The X-Files

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The X-Files
Chris Carter at the London premiere for The X-Files: I Want to Believe in July 2008.
Chris Carter at the London premiere for The X-Files: I Want to Believe in July 2008. Photo: Olivier Laurent · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
TypeBook, film or media
Also known asX-Files

The X-Files is an American science-fiction television series created by Chris Carter, first broadcast on Fox from 1993 to 2002, with revival seasons in 2016 and 2018 and two feature films. It follows FBI agents Fox Mulder, a believer, and Dana Scully, a skeptic, as they investigate unexplained cases, and it became one of the most influential depictions of UFOs and government cover-ups in popular culture.[1]

The series

David Duchovny at the panel Tribeca Talks: Revenge of the Electric Car, for the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival .
David Duchovny at the panel Tribeca Talks: Revenge of the Electric Car, for the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival . Photo: David Shankbone · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Mulder (David Duchovny) is convinced that extraterrestrials exist and that the government is hiding the truth; Scully (Gillian Anderson), a medical doctor, is assigned to debunk his work with scientific explanations. Carter deliberately reversed the usual roles by making the man the believer and the woman the skeptic.[1] About a third of the 218 episodes form the "mythology", a long story of a planned alien invasion, a secret group of officials called the Syndicate, alien–human hybrids and a substance known as the black oil. The rest are stand-alone "monster of the week" stories.[1]

Reception and influence

The set in The X-Files containing Fox Mulder's office.
The set in The X-Files containing Fox Mulder's office. Photo: Alistair McMillan (alistairmcmillan) · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Starting as a cult show, The X-Files became a hit and a pop-culture touchstone that tapped into public mistrust of governments and large institutions. By the end of its original run it was the longest-running science-fiction series in American television history.[1] It spawned the spin-offs Millennium and The Lone Gunmen and the films The X-Files (1998) and I Want to Believe (2008).[1]

Illustration of a screen showing a flying saucer
Illustration: a screen showing a flying saucer. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

The series drew on real UFO lore. A 1994 episode had Scully suggest swamp gas as an explanation, echoing the 1966 Michigan sightings, and a 1995 episode mocked the alien autopsy film broadcast that year by the same network, Fox.[2][3]

References

This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.

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