This is perhaps the strongest aspect of the eighth season, the sense that it has a certainty and finality that the seventh season lacked. It would allow the show to say a proper (and extended) farewell to Mulder. Easing David Duchovny out of the show would allow for a smoother transition. The idea of doing The X-Files without either Mulder or Scully was horrifying to the production team and horrifying to certain sections of fandom, but Duchovny’s willingness to stick around for half of the eighth season afforded some measure of compromise. This forced the show to change, but in a way that afforded some measure of stability.
#XFILES SEASON 8 OPENIN FULL#
At the end of the seventh season, with everything coming down to the wire, Duchovny made it clear he would not appear in a full eighth season. It turned out that something was Duchovny. The show had begun diffusing its focus in the fourth and fifth seasons by focusing on members of the supporting cast, but it was still effectively a two-lead show. Duchovny and Anderson were headlining a show that filmed twenty-odd episodes a season.
In hindsight, it seems obvious that the show could not continue forever. The eighth season represents the most seismic shift in the creative life of The X-Files, and – as with those other big decisions – it was largely driven by choices outside the production team. David Duchovny forces the move to Los Angeles in the sixth season. The decision to film The X-Files: Fight the Future between the fourth and fifth seasons was at the behest of Fox rather than the production team. The mythology largely developed from Scully’s abduction in Duane Barry and Ascension, an attempt by the writers to work around Scully’s abduction. As such, the really big changes to the show were largely driven by external factors. The production team were working under incredible pressure, so it makes sense they would not want to change a formula that made sense. Why risk changing something that has been proven to work and to which the audience has responded? For all the (deserved) praise The X-Files gets for popularising (or repopularising) serialised storytelling in prime-time television, it was just as conservative as any other show. More than that, if a show has figured out an approach that has worked, it makes no sense to deviate from that pattern. Routine and familiarity make the production schedule easier to manage, particularly for shows with large season orders. Network television is largely built around churn, a conveyor belt model that is designed to generate product according to tight schedules and oppressive deadlines. In many ways, television is a conservative medium – more in an artistic sense than a political one. The eighth season of The X-Files would be the perfect last season of the show, and a pretty solid first season of a new show born from the ashes. Concurrent with the airing of this season, Carter and The X-Files production team created and aired a short-lived spinoff titled The Lone Gunmen.This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.
Ratings for the season were initially strong, but it eventually averaged a total of 13.53 million viewers, down from the seventh season's 14.2 million.
Season eight was received well by critics but was less warmly received by fans, many of whom were unhappy that Duchovny reduced his role and that Patrick took over as co-lead alongside Anderson.
#XFILES SEASON 8 OPENIN SERIES#
In addition to the cast change, series creator Chris Carter updated the opening credits, which had remained unchanged since the first season. The season also marked the first appearance of Annabeth Gish as Monica Reyes, who would become a main character in the ninth season. Actor Robert Patrick was hired as a replacement for Mulder, playing John Doggett. For this season, Duchovny elected to return only as an intermittent main character, appearing in only half of the episodes.
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