Though obviously nobody knows what exactly each episode of the upcoming X-Files revival miniseries will entail, we now — thanks to an interview with David Duchovny in TVLine — know when to look out for the star’s favorite episode. We also know that, as he states pretty clearly in the Q&A, creator Chris Carter’s episodes are not his favorites to film.
In the interview, he discusses his appreciation for Darin Morgan’s scripts in the original series (he wrote four — “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,'” “War of the Coprophages,” “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” and “Humbug”). Duchovny says they were “funny and whimsical yet very smart and rigorous,” and Morgan’s episode in the upcoming miniseries is likewise Duchovny’s favorite to perform. In keeping with the adjectives used to describe his scripts, the title for Morgan’s upcoming episode (he wrote and directed it) is the funny-and-whimsical sounding “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”; its air date is February 1, 2016. As for Carter’s episodes, he says:
Chris [Carter] really took care of the scope and the action, [but] action’s less interesting for me to play as an actor. You’ve got to be there at night, basically. And you’ve got to run to something or from something. [Laughs] That’s not a knock on Chris’ writing. But Darin’s episodes were always very verbally, often comically driven and thematically twisted. And it’s the same this time.
Thanks to the likes of this review in the L.A. Times, following the screening of the premiere episode of the 6-part miniseries at New York Comic-Con, we know that a. Mulder now has long hair and lives in isolation and is thus pretty much Rust Cohle, while b. Scully works as a surgeon at Our Lady of Sorrows hospital but c. they get back into the game of alien/paranormal investigation when an “internet media sensation” named Tad O’Malley brings them into the merged world of aliens and post-9/11 political conspiracies. “Even Presidents Obama and Bush make archival appearances, Homeland credits style,” notes the L.A. Times. And while the show documents how the passage of time has changed its two main characters, Duchovny details in the interview how he and Anderson’s own personal growth might affect the show:
The first time around it was one of my first jobs. I was really just trying to keep my head above water artistically. I think me and Gillian coming back at this point in our lives and in our careers… we’re much better at what we do now. It was really wonderful, for both of us, to recreate these characters with better skills.
And of course, despite the fact that he’s already answered the question (with understandable opaqueness), the interviewer asked Duchovny whether there was a chance the miniseries could become “an annual thing” (so…just a series?). Duchovny said, “We don’t want to just make more episodes because [they] can… If Chris is re-inspired to start thinking about where to take the show and the characters next I’m sure we’d all listen.”