Talk:The X-Files/Archive 3

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Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" in mythology list

I'm creating this in anticipation that people will argue with me about my recent inclusion of this episode in the mythology list, as I know that list is a hotly debated topic. My rationale for including it is that it presents very important elements into the story: the fact that the government is flying UFOs, and that they're hypnotically implanting people with abduction experiences. These seem obvious to me as being very important to the mythology. If you feel strongly one way or the other please post your thoughts. Thanks.Equazcion 11:52, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Well the thing is, this has been debated here before and it seems the only solution is to limit what counts as mythology as much as possible. Otherwise the purpose of a mythology section is defeated- the idea isn't to say "these are the essential episodes to watch if you want to know The X-Files".
In the case of Jose Chung's, you're right it does fit with the mythology, but none of those elements were actually INTRODUCED in that episode and then picked up later in the "serious" ones. If it was still 1996 and there had only been one XF episode of this type, putting it in mythology would make sense, but following Jose Chung's there were a number of other comedy episodes that took elements of the mythology, like Dreamland, so that comedy episodes became their own category.
If Jose's is there, very soon you'll get people adding all these other comedy episodes, and all the Lone Gunmen episodes. And then an XF fan sees those there, but say Tooms or The Host is not there. I've never seen Tooms described as a mythology episode until someone just added it here in a recent edit, but it's undeniably far more important to the mythology than Dreamland or even Unusual Suspects is, since it's where CSM first talks and Skinner first appears. And Beyond the Sea is where Scully first "believes" and Mulder first doesn't, and where her father first appears, which of course is necessary before there can be a "One Breath"- so then you'll get people adding every episode that's "important" to the list, regardless of whether it fits in mythology or not. The show also went more and more toward an interpretation where all paranormal and alien events are a manifestation of the same supernatural presence, so in that case any X-Files episode is mythology.
I've explained this before but my personal criteria for inclusion in this article's mythology list is something like this:
  • Plot deals with central conspiracy of show in some way, even if it's only a subplot of the episode. If the central conspiracy is not the main plot of the episode, or it's not presented in a typical mythology formula, then the episode NEEDS to either feature Cigarette Smoking Man, X or another conspirator (preferably outside of Mulder's memories), or it NEEDS to have long term effects for the characters or else it can't be considered mythology.
  • However, not ALL the dramatic episodes with long term effects for the characters are "mythology." Episodes like Beyond the Sea, Never Again and Paper Hearts tie in with it in some ways, but can't be listed as mythology episodes.
  • If the conspiracy IS the main plot of the episode, it will always be considered mythology except if it's one of those episodes which in retrospect don't make sense as part of the conspiracy and which they never ever returned to (all those first season episodes with Deep Throat and aliens added unnecessarily to the plot, things like Ghost in the Machine, Fearful Symmetry, F. Emasculata and Avatar).
  • At least for the purposes of this list, which is supposed to simplify things for people who don't know what "mythology" means, we can't list episodes that are considered classic examples of "comedies" or "monsters of the week" as mythology.
  • Travelers is in a gray area because what happens may not be so important and it lacks any of the important characters, but it involves the "true" history of the conspiracy and the early X-Files. Musings of a CSM is mythology, whether or not it's "true", because the flashbacks involve characters as important as CSM and Deep Throat.
  • What was on the official DVDs is a guideline, but since the mythology DVDs did not include Conduit, Sleepless, Musings, or Christmas Carol/Emily (or Jose Chung's!) among others, we have to take it with a grain of salt. The DVDs include what Carter or the producers want to be retroactively considered "canon", as opposed to what was considered that way at the time and continues to be seen as mythology by most viewers. There were also space limitations on the number of episodes they could include from each season. 172.163.97.8 00:10, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
You say one of your criteria is featuring a conspirator like CSM or X, but Beyond the Sea featured Deep Throat, who was X's predecessor — yet I would never consider Beyond the Sea to be a mythology episode. I disagree with you that Jose Chung didn't introduce elements that were influential later on. Later in the series, during the Cassandra Spender story, Mulder becomes convinced that all abductions are actually hoaxes, UFO's are all top-secret military aircraft, and all memory of abductions were hypnotically implanted, even thinking that Scully's hypno-regression therapy sessions were a result of memory implantation. These are all elements first introduced in Jose Chung. I don't consider Jose Chung to be a comedy episode, although it did contain much more humor than most episodes. On the contrary I feel that Jose Chung developed the plot of the mythology further, which is my own test for whether or not an episode should be considered mythology.Equazcion 00:23, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I think you're forgetting about "Nisei" and "731" though. Those came earlier in season 3 than "Jose Chung's," and those episodes first introduced the idea that abductions were staged hoaxes by the government. Part of what made Jose Chung's brilliant was the way it drew on all the already existing mythology in the show, and even though the tone was different, it respected the existing plot. But I don't think the producers would have allowed actual new plot elements to be introduced in that episode because it was in a form that would lead most people to not see it as part of the "canon" (I mean, Mulder does that yelping thing!). But when I call it a comedy, that doesn't mean I laugh out loud necessarily, or that it has less to say than other episodes, in fact it has more to say, it just says it in a different way. Hopefully we're all agreed that it's a pivotal episode for the show, even if not in terms of advancing the mythology plot.
Imo, it's quite up to interpretation which episodes you want to consider as furthering the plot. I think every great episode furthers the plot in some way, maybe by developing the characters. You might take a look at this review site which changed the way I look at the show, by ignoring the usual distinction between mythology and everything else.
Also I could be wrong but I don't remember Deep Throat being in Beyond the Sea. And as I said, Deep Throat (and aliens) were in a lot of early episodes no one considers mythology, because they hadn't really worked out the distinction yet in season 1. Eve is an example of a Deep Throat+conspiracy episode that's still not considered mythology- even though it doesn't contradict it. Ice isn't usually considered mythology despite having such important development of the characters, and even the introduction of the alien worm which is similar to the later "black oil". And then you have stuff like Genderbender or Ghost in the Machine, which have aliens and Deep Throat, but no one takes them seriously. 172.163.97.8 00:44, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
You're right about Beyond the Sea, I was confusing it with Young at Heart -- however the point still stands with Young at Heart, which features Deep Throat, a lot, and still should by no means be considered mythology. As far as UFO hoaxes being introduced earlier, yes they were in a general sense, even earlier than Nisei — Little Green Men, the first episode of Season 2, has Mulder suggesting into a tape recorder that it could all be an elaborate hoax to play on peoples' willingness to believe. But the specific demonstration of how the government goes about the hoaxes is given in Jose Chung, as well as the possibly more important element that real alien abductions also do occur despite the hoaxes. You're right, it's largely a matter of opinion.... so let's get some more peoples' opinions if we can. Hopefully there's some kind of majority opinion.Equazcion 01:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately this talk page isn't very active. You usually get no replies here even on controversial topics. So the best way of establishing opinion is to look at if your edit gets reverted. That mythology list is easily the most edited section after the "future of the show" part. I'll leave Jose there and we'll see if anyone either deletes it, or takes it as license to add a lot of other episodes that neither of us thinks should be there. :) Would you draw the line at Dreamland/Dreamland II? 172.163.97.8 02:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely, Dreamland is definitely not mythology. Even though you'd think being inside Area 51 would allow us to learn SOMEthing about it, and didn't... :) So yeah I agree, let's wait and see. Equazcion 02:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Sleepless is there along with Red Museum which someone recently added (2nd season). What do you think of those? I don't really think they belong...Equazcion 03:33, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I think it's ok, if one is there, both can be there. I don't like "Red Museum" because of the way it tries to be a mythology episode at the end. I think because Chris Carter wrote it he was able to put in something important overall to the series, even though it didn't fit the monster-of-the-week format of the episode, and even though it wasn't really that important long term, at least not as presented in Red Museum (they never mention these events again). Again probably because it's Carter's episode, he got to include it on the mythology DVD. So I understand why some people want to list it as mythology now. As for "Sleepless", which is not on the mythology DVD, I think it needs to be in a list of mythology episodes, because of what's going on in the background with Krycek, Mulder, Scully, CSM and Mr. X, which has pivotal importance to the whole series and leads right into "Duane Barry". The main stand-alone plot, as well, is a government conspiracy, even though it's not directly related to the alien one. "Conduit" is another episode that's not on the mythology DVD, probably because it was so early and some of the facts there were contradicted by later mythology about Mulder's sister, but it's still essential in establishing that entire plot line, and needs to be listed, in my opinion. "Wetwired" is another that's very arguable, because the conspiracy there may not be that important long-term, but it does involve X and CSM, and finally reveals exactly who X is working for (and the next time he is seen, he dies). On the other hand it's presented in the form of a stand-alone. But on the other hand, it's a stand-alone with extremely important emotional implications for M&S as characters. Combine that with the conspiracy plot and that makes it mythology, in a way. 172.133.79.217 22:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Many standalone episodes had to do with "separate" government conspiracies... like Avatar especially, which I think has much more connection with the main conspiracy than Wetwired (it's about Skinner getting framed by the syndicate for murdering a prostitute, we see a non-speaking CSM cameo). I think there's too much importance placed on the appearance of conspirators. The show tried to put them in along with significant revelations in many standalone episodes, to make the standalone episodes less standalone. But even though a particular episode is the first time we find out about something that shouldn't make it mythology. I think a mythology episode should be limited to episodes strictly where the main plot is about the alien conspiracy. Everything we need to know is presented in those, even if they don't contain the "first revelation" of an element. Anything else is too much a matter of opinion and dare I say non-encyclopedic.
I personally would include Jose Chung but I concede to being in the minority there, so I'm fine with leaving it out. But all these "fringe" episodes that contain bits of mytharc elements I really think should be left out of such an "official" list, as this is supposed to be.
On second thought, maybe we should even be taking the list directly from the mythology DVD set, since it's the only referenceable source we have. We could include the other episodes like Conduit, Musings, and Christmas Carol/Emily on a separate list, labeled as episodes that are not officially mythology but that involve it in a significant way. What do you think? Equazcion 02:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I split the list as I suggested above. It makes the most sense. The list was changing too much, and was far too subjective. In the official list I included references to the episode lists on the mythology DVDs, so it's now a real referenced list instead of... whatever it was before. The other episodes were moved to the "Unofficial" section just below it.Equazcion 04:22, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I reverted the section title back to "Unofficial mythology episodes." I understand how strongly you feel that they're part of the mythology but the fact remains that these are unreferenced opinions. The title "Other mytharc episodes" is not accurate, because the only thing that makes them mytharc are fan opinions, which are unreferenceable. If they aren't part of the official mythology DVD's then they are unofficially part of the mythology, which makes that a more accurate section title. Equazcion 10:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I also removed the "Mythology DVD" section title. The point of the section is to list the mythology episodes, not to describe a DVD release, and the parent section is already labeled for that.Equazcion 11:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

IMPORTANT: Citations on this page

Something to bear in mind as you make edits or condensations of this page: the citations are still in the antique format where they only listed once, and each time after that you get a ref name="whatever", without the details. This refers back to the original time the citation was listed.

If you delete ANY text from this page, make sure you are not also deleting a citation with a ref name=, which may be used throughout the page in other sentences which you didn't intend to delete. What happens then is there are large blanks in the references at the end, and lots of unsourced statements which actually did have sources. This recently happened with a sentence in the intro. Someone made an improvement, but unknowingly removed a source that was used throughout the entire page.

Also, if material is removed to be spun out into other articles, someone would need to go through it to make sure they restore the citations used in other parts of this article. 172.163.97.8 00:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I saw your edit summary, that ref removal was my bad, sorry. I'll be more careful next time.Equazcion 01:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
It's ok. I'm sure much worse removals have happened and no one noticed them. We should probably try to convert the citations to a proper format once it's established if this page will be divided or not. 172.163.97.8
Divided how? Where can I see a discussion on that?Equazcion 02:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Some have suggested dividing the page into separate articles because of its length. There's a discussion earlier up the page. 172.133.79.217 22:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Episode notability

Many or all of the existing individual episode pages for this series appear to fail the notability guidelines for television episodes, and have been tagged accordingly. These articles can be improved through the inclusion of real-world information from reliable sources to assert notability. Overly long plot summaries should be edited, to a maximum length of approximately ten words per minute of screen time. Trivia should be integrated into the body of the article, or removed if it is not directly relevant. Quotes and images should only be used as part of a critical analysis of the episode. You might also consider merging any notable information onto the show's "List of episodes" or season pages. Otherwise, when these pages come up for review in fourteen days, they may be redirected, merged or deleted. If you want any help or further information, then come to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television/Episode coverage. Thanks. TTN 19:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

The Simpsons episodes are all on Wikipedia, each with a separate article. The only difference there is that a Wikiproject exists to catalog all Simpsons episodes. Are we to assume that if a Wikiproject existed to catalog X-Files episodes, then the articles would then be notable?Equazcion 22:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The difference between the two series is that the Simpsons editor have asserted notability, given real world information, and have proved the episodes' potential in general. That needs to be done for these to exist. TTN 22:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Potential? The episodes' potential to do what exactly? What kind of real-world information do Simpsons episode articles exhibit that these don't? Have you checked each one, or did you just make an assumption and add tags to all of them?Equazcion 22:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
  1. This episode won two Emmys. One was for the writing, and the other was awarded to Peter Boyle for his guest appearance in this episode.
  2. This episode was named the 10th greatest episode in TV history by TV Guide

Equazcion 22:36, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

That has potential, but it still lacks any sources and if the Emmys are the only thing about it, they can be placed elsewhere. It's best to tag it. TTN 22:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Homer's Enemy and Cape Feare are the best examples of Simpsons episodes. TTN 22:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I didn't ask for examples of good Simpsons episode articles. ALL the episodes have articles. You're giving me examples of the ones that most deserve to stay? I can give you good examples of X-Files episodes - does that mean they ALL deserve to stay as well? Equazcion 22:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
You said that you wanted to see what was so special about them, so I showed you. The Simpsons get a break due to their three FAs and thirty something GAs. They have shown that a great amount deserve articles. In the end, many probably won't need them, but there is no need to get on their case. There is not one episode of this series that even comes close to really proving itself. Even then, around forty quality articles substantiates four hundred while two or three hardly makes over one hundred worth it. Instead of attacking another show, work on this one. TTN 23:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not attacking another show. I'm pointing out exactly what you've just proven: that rather than reviewing each article, you review a couple and tag all of them to reflect a generalization. "In the end, many probably won't need them, but there is no need to get on their case" -- wrong. Tag the articles that deserve to be tagged. "two or three hardly makes over one hundred worth it" - that's not how it works. You're supposed to review an article and tag it accordingly, not review a couple of articles and tag ALL related ones accordingly. Equazcion 23:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you are. You are trying to justify that these deserve articles as much as they do, even if that means that both are wiped out. They have proven a general notability, which is all that needs to be done. You don't actually have to fix the episodes if you show that they have the potential. In this case, I looked at every one of them, and only a few had any references, which are total crap. That negates any worth. TTN 23:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
You don't have to fix an article if you've shown that they have potential? That they have the potential for notability? You can't be serious. Where are you getting this crap from? You're completely off your rocker. All the X-Files episodes have potential, they just need references and other info that does exist. So they have potential. Equazcion 23:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Sources need to be shown to back claims of notability. TTN 23:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Do sources need to be shown to back claims of potential for notability? How exactly does one prove the potential for notability, as you've listed as criteria for keeping an article? Please do edify me. Equazcion 23:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
What I just stated is all you need to do. Find a good number of wide sources that show potential for all episodes. Otherwise, work on the one or two that may be able to actually exist. TTN 23:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
This potential crap is just that, crap. You made it up. Unless you can show me a wikipedia guideline for it. Equazcion 23:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

OK So while you guys are arguing about this, I want to put all the episode name links on the Dana Scully page in the same format, and I need to know if the individual episode pages are going to be deleted before I start linking to them, so what's the best format to use? Should the link go to the existing page for the episode, or the List of The X-Files episodes article? Marikology 20:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Since no one knows if the episodes are going to be deleted you'll have to wait and see before you can make links. However I think if the episodes do get deleted there's a good chance they'll get redirected to the episode list, so if you ask me you can probably link to the individual episodes now. Equazcion 07:49, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Can I contribute to this argument? My feeling is that X-Files episode articles probably have more potential for notability than those of most television shows, if only because each episode features a different sort of plot material and unique secondary characters from others. Simpsons episodes merit their own articles because of the frequent guest stars and references to other media, thus creating internal link frenzies to justify themselves. However, The X-Files episodes always take place in different settings and dealing with different areas of the paranormal, rather than just character interactions between the same set of characters. There are some shows whose formula allows for only minor variations per episode, and this is not one of them.

In addition, the large number of nominations the show received for a variety of different episodes allows for incorporation of that stuff into individual articles, along with the basic plot summaries. For example look at the Emmy nominations the show got in season 4- over half the episodes of the season received nominations, all in different categories.

I think the real problem hindering an improvement of both this page and the episode summaries right now is no one's sure what to do with the "History" section here. If we want to save the individual episode pages, and if this article is going to even attempt to make featured, this has to be dealt with soon.

As I mentioned before, someone has suggested splitting off the "History" section into its own article called "History of The X-Files" because of the ridiculous length of this one. I think that's a good first step, but it will require a lot of care in making sure the absolute bare essentials of that section remain here in summarized form, and even more so, that the references used in both that section and others are not removed from the page.

In the meantime, while the wordy comprehensive History text can remain as its own page (subject to possible future deletion, of course), the information from there should gradually be incorporated into the individual episode articles where it fits, resulting in a pared down, cleaner main X-Files page, but preserving the comprehensiveness in links to the side articles. A lot of the information found in the history section is indeed about specific episodes, not just the little plot summaries either, but stuff that could improve the pages, such as where the episode fit in the larger picture, in terms of first introducing some character or element to the show, or even citations of critical and viewer response to the episode (it almost seems there's too much of this, but apparently that's a key element to having a good NPOV page). Hopefully an improved version of the History text could also continue to exist independently as its own article, even as some of the information was copied into the episode pages. There are still things in "History" that wouldn't fit in the episode pages, as well as a lot of context.

Anyway, sorry I can't help right now, but those are my suggestions for you guys so NEXT time we can make featured. Equazcion, I congratulate you for all your work on the article, especially the lost cause of defending it at this point. You're right that the History section is not written "in universe," and that's the most promising thing about it, compared with the less flawed, less informative versions of the page from that past. 172.146.244.91 09:10, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

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