x--ile-

Although giving up BBC3 for lent seemed a virtuous idea that God would definitely approve of – it has, in fact, sent me on a rather shadowy path that culminated in discovering the very middle of the World Wide Web last night.

It is not overstating the mark to say that it recalled the scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture where Captain/then Admiral Kirk scrubs away the rust on the life-form VGER only to discover more letters that revealed it was the VOYAGER VI NASA probe returning from deep space and then it starts talking through the bald crewman dude who still gives me confused feelings sometimes when I drive at night.

The first X-files episodes came at the populist cusp of the World Wide Web. It was a perfect pitch to utilise this new home and school technology. It was cult enough, darkly humoured enough and just on the edge of conspiracy plausibility to have nerds dialling up on chirping, blinking modems trying vainly to hack into mainframes - any mainframes - for dossiers on aliens and have blocky font discussions about ESP Amish children. And, in Scully, it had the perfect geek pin-up to seek out and impatiently unpixilate into the wee small hours.

For some, after the series stopped making any semblance of sense (around the end of season 4) and started talking about government approved extra-terrestrial flowers being pollinated by earth bees or whatever, the grid fell quiet. It would be 12 years before people would use the internet again with the development of Facebook and the YouTube.

But X-File geek computer chats remained, forgotten out there, floating deeper through cold wires into the internet. They have been evolving, learning. They have been questing for a kind of soul. And they are not blocky any more.

This is what is at the centre of the internet:


[I particularly approve of the audio inserted at 4:50. Mulder is hardcore with his threats. I like to think that it is directed at Scully’s dad. You’re absolutely right, which means it would have been in season 1 for that to be the case, to keep it canon]

Alright, it isn’t strictly what is at the centre of the internet. But it is so fabulously uber-geek it could have been. I wouldn’t have put it past it – let’s just say that.

In fact I really discovered a whole sub-genre of this kind of thing being made out of the internet.

Now, I am happy to admit, I watched the X-files (first 4 seasons only, obviously). And I enjoyed that, to start off with, there were only a few of us at school who would watch it and talk about it the day after and we all told our career guidance teachers we wanted to join the FBI and go up to girls in class saying [to their bemusement] that we were saving ourselves for a meaningful, monogamous relationship with Dana Scully – but at no point did I consider “You know what this episode about a half-man-half-stretchy-salamander that creeps through kitchen sink food disposal units and eats people’s kidneys needs? A relationship montage put to slightly dated soft-rock in 15 years time”

Here is another one. The creator, BeckyScully [Oh-Kaay] says that this is intentionally edited from Scully’s point of view where the narrative is she and Mulder are going through a tough time. Extraordinary.



Some are even worse than others:




Fair enough, there is actually something quite touching about that last one. But what is possessing people to do this? People are sitting at home, at branded coffee shops and in places of employed commerce putting together visual and audio clips as weird back to front music videos for a TV show that ended over a decade ago.

All I am saying – it is like I am reading your mind - if it was me doing it I would have chosen the schmaltz-enfeebled Beauty and The Beast. A Coldplay ballad superimposed on that simply has to be an improvement on any scene: even the bits where Vincent is in a downtown alley ripping out some raggedy thug’s thorax.