The X-Files Friday Feature: Geography

The X-Files is a show that takes place in a lot of different cities, but primarily Washington, DC, but is filmed entirely in and around Vancouver.

This often makes for some strange visuals, especially when it comes to the vegetation in the area, but also the architecture, street layouts, and addresses.

I think because I'm so familiar with the Washington, DC area that a lot of the locations seem strange to me. I could easily see someone who's never lived here finding everything perfectly believable. It's especially noticeable when they venture into northern Virginia, because that's where I've lived almost my entire life, so I know it rather well.

And this is the first show I've watched that's set in a place I'm very familiar with. I'd say the same thing happens to people from say, New York, but it looks like a lot of shows that take place in New York are actually filmed there. I guess New York has such a distinctive appearance that it's harder to fake? Or maybe DC is just harder to film in or to convince actors to go to? I suspect the former.

I don't think DC is that generic, and I guess there are enough different parts of it that something like Mulder's apartment could exist here, but the more noticeable problems are things like the widths of the streets (this is an old city and doesn't have a lot of very wide streets) or the style of the homes (again, old city, not a lot of modern residential architecture, except in the suburbs, where I don't think the show has ever really gone).

But even when they go to other places - they've been to much of the mid-Atlantic area multiple times, and none of it really looks quite right. Nothing in 'The Jersey Devil' looked at all like Atlantic City, for example.

Obviously the episodes set in the Pacific Northwest are going to be the best when it comes to geography, because it's filmed there. There's no stretch of the imagination required to believe that Washington, Oregon and British Columbia look a lot alike (at least for us east coast folks - I'm sure anyone reading this from the Pacific Northwest gasped reading that sentence), as in the Pilot and 'E.B.E.' and 'Darkness Falls'.

I feel like season 2 gets even worse, because much more of it is set in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas. There's no '900 W. Georgia St.' in the Washington area. There's a Georgia Avenue in D.C. and Maryland, and a Georgia St. NW in the city, but no W. Georgia St. D.C. doesn't use designations like that.

And I don't know what that stadium is that looks like it's under construction, but it's nowhere in the D.C. area. Obviously they just found the site somewhere in the Vancouver area, and maybe now you could look at the timeline of the show and assume it might be FedEx Field, which was built around that time, but in reality, ground wasn't broken until March of 1996.

But perhaps the worst offence is what they did to Germantown, Maryland in 'Colony' and 'End Game'. Yes, Germantown is home to many companies doing research in biotechnology, but the setting of what appears to be a 'warehouse district' is really not particularly accurate. It's as if the writers only had vague knowledge of Germantown when they decided to write it into an episode. Germantown is a suburban area with offices and strip malls, not factories and warehouses.

It kind of reminds me of the story behind R.E.M.'s song, (Don't Go Back to) Rockville, which was written with almost no knowledge of what Rockville was actually like. It, too, is an affluent D.C. suburb, rather than the depressed factory town Mike Mills assumed it to be when he wrote the song.

Sometimes, though, they get something right - I didn't mention it in my post about 'Fresh Bones' because I was so confused by the episode's existence, but not only was X's use of the 10 of Diamonds very clever, but also very accurate. North Carolina state and county roads are displayed on signs inside diamonds. The diamonds are now white with black numbering, but I can see how an older sign in a rural part of the state might be black with yellow/white numbering. The only inaccuracy regarding it is that it's described as 'County Road 10', because North Carolina doesn't actually have county roads - all its primary roads are maintained by the state. (No, that's not something I just know, I had to ask the internet.)

Perhaps the bigger geographical issue I've noticed that is also not unique to The X-Files is that travel times are basically non-existent. They even mention them at times - I think in 'The Jersey Devil', Scully comments on D.C. being a three hour drive from Atlantic City (Scully is a speed demon, that trip can't be made in under three and a half hours) but most of the time they don't and there seems to be a lot of magic, like all the action between Martha's Vineyard and D.C. in 'Colony' and 'End Game'.

I mean, I know they can't show all the back and forth travel, but at least give a better indication that some time has passed before everyone just shows up 400 miles away.

Still, most of the time it doesn't distract or take me out of the show, but every now and then there's a caption that makes me think, "Really? REALLY?"