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Aliens Are OverratedThe best X-Files episodes weren't about extraterrestrials.

By Juliet LapidosPosted Thursday, July 24, 2008, at 6:39 PM ET

Also in Slate, Dana Stevens reviews The X-Files: I Want To Believe.

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Dana Stevens tried and failed to care about the new X-Files movie. David Edelstein tried and failed to understand the first X-Files movie. David Plotz described the fandom that elevated X-Files to a fixture of cultural obsession. Karen Olsson asked whether aliens really abduct humans.

The new film also makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously. At one point, Mulder and Scully earnestly debate what the psychic priest might have meant when he uttered the ever-so-cryptic phrase "Don't give up." For longtime fans, the movie's consistently high-serious tone will be a particular disappointment. The X-Files lasted for so many seasons in part because when it wasn't concocting conspiracy theories, it was willing to poke fun at itself. Within the standalone category, there were lightly comic episodes like "Small Potatoes" but also overt self-parodies, which popped up once or twice a season.

Mostly written by Darin Morgan, the self-parody episodes sent up Mulder and Scully's almost-romance, the stark contrast between his paranoia and her skepticism, and the very concept of alien abduction. They also painted a devastating portrait of lonely UFO spotters who insist we aren't alone. Indeed, in Morgan's scripts the phrase "we are not alone" sounds more like a plea than a statement.

"War of the Coprophages," a parody episode from Season 3, presents Mulder and Scully on a rare night off. He travels to Massachusetts, where there have been "widespread accounts of unidentified colored lights hovering in the skies." She stays at home, cleans her gun, then her dog, and eats ice cream out of the carton. When Mulder becomes convinced that alien cockroaches are killing the citizens of a small town, he calls Scully to consult. She supplies plausible explanations for each bizarre death—anaphylactic shock, a brain aneurism—which, of course, turn out to be wrong. The cockroaches are aliens. This is all played for laughs, with Mulder running after insects and falling for an entomologist named Bambie. But there's a melancholy streak to the episode as well: It's supposed to be their night off. Mulder's quest to find something "out there" is, in this instance, a transparent desire for companionship. Scully's skepticism is no less pathetic. At least Mulder has a calling—all she can think to do in her spare time is clean her gun.

The most famous self-parody among X-Files fans is the brilliantly convoluted "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." Author Jose Chung interviews Scully about a supposed abduction that happened in a small town, and he tracks down a series of self-proclaimed witnesses. Every one, of course, has a slightly different version of what happened: There was no abduction (just a couple of kids who made up a story after an awkward sexual encounter); the "aliens" were actually military personnel (in alien suits); a real alien abducted the two kids (plus the guys in alien suits). Morgan's teleplay portrays the UFO spotters not as misunderstood truth-seekers but as losers motivated by loneliness, boredom, and delusions of grandeur. One of the witnesses, Rory Crikenson, claims that men in black are trying to suppress his alien-themed screenplay. Another, Blaine Faulkner, wants to be abducted so that he won't "have to worry about finding a job."

Characters like Crikenson and Faulkner, absent from I Want To Believe, were so effective because they were eerily familiar: They were the sort of people who would have tuned into The X-Files. Recall that for its first three seasons, the show aired on Friday nights, which means fans either were giving up part of their weekend plans or didn't have any to begin with. If the conspiracy episodes were an escape for viewers who weren't much enjoying the mid-'90s "holiday from history," the standalones held up a mirror to a lonely audience. Unfortunately, even these once-devoted viewers probably won't much enjoy I Want To Believe, which has neither the incisiveness and humor of the standalone episodes nor the grand framework of the alien mythology but has grandiosity in spades.