The X-Files: An Overview
Finally, it is done. *g*
The X-Files was a show that ran for close to a decade, so not surprisingly, this is long. It is also very spoilery and picture heavy. I've done my best to give a balanced view of the series, but since I'm a slasher, I've given a bit extra room to things that are especially relevant from that aspect. Don't sue me, okay? ;) Also, my viewing of the last two seasons was sporadic at best, so in this overview, I don't have much to say about them. If I've gotten something completely wrong, don't hesitate to let me know.
The Premise:
Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI believes that his sister Samantha, who disappeared when they were children, was abducted by aliens. This has given him a deep interest in the paranormal and prompted him to give up a promising career in the Violent Crimes Unit to take charge of the Bureau's so called X-Files - cases that seem to defy natural explanations. To keep an eye on Mulder's unorthodox investigations, his superiors assign Special Agent Dana Scully to work with him. But Scully's scientific approach and innate scepticism don't put a damper on Mulder's search for the truth behind paranormal phenomena, as the men in power hoped it would; on the contrary, her qualities complement his, and together they become far more efficient than he could ever have been on his own. Each week, they solve a new X-File, but apart from the stand-alone episodes which dominate the show, there are also a few episodes every season which further the major story line of the series - the agents' search for the truth behind stories about extra-terrestrials on Earth.
The Conspiracy:
The mytharc of The X-Files is notoriously complicated, mainly due to producer Chris Carter's penchant for being as obscure as humanly possible and jossing his own storylines whenever he gets the chance. I think it's safe to say that very few fans truly understand each and every step of the main plot, and it's perfectly possible to enjoy the show and the fanfiction anyway. I'll try to give a very brief summary of the most important points in the conspiracy that Mulder and Scully gradually uncover.
In the X-Files universe, aliens have been visiting Earth on and off for thousands, maybe millions of years, possibly even creating humanity. In the 1940s - probably in relation to the Roswell incident, though this is unclear - the aliens return with the intention of colonizing Earth. To this end, they plan to release a virus known as 'the black oil' or 'the black cancer', which would wipe out humanity. (The virus travels in the form of an oily black liquid which moves over the victims body on its own until it finds entry through an orifice. Once inside, it can sometimes be seen as a dark cloud in the persons eyes.) But somehow, contact is made between the Colonizers and government officials, and a group of men decide to make a deal with the aliens. These men, who become known as the Consortium or the Syndicate, are promised their own and their families survival and safety in return for helping the Colonizers create a human/alien hybrid, a race of slaves who would facilitate the take-over of the planet. However, the Consortium uses the drawn-out process of creating the hybrid as a way of putting off the final invasion of Earth until they have had time to complete their secret weapon against the aliens - a vaccine which would make humans immune to the black oil and give us a chance to fight. They are doing what they believe is best for humanity, but they are also using whatever means necessary to keep the presence of the aliens and their own involvement with them from being discovered, and they have no qualms about using innocent people - even their own family members - as unwilling guinea pigs in their horrible experiments with hybridization, cloning and vaccination. Throughout the show, they are Mulder's and Scully's main enemies, using their considerable power to thwart the agents' search for truth at every turn.
To complicate matters, there is also a second group of aliens who violently oppose the ones who want to colonize Earth, and who resent the Consortium for playing along with the Colonizers instead of mobilizing a resistance against them. These aliens - often referred to as the Faceless Rebels because they have closed off their faces as a protection against the black oil - kill off many of the members of the Consortium, as well as large groups of people who were abducted by aliens and used in the hybridization experiments.
The players:
Special Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny):
The son of Bill and Teena Mulder (Or is he? See below.), Fox - who never lets anyone use his detested first name - grew up in New England (possibly Martha's Vineyard). He attended Oxford University, England, where he took a degree in psychology and had a relationship with a woman named Phoebe Green, who later joined the Scotland Yard. Known in the Bureau as 'Spooky', both because of his uncanny deduction skills and his interest in the paranormal, he is something of an outcast among his colleagues, who often ridicule his ideas. In his early days with the X-Files, before Scully, he was engaged to be married to his then partner Diana Fowley.
A man of intuition and powerful emotions rather than balanced intelligence, Mulder's life is governed by three credos: "The truth is out there" - the series motto, summing up Mulder's search for the truth about his sister's abduction, extraterrestrials and paranormal phenomena in general; "I want to believe" - the caption on a UFO poster on his office wall, stating his desire to see more things between heaven and earth than science allows; "Trust No1" - the paranoia of a conspiracy theorist in a nutshell. He does, however, develop a strong bond of trust with Scully, who becomes his only truly reliable ally in a world where nothing is as it seems. The Mulder/Scully relationship was the heart and soul of the show, and the fans were divided into one group who believed them to be best friends and nothing more, and one who felt that they were in love and should get together. The two factions called themselves 'NoRomos' and 'Shippers' respectively, and could get rather fanatic.
A few personal facts about Mulder: He wears Armani suits and notoriously ugly ties to work; he is red/green colourblind, though this is often ignored in fic; he has a photographic memory; he eats sunflower seeds as snacks; he lives in apartment 42 in a house in Alexandria, VA; he has a fishtank in his apartment, though no one knows how the fish stay alive when he's always off on assignments; he seems to continually sleep on his couch and never in his bed; he never has any girlfriends, but watches a lot of porn and calls phone-sex operators, something that's often overstated in fic; he has a famous flair for dry, witty remarks, and he never, ever does what he's told. Also, his mouth is a work of divine inspiration, but don't get me started on that. *g*
Special Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson):
As the daughter of Captain William Scully and his wife Margaret, Dana grew up at Miramar Naval Air Base, and the military way of thinking has probably influenced her as much as her Catholic faith. She is a medical doctor with a specialty in forensics, and has a degree in physics from the University of Maryland. Not surprisingly, her family wasn't pleased when she decided to join the FBI instead of practicing medicine. Scully is a logical person who investigates cases with scientific precision and tries every possible natural explanation before she's willing to accept that anything is due to supernatural phenomena. She's also a stable, deeply loyal and honest person, and all these qualities make her the perfect person to anchor Mulder's impulsive, somewhat paranoid character. At the same time, she's an exceptional agent in her own right, tough enough to handle even the most extreme situations on her own.
Early in the second season, Scully is taken to Skyland Mountain, Virginia, by a man named Duane Barry, and is abducted by aliens who perform tests on her and, as it later turns out, harvest her ova. She is soon returned to Earth, but a chip implanted in her shoulder eventually results in a brain tumour which comes close to killing her. The abduction also leaves her incapable of having children, something that torments her. However - through some miracle I think few people understood - she suddenly conceives a child by artificial insemination, Mulder being the proud father. Their baby boy is given the name William after both his grandfathers.
Scully always wears a necklace with a small golden cross given to her by her mother; she doesn't have a desk of her own in Mulder's basement X-Files office and resents this, though she only complains once; she attracts a lot of attention from the men in the Bureau, who often point out that she is wasting her talents with Mulder, but she remains single; she tends to wear neat suits and pumps with sensible heels, though in later seasons she more often wears leather jackets; she has two brothers and a sister, and the family appears to have been close knit; she gets a tattoo of a snake biting its tail on her lower back; her clean, cosy, well-ordered home is the opposite of the mess that is Mulder's.
Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi):
Skinner is Mulder's and Scully's superior at the Bureau, and as such he occupies the middle ground between them and the men in power who try to keep them down. He comes to treat the agents with obvious, though surly, affection, and often helps them out of trouble, but he also sometimes does the bidding of the higher-ups. To find a cure for Scully's cancer, he is willing to make a deal with the Consortium, though he prevents Mulder from selling his soul that way. At one point, he is shot by Luis Cardinal, Consortium hench man and colleague of Alex Krycek (see below). In season six, he is infected with nanomachines which make his body collapse when they are activated by remote from a palm pilot controlled by Krycek, probably to ensure his cooperation with the Consortium.
A former US Marine and a Vietnam veteran, Skinner is a tough, pragmatic man of few words. He is married to Sharon, though it would appear that they get divorced during the course of the show. In fanfic, he has been paired with all the other major characters, both male and female, and it's not unusual for him to be the third party in threesomes where the other two participants are either Mulder and Scully or Mulder and Krycek.
The Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM), aka Cancer Man , aka the Smoker, real name(?) C.G.B. Spender (William B. Davis):
The face of the Conspiracy and the constant enemy of our heroes. A government official with a high position within the Consortium, though not its leader. His constant smoking of cigarettes of the brand Morley leads Mulder to give him the nicknames he is known under for most of the series. Showing up without warning in his cloud of smoke and pulling the strings of many powerful people, he is an elusive figure who infuses his appearances with mystery and foreboding.
The Smoker and Mulder's father - who worked for the State Department and was himself among the founders of the Consortium - were friends at one time, and he had an affair with Mulder's mother. It's therefore possible that he is Mulder's real father, a fact that explains the odd affection he seems to have for the agent, although he still tries to have him killed more than once. With his ex-wife Cassandra Spender, whom he allowed to be subjected to hybridization experiments, he also has the son Jeffrey (see below). According to the episode 'Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man', he had a hand in everything from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate, and is also a failed novelist, though this information should be taken with a large grain of salt. It's clear, however, that he is a lonely man, and though he sometimes seems like the devil incarnate, at others he is very human, fallible and frail. On two occasions he appears to be killed - first by the Consortium, then by Krycek acting on his own - but he survives until the very last episode of the show. In flashbacks, his younger self is played by Chris Owens, who also plays Jeffrey in the present time.
Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea):
Judging by the number of episodes he appeared in, Alex Krycek is a minor character on The X-Files. Not so in the world of fandom. A combination of the characters enigmatic background and behaviour, actor Nick Lea's physical beauty and his chemistry with the regulars on the show resulted in Krycek becoming the protagonist of innumberable works of fanfiction, and Mulder/Krycek turning out to be the perhaps most popular XF slash pairing. A closer look at Alex's career is therefore in order.
Krycek makes his first appearance in season two, when the X-Files team has been temporarily disbanded and he is assigned as Mulder's new partner. He gives the impression of being an innocent rookie, with neatly combed hair and cheap suits, expresses admiration for Mulder and interest in the paranormal, and appears shocked when he has to shoot and kill a suspect. It's impossible, however, to tell how much of this is an act, because we soon discover that Krycek has been planted by the Consortium to spy on Mulder and is reporting directly to the Cigarette Smoking Man. After killing a tram-operator at Skyland Mountain and thereby preventing Mulder from getting to the top in time to save Scully from being abducted, and then killing Duane Barry to keep him from talking, Krycek disappears. Mulder now knows that he was working for the Consortium, and judging by how he behaves every time they meet over the following seasons, he takes this betrayal hard. At least once, he calls Krycek a rat, and that and similar invectives such as Ratboy and Rat Bastard have become fan designations for Alex, often used affectionately rather than as insults. (Odd nicknames sometimes used in fanfiction are explained if you know that 'lysa' and 'krysa' are the Russian words for 'fox' and 'rat'.) The next time we meet Alex, he's shed his FBI skin and appears in his trademark style of denim and leather. The peculiar pattern for all later interactions between Mulder and Krycek begins to establish itself as soon as they come face to face again - a furious Mulder subjects Krycek to verbal and uncharacteristic physical abuse, and Alex, professional killer though he is, never hits back. Much has been made of the psychology behind this, especially by slash fans.
During his few episodes, Krycek leads a very active life. A swift summary of a chain of events that spans several seasons and most of the mytharc episodes:
On the Consortium's orders, Krycek makes Mulder paranoid and violent by putting a hallucinogenic drug in his building's water supply, shoots his father and very nearly manages to frame him for the murder. He's very nearly killed by a still drugged and furious Mulder, and is saved only by the fact that Scully is willing to shoot her partner to keep him from becoming a murderer. He takes part in a botched attempt on Scully's life, resulting in the death of her sister Melissa at the hands of Luis Cardinal. He gets his hands on a DAT tape which contains important information about the Conspiracy and is nearly killed by the Consortium for his trouble, leading him to turn his back on the organization. He sells information from the DAT tape to the highest bidder, is caught by Mulder in Hong Kong and dragged back to the US. In the Hong Kong airport, he is possessed by a version of the black oil often nicknamed 'the oilien' - an alien entity who enters people's bodies and controls their minds, and which wants to return to the spacecraft it came from. He escapes from Mulder, finds the UFO in an abandoned underground missile silo and is locked in with it by the Smoker, free of the oilien who leaves him for the ship, but effectively buried alive. He is rescued, or so he claims, by members of a neo-nazi militia who happen to stumble by, and for a while pretends to join them in order to get back on Mulder's good side by exposing the terrorist acts they are planning. He says he also wants to expose the Consortium, and gives Mulder information which leads the two of them to Tunguska, Russia, where a Russian counterpart to the Consortium is conducting experiments with the black oil in a prison camp. He claims to be the son of Russian immigrants and it emerges that he speaks the language fluently. He spends some time locked with Mulder in a small Russian prison cell. He falls into the hands of escaped prisoners who cut off his left arm without anesthetics in a misguided attempt to save him from the effects of the black oil. He makes it back to civilization and it turns out that he's been working for the Russians for a while, perhaps since the very beginning. He returns to America, tries to trade information for the vaccine the Consortium is developing, has a relationship with Marita Covarrubias (see below) and is betrayed by her. He breaks into Mulder's apartment, holds the agent at gunpoint, tells him about the planned colonization and the existence of the Faceless Rebels, says that it's imperative to fight for humanity's survival, hands over the gun and kisses Mulder on the cheek. He runs more errands for the Consortium, probably with the intention of double-crossing them, though by now it's impossible to tell whose side he's on in any given situation. He is a prisoner in a Tunisian labour camp for reasons unknown, and released to help Marita find a UFO for the Smoker, but instead leads our FBI agents to it, which results in Mulder's abduction by aliens. He pushes the now wheelchair bound Smoker down a flight of stairs, apparently killing him. He tries to make Skinner kill Scully's miracle baby (which disrupts the order of things in some typically incomprehensible way) and in return offers a vaccine that would save Mulder's life when the agent is returned by the aliens more dead than alive. He helps our heroes against alien super soldiers in the mess surrounding the birth of the baby, but finally becomes convinced that the colonizers will win, changes sides one last time and pulls his gun on Mulder, intending to kill him. However, he is in the end unable to go through with this, hesitates too long, and is himself shot and killed by Skinner.
There are quite a few Krycek apologists in fandom who would argue that he didn't really do half of the things I've enumerated here, but personally, I think it's more interesting when you don't try to find a way around the moral defects of the character but jump right in with them.
The Lone Gunmen -Langly (Dean Haglund), Frohike (Tom Braidwood) and Byers (Bruce Harwood):
Friends of Mulder's who run the magazine The Lone Gunman: The Newsletter for Those Who Want to Stay Informed and Alive, a publication filled with conspiracy theories on various subjects. Scully finds them to be the most paranoid people she's ever met, but they often prove invaluable to the agents' investigations by providing little-known or classified information and being able to by-pass any security system. A group of highly intelligent nerds, the Gunmen are often used for comic relief, but they also have serious aspects, perhaps most clearly revealed in Frohike's unrequited love for Scully and in the episodes which centre around Byers' relationship with the mysterious Susanne Modeski. The Gunmen gained a surprising level of popularity among fans and even got their own spinoff show.
Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin) and Mr. X (Steve Williams):
At various times during the show, these men are Mulder's inside sources for information about the Conspiracy, meeting him in dark alleys and underground parking garages. They are both killed by the Consortium.
Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden):
Replaces Mr. X as Mulder's contact in the Consortium. Employed by the United Nations. Though she initially appears to be helping him, it turns out that she is part of the conspiracy against him. At one point, she has a sexual relationship with Alex Krycek, though the degree of actual emotions involved on either end is anyone's guess. She tries to double-cross everyone, gets infected with the black oil, cured by a vaccine, and subjected to terrible Consortium tests. Ends up helping Krycek pushing the Smoker down the stairs.
The Well-Manicured Man (John Neville):
A high-ranking member of the Consortium. Gives orders to the Smoker and often disagrees with his opinions.
The Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson):
A shapeshifting alien who turns up all over the place, killing Faceless Rebels as well as humans who might reveal the alien presence on Earth. Uses an ice-pick like tool, in fanfic sometimes called a 'plam', to kill other aliens with a stab to the back of the neck, a method on occasion also adopted by Krycek and Mulder.
Special Agent Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens):
The son of Cassandra Spender and the Smoker. Seems rather confused about his place in the world. Takes over the X-Files for a while when Mulder and Scully are in the doghouse for the umpteenth time, but has no interest in the paranormal and deliberately fails to investigate cases that Mulder find important. Has a go at working for his father in the Consortium, but doesn't have the stomach for it. Is killed by the Smoker, who throughout seems to feel that Mulder is a better son to him, even though they are enemies.
Special Agent Diana Fowley (Mimi Rogers):
Appears in season five at the same time as Jeffrey, revealing herself to be Mulder's former fiancée and his one-time ally in his investigations of the paranormal. Has been in Europe and the Middle East since the break-up. She and Scully have near cat-fights over Mulder, and large parts of fandom instantly joined our redhead in hating her guts. Fowley is partnered with Spender during his time with the X-Files, but claims to be on Mulder's side. She is finally shown to have worked for the Consortium all along, and is killed by them.
Special Agent John Doggett (Robert Patrick):
A former New York City cop and US Marine, Doggett is assigned as Scully's partner in season eight, when Mulder has been abducted by aliens and is missing for quite some time. He is a died-in-the-wool skeptic who believes that everything can be solved using proper police investigation techniques. Was divorced from his wife Barbara after the kidnapping and murder of his eight-year-old son Luke.
Special Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish):
Joins the X-Files team halfway through season eight. Is interested in the metaphysical and studied folklore and mythology at university. Grew up in Mexico. Investigated the murder of Doggett's son.
Links:
The Ultimate X-Files Information Complex - This site has an excellent detailed guide to the mythology of The X-Files and was a great help for me when writing this.
The X-Files Compilation - A site with extensive character guides. An excellent place to go when you're reading a fic and find yourself wondering 'Who's this Tooms guy?' or 'Why is the dog called Queequeg?'
The Gossamer Project - One of the largest fic archives on the web. X-Files fanfiction of every conceivable variety by more writers than I even want to contemplate. Daunting to wade through if you don't know what you're looking for, but admirable in its ambition.
The Basement - The main X-Files slash archive, m/m and f/f, all pairings. A huge archive, where you'll also find an extensive list of links to authors' pages and smaller, more specialized archives.
TER/MA - The portal page for the main Krycek-centric slash archives RatB (Mulder/Krycek) and Warm Thoughts (Skinner/Krycek), as well as for some great fan art pages. A beautiful site, adorned with art by the famous Theban Band, and the number one place for all things Krycek.
ScullySlash - Just what it sounds like, an archive for all those stories where our breathtaking redhead gets it on with another woman. Also welcomes stories about other female X-Files characters.
The XF Romantics Fanfic Archive - An MSR (Mulder/Scully Relationship) archive. Truth be told, I know absolutely nothing about shipper fic and picked this archive at random because it's the most pleasing to the eye. If anyone knows of better places, please let me know so I can add the links.
The Acacia Archive - Site with strict NoRomo policy. Strictly gen, absolutely no hints at Mulder/Scully romance.
The X-Files was a show that ran for close to a decade, so not surprisingly, this is long. It is also very spoilery and picture heavy. I've done my best to give a balanced view of the series, but since I'm a slasher, I've given a bit extra room to things that are especially relevant from that aspect. Don't sue me, okay? ;) Also, my viewing of the last two seasons was sporadic at best, so in this overview, I don't have much to say about them. If I've gotten something completely wrong, don't hesitate to let me know.
The Premise:
Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI believes that his sister Samantha, who disappeared when they were children, was abducted by aliens. This has given him a deep interest in the paranormal and prompted him to give up a promising career in the Violent Crimes Unit to take charge of the Bureau's so called X-Files - cases that seem to defy natural explanations. To keep an eye on Mulder's unorthodox investigations, his superiors assign Special Agent Dana Scully to work with him. But Scully's scientific approach and innate scepticism don't put a damper on Mulder's search for the truth behind paranormal phenomena, as the men in power hoped it would; on the contrary, her qualities complement his, and together they become far more efficient than he could ever have been on his own. Each week, they solve a new X-File, but apart from the stand-alone episodes which dominate the show, there are also a few episodes every season which further the major story line of the series - the agents' search for the truth behind stories about extra-terrestrials on Earth.
The Conspiracy:
The mytharc of The X-Files is notoriously complicated, mainly due to producer Chris Carter's penchant for being as obscure as humanly possible and jossing his own storylines whenever he gets the chance. I think it's safe to say that very few fans truly understand each and every step of the main plot, and it's perfectly possible to enjoy the show and the fanfiction anyway. I'll try to give a very brief summary of the most important points in the conspiracy that Mulder and Scully gradually uncover.
In the X-Files universe, aliens have been visiting Earth on and off for thousands, maybe millions of years, possibly even creating humanity. In the 1940s - probably in relation to the Roswell incident, though this is unclear - the aliens return with the intention of colonizing Earth. To this end, they plan to release a virus known as 'the black oil' or 'the black cancer', which would wipe out humanity. (The virus travels in the form of an oily black liquid which moves over the victims body on its own until it finds entry through an orifice. Once inside, it can sometimes be seen as a dark cloud in the persons eyes.) But somehow, contact is made between the Colonizers and government officials, and a group of men decide to make a deal with the aliens. These men, who become known as the Consortium or the Syndicate, are promised their own and their families survival and safety in return for helping the Colonizers create a human/alien hybrid, a race of slaves who would facilitate the take-over of the planet. However, the Consortium uses the drawn-out process of creating the hybrid as a way of putting off the final invasion of Earth until they have had time to complete their secret weapon against the aliens - a vaccine which would make humans immune to the black oil and give us a chance to fight. They are doing what they believe is best for humanity, but they are also using whatever means necessary to keep the presence of the aliens and their own involvement with them from being discovered, and they have no qualms about using innocent people - even their own family members - as unwilling guinea pigs in their horrible experiments with hybridization, cloning and vaccination. Throughout the show, they are Mulder's and Scully's main enemies, using their considerable power to thwart the agents' search for truth at every turn.
To complicate matters, there is also a second group of aliens who violently oppose the ones who want to colonize Earth, and who resent the Consortium for playing along with the Colonizers instead of mobilizing a resistance against them. These aliens - often referred to as the Faceless Rebels because they have closed off their faces as a protection against the black oil - kill off many of the members of the Consortium, as well as large groups of people who were abducted by aliens and used in the hybridization experiments.
The players:
Special Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny):
The son of Bill and Teena Mulder (Or is he? See below.), Fox - who never lets anyone use his detested first name - grew up in New England (possibly Martha's Vineyard). He attended Oxford University, England, where he took a degree in psychology and had a relationship with a woman named Phoebe Green, who later joined the Scotland Yard. Known in the Bureau as 'Spooky', both because of his uncanny deduction skills and his interest in the paranormal, he is something of an outcast among his colleagues, who often ridicule his ideas. In his early days with the X-Files, before Scully, he was engaged to be married to his then partner Diana Fowley.
A man of intuition and powerful emotions rather than balanced intelligence, Mulder's life is governed by three credos: "The truth is out there" - the series motto, summing up Mulder's search for the truth about his sister's abduction, extraterrestrials and paranormal phenomena in general; "I want to believe" - the caption on a UFO poster on his office wall, stating his desire to see more things between heaven and earth than science allows; "Trust No1" - the paranoia of a conspiracy theorist in a nutshell. He does, however, develop a strong bond of trust with Scully, who becomes his only truly reliable ally in a world where nothing is as it seems. The Mulder/Scully relationship was the heart and soul of the show, and the fans were divided into one group who believed them to be best friends and nothing more, and one who felt that they were in love and should get together. The two factions called themselves 'NoRomos' and 'Shippers' respectively, and could get rather fanatic.
A few personal facts about Mulder: He wears Armani suits and notoriously ugly ties to work; he is red/green colourblind, though this is often ignored in fic; he has a photographic memory; he eats sunflower seeds as snacks; he lives in apartment 42 in a house in Alexandria, VA; he has a fishtank in his apartment, though no one knows how the fish stay alive when he's always off on assignments; he seems to continually sleep on his couch and never in his bed; he never has any girlfriends, but watches a lot of porn and calls phone-sex operators, something that's often overstated in fic; he has a famous flair for dry, witty remarks, and he never, ever does what he's told. Also, his mouth is a work of divine inspiration, but don't get me started on that. *g*
Special Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson):
As the daughter of Captain William Scully and his wife Margaret, Dana grew up at Miramar Naval Air Base, and the military way of thinking has probably influenced her as much as her Catholic faith. She is a medical doctor with a specialty in forensics, and has a degree in physics from the University of Maryland. Not surprisingly, her family wasn't pleased when she decided to join the FBI instead of practicing medicine. Scully is a logical person who investigates cases with scientific precision and tries every possible natural explanation before she's willing to accept that anything is due to supernatural phenomena. She's also a stable, deeply loyal and honest person, and all these qualities make her the perfect person to anchor Mulder's impulsive, somewhat paranoid character. At the same time, she's an exceptional agent in her own right, tough enough to handle even the most extreme situations on her own.
Early in the second season, Scully is taken to Skyland Mountain, Virginia, by a man named Duane Barry, and is abducted by aliens who perform tests on her and, as it later turns out, harvest her ova. She is soon returned to Earth, but a chip implanted in her shoulder eventually results in a brain tumour which comes close to killing her. The abduction also leaves her incapable of having children, something that torments her. However - through some miracle I think few people understood - she suddenly conceives a child by artificial insemination, Mulder being the proud father. Their baby boy is given the name William after both his grandfathers.
Scully always wears a necklace with a small golden cross given to her by her mother; she doesn't have a desk of her own in Mulder's basement X-Files office and resents this, though she only complains once; she attracts a lot of attention from the men in the Bureau, who often point out that she is wasting her talents with Mulder, but she remains single; she tends to wear neat suits and pumps with sensible heels, though in later seasons she more often wears leather jackets; she has two brothers and a sister, and the family appears to have been close knit; she gets a tattoo of a snake biting its tail on her lower back; her clean, cosy, well-ordered home is the opposite of the mess that is Mulder's.
Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi):
Skinner is Mulder's and Scully's superior at the Bureau, and as such he occupies the middle ground between them and the men in power who try to keep them down. He comes to treat the agents with obvious, though surly, affection, and often helps them out of trouble, but he also sometimes does the bidding of the higher-ups. To find a cure for Scully's cancer, he is willing to make a deal with the Consortium, though he prevents Mulder from selling his soul that way. At one point, he is shot by Luis Cardinal, Consortium hench man and colleague of Alex Krycek (see below). In season six, he is infected with nanomachines which make his body collapse when they are activated by remote from a palm pilot controlled by Krycek, probably to ensure his cooperation with the Consortium.
A former US Marine and a Vietnam veteran, Skinner is a tough, pragmatic man of few words. He is married to Sharon, though it would appear that they get divorced during the course of the show. In fanfic, he has been paired with all the other major characters, both male and female, and it's not unusual for him to be the third party in threesomes where the other two participants are either Mulder and Scully or Mulder and Krycek.
The Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM), aka Cancer Man , aka the Smoker, real name(?) C.G.B. Spender (William B. Davis):
The face of the Conspiracy and the constant enemy of our heroes. A government official with a high position within the Consortium, though not its leader. His constant smoking of cigarettes of the brand Morley leads Mulder to give him the nicknames he is known under for most of the series. Showing up without warning in his cloud of smoke and pulling the strings of many powerful people, he is an elusive figure who infuses his appearances with mystery and foreboding.
The Smoker and Mulder's father - who worked for the State Department and was himself among the founders of the Consortium - were friends at one time, and he had an affair with Mulder's mother. It's therefore possible that he is Mulder's real father, a fact that explains the odd affection he seems to have for the agent, although he still tries to have him killed more than once. With his ex-wife Cassandra Spender, whom he allowed to be subjected to hybridization experiments, he also has the son Jeffrey (see below). According to the episode 'Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man', he had a hand in everything from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate, and is also a failed novelist, though this information should be taken with a large grain of salt. It's clear, however, that he is a lonely man, and though he sometimes seems like the devil incarnate, at others he is very human, fallible and frail. On two occasions he appears to be killed - first by the Consortium, then by Krycek acting on his own - but he survives until the very last episode of the show. In flashbacks, his younger self is played by Chris Owens, who also plays Jeffrey in the present time.
Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea):
Judging by the number of episodes he appeared in, Alex Krycek is a minor character on The X-Files. Not so in the world of fandom. A combination of the characters enigmatic background and behaviour, actor Nick Lea's physical beauty and his chemistry with the regulars on the show resulted in Krycek becoming the protagonist of innumberable works of fanfiction, and Mulder/Krycek turning out to be the perhaps most popular XF slash pairing. A closer look at Alex's career is therefore in order.
Krycek makes his first appearance in season two, when the X-Files team has been temporarily disbanded and he is assigned as Mulder's new partner. He gives the impression of being an innocent rookie, with neatly combed hair and cheap suits, expresses admiration for Mulder and interest in the paranormal, and appears shocked when he has to shoot and kill a suspect. It's impossible, however, to tell how much of this is an act, because we soon discover that Krycek has been planted by the Consortium to spy on Mulder and is reporting directly to the Cigarette Smoking Man. After killing a tram-operator at Skyland Mountain and thereby preventing Mulder from getting to the top in time to save Scully from being abducted, and then killing Duane Barry to keep him from talking, Krycek disappears. Mulder now knows that he was working for the Consortium, and judging by how he behaves every time they meet over the following seasons, he takes this betrayal hard. At least once, he calls Krycek a rat, and that and similar invectives such as Ratboy and Rat Bastard have become fan designations for Alex, often used affectionately rather than as insults. (Odd nicknames sometimes used in fanfiction are explained if you know that 'lysa' and 'krysa' are the Russian words for 'fox' and 'rat'.) The next time we meet Alex, he's shed his FBI skin and appears in his trademark style of denim and leather. The peculiar pattern for all later interactions between Mulder and Krycek begins to establish itself as soon as they come face to face again - a furious Mulder subjects Krycek to verbal and uncharacteristic physical abuse, and Alex, professional killer though he is, never hits back. Much has been made of the psychology behind this, especially by slash fans.
During his few episodes, Krycek leads a very active life. A swift summary of a chain of events that spans several seasons and most of the mytharc episodes:
On the Consortium's orders, Krycek makes Mulder paranoid and violent by putting a hallucinogenic drug in his building's water supply, shoots his father and very nearly manages to frame him for the murder. He's very nearly killed by a still drugged and furious Mulder, and is saved only by the fact that Scully is willing to shoot her partner to keep him from becoming a murderer. He takes part in a botched attempt on Scully's life, resulting in the death of her sister Melissa at the hands of Luis Cardinal. He gets his hands on a DAT tape which contains important information about the Conspiracy and is nearly killed by the Consortium for his trouble, leading him to turn his back on the organization. He sells information from the DAT tape to the highest bidder, is caught by Mulder in Hong Kong and dragged back to the US. In the Hong Kong airport, he is possessed by a version of the black oil often nicknamed 'the oilien' - an alien entity who enters people's bodies and controls their minds, and which wants to return to the spacecraft it came from. He escapes from Mulder, finds the UFO in an abandoned underground missile silo and is locked in with it by the Smoker, free of the oilien who leaves him for the ship, but effectively buried alive. He is rescued, or so he claims, by members of a neo-nazi militia who happen to stumble by, and for a while pretends to join them in order to get back on Mulder's good side by exposing the terrorist acts they are planning. He says he also wants to expose the Consortium, and gives Mulder information which leads the two of them to Tunguska, Russia, where a Russian counterpart to the Consortium is conducting experiments with the black oil in a prison camp. He claims to be the son of Russian immigrants and it emerges that he speaks the language fluently. He spends some time locked with Mulder in a small Russian prison cell. He falls into the hands of escaped prisoners who cut off his left arm without anesthetics in a misguided attempt to save him from the effects of the black oil. He makes it back to civilization and it turns out that he's been working for the Russians for a while, perhaps since the very beginning. He returns to America, tries to trade information for the vaccine the Consortium is developing, has a relationship with Marita Covarrubias (see below) and is betrayed by her. He breaks into Mulder's apartment, holds the agent at gunpoint, tells him about the planned colonization and the existence of the Faceless Rebels, says that it's imperative to fight for humanity's survival, hands over the gun and kisses Mulder on the cheek. He runs more errands for the Consortium, probably with the intention of double-crossing them, though by now it's impossible to tell whose side he's on in any given situation. He is a prisoner in a Tunisian labour camp for reasons unknown, and released to help Marita find a UFO for the Smoker, but instead leads our FBI agents to it, which results in Mulder's abduction by aliens. He pushes the now wheelchair bound Smoker down a flight of stairs, apparently killing him. He tries to make Skinner kill Scully's miracle baby (which disrupts the order of things in some typically incomprehensible way) and in return offers a vaccine that would save Mulder's life when the agent is returned by the aliens more dead than alive. He helps our heroes against alien super soldiers in the mess surrounding the birth of the baby, but finally becomes convinced that the colonizers will win, changes sides one last time and pulls his gun on Mulder, intending to kill him. However, he is in the end unable to go through with this, hesitates too long, and is himself shot and killed by Skinner.
There are quite a few Krycek apologists in fandom who would argue that he didn't really do half of the things I've enumerated here, but personally, I think it's more interesting when you don't try to find a way around the moral defects of the character but jump right in with them.
The Lone Gunmen -Langly (Dean Haglund), Frohike (Tom Braidwood) and Byers (Bruce Harwood):
Friends of Mulder's who run the magazine The Lone Gunman: The Newsletter for Those Who Want to Stay Informed and Alive, a publication filled with conspiracy theories on various subjects. Scully finds them to be the most paranoid people she's ever met, but they often prove invaluable to the agents' investigations by providing little-known or classified information and being able to by-pass any security system. A group of highly intelligent nerds, the Gunmen are often used for comic relief, but they also have serious aspects, perhaps most clearly revealed in Frohike's unrequited love for Scully and in the episodes which centre around Byers' relationship with the mysterious Susanne Modeski. The Gunmen gained a surprising level of popularity among fans and even got their own spinoff show.
Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin) and Mr. X (Steve Williams):
At various times during the show, these men are Mulder's inside sources for information about the Conspiracy, meeting him in dark alleys and underground parking garages. They are both killed by the Consortium.
Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden):
Replaces Mr. X as Mulder's contact in the Consortium. Employed by the United Nations. Though she initially appears to be helping him, it turns out that she is part of the conspiracy against him. At one point, she has a sexual relationship with Alex Krycek, though the degree of actual emotions involved on either end is anyone's guess. She tries to double-cross everyone, gets infected with the black oil, cured by a vaccine, and subjected to terrible Consortium tests. Ends up helping Krycek pushing the Smoker down the stairs.
The Well-Manicured Man (John Neville):
A high-ranking member of the Consortium. Gives orders to the Smoker and often disagrees with his opinions.
The Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson):
A shapeshifting alien who turns up all over the place, killing Faceless Rebels as well as humans who might reveal the alien presence on Earth. Uses an ice-pick like tool, in fanfic sometimes called a 'plam', to kill other aliens with a stab to the back of the neck, a method on occasion also adopted by Krycek and Mulder.
Special Agent Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens):
The son of Cassandra Spender and the Smoker. Seems rather confused about his place in the world. Takes over the X-Files for a while when Mulder and Scully are in the doghouse for the umpteenth time, but has no interest in the paranormal and deliberately fails to investigate cases that Mulder find important. Has a go at working for his father in the Consortium, but doesn't have the stomach for it. Is killed by the Smoker, who throughout seems to feel that Mulder is a better son to him, even though they are enemies.
Special Agent Diana Fowley (Mimi Rogers):
Appears in season five at the same time as Jeffrey, revealing herself to be Mulder's former fiancée and his one-time ally in his investigations of the paranormal. Has been in Europe and the Middle East since the break-up. She and Scully have near cat-fights over Mulder, and large parts of fandom instantly joined our redhead in hating her guts. Fowley is partnered with Spender during his time with the X-Files, but claims to be on Mulder's side. She is finally shown to have worked for the Consortium all along, and is killed by them.
Special Agent John Doggett (Robert Patrick):
A former New York City cop and US Marine, Doggett is assigned as Scully's partner in season eight, when Mulder has been abducted by aliens and is missing for quite some time. He is a died-in-the-wool skeptic who believes that everything can be solved using proper police investigation techniques. Was divorced from his wife Barbara after the kidnapping and murder of his eight-year-old son Luke.
Special Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish):
Joins the X-Files team halfway through season eight. Is interested in the metaphysical and studied folklore and mythology at university. Grew up in Mexico. Investigated the murder of Doggett's son.
Links:
The Ultimate X-Files Information Complex - This site has an excellent detailed guide to the mythology of The X-Files and was a great help for me when writing this.
The X-Files Compilation - A site with extensive character guides. An excellent place to go when you're reading a fic and find yourself wondering 'Who's this Tooms guy?' or 'Why is the dog called Queequeg?'
The Gossamer Project - One of the largest fic archives on the web. X-Files fanfiction of every conceivable variety by more writers than I even want to contemplate. Daunting to wade through if you don't know what you're looking for, but admirable in its ambition.
The Basement - The main X-Files slash archive, m/m and f/f, all pairings. A huge archive, where you'll also find an extensive list of links to authors' pages and smaller, more specialized archives.
TER/MA - The portal page for the main Krycek-centric slash archives RatB (Mulder/Krycek) and Warm Thoughts (Skinner/Krycek), as well as for some great fan art pages. A beautiful site, adorned with art by the famous Theban Band, and the number one place for all things Krycek.
ScullySlash - Just what it sounds like, an archive for all those stories where our breathtaking redhead gets it on with another woman. Also welcomes stories about other female X-Files characters.
The XF Romantics Fanfic Archive - An MSR (Mulder/Scully Relationship) archive. Truth be told, I know absolutely nothing about shipper fic and picked this archive at random because it's the most pleasing to the eye. If anyone knows of better places, please let me know so I can add the links.
The Acacia Archive - Site with strict NoRomo policy. Strictly gen, absolutely no hints at Mulder/Scully romance.