The title of this blog post is a quote from the
Jack Vance novel
Star King. Much of the joy from reading Vance's
Demon Princes tales (or his
Alastor Cluster novels or the
Cadwal Chronicles) arises from Vance's humor and his glorious vocabulary. With each page turn, you encounter another word such as "squeamish" lovingly deployed by Vance in a clever and amusing way.
SIHA and the X-Files
Allow me to use "squeamish" in another sentence. I'm squeamish about the horror elements in
The X-Files.
Here in
August, it is time to celebrate the science fiction of Jack Vance, but first... a brief digression into the
X-Files. Why? I'm constantly looking for interesting Hollywood aliens and much of my search involves looking back old science fiction films. For example, last year I traveled back to 2002 in order to see
Solaris.
Today, my destination in Time is 1998 where I explore a spooky connection between Jack Vance and
The X-Files...
The Quote
Kirth Gersen has just traveled across vast interstellar distances, into the far
Beyond, in an attempt to rescue poor innocent
Pallis Atwrode from the evil clutches of "Beauty" Dasce, a man so hideously disfigured that he brags of being able to paralyze dogs with a single glance.
Gersen captures Dasce and hopes to learn from him the secret cover identity of Demon Prince
Attel Malagate, one of the men who killed Gersen's parents.
Not aware of Gersen's convoluted and decades-long quest aimed at taking revenge on Malagate and the other Demon Princes, another character in the story chides Gersen about his unusually gentle treatment of Dasce, "
I'm surprised you haven't killed him."
Gersen hopes to conceal his plan for tricking Dasce into revealing Malagate's secret identity and says in reply, "
Consider me squeamish, if you like."
While the X-Files bulge with a plethora of paranormal phenomena, there is just a subtle patina of the paranormal tinting the canvas of Vance's novels. Vance never states explicitly that Gersen has telepathic powers, but he does seem to often be in
the right place at just the right time which allows Gersen to out-fox his evil foes.
Spooky Mulder
 |
Mulder and Scully trying to be cute: door lock humor.
On the roof's the only place I know
where you just have to wish to make it so.
Up on the roof! |
All of this is a rather long-winded lead-up to the point of this blog post: I recently re-watched the 1998 X-Files movie,
Fight the Future. There would be no X-Files film, except for the odd fact that "spooky" Mulder inexplicably ends up in
the right place at the right time.
Why I'm BLUE. Conspiracy 17 18
The plot of
Fight the Future makes absolutely no sense: a hyper-secret global
conspiracy has been on-going for half a century, concealing from the world an imminent alien invasion.
The
conspirators need to quietly dispose of two dead bodies, so they blow up an entire building and try to pretend that the corpses were killed in the explosion. This is such a stupid plot that the film makers double down, depicting a senior FBI agent as dutifully following orders from the
conspiracy folks: he sits next to the bomb waiting for it to explode, making sure that nobody pulls the plug on the cartoon count-down timer.
 |
Mulder and Scully both get
to see an alien spaceship. |
At this point in the film, even Mulder had to look at the camera and say "That makes no sense."
Okay, ignore the idiotic plot. Someone has warned the FBI that a bomb has been planted, but the tipster falsely says the bomb is in a building across the street. Mulder risks being reprimanded but "on a hunch" he takes Scully across the street to the actual building that is going to be destroyed. The film makers don't even try to explain how Mulder "knows" where to search for the bomb, so the start of
Fight the Future has the same feel as a Vance story where Kirth Gersen inexplicably ending up in
exactly the right place to defeat the bad guy.
 |
| latex aliens |
But wait! It can't be that easy! If your hero can magically see the future or read the minds of the perpetrator, then there is no adventure. The hero must sweat a bit! For
Fight the Future, after Mulder gets to the doomed building, his spooky senses fail him. He goes to the roof of the building to look for the bomb (don't ask why) and it is a hot day. If he had instead searched inside the building, he never would have gotten hot and thirsty. Of course, the bomb is
not on the roof, but returning to the ground floor for a cold drink, Mulder finds the bomb, hidden inside a soda vending machine. Inexplicably, after Mulder strolled into the snack room, nobody else can enter into that room. Somebody put chewing gum in the door lock! Will Mulder be blown to pieces? We are only a few minutes into the film, so we all know that he will not be vaporized in the explosion. Also, the X-files has been renewed and
season 6 is forthcoming.
 |
| Hurry, Scully, we have to get out of this movie! |
Viewers might as well laugh at the multiplying plot holes. The FBI supervisor arrives with the steel door-cutting team (sparks fly as the timer ticks down to
BOOM!), cuts open the door and orders Mulder to get out of the building.
It gets worse.
After all that (the building is blown up along with the FBI supervisor), the two corpses are pulled from the rubble and brought back to a morgue in Washington where Mulder and Scully can talk their way past military police guards and examine the bodies. It is immediately clear that they were not killed by the explosion.
 |
Mulder chased through a corn
field by a giant flying flashlight.
Don't ask. |
We must conclude that this entire introduction to the film was engineered to meet the Union requirement that there be a BIG explosion in the film. Due to the inexplicable complexity of how the
conspirators tried to hide the cause of death of the two corpses, Mulder was given the chance to learn that the two deaths are linked to the global alien invasion
conspiracy.
Chris Carter's film-making formula: "Just keep blowing things up and hope they don't notice that the plot makes no sense."
 |
| You're calling me crazy? |
For this second phase of the unraveling global
conspiracy, "Spooky" Mulder does not guess which building in Washington now holds the two mystery corpses. He is
told where to look by a nut-job
conspiracy theorist who knows all about the on-going global
conspiracy except for any actual details. Mulder and the
conspiracy theorist bond and spend the middle part of the film chatting and urinating in the dark alleys of Washington.
Union requirements also required inclusion of a shooting in the film. Mulder gets shot at point-blank range and survives. Luck again? We'd all rather be lucky than dead, but like the cartoon count-down timer of the bomb, there is another clock ticking and it is used to make sure that the life of either Scully or Mulder is threatened in every X-Files episode. In the television series, all these comic book threats to the stars of
The X-Files do not have to make sense, we just need a cliff-hanger that will bring viewers back after each commercial break. This TV formula was applied to the film, too.
 |
| Fight for the Jiffy Pop popcorn jokes. |
The Film Makers Union strikes again. Union requirements also led to the inclusion of a car chase in
Fight the Future. Mulder has to chase after a train because the global
conspiracy uses train cars to haul evidence of the invading aliens across the vast hinterland of the USA to secret bases of the
conspirators.
 |
Yes, it looks like a virus to me,
but don't take my word for it,
let's use Scully's magical
virus detecting microscope! |
Except when they don't, particularly when Scully gets infected by the alien virus and, since she is the star of the show, she gets sent to Antarctica.
What virus?
At this point you ask, "What virus?" Which, in turn, raises the question: do either Carter or
Spotnitz know what a virus
is? In order to accomplish their invasion of Earth, the aliens first send into outer space a "virus" which lands on planets like Earth and waits for many millions of years until the film industry can develop to the point where it becomes possible to produce an alien invasion flick.
 |
| the leaky conspiracy |
Then, just in time for the filming of
Fight the Future, the alien virus "mutates" and begins transforming the bodies of dead humans into bouncing baby aliens.
BUT, all is not lost because the global
conspirators have devised a "weak vaccine" which, when injected into someone already infected by the alien's virus, magically saves the poor infected victim.
 |
| conspirator bee |
The car/train chase leads Mulder to a secret base where the
conspirators are preparing millions of honey bees to serve as the vector for efficiently spreading the alien virus to the human population of Earth.
Scully is "stung" by a bee and must be injected with the vaccine in order to prevent her body from birthing an alien creature. Sure, sure, I'll buy ALL of that. But how does Mulder get the vaccine and know how to find Scully at the secret base in Antarctica?
Duh. Because after 50 years of the super-secret
conspiracy, one of the top folks running the global
conspiracy gives Mulder the vaccine and the coordinates of the secret base. So much for the paranormal abilities of Mulder, telepathic or otherwise. Even the leaders of the global
conspiracy got the news that Fox had renewed
The X-Files for another season and Scully needed to be rescued.
 |
| more lies |
Science Fiction
It turns out that the secret base in Antarctica was built on top of a Ginormous alien spaceship. As soon as Scully is injected with the vaccine, the alien spaceship activates and rises into the sky.
How does use of the vaccine re-activate a spaceship? Obviously, this is because the film'$ budget limit had been reached and Carter needed to wrap things up quickly. Mulder and Scully return to Washington with just enough evidence of the alien
conspiracy (one dead bee) to keep the X-Files in business for another season. Whew!
 |
| before the bee |
Some X-Files fans have concluded that what made
Fight the Future a good movie was that it developed the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Mulder confesses that he needs Scully to keep him from going off the rails and being just another "UFO nut". Scully confesses that she must continue to work with Mulder to find "the TRUTH™", so she abandons her dream of a career in medicine and stays with
the X-Files Mulder.
I want to Squeam
 |
| tube fed |
The parts of
The X-Files that I've always liked the least are the horror elements. However, I have a strange confession about
Fight the Future. In the silly scene where Mulder has traveled across Antarctica to rescue Scully, his spooky good luck comes through once again. He falls through the ice into a convenient ventilation shaft that takes him (like sliding down a playground slide) right to Scully. She's being kept cool, submerged in ice water, with some kind of alien Hi Tek™ breathing/feeding tube in her mouth. Mulder starts pulling out the tube and he keeps pulling and pulling and pulling... Very silly but I was amused.
Pulling the alien device out of Scully's body is a very disgusting visual film gimmick, but it struck me as a nice way to show fans of the X-files mythology an example of strange alien technology that we Earthlings can't understand, but which would make perfect sense to the more technologically savvy aliens.
Related Reading: some
Demon Princes fan-fiction
Next:
The Gensifer Clan
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