I've mentioned the show, Fringe more than a few times here, and figured it was time to expand on some of those mentions. Obviously, this will contain plenty of spoilers for the show.
If you haven't seen Fringe, I highly recommend it, especially since I know you already like The X-Files.
I started watching Fringe at the beginning of its second season. I watched season 1 on Netflix while recording the season 2 episodes on my DVR, saving them for later. So I got caught up some time around 'Earthling', in October of 2009.
And as long as we're on that subject, the episode, 'Earthling', bore some great similarities to the season 1 X-Files episode, 'Space', which I know many fans of the show would rather forget even existed. They aren't wrong, it was a pretty terrible episode, and Fringe didn't really handle the idea much better, and was criticised for being essentially a ripoff (though some also compared it to 'Soft Light', which was a better episode of The X-Files, while the parallel did not really improve 'Earthling').
The episode that followed 'Earthling', 'Of Human Action', was similar in many ways to 'Pusher', at least in its paranormal ability. The plot itself differed greatly, but also, since mind control is a common theme in science fiction, that one I'm willing to say was dreamed up on its own and bears only a coincidental similarly to 'Pusher'.
But it's not just episode plots and themes that I've noticed. The character interactions on Fringe are also sometimes a lot like they are in The X-Files. In fact, they are so parallel, it's almost possible to draw some direct character parallels.
I wouldn't say Olivia is Mulder, but she's certainly open to exploring unknown possibilities, especially at Walter's urging, and against Peter's Scully-like skepticism. Actually, Peter is much more dismissive than Scully ever was. She may have rolled her eyes a lot, but Peter is far more vocal about his disapproval of Walter's seemingly outlandish ideas.
I think to some degree, Nina Sharp and William Bell play the role of the Cancer Man. They're mysterious and shadowy, and we're never really sure what their motives are. Massive Dynamic represented whatever organisation the Cancer Man is a part of, and given the connection to government research, there's a definite similarity in that a lot of the things Olivia and Peter and Walter encounter are related to past research, both public and private, while many of Mulder's and Scully's investigations run right into shady government projects of years past.
The series definitely diverge after a point - once Fringe enters its parallel universe storyline and then introduces the Observers as the main antagonists of season 5, it's pretty much an entirely different show.
But early on, had I already seen The X-Files when watching Fringe, I would have immediately noticed the similarities in the first two seasons.
There's also the matter of whether or not these shows actually take place within the same fictional universe. Is it possible that Skinner and Broyles worked together at some point? Could the X-Files have been legitimised and turned into Fringe Division when the Pattern emerged?
And if that's true, what does the red X-Files universe look like? Is there a blonde Dana Scully over there? Or a Samantha Mulder who's an FBI agent because her brother was abducted? Maybe the Cigarette Smoking Man is a heavy drinker instead?
Well, OK, probably not.
Whether or not we can claim the shows take place in the same universe, the influence is still clear. People were making X-Files comparisons all over the place, and I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "Yeah, I guess, maybe I should watch that some time." And it took until the end of Fringe to actually do it.
At some point, though, Fringe diverged from the Pattern and the case of the week episodes and became highly serialised. By season 5, the one-off episodes were gone entirely. I don't anticipate that happening with The X-Files, though. For one thing, this was a much more popular show and developed a formula early on, and that formula works very well, so there's really no reason to change it.
And of course, I can't compare the two shows without comparing their intro sequences. The Fringe intro, even its theme music, is so obviously influenced by The X-Files you could even argue it was directly ripped off. The most obvious difference is that Fringe's hand has six fingers, as opposed to The X-Files's five.
The truth is Over There.
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