This month is the twentieth anniversary of The X-Files. (Yes. Feel old.) In honor of our beloved truth-seekers and the show that brought both the terms “mythology” and “shipping” into the popular lexicon, let’s look at 20 reasons The X-Files only worked because it was set 20 years ago.
1. Everyone has a flashlight on their phones.
Remember all those times Mulder and Scully were stuck in dark places without a flashlight? Now they’d just whip out their smartphones.
2. And a camera.
I’m surprised Mulder didn’t carry around a camera in the ’90s. Now, he could totally send Scully Snapchats of all the aliens and unexplained phenomena that he saw and she didn’t.
3. And a search engine.
Remember when Mulder and Scully argued over the exact definition of a vampire or a chupacabra? Sadly, their favorite form of nerd flirting would end the minute one of them said “Siri. Define chupacabra.”
4. And a GPS.
Mulder would never get lost again.
5. Cell towers are everywhere.
Mulder and Scully conveniently lacked cell phone reception at every time it would have been useful. Now, there’s no excuse.
6. As is Wi-Fi.
Even if they were on a train without phone reception, they could still use the train’s Wi-Fi to email each other. Amtrak has Wi-Fi now, as do many buses. There’s no convenient excuse for them to not be able to communicate. (Well, except maybe dead batteries. But there’s no excuse for them not to carry travel chargers in their FBI trenchcoats.)
6. Social media would screw up time loss.
Want to find out what happened in those nine minutes you missed? Ask Twitter, or refresh your Facebook newsfeed.
7. The evil artificial intelligences would win.
In both “Ghost and the Machine” and “Kill Switch,” our heroes defeat evil sentient AIs by uploading viruses. Now every corporation has a highly sophisticated form of internet security and antivirus software, and those viruses wouldn’t stand a chance. (Also: is “sentient AI” redundant?)
8. Paternity testing would take the mystery out of Baby William.
Remember how Scully had a baby, and it might have been Mulder’s but also might have been part alien or super-soldier? (Yes, we’d like to forget that plotline too.) They’d just snag a quick paternity test and solve the matter. The truth is in your DNA, Fox Mulder!
9. Mulder and Scully could define their relationship status on Facebook.
They’d pick “it’s complicated,” right?
10. They’d also be able to stay connected to all the people they met over the years.
New message from LinkedIn: Eugene Victor Tooms got a new job!
11. Of course, that means they’d spend 25 percent of their day filtering out LinkedIn email.
The average American worker spends over two hours every day sorting and replying to email. That’d make an exciting television show.
12. And there’d probably only be one of them.
Post-recession, the FBI could probably only afford to hire either Mulder or Scully. (You know as well as I do that we’d all pick Scully.)
13. It’s much more difficult to keep an identity secret these days.
So many plotlines hinged on secret identities. So, so many plotlines.
14. On the other hand, it’s much easier to figure out what happened to someone.
Just call the team at CSI. And no, it wasn’t vampires.
15. The Lone Gunmen’s zine would disappear.
Except among hipsters.
16. The Lone Gunmen would be the coolest people on the show.
Thanks to the explosion of Nerd Culture, The Lone Gunmen would go from geeks to awesome geeks. They would all have girlfriends and their own YouTube channels.
17. Mulder wouldn’t throw pencils into the ceiling when he was bored.
He’d play Candy Crush instead. Or check Reddit.
19. Scully would never eat another “non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicle.”
She’d be all over the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte instead. Non-fat, of course. No whip.
19. You couldn’t do that “bug crawling across the screen” trick anymore.
Instead of 13-inch TVs, we watch shows on gigantic screens or 4-inch smartphones.
20. Vince Gilligan would be otherwise employed.
Even though he swears he learned everything he knows about writing Breaking Bad from his work on The X-Files.
What’d we forget? Let us know in the comments.
About the Author:
James is an avid designer and coder since he was 12, James writes and curates topics on both basic web development and advanced languages with a particular focus on mobile. Read his thought on tech on Twitter and his favorite articles on Google+
