A Fully-Fledged X-Phile creeps out of hibernation...

So I have been re-watching The X Files from the beginning (201 episodes in total..phew!) in preparation for the new series starting in January 2016. If you Google the show you will notice I am one of millions of people doing this at the moment, so I don't feel so weird for binging on scifi and writing about it. Since I have not seen some of the early X Files episodes since I was literally a teenager, the experience of watching them as fully-fledged adult is both exciting and nostalgic. The scripts are a lot funnier than I remember and I can now really appreciate how excellently the show is made (some of those camera shots are epic!). Plus, now we have the internet and small mobile phones, but when the show first started the characters were still using books to do research! I get excited every time Mulder flicks through an encyclopaedia. How novel! How retro! It is sort of comforting to watch an era that you lived through and that is essentially gone now. Plus now I can see the common character trends in the series and laugh about them, rather than get all mixed up in the angst of the show, which when I was a teenager, was what I actually felt most of the time: Angst. Now I appreciate the humour:

Every Episode of The X Files

*something mysterious happens*

Mulder: ALIENS
Scully: SCIENCE
Mulder: Look, a thing...
Scully: Don't do the thing!
Mulder: I'M GOING TO DO THE THING
*sexual tension*
Mulder: It could have been aliens!
Scully: But science!

As a 32 year old I have a lot more appreciation for 'science' than I did when I was actually studying it in school and so this time round, while watching the show, I find myself sympathising with Scully a lot more and thinking Mulder is blatantly crazy half the time. And obviously now that I can look up anything on the internet, my obsession for the show just gets bigger. Looking for an amusing picture of Mulder arranging pencils? Just Google it and 'Wham!' There it is on your screen!

Pencil straightening...a common FBI activity...

When I was first watching the show in the 1990s (yes I am that old), I had a pretty slow dial-up-connection and we only had one computer, which really belonged to my father, so I would spend most of my time actually reading about the characters in fan magazines or in books from the library. Those were the days when I thought I was the only scifi fan or X-Phile (the term for a fan of the show) out there. It was pretty lonely to be honest. Now you can find a fandom for pretty much anything anywhere on the internet. Plus, years later, I have a best friend called Nat (who I met in University and who is as obsessive as me about things) who turns out was also an X-Phile when she was a teenager and guess what?! Even my husband confesses to having watched it religiously after school. So now I have three people to share my obsession with, which is joyous. Sort of like a madness shared by three...a 'folie a trois' if you like...

I can also indulge in all the other X-Philes' fan-created-websites out there, which is where I found the below gif of a very young Scully looking sceptical...pretty much her expression for the whole 9 years of the show...

Aliens? Mulder, please... (courtesy of http://mulder-pls.tumblr.com/)

Apparently according to the Urban Dictionary:

A true x phile should be able to quote every significant event throughout the 9 year run of the show. Possibly the only people to ever understand the complex conspiracy that just got more confusing as time went on. A typical x phile would be able to say any of these at least once every day and incorporate them into otherwise unrelated conversation: 

"That was like that time in that episode in Season 3 when Mulder asked Scully to..."
"That's why they put the 'i' in FBI!" 
"This must be a conspiracy" 
"Ooo! I feel like I'm stuck in an X File" 

Whilst watching TV: "That guy was once on the x files in an episode where Scully and Mulder...." 

Both Nat and I definitely fall into this category. Cursed with a photographic memory for faces, I am always pestering my husband when we watch TV by reminding him that this actor was in that movie or that we saw that actress in that TV show. So in light of our new found shared passion, Nat and I have decided to start a blog together...it won't be on this blog since this is a platform for my online ramblings and musings (such as they are), but I will link to the new site from this one once it is set up. Watch this Space! Oh...and The Truth is Out There!