alt Hacker NewsThe X-Files was the right show at the right time; a "bubble" of the '90s, if you will. The internet and mobile technology was nascent. The world was getting bigger, but was still quite "small". I definitely feel quite privileged to have lived through this time, and enjoy all things '90s quite a bit. Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure, and I wish they would just stop. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to hang out with the Lone Gunmen for a bit.
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> Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure
I second that. Please, for the love of all good things, do not remake the X-Files, or Firefly.
24 is another one that was at the right time, although the big one was not under their control. It started showing 2 months after the 9/11 attacks. More to the general point, it was also at the time that computers and internet usage was fast growing, but gaps in the digital side meant it was still plausible that field agents were important. They also had plot lines such as the bad guys using online video game chat (a smaller but growing thing in the early 2000s) as a hidden communication channel which I believe is pulled from real events.
I wrote an essay for a private journal last year about how the X-Files mainstreamed anti-scientific and anti-government conspiracy thinking and thereby led to the downfall of American democracy in the 21st century. It valorized the fringe, presaged "do your own research" and consistently told us that the skeptic is always wrong, the believer is always vindicated.
It wasn't a bubble of the 90's, it was a prescient blueprint for the 2020s.
It might just be age and experience, but the world felt bigger in the 90s than it does now.