Eight of the ten episodes, the ones sandwiched by the opening and closing chapters, will go back to the show’s core success: standalone stories with Spooky Mulder and Scully. She acknowledged there was some harsh criticism of the six-episode 2016 season, but she also acknowledged how successful it was.
“It’s hard because I don’t want to say they were disappointing because we have a lot of positive feedback as well, clearly 15-plus million viewers an episode”, Walden said.
After getting called out in a major way by none other than star Gillian Anderson for its lack of female writers and directors, “The X-Files” is making some behind the scenes changes, and will include two female writers and two female directors on its upcoming 11th season.
Another day, another Television Critics Association panel where network executives attempt to apologetically explain why their shows are created, written, and produced by and feature white men without actually revealing that they probably just don’t care about diversity. “I think Chris is really excited…there’s certainly no reason he had to do this”, she said. (TV Insider has reached out to Fox to get the names of the new writers; we will update when that becomes available.) “We do have two female directors”.
One of the most influential series of all time, The X-Files originally limped to an unsatisfying series finale, followed by an even less satisfying movie, The X-Files: I Want To Believe. “After 200-plus episodes of a show that has a very specific mythology, where the fan base has a very high expectation that the episodes are going to deliver, that there are going to be Easter eggs…the tendency is to want to rely on the people who helped you make the original when you’re just making 10 episodes”. The crew with Chris for a very long time happened to be a group of male writers. “We had hired the writers before news broke of this particular situation”, Walden continued.
While The X-Files is indeed returning for an eleventh season on Fox, it will concentrate more on standalone stories rather than its own convoluted mythology which resulted in some of the most polarizing aspects of the tenth season. “So I’m not 100 percent sure of the chronology of the situation”.