Summary: 2000 interview with director Kim Manners about the future of the show. Includes some discussion of the Season 8 plans for Krycek and Marita (those plans were aborted when Laurie Holden signed for The Majestic). This interview mirrored from Cyberex.

Will The X Files Survive?
Interview with Kim Manners, XF director.

It's good to search for new experiences - something different from the ordinary. Even if you have to hire new actors.

The experiences which Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) have gotten involved in are too far removed from reality to even be called "different". Bizarre is the word.

"X-Files is about aliens and conspiracies," The X-Files in-house director Kim Manners says of the series. He has helmed over 30 episodes of FOX's immensely-and globally--successful cult sci-fi series. "The show is also about Mulder and his family, Mulder's obsession with his abducted sister. He finally uncovered the whereabouts of his sister and what really happened to her. We also saw where human beings originally came from, and the chemistry between Mulder and Scully was exposed in depth."

The early tragedy of his sister Samantha's abduction plunged Mulder's young life into chaos, ultimately splitting him from his family and any hope of future peace. Fox Mulder never forgave himself for failing his sister as he worked through the trauma that ultimately brought him into the FBI X-Files. Released from his heavy, self-imposed burden of guilt, Mulder finally got his life back in Season Seven's Closure, and Manners captured the dramatic moment perfectly with his directing supported by a harmony of excellent work by the actors, writers, and crew. In this painful but beautiful episode, Duchovny showcased his best acting in the series, and his performance leading to the poignant ending was sincerely elegant.

"A picture tells a thousand stories. For me, what characters don't say is sometimes more important than what they do say. The moments between the dialogue, the thinking process that the character goes through, is what interests me. Not so much what they say as what they're thinking and how they got there. I try, as a director, to let the actors tell the moments, so you're studying them rather than just being there to listen to them. You have to dig deeply. You have to watch carefully. I think that's what grabs an audience, having to pay attention. And it's more fun to do, I think. Watching the character evolve rather than just sitting back and letting them spill it out."

As one of the directors of The X-Files, Manners has a policy that he follows for every episode, regardless of type. Every show must incoporate a psychological element. It must use drama to illustrate the fears we hold in our subconscious.

"I try to direct in two ways; to make it scary, and to have a story that people can become involved in and feel the pain that the character feels. I try to approach each episode I direct differently, but the one thing that I always look for is the emotion. I don't think The X-Files works if it hasn't been grounded in some sort of emotion. That would be dead." He smiles." I've read a lot of scripts over the past couple of years, but none of them caught my interest. Most of them were really poor. Right now I'm very happy to be here with this great cast and crew and writers. Doing The X-Files is much more like making a feature film."

"I've done many mythological episodes in the past. Tunguska, dealing with the black oil in Season Four, one of the most exciting two-parters I have directed, is actually a higher entity - a part of an alien race which was looking into taking over the Earth," recalls Manners. "It's interesting-- Amor Fati, the final episode of the three-parter which Michael Watkins directed in Season Seven, dealt with black oil. That was exactly what Mulder was infected with in Tunguska. They finally pulled that stuff off!"

Manners' dark and sensitively artistic camera angles paint a deep and somber backdrop for the highly original storyline, but perhaps one of the most original - and menacing- characters of the World of X is Alex Krycek. (played by Nicholas Lea)

"Speaking of emotion, Tunguska was mainly a Mulder/Krycek two-parter. No spaceships appeared in that episode, but there was this fascinating frontier aspect. Although Mulder swore to make Krycek pay for the murder of his father, now Krycek seems to be farther away than ever from Mulder's revenge," said Manners.

Every time Krycek appears he has a different role. He first showed his true colors when he betrayed Mulder as his interim FBI partner and revealed his double agent status, then morphed into a free-lance criminal, then a well-connected Russian agent. Now he's been taken out of a Tunisian prison and has begun working for himself. Krycek is a survivor, a 'character of convenience' who can be used any way the writers want. Affectionately dubbed "Ratguy" by his fans, Krycek often pops out of the blue to astonish viewers with his dark designs and menacing charm. Though it's hard to interpret the purpose of his character, adding Krycek in any way, especially with Mulder or Skinner, is to inject spice into the episode.

"He is actually an activator character who makes you think that there's something else going on, some other mystery out there. If the season goes more, you'll definitely see what Krycek is really doing."

Red herrings or not, Krycek's most exciting transformation was into that of lover. In Season Five's Patient X/The Red And The Black, Krycek reinvented himself by trading passionate kisses with Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden), and -- only slightly less passionately -- with his former FBI partner, Fox Mulder.

"The kiss between Krycek and Marita in Patient X' was the first time an affectionate love scene was physically depicted in the show. I wanted it to be a kind of low passion. Nick (Nicholas) Lea and Laurie Holden were a little timid about it. I said, 'Listen guys, you just have to go for it here.' We had to do several takes, until they got to know each other. They finally went for it. If the actors are shy, it doesn't work. Go for it," grinned Manners.

"We stay tuned to the characters and to what they were doing in the previous episodes. Marita was helping Krycek, and then there was a sex scene (which was not shown on screen), and we saw that she had betrayed him."

But despite the claims to continuity, avid "X-Philes" who dissect every element of the show claim there are literally dozens of frazzled story ends laying around. The viewers have expressed that they have high expectations for Season Eight, that it's time for all the fandom conspiracies and unsolved factors to be revealed. If this year - as rumored- turns out to be the last season for The X-Files, they certainly should get their wish. To do less would be cheating the loyal fandom that made the show such a phenomenal success.

Requiem left the wheelchair-bound Cigarette Smoking Man pushed down a flight of stairs by Krycek and Marita, Scully pregnant, Mulder kidnapped, and the Aliens involved in a cleanup of their plots on Earth. All very promising, but unless Mulder returns, Season Eight will be much narrower and less interesting than previous years. Announced plans to write in a new partner for Scully have failed to generate much interest among fans, even if the new partner is -as confirmed- American actor Robert Patrick. (the T-1000 silver Terminator from Terminator 2: Judgment Day) One wryly recalls the anticipation when another "new" X-Files character was announced a few years ago; Agent Jeffrey Spender.

Hollywood should take a lesson from the Aliens. If the creators want the show to survive a few more seasons, it may be time to point the spotlight on ice-man Krycek, the sole survivor with so many talents and faces, or Skinner, another popular and established X-Files character, rather than fishing afar for new talent.

"We want every episode in The X-Files to the best it can be. Chris (Carter), Frank (Spotnitz), and we all are dedicated to the best work we can do. I think what we're doing in the show is much better than a lot of things I've seen in big movies. I think it's going to be interesting to see how it all pays off. The invasion is still coming. We're going to find out what that means."

Miwa Hirai