The X-Files Friday Feature: Nostalgia

I won't say The X-Files is making me nostalgic for the '90s, but it certainly brings back some memories.

I was 16 when this show started airing, and the world seems like it was a different place back then.

I haven't yet reached any episodes that feel like they just had to have been made before September 11, 2001, but there are definitely some elements that seem out of place today. For example, pretty much any scene in an airport doesn't quite feel right. They too easily change course, double back, or buy one way tickets with cash. I'm sure at some point, something more glaring about the pre-9/11 world will stick out. It simply has to, because there was so much we just took for granted then.

But the thing that really got me thinking about the '90s was Usenet.

It occurred to me the other day that Google Groups has archived and maintained basically all the newsgroups that have been around since the '80s, which means that alt.tv.x-files should be there, fully preserved. For all I know, people may still be posting to it. After all, there was another movie made not long ago, and obviously people still watch the show and new viewers are still being introduced to it.

So today, I visited Google Groups and checked up on that. It's a little hard to narrow the range, and it was a very active newsgroup, but I was able to limit my search to dates before episodes I hadn't seen, so I could read what people were saying about the show as it aired and not have to worry about spoilers. (Though there's occasional discussion of episode previews for later weeks.)

I have to say, it feels like I've stepped into a time machine. I know that a lot of those people probably stuck with the show all the way to the end, and now know what really happened, but it makes for an interesting snapshot of the series, as I suppose the early entries on my own blog will by the time I finish the series at the end of this year.

It's fascinating to see the theories people have about Scully's disappearance after 'Ascension', which is about where I am as I write this.

But not only was this the early days of The X-Files, it was also the VERY early days of the Web. Most of the sites we take for granted now didn't exist in 1995, and even imdb wasn't yet covering television shows, let alone individual episodes.

Today I can go to imdb or Wikipedia and look up everything I want to about the show (I try to be careful, though, because Wikipedia especially can be full of spoilers). I even found a site that has transcripts of every episode, which is extremely helpful in recalling what happened in them when I write a post. I'm sure if the show were airing today, there would be dozens, or even hundreds (dozens of hundreds?) or sites dedicated to X-Files spoilers. (There already are plenty dedicated to every other show, so it makes sense.)

I kind of wish I could go back to that time, and watch a show so unspoiled and disconnected that I literally did not know how many episodes long the season would be, or what the next episode would be called. Of course, I also wouldn't be blogging my experience, because there was no such thing as blogging, but if I were watching as it aired, I'd probably have been discussing it on Usenet or a BBS somewhere with other people who were just as unspoiled.

So I encourage all of you who have the time to check out the now 18-year-old posts on alt.tv.x-files. It's pretty entertaining, and I would imagine more so if you know what's coming.