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The change in that zeitgeist is also one of the things the creators "credit" with its decline, though Duchovny getting into a lawsuit with Fox and checking out

The change in that zeitgeist is also one of the things the creators "credit" with its decline, though Duchovny getting into a lawsuit with Fox and checking out certainly didn't help. After the 9/11 attacks public interest in not trusting the government sharply declined. The pilot episode of the Lone Gunmen spin-off, released earlier in 2001, featured a plot where "terrorists" had flown a passenger liner into the WTC but it was really a government inside job to gain support for a new war. That show didn't get renewed.

mickeyp 3y ago
I mean, speaking of conspiracies, I've watched the spin-off show and it's... not that good. Turns out, you need good writing and Mulder/Scully to keep those three interesting. It most assuredly got cancelled because it wasn't that good :-)
- hnbad 3y ago
  I'd say X-Files largely survived because of the dynamic of the characters. A lot of the episodes were not very good except for the interplay between the two. But in the absence of good writing you definitely needed Mulder and Scully and the spin-off didn't have them.
  - the_doctah 3y ago
    The Smoking Man and AD Skinner were good characters too.
keepamovin 3y ago
The pilot episode of the Lone Gunmen spin-off, released earlier in 2001, featured a plot where "terrorists" had flown a passenger liner into the WTC but it was really a government inside job to gain support for a new war. That show didn't get renewed. That’s incredibly prescient! What the hell?
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  About a decade before that I was at a friend's house. The guy was a little bit weird so he subscribed to magazines for people to keep track of airline security and ant-terrorism monitoring and whatever. I looked through his magazines. I remember one magazine recommended that security forces should be on the lookout for terrorists using passenger planes as essentially human guided missiles. Went way into details of how much explosive power fuel would have etc. I suppose it wasn't especially prescient, more like obvious for any expert in the field.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    IIRC terrorists using planes to attack buildings is a common threat scenario for infrastructure projects like nuclear power plants. However usually this refers to small civilian planes like Czesna. Not large passenger airliners like a Boeing 767. Let alone two of them.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      > However usually this refers to small civilian planes like Czesna. Not large passenger airliners like a Boeing 767. That is a really odd thing to say on the context of security. If people did indeed have this rationale, I would be surprised at the obvious and absurd display of incompetence. A vulnerability is a vulnerability, and you expect the attacker to decide how much impact he will try to cause (with a bias into "a lot"). The part about 3 planes is reasonable (something at this level of organization should raise an alert somewhere).
    - tivert 3y ago
      > IIRC terrorists using planes to attack buildings is a common threat scenario for infrastructure projects like nuclear power plants. However usually this refers to small civilian planes like Czesna. Not large passenger airliners like a Boeing 767. Honestly, that doesn't make any sense to me and I'm doubtful. I work at a company that had a data center (built pre-2001) 10 or 20 miles from an airport. It was built like a literal bunk because (IIRC) their threat model included "jet airliner crashes into datacenter" (no terrorism required). It looks like they were testing/modeling that scenario with nuclear power plants way back in 1988: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/us/threats-responses-reactor-vulnerability-experts-say-nuclear-plants-can-survive.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/us/threats-responses-reac...: > The 19 experts, many of them retired, work or worked at universities or companies that build or operate reactors. In an article on Friday in the journal Science, they dismiss fears voiced by opponents of nuclear power that the nation's reactors are vulnerable to a terrorist attack. > "We read that airplanes can fly through the reinforced, steel-lined 1.5-meter-thick concrete walls surrounding a nuclear reactor," the article says, "and inevitably cause a meltdown resulting in 'tens of thousands of deaths' and 'make a huge area uninhabitable for centuries,' to quote some recent stories." But, they add, "no airplane regardless of size, can fly through such a wall." > The article says the scenario "was actually tested in 1988 by mounting an unmanned plane on rails and 'flying' it at 215 meters per second (about 480 m.p.h.) into a test wall." The engines penetrated only about two inches and the fuselage even less, according to the article. Something with two engines at 480 mph is a jet, definitely not a Cessna-type general aviation plane.
agazso 3y ago
If anyone is interested the whole series can be watched on Youtube for free. Altogether it is not that great, nevertheless I find the meta story about the pilot fascinating (a show about conspiracy theories "predicts" the 9/11 attack). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvxyiWmJpok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvxyiWmJpok
- parineum 3y ago
  You can watch it as two shows (like a lot of shows from the 26 episode season era), one being the story arc episodes and two being the monster-of-the week style episodes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythology_of_The_X-Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythology_of_The_X-Files

mickeyp 3y ago

I mean, speaking of conspiracies, I've watched the spin-off show and it's... not that good. Turns out, you need good writing and Mulder/Scully to keep those three interesting. It most assuredly got cancelled because it wasn't that good :-)

hnbad 3y ago
I'd say X-Files largely survived because of the dynamic of the characters. A lot of the episodes were not very good except for the interplay between the two. But in the absence of good writing you definitely needed Mulder and Scully and the spin-off didn't have them.
- the_doctah 3y ago
  The Smoking Man and AD Skinner were good characters too.

keepamovin 3y ago

The pilot episode of the Lone Gunmen spin-off, released earlier in 2001, featured a plot where "terrorists" had flown a passenger liner into the WTC but it was really a government inside job to gain support for a new war. That show didn't get renewed. That’s incredibly prescient! What the hell?

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
About a decade before that I was at a friend's house. The guy was a little bit weird so he subscribed to magazines for people to keep track of airline security and ant-terrorism monitoring and whatever. I looked through his magazines. I remember one magazine recommended that security forces should be on the lookout for terrorists using passenger planes as essentially human guided missiles. Went way into details of how much explosive power fuel would have etc. I suppose it wasn't especially prescient, more like obvious for any expert in the field.
- hnbad 3y ago
  IIRC terrorists using planes to attack buildings is a common threat scenario for infrastructure projects like nuclear power plants. However usually this refers to small civilian planes like Czesna. Not large passenger airliners like a Boeing 767. Let alone two of them.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    > However usually this refers to small civilian planes like Czesna. Not large passenger airliners like a Boeing 767. That is a really odd thing to say on the context of security. If people did indeed have this rationale, I would be surprised at the obvious and absurd display of incompetence. A vulnerability is a vulnerability, and you expect the attacker to decide how much impact he will try to cause (with a bias into "a lot"). The part about 3 planes is reasonable (something at this level of organization should raise an alert somewhere).
  - tivert 3y ago
    > IIRC terrorists using planes to attack buildings is a common threat scenario for infrastructure projects like nuclear power plants. However usually this refers to small civilian planes like Czesna. Not large passenger airliners like a Boeing 767. Honestly, that doesn't make any sense to me and I'm doubtful. I work at a company that had a data center (built pre-2001) 10 or 20 miles from an airport. It was built like a literal bunk because (IIRC) their threat model included "jet airliner crashes into datacenter" (no terrorism required). It looks like they were testing/modeling that scenario with nuclear power plants way back in 1988: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/us/threats-responses-reactor-vulnerability-experts-say-nuclear-plants-can-survive.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/us/threats-responses-reac...: > The 19 experts, many of them retired, work or worked at universities or companies that build or operate reactors. In an article on Friday in the journal Science, they dismiss fears voiced by opponents of nuclear power that the nation's reactors are vulnerable to a terrorist attack. > "We read that airplanes can fly through the reinforced, steel-lined 1.5-meter-thick concrete walls surrounding a nuclear reactor," the article says, "and inevitably cause a meltdown resulting in 'tens of thousands of deaths' and 'make a huge area uninhabitable for centuries,' to quote some recent stories." But, they add, "no airplane regardless of size, can fly through such a wall." > The article says the scenario "was actually tested in 1988 by mounting an unmanned plane on rails and 'flying' it at 215 meters per second (about 480 m.p.h.) into a test wall." The engines penetrated only about two inches and the fuselage even less, according to the article. Something with two engines at 480 mph is a jet, definitely not a Cessna-type general aviation plane.

agazso 3y ago

If anyone is interested the whole series can be watched on Youtube for free. Altogether it is not that great, nevertheless I find the meta story about the pilot fascinating (a show about conspiracy theories "predicts" the 9/11 attack). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvxyiWmJpok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvxyiWmJpok

parineum 3y ago
You can watch it as two shows (like a lot of shows from the 26 episode season era), one being the story arc episodes and two being the monster-of-the week style episodes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythology_of_The_X-Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythology_of_The_X-Files