 07, 2000 @09:42PM (#1296535) Homepage Journal
    A lot of these TV shows would make a great place for Linux. Have Gillion Anderson carry around an IBM thinkpad (With a working mwave modem, for that X files twist) with Linux, X, Gnome/E and her own X files themes. It'd give the computer that unique flavor that the TV shows are always looking for without completely pissing off the technical viewership (Except maybe the bit about the working mwave modem.)

    Wonder how much it would cost IBM or RedHat to buy that spot on a couple of these shows...

  • You're correct, there are only three of them. I was hoping nobody would catch my mistake. X_X

    "You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

  • I just dont get it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why do all of you think the X-Files is so great? I'm not trying to be a troll, I just have hell trying to get myself to sit through an entire episode of it... it's boring, the plots are convoluted and make no sense. The storylines are written as if generated on a script: Agents get sent to check out something weird, Mulder goes off on a tangent and Scully tries to be logical, and then the rest of it is eye candy and lame attempts at mind fucking with the occasional weird attempt at humor. The theme song is decent, but that's all i like about the show. I don't get it, can someone please explain why they can actually tolerate watching it? I just hope theres no spinoff just so I dont have to put up with more X-files related crap. And by the way, Gillian Anderson has no sex appeal at all... unless you like pale, boring, stuffy, frigid, pretensious women like that...

  • Dean Haglund (Score:4)

    by toastyman ( 23954 ) <toasty@dragondata.com> on Monday February 07, 2000 @09:54PM (#1296539) Homepage
    Not completely related, but... I had the privilage of meeting Dean Haglund, one of the Lone Gunmen a few weeks ago, at a Fox party. (see obliglatory photo here [kevinday.com]). He mentioned to me that he had a website up where he talked about upcoming projects.... www.deanx.com [deanx.com] doesn't mention anything about this, but I suppose he's not saying it's not true. :)

    His e-mail appears to be broken right now, perhaps when it's fixed we can see if he has any comments...
  • who looked _exactly_ like the red haided lone gunman.

    It was pretty creepy - he worked in defence research, too, and had a number of PhDs in really weird, unrelated stuff - hypersonic aerodynamics, radar.

    I don't really knwo why I'm shareing this, though....

  • Lone Gunmen Spinoff (Score:3)

    by Dark Rom ( 87282 ) on Monday February 07, 2000 @10:13PM (#1296541)
    The Sci Fi Wire, has an article about the fact that that FOX has given the green light for production of this spinoff, to quote the article "The show is envisioned as a light drama with humor and conspiracy themes. Carter reportedly plans to add a new character: a woman after whom the Gunmen lust." so just a tidbit follow the below to the full story.

    http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?200 0-02/04/11.00.tv
  • No offense, but how are a few 30 second spots/cameos going to benefit Linux and the Linux community in any way?

    It's not going to convince home viewers to rush out and install Linux on their home PC's, unless you expect them to hawk the product on the show: "Gee, Mulder, have you ever noticed that Red Hat Linux, which I am running on my laptop, performs much better than any Microsoft Windows platform. Note the superior uptime, the stability, and increased amount of free memory..." It's not going to convince software companies to support Linux... "OOH Linux on the X-Files, must port every program immedietally." It's not going to encourage investors. It's not going to get more quality programmers involved in the open source community.

    And to be honest, do you think Red Hat, VA, or the like, is going to pump money into Fox just so a small subset of techie fans will find it more realistic? I think it's already clear that Hollywood doesn't really care if they manage to please small subsets of viewers by making some parts of TV shows or movies seem more realistic?

    The question I am asking is, quite simply, why? Sure, maybe giving Gillian a Linux box will be cute and appealing to the geek demographic that watches the show, but the mainstream public will hardly care less. Besides, we don't need any more product plugging on our TV shows, even if it is to make things more realistic or to help a "good cause?" The waves of commercials are enough as it is... maybe RH and the like should purchase commercial time instead. Sorry to seem critical, but I just don't see what kind of point you're trying to make here.

  • curious... (Score:3)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@@@gmail...com> on Monday February 07, 2000 @10:29PM (#1296543) Homepage
    It's interesting how Fox, being Fox, feels the need to put in a "competing theorist in the form of a beautiful young woman". While I have absolutely nothing against beautiful women, I wish they'd put as much thought into creating a believable character as they do on their wardrobe. It seems that every science or science fiction-oriented show seems to have that beautiful, 23-year old nuclear physicist who doesn't act or sound like a scientist, who is put in just so she can be seduced by the male protagonist, the tough, working-class, cerebrally -challenged all-American guy.
  • I'd watch them in their own series. They are, after all, the best characters. The suit, the hippie, the creepy old guy. Ah, Byers, Langley, and Frohike: hang in there. We're pulling for you.

    I agree. In fact, I think that the trio were the most underexplored characters on the show, considering the potential they would have. They are without a doubt the most colorful characters on the show, and, IMHO, the most entertaining. I'm a little put off that they aren't seen more than they are, but the prospect of a show about them would be totally awesome, if done right.

    However, I think the writers would deffinately need to beef up in a couple of categories:

    • deffinately need to get better acquianted with technical jargon
    • Seeing as they have done such feats of cracking such as breaking into the FBI dbase (I know, sounds cliche... but it was important for the story) they really should be seen using some form of *nix. I mean, come on--no serious cracker would operate on a Wintel box. They strike me as Linux guys, but anything other than Windows will do.
    • Veer away from paranormal/extraterrestrial storylines, and more into the techical/conspiracy genre. Duh. Kill Switch comes to mind as a good example, excepting, of course, the horribly bad portrayals of "hacking."

    An interesting note: Anderson's contract says she is obligated to stay on for one more season. Would this qualify? I seriously doubt Duchovny could be coaxed into another year, and the show would suck horribly without him.

  • I had the privilege of working with Dean Haglund in Vancouver in Theatresports in the 80s. He has a clever wit, and a sharp nose (oops) for comedy. I would entirely endorse a spin-off of him and the other lone gungeeks.


  • His site does mention it, but I guess it could be a recent update. He basically says that he heard about it, along with the other two, at an announcement without any prior knowledge about the deal. But there's no denial or confirmation. Read about it here [deanx.com]

  • The show used to be a lot better, in the first and second seasons, or at least it seems that way to me. That was back before the whole conspiracy storyline began to dominate, when the characters would investigate events that, in the end, weren't explained satisfactorily. The atmosphere was better, I think, because so much was hidden from viewer; an alien staring straight at the camera isn't nearly as frightening as a shadowy figure slipping by the darkness...

  • Related news item (Score:3)

    by harmonica ( 29841 ) on Monday February 07, 2000 @10:40PM (#1296548)
    Mr Showbiz had this too: http://mrshow biz.go.com/news/Todays_Stories/204/lonegunmen02040 0.html [go.com].

    No flamebait meant, but why was this rejected when I suggested it some days ago?
  • Giving the lone gunmen their own show would be a great idea. Me and my friends would all watch this show. Hell, I like them better than Sculley and Moulder. The few shows that had these fellows in them were the best X-files. These three are actually funny and can act.

    Someone with a clue needs to setup a five year plan and hire some good writers to setup a complex plot that wraps up before the interest in this show ends.

    The trouble that three people not associated with the government could get into boggles the mind. Whenever Moulder shot someone he could just hold up his badge and say "FBI." These three can't do that without ending up in jail. They are going to have to think their way out of jams.

    I see possibilities from Mission Impossible as well as Get Smart in a show with the Lone Gunmen.

  • That pretty much sums up the stereotype, but I think part of it (the attractive young female scientist) works for the X-Files and Scully, because she and Mulder never got involved that way.

    Of course there /is/ a certain tension...

  • Hey, go easy on the guy - he's just blue-skying; there's no need to stomp all over him.

    Anyway, the only logical reason for wanting to see Linux on the X-Files is that it would be cool ;)

  • Let's face it, 90% of x-philes don't watch the show for the special effects, the confusing and sometimes contradictory mytharc, or the spookiness factor (no inside joke intended).

    We watch it for the Mulder/Scully interaction, the jokes, the character development, the morbid curiosity of watching a dysfunctional couple stumble through the steps of their relationship under extreme circumstances. The most irrelevant parts of the storyline (to the average x-phile) tend to be the ones that have least to do with the characters. Mulder and Scully are fully fleshed out, nuanced characters that long-time viewers identify with. It helps that the actors are both attractive, without being oversexed, and they can play their parts convincingly without being pompous or suffering from William Shatner Syndrome.

    The reason I'm laying this out is that it would take an incredible amount of work to similarly flesh out the Lone Gunmen to evoke the same kind of viewer response. While they're a breath of fresh air whenever they appear on the X-Files, they are meant to play the foil, the comic relief, the supporting cast. I've watched the Lone Gunmen-centric episodes of the X-Files, and while they're enjoyable, frankly the best parts (read: most involving) are the ones where Scully or Mulder are included. While a select minority (especially the tech-oriented) would probably watch such a spin-off, the large majority of the X-Files fan base would probably lose interest.

    Just my 2 cents.
  • Ok, smack me for being blind. His site *does* talk about this... http://www.deanx.com/buzz.htm [deanx.com]

    (and it was at the TCA event he's speaking of where I met him... even spookier) :)
  • "Woo-Hoo!" writes one on the aus.tv.x-files newsgroup

    Man, I wish I would be able for such astonishing concatenation of "o"'s and "w"'s and other nice letters, then I could get quoted or even be seen on slashdot.

  • well, yes, that's one of the things I like about the X-files..Scully was a well-developed character. Hopefully it'll be the same for the new female lead.

  • Maybe their Alien Episode involves one of their 'puters crunching an important signal block from Seti@Home?
    No, no, no, this is a spinoff, remember?
    It would have to be from YETI@Home [slashdot.org].
  • Yeah I wasnt intending to flame him, it was just a general rant on the seeming /. mentality that Linux needs to be inserted into every single part of modern culture. It definitely wasnt supposed to be a personal attack if it came out that way.

  • X-Files on DVD (Score:4)

    by Shaheen ( 313 ) on Monday February 07, 2000 @11:23PM (#1296560) Homepage
    I submitted this, but it got rejected, so here it is in thread post form:

    As bad or hypocritical as it is for me to bring this up in this forum, FOX has announced the X-Files (Season 1 so far) will be released on DVD in a full box set - 7 Discs with the entirety season 1 including the pilot. You can preorder your copy at DVDExpress [dvdexpress.com] for $90. Personally, I think it's quite a deal, but I dunno if I'm going to buy it with all this MPAA stuff going on...
  • ..I have to say I'm somewhat sceptical about this. IMHO the lone gunmen (along with CSM) are the best characters in X-files, but I think that has a lot to do with fact that they are shown very rarely. Give them their own show and they will probably run out of the "good stuff" pretty soon. When the lone gunmen have an appearence in the X-Files, you can always count on it being funny or weird, but I'm not sure that can carry a whole TV-Show.

  • Personally, I think that Scully would be a Mac geek. Is that a contradiction in terms?

    The Lone Gunman would be constantly fighting over which distro to use. Byers use Redhat with the KDE Desktop on his custom built Dell machine. Langely would be a Slackware/Debian fanatic with a dozen partitions on his hard drive and no case on his computer. Frohike would just sneer disdainfully at them as he upgrades the OpenBSD machine that he built in '95 with hardware that he steals from the IBM booth at Comdex every year.
  • Why do all of you think the X-Files is so great? I'm not trying to be a troll, I just have hell trying to get myself to sit through an entire episode of it...

    Ok ok... I guess I feel compelled to reply to this. There are many good reasons to like the X-Files, some people like it for its spooky atmosphere and horror episodes, and some people like it for its nonsensical convolted conspiracy plotlines. Myself I think it's entertaining, and a least an order of maginitude higher quality than all other TV shows.

    Some key points in favor of the show:

    1. Great characters. Say what you will about Gill and sex appeal, many people are attracted to at least one of Mulder and Scully. They're good-looking, they're funny, and they have a whole host of surrounding dramatis personae. The Lone Gunmen, for example... good enough to base a whole nother series on, maybe. (Actually, I'd much rather watch a spinoff focussing on Cancerman and the Consortium, but that's just me.)

    2. Good writing/acting. Ok, so not every episode is the original piece of plot in the world. At least it's not lame Hollywood crap. Plus, there are some real gems of episodes tossed in the mix. I recommend watching the show for at least a couple of weeks (one ep/day) before casting judgement.

    3. Excellent photography/direction. Like I said, ten times better than almost all other TV shows. It's dark, it's stylish, it's just plain fun to watch.

    4. Cool music. It goes past the theme too. Nothing like eerie music to add the sweet finishing touches to a good horrifying scene.

    Anyway, that's about all I have to say about that. I hope there isn't a LGM spinoff, just because spinoffs are usually not that great, and Chris Carter hasn't gone anything good in several years.


  • But they already have a woman to lust after! Scully!
  • Hey. How about everybody pours me down their pants? eh? eh? come on, now. don't be shy.
  • Also not entirely related, but still interesting for X-Philes: Dean Haglund often performs improv in and around Los Angeles, California. I have seen him at the ACME Comedy Theatre [acmecomedy.com] on Friday nights a few times. He is very funny, and it's always nice to see actors who are locked into a series do something other than the character's we've gotten used to.

    T.J. Hooker being the notable exception.

  • why would they want to do a spinoff ? i mean, X hasnt even reached 4.0 yet.

    and how does fox have anything to do wi... oh.

    nevermind

  • >Seriously, Slashdot would fit in nicely with those 3

    the last thing i wanna see on tv is david duchovney doing cameos while pouring hot grits down natalie portmans pants while gillian anderson smears raisins on her chest and talks about don knotts.

    then again it IS fox

  • New Buffy spin off: Giles in "The Librarian"
    Star Trek series to replace DS9: "Star Trek: Tribble"
    Blake's 7 spin off: "The adventures of Orac"
    Inspired by Slashdot: "Bytes and Nybbles - Erotica on the internet"
  • karma be damned, but would you mind doing one of these with a line like "Nastard LICKED MY WANG" or the like ? just once i wanna see my name in a troll post. hell you can even opensource me, petrify me, and pour hot grits down my pants. i dont care.

  • Oh.. I wanna see the blake's 7 spinoff.. and I wonder when the Daleks get their own series...
  • not enough room in there

    //rdj
  • Yeah! A dalek series would be great.

    Ever see the K-9 spin off though. Very 80's hi-tech. It had most amazingly cheesy intro ever. The intro also had K-9 dynamically sitting on a wall, and Sarah Jane smith sipping wine.

  • Presumably you're trying to start a distribution flame war, but I'll reply anyway.

    You're probably referring to OpenBSD, which places a high priority on security right out of the box. Unfortunately, a secure OS is no replacement for a smart system administrator. It doesn't really matter what you're running if you're incompetent.
    That said, I must admit that I find RH to be a little too overenthusiastic with the large number of daemons it starts up by default. Of course, anyone with a clue will go in and switch everything unnecessary off as soon as the installation's finished, but it would have been nice if they could have made it a bit more secure to start with.
  • Germany's a bit behind in broadcasting the episodes (now near the end of the sixth season), so yesterday they aired an episode where Scully was working with the three guys in Las Vegas. That show /definitely/ was a lot of fun, even without Mulder. Maybe because Scully was on drugs...

    However, I'm not sure if the writers can really come up with enough new story lines. On Anderson's contract, I don't think they can make her work on another show if she doesn't want to.
  • As inspired by the short story "The Croud" it's
    Law & Order: The Croud
    Featuring those three people who seem to have made it into the backround of every episode so far.

    As inspired by the continual inclusion of a last-series character on at least one episode of the next series it's
    Star Trek: Morg or Mort or whatever that guy's name is

    As inspired by thousands of idiots who didnt stop to think first it's
    Man, you know what would be cool.. a zork TV show.. where every week he has to battle a grue or something..
    Featuring such memorable characters as The Theif, The Jester, and a small brick of clay!

    Damn I suck at this.

    Sim TV Show! Featuring tile #237 as special agent shmox puldarian!

    Ok I'll stop now.

    Anyone want to remove that asshole Troll below me?
  • YUM is the word, for sure.
  • You see, this is exactly the kind of prejudiced nonsense that pisses me off about Slashdot. No wonder one gets the feeling that this place is nothing but a haven for quasi-geek conformist Linux lusers who keep shouting "open the code!" but who have never written a single line of code in their lives. *sigh*

    I Am Not A Linux User (IANALU), and neither are many of the people on Slashdot. Stop thinking you rule the world: you don't.

    This is very much like the situation with Americans on the Internet. They are always so sure that they run the entire world. That pisses me off as well.
  • While it would be great to have a spin-off of the Lone Gunmen, I'd hate to see Chris Carter suffer another dead series. Harsh Realm was violent, dull and plotless. Millennium usually put me to sleep at a time slot of 9 on Friday. Damn, that's LATE for a Friday, aside from the fact that it's one of the deadest nights of the week. If TGIF could be on top of Friday nights for the past ten years, it's no wonder that these two failed.

    I like X Files, in fact, it's one of my favorites. I hope The Lone Gunmen turns out to be a good spin-off, and not something like Poltergeist: The Legacy. Aside from its irritating knock-off of a White Wolf Games title, it probably shows off the worst Canadian acting and writing. I watch a great deal of Canadian televison, since it is heavily in syndication.

    sidenote: a list of good Canadian TV shows:
    Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Due South, Forever Knight, First Wave, Sliders, Lexx, Stargate SG1, The Outer Limits, and Earth Final Conflict. Not to mention the questionable "Me Too" adventure shows that came after Hercules and Xena, which can be painful to watch. And let's not forget TekWar. Oh, and the first 5 seasons of X files, but that seems to be a mostly American Production.
    Most of these are shot in Vancouver, BC.
  • I'm not so sure a show about the Lone Gunmen would be a good idea. Often characters are best left mysterious; if you know too much about them it takes away half the fun. Fonzie was more interesting when he was a mysterious side character, and Hawk from Spencer for Hire shouldn't have gotten his own series.

  • uh, as I am canadian, I must protest. All of those except Due South suck and if there are indeed canadian productions, nothing to be proud of...

    Although Alan Alda (I think unless I'm imagining things) was on The Outer Limits once...but actually that was kind of depressing.
  • You aren't being hypocritical [STANDARD DISCLAIMER: as far as I can tell -- you are probably a complex person with many personal contradictions like the rest of us, but there's nothing hypocritical in your post]. You and I and a lot of other people would probably very much like to be able to watch the X-files. The hypocrites are those who are selling the DVDs but don't seem to want us to have any choice about how we watch them.
  • Kill your TV. Really! Turn it off for one week. If I was a billionare, I'd pay people to do anything besides watching TV. PLEASE. I want to live in a country with no TVzombies or "pop-culture (gag)"


    .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._ .:*~*:._.
  • Am I the only one who remembers Harsh Realm? Carter's other spinoff that lasted about 3 episodes before Fox yanked it. It sucked, all of Carter's stuff sucks. I treat X-File popularity much like the Mac's popularity. A bunch of fanatics who have convinced themselves that Carter can do no wrong, no matter how crappy, overdone and hackneyed the show gets.
  • Here's why.

    First, X-Files are great.

    More importantly, if the suits at the movie studios see a drop in demand for DVD, they'll shuffle content to some new proprietary format. By keeping demand for DVDs up, we keep a proprietary format we can already access...at least for now.

    Meow
  • One or two "big" conspiracy shows (with appearances by CSM) do not a season make.

    What do they do with the rest of their time? Play Quake or browse Freshmeat?

    Meow
  • I'm waiting for the ENTIRE show, all 7 seasons + movie(s), on DVD. (What's that, like 49 discs?) hehe.. I think just having the first season would be cool, but I know they'll release some sort of box set with all of them eventually. I'm sure it won't be cheap, though!
  • Ya forgot the best one. Red Green.

    I gotta admit, it was kinda funny seeing Ranger Gord on EFC two weeks ago as a TV reporter.
  • I don't know about Scully using a Mac. I see her more as a NT workstation person. Relatively mainstream computer user, with a need for common programs, but she's smart enough to see that 9x just doesn't cut it for real work.

    Byers might use Solaris. He just seems the type. (Read into that what you will...)

    Langely is definitely the Slackware type, but probably keeps a Win9x box kicking around to play a few games when he has time, and to watch DVDs. I can imagine him saying in a total dead-pan to the question about his computer's ventillation, "There is no case."

    As for Frohike, you're dead-on. OpenBSD all the way for him. I don't think he even entirely trusts his two partners. He probably has some heavy-duty encryption on all his hard drives. I wouldn't be surprised if he had some daemons set to do Nasty Things to his friends' machines if his machines detected something hostile coming from them.
  • <i>uh, as I am canadian, I must protest. All of those except Due South suck and if there are indeed canadian productions, nothing to be proud of... </i>

    And I guess as a Canadian, you think US shows rock? Give me a break. Every popular show in the US is either a formulaic drama or a lousy comedy. We have seen countless shows come and go with the same plots, sets and concepts as the last. NBCABCCBSFOXUPNWB just turn them out one by one, same people, same sets, same plastic sense of humour. It's odd that people in Canada get US satteite codes to watch NBC. I won't even watch that channel.
  • Read the rumor [corona.bc.ca] at Coming Attractions. The rumor was posted on January 12, 2000, so you need to click on the "archive" link.
    --
    Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by Gyver ( 62682 )
    Don't you think there is enough blatant commercialism on TV and in movies as it is without us joining in. One thing that is so appealing to me and a lot of other people about the geek community is our stedfastness toward conformity. This would be one of the worst forms of conformity that I can think of. Linux get enough publicity as it is, so much so in fact that I'm starting to worry that it, itself will soon become an institution
  • Me too. They are hilarious and remind me of my friends in high school :-) The one more recent episode where they were at a security convention was a bomb. Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with last year's shows and I knew it would happen - the writing would go in weird directions like Twin Peaks. Man, I loved that show, but it got too weird even for me at the end.

  • MPAA be damned. X-files season 1 on DVD is MINE. I hadn't heard about this thanks for the info.
  • Yes, IMO the Lone Gunmen stink. They reinforce every bad stereotype about geeks/hackers. Socially inept, wacko conspiracy theorists, dangerous...etc.

    I don't watch X-Files, but the times I've had to I've groaned whenever the Lone Gunmen appear.

    Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla [sourceforge.net]
  • That he doesn't offer it to the Fox network. Fox'd kill it faster than you can say "Harsh Realm".

  • I guess I'm in the minority here, but I watch the show 'cuz I still have a shred of hope that Chris Carter (and Frank Spotnitz) can actually pull the main storyline together, despite evidence to the contrary.

    This week we believe in aliens. Next week, they'll start invading! Ooh, a brain-eating monster, let's go chase it instead! C'mere Chompy, hee hee hee. The Super Global Mega Conspiracy who keeps killing people off can't hurt us while we're wandering off to investigate Killer Monster of the Week, no! Wait, I don't believe in aliens this week. Maybe next week!

    Is it too much to ask that Chris Carter focus his attention on the X-Files long enough to give it some creative direction, instead of "Two goofy FBI agents investigate something so strange and bizarre that lovable weirdness ensues! Oh, and have the monster of the week chew on somebody by the end of the second act. Just don't have CSM stand around looking menacing. That's OUR bit."?

    Boy, I sound bitter, don't I? Sorry.

    --

  • I dunno.... I thought X-Files was better back in the early days. All this crazy stuff was going on with aliens, supernatural phenomenon, and genetic aberations. The government was always involved somehow, but we never new how or why. I stopped watching after they revealed the alien takeover conspiracy. After the mystery was taken away, there was no point in watching it anymore.

    I did like the X-files's particular brand of humor, but the Mulder/Scully relationship never interested me.

    So what I'm getting at is, if the Lone Gunmen spinoff brought back the air of mystery, I'd definately watch it.

  • Space:Above and Beyond was great, apart from the token Brit, looking for sandwiches in the desert, while learning to speak alien lingo - All the americans had new uniforms, so they looked modern, while this brit looked like a escapee from the Great Escape, with a 1940's Oxford accent to boot. Bang on, wot! Don't let jerry get you down, eh!! Does anyboby know if more Space:Above and Beyond was made other than the episodes leading up to the group being split up? (One floating in space, two crashing to a planet, and two escaping back to base). It was a great show, with a good storyline running through it, and you didn't know who would survive through each episode. Whipped the ass of Star Trek, and was pretty close to Babylon 5.
  • "YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!"

    I was hoping that this would happen. Maybe Rob could swing a cameo or two. No, BS I was saying to my wife when I found out that this season would be the last that I hoped that they'd spin off a Lone Gunmen series and it now looks like I've gotten my wish.

    LK
  • Yack! That episode was horrible!


    William gibson not only knows little about computers ("He invented internet!"), he doesn't know his counterculture either.

    That "Invisigoth" character made me fall out of my chair and wet myself.


    The 2-parter about the mysterious blond was far better.


    "C'mon! Daddy needs a new sword of wounding!"

  • There is a computer hacker named "The Thinker", he was in the season 2 finale.


    Well, his corpse was anyway. :)

  • Uh...don't you see the paradox in your post? If X"-Files" fans are fanatics that think Carter can do know wrong, why then did no one watch "Harsh Realm"?
  • Stop thinking you rule the world: you don't.


    No. But we rule Slashdot. Nyah nyah nyah.

  • I wasn't going to say anything,...


    Langley is a Linux guy, Byers is a BSD or a Sun guy, and I'd bet dimes to donuts that Frohike still uses either CPM or a VAX and still does some pretty cool kung-fu with it.


    That is, if I'm right and Langley is the blond guy. If not, switch Langley and Byers around.

  • As I see it, the Lone Gunmen are primarily journalists, trying to get the word out, maybe get that big break that will let them spread the Truth to everyone. Maybe this female nemesis could be a reporter for a big-name news agency, and she keeps poaching their stories.

    One problem they're going to have is that at first nobody wants to listen to them, and then when the story gets out, everybody watches it on CNN instead. So they're stuck on the bleeding edge of journalism, turning over rocks to find something interesting, and then trying to make themselves heard in the stampede.

    Another difference between Mulder and the Lone Gunmen is that Mulder never gets a false lead, probably because anything that comes to his attention has already been filtered once through FBI investigators. It's always a real monster. The Lone Gunmen aren't going to have nearly as good a hit-to-miss ratio, because they're tracking down rumors and innuendo. But maybe they could come across something worth investigating while tracking a false lead, too...

    Lastly, if the Lone Gunmen are Mulder's wild and out-there contacts, I wonder what their wierd friends are like...

    Jon
  • This is a serial after all, after the great childrens cinematic tradition of the 40's and 50's. The genre dictates that every episode end in a cliffhanger. If CC pulled the story together and actually resolved something, it would only be entertaining for that episode and then people would stop watching. Interest in the underlying premise is built by adding new plots and more complexity. Unfortunate, but that's just the way a serial works.
  • Oh no... Slashdot is developing MEMES??


    Next Andrea Chen will start posting here.

  • Sounds kinda like James Bond flicks... ("The World Is Not Enough", anyone?) Of course, he's a gadgetally-enhanced Brit, not an All-American...

    --
  • HR kinda sucked, but keep in mind that in a pilot storylines often have to be sacrificed in order to introduce the premise and all the characters.


    Frankly, I don't think Fox gave the show adequate time to prove itself. A lot of fun things could have been done.

  • Smart is sexy. Most of my attraction to Scully is that she can use the words "mycologist" and "necrotize" in a scentence.
  • They reinforce every bad stereotype about geeks/hackers. Socially inept....

    Geeks/Hackers generally are socially inept, except among are own kind. Basically we don't fit into normal everyday society with non-geeks very well.

    ...wacko conspiracy theorists...

    I don't believe that the lone gunmen could be defined as "wacko", since it usually turns out that they're right.

    ...dangerous...

    Dangerous how?

    ...etc.

    As my World History teacher from high school explained it, you should only use etcetera when there are obvious continuations to a list that are too numerous to mention; not when you can't think of anything else to say.

  • The lone gunmen make great supporting characters for the X-Files, but I honestly don't think they have what it takes to have a show focused on them be successful.

    In the X-Files, the show is balanced between Mulder's crazy ideas and Scully's scientific explanations and that is part of what makes it cool. I think a lot of us are scientific types and Scully helps make things not totally unbelievable. A show focusing on the lone gunmen, described in the article as "the Mulder-worhsipping Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists," would be too unbalanced. I, and most people I think, like to see some elements of realism in any TV show. It gives us something to relate to.

  • I love that "TV fries your brain" rubbish. If TV fries your brain, then so does the internet. It has about the same quality, possibly less, of mind-numbing uselessness.
  • puh-leaz. This was one show I _really_ really wanted to like. Especially since it was almost DOOM on T.V. I never watched an episode that wasn't a major disappointment. Putting it in the same league as B5 leaves me speechless. Did anybody ever wonder why in the first episode of Space:A&B, we have a bunch of kids who will do anything to get to space, so they jump on board a colony ship and take off. After landing on some planet, they are completely obliterated by a bunch of mean aliens. The colonists were completely defenseless because humans had never discovered any other alien beings. Fast forward a couple of days and the earth has a complete space military complete with battle cruisers, fighters, landing parties, etc. Why all this defense when the earth thought they were alone in the galxy? Where was the escort for the colonists? WHY DIDN'T THOSE KIDS JUST JOIN THE MILITARY TO START WITH?

  • re-read my post. Did I mention US shows anywhere? How did you infer that I think US shows rock? I didn't say anything about US shows. All I said was that almost all of those canadian shows mentioned suck.

    We can apply a law...I forget the name: "90% of everything is crap." which applies equally to canadian and american television, and I can testify to this from experience, since canada has healthy doses from both sides of the border, whereas I don't think the US has much Can. programming.
  • ...and here is evidence to this fact you point out.

    And I'm contributing to it!

    Actually, the internet is more useful than tv for me (and many others). eg. I can find papers on interesting topics that I would otherwise need to hunt down in libraries. And it's cold outside.

    fyi, anyway. Maybe justifying the time you spend online would make you less cynical. Staying away from slashdot would help too.
  • I didn't say it was good. I think calling the depictions of "hacking" horribly bad qualifies as not calling it good. But I think the basic idea behind it was interesting, and maybe in someone else's hands (specifically, someone who knows something about computers) it could actually be cool.
  • It seems that every science or science fiction-oriented show seems to have that beautiful, 23-year old nuclear physicist who doesn't act or sound like a scientist, who is put in just so she can be seduced by the male protagonist, the tough, working-class, cerebrally-challenged all-American guy.

    The reason they do this is because major networks are interested primarliy in ratings, because ratings allow them to charge their advertisers higher rates. Somewhere, some network pollster figured out that the primary audience for SF shows is males, ages 18-30, who, /surprise/ like to look at beautiful 23-year-old nuclear physicists. So the networks know that if they add a beautiful woman to the mix, more people will watch, and they can get higher ratings. (Besides, it's a FOX show...I think having beautiful people who don't do much more than look beautiful is part of their charter.)

    This is the same mode of thinking that has, IMNSHO, taken good, "pure" SF right out of our movie theatres, and replaced it with what the studios call "Sci-Fi-Action!" or "Sci-Fi-Horror!". It's too bad that we'll probably never see Ringworld or Foundation made in our lifetimes...which may be a blessing...I mean who wants to see Arkady played by Julia Roberts anyways?

  • Yeah, I love that episode! It's one of the rare shows focusing on the Lone Gunmen, and I really wish there were more. They are great characters.

    It was also a great opportunity for Scully to loosen up and become the punchline for once; and the Morris Fletcher cameo was a nice touch. Anderson's probably getting tired of the role because Scully's such a tightass.

  • That guy is hilarious. I saw him in the Canadian Improv Championships, which was pretty funny.

    Has anyone else seen the new shorts he's in that come on the Canadian Comedy Network late at night? It's this really cheesy thing about two hippy, stoner, conspiracy guys who happen to find Hanger 18 and end up getting abducted by aliens. It's basically dolls and props getting moved around with strings (like Fireball XL-5, only in colour with less production quality). I've seen two episodes so far. When they found hanger 18, there was all kinds of aliens in jars labelled "Property of C. Carter." They also get anal probes and smoke a lot of weed. It's quite funny.
  • Wow. I agree completely! Langley (yes, he is the blond guy) strikes me very strongly as a Linux guy. And others seem completely in character as well. The point is, anything but Windows. Not for any zealous "Microsoft is evil!!!" reasons, rather because no serious cracker would every use a Wintel box because some form of *nix perfectly suited for that kinda stuff. Sadly, I doubt the writers would be competent enough to get that detailed, we'd actually be lucky to even see a recognizeable OS (and if it was, I'd bet is would be either Windows or Mac).
  • Back in college I was in electricity & magnetism lab with someone that looked just like Lazlo from Real Genius. I used to see him walking through the Physical Sciences Building on the weekend all the time... the guy had the same mannerisms too. It was freaky.
    Does anyone know why Extrans formatting no longer appears to work?
  • >This is very much like the situation with Americans on the Internet. They are always so sure that they run the entire world. That pisses me off as well.

    Yeah? Well how many aircraft carriers do *you* have? ;)

  • Ouch. While I really like Due South, I generally hate sci-fi television. For some *really* good Canadian television, check out The Newsroom, Twitch City, or Made in Canada. I'm even known to sit down and laugh my ass of at Butch Patterson ("Money troubles?" "Ah, nothing a video camera and some runaways can't fix.") or Kevin Spencer [kevinspencer.com].
  • i have to agree with you on this one. i'm pretty much a latecomer to the whole x-files thing (and now i don't have a tv so i'm missing this entire season...grrr), but one of the things that originally drew me to the show was the character development. and the humour. it's incredibly hard to find *any* science fiction that's cool *and* can laugh at itself. i used to sit around the tv with my friends, and we always agreed the best episodes were the ones where either mulder or scully had some serious character development, or we cracked up laughing. the show got downright silly at times. along with being interesting and somewhat thought-provoking.

    maybe if they keep up that same quality of character development with the lone gunmen the shouw could be really good, but if it's just a bunch of paranoid computer geeks running around and trying to get laid, i'll get bored real quick.
  • As for Frohike, you're dead-on. OpenBSD all the way for him. I don't think he even entirely trusts his two partners. He probably has some heavy-duty encryption on all his hard drives. I wouldn't be surprised if he had some daemons set to do Nasty Things to his friends' machines if his machines detected something hostile coming from them.

    That's probably true, plus Frohike would probably take the hard drive out of his computer and carry it with him whenever he had to turn it off for some reason.
  • Fox is a MPAA member. I'll consider watching it AFTER the MPAA drops the DeCSS piriacy BS. Untill then I'm boycotting the Network, the movies, and anything else Fox owns.

  • PC's, unless you expect them to hawk the product on the show: "Gee, Mulder, have you ever noticed that Red Hat Linux, which I am running on my laptop, performs much better than any Microsoft Windows platform

    Perhaps a softer sell with the Lone Gunmen. Mulder or Scully having trouble with laptop. One or the LG gets out Laptop with Tux screensaver, instantly performs the needed task and comments, 'You wouldn't have these problems if you ran a real operating system!'.

    I doubt it'd cause a sudden upset in the desktop marketshare, but it would be a nice 'in' joke for the Linux users out there (I'll bet that the proportion of Linux/Windows users who watch the X-files is higher than the general population).

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