The X-Files: Cold Cases by Joe Harris
My rating: 2 of 5 stars A Well-Made but Backwards Looking Production X-Files Cold Cases #1 consists of five episodes taking place about ten years after the TV show. Scully and Mulder have left the FBI and are living under aliases (Mr. and Mrs. Blake), trying to keep a low profile, when good old Skinner (their immediate FBI boss in the old TV show days) drops by to tell them that someone has hacked into the FBI database to peruse the old X-Files, possibly compromising the pair’s identities. This sets in motion their return to the FBI to go through some of their old cold cases, which sets in motion their involvement in schemes featuring black oil, the purity virus, super aliens or alien-human hybrids (who shapeshift, mind control, heal mortal wounds, take over people’s bodies, fly around in near instant travel UFOs, and so on), and Scully’s child (now eleven-years-old, fostered off to another family, and currently of unknown location). That concept is good and bad. The good is that it’s familiar and nostalgic and pretty much captures what made the TV show absorbing and appealing. The bad is that it looks backwards so much to the old TV show, reviving multiple dead characters multiple times, reopening old cases, resuming the old alien or alien-human hybrid schemes, etc. I just wish the producers had tried to make new cases unrelated to the old ones rather than revisit the old ones (often with substantial flashbacks from characters). One whole episode (4) consists of Spender’s flashbacks to the 1950s, 60s, and 70s and to various points of his early career. They could have made up new Cold Cases instead of revisiting old ones from the TV show. I did enjoy the quirky participation in events of the Lone Gunman, the mismatched and motley trio of hackers from the TV show (one of them has a crush on Scully, calling her “Red” and saying things like, “I’d walk through fire and wrestle bees for that woman.”) There are some good lines, like “Officer—the flashlight is dazzling me and this is not what it looks like,” “Extraordinary men are always the most tempted by ordinary things,” and: “Agent Mulder, do women speak so freely to men in your country?” “Yes, it’s a thing called gender equality, very potent when mixed with free speech. We like it.” Listening to the audiobook is like listening to the TV show. There are sound effects (cigarette lighting and puffing, cars crashing, guns firing, flame throwers and geysers spewing, etc.). The famous theme music sounds great. The dramatic “DUN!” sounds for the ends of cliffhanger scenes (almost as if we’re about to break for a commercial) are effective. And the voice actors are mostly fine--though the Saudia Arabian English accents in a late episode sound suspiciously like the Russian English ones in an earlier one. Without being able to watch the handsome and lovely Mulder and Scully interact and do their things and play off each other, a key part of the attraction of the old TV show is unavoidably missing in this audiobook, nostalgic though it is to hear Duchovny and Anderson’s voices and fine though they are at voice-acting (though sometimes sounding bored by it). Perhaps that’s why it’s easy to think that the alien shapeshifting and body puppetry etc. are a bit too convenient and absurd, and that the “not the government but the GOVERNMENT” concept (especially when you factor in scheming aliens) absolves the US government and its agencies of much agency in pernicious plans. Finally, the set of five episodes ends with MANY loose ends, so although I am not sorry to have listened to them, and did have fun with them while cleaning the apartment etc., I’m not going to listen to succeeding X-Files Cold Cases, because the project is too backwards looking for me and too prone to the old When You Have Aliens with Superpowers the Writers Can Do Anything They Want Any Time They Want flaw. Recommended mostly for fans of the old series. View all my reviews
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