WEBVTT - Hypernormalization 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.600 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:15.640 audio for full exposure, listen with headphones. How did the 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:18.279 United States develop the technology to pull ahead of the 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.600 Russians in the space race? Many believe that a sophisticated 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:25.239 guidance system was salvage from a crashed UFO. Not for 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:27.920 the first time, a motion picture tells the story of 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:31.640 these incredible events. It started with an accident in space 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:36.879 and it led to the crash of a large metallic 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.320 disc in the Arizona Desert. Why have the facts been 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.720 kept hidden from the American public? What is it our 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.880 government doesn't want us to know? This new motion picture 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:50.159 reveals the startling proof that the government actually has the 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:53.600 wreckage of Appliance Saucer and the bodies of alien astronauts. 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:56.920 You will learn the incredible story of the most startling 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.640 government cover up ever conceived. See a story of the 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:11.080 UFO Covered up Hanger eight D. I'm Toby Ball and 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:31.119 this is Strange Arrivals Episode twelve. Hypernormalization in Pearson's Magazine 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:35.200 in Great Britain and Cosmopolitan Magazine in the United States 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:40.840 serialized H. G. Wells The War of the World's It 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.160 was published in book form the following year. It is 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.319 one of the first stories of humans confronted with beings 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.960 from outer space, and its inspired movies, comic books, in 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:56.280 orson Wells famous radio broadcast. It's safe to say that 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:00.680 most alien related popular culture doesn't engage to directly with 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:05.200 the UFO folklore. Classics such as Invasion of the Body 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:09.040 Snatchers or The Day the Earth Stood still common on 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:13.480 larger social issues of the time. Abduction accounts have led 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:17.519 to movies like The UFO Incident and Fire in the Sky, 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:22.359 which addressed those particular stories, but not the broader UFO context. 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.440 Even Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which borrows some 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:30.040 from the UFO folklore of the late nineteen seventies, does 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:34.440 not concern itself much with broader themes of government complicity 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.960 beyond the security around Devil's Tower. The most significant piece 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.560 of popular culture to use the UFO folklore was the 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:49.360 iconic nine nineties television show The X Files. I had 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:54.640 an idea way back in the eighties there was a 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:56.880 show on that I loved when I was a kid 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:00.120 called cold Check The Night Stuck, and it was the 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.239 scariest thing I've ever seen on TV. So I thought, 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:04.960 there's nothing scary on TV one, and I try to 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:07.239 do a show that is as scary as that one. 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.760 This is Chris Carter, creator of The X Files. So 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.360 I sat down and came up with the characters of 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.240 Molder and Scully FBI agents. I was inspired, especially you 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.600 can see Scully's red hair by Silence of the Lambs. 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:24.760 That was an early inspiration. So I came up with 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.320 these two characters, and I kind of turned the tables 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:32.000 on what would be the stereotypical believer in skeptic Maiden 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:36.840 Molder the male the believer, and Scully the female, the skeptic. 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:39.960 I wanted to make her not only a doctor, but 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:45.080 a scientist, so she could refute Molder's claims with her 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.480 hard science. It's a take on another iconic duo, the 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:53.720 Kirk Spock partnership from the original Star Trek, a way 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:56.560 for the issues of the show to be reasoned through 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:02.920 the two lead characters. The show is fictionalized, scripted storytelling 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.280 vehicle for these characters, Molder and Scarlet looking for the truth. 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:08.600 And I said to them, you know, they wanted to 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:11.040 wrap up the episodes at the end kind of in 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.320 a neat bow with an explanation for what Malder and 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.760 Scully had seen. And I said, that's exactly what you 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:20.120 don't want. You don't want to have the answers. You 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:22.000 want to be left with wonder, you want to be 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:24.680 left with ah. You want to be left with your 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.920 own opinions at the end. And it took me a 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:31.880 real hard sales pitch to get them to understand that. 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:36.919 With this initial conception in place, Carter brought together writers 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:41.159 to help develop the show and write episodes. I was 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.400 really lucky to hire two teams of smart guys. Glenn 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.000 Morgan and James Wong were a writing team, uh, and 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.520 then a writing team of Howard Gordon and Alex Gonza, 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:56.000 who were also too smart guys who went on to 0:04:56.080 --> 0:05:00.680 create Homeland together. I'm glad more gonna it's one of 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.960 the exact producers of The X Files and you're one 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:08.200 two for. And then the last time Morgan wrote with 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.479 a partner named Jim Wong, who had been friends with 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.119 since high school. We were gonna go on some other show, 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.159 a romantic comedy that was the hit pilot of that season, 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.440 and Peter Roth, who was the head of Fox TV, 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.400 had said watch his pilot I demand that you watch 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.520 his pilot, and so sort of career politics, we go, well, 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:30.080 we'll watch this pilot the X Files and tell Peter 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:31.839 thanks for thinking of us, but we're gonna go do 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:34.200 this other hot show. And uh, Jim and I watch 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:39.240 Exiles pilot, We're like, WHOA, I want to do this show. Carter, 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.080 along with the two writing teams, developed the Molder and 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:47.600 Scully arc through different types of stories. Depending on the week, 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.800 it could be a horror, suspense, thriller, or paranormal episode. 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.240 So The X Files from the very beginning was not 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:59.200 just going to be an UFO alien show. It was 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:02.320 going to be more than that. And I had actually 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:05.320 created a marketing package before any of these people came 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:07.960 on when I turned the pilot and originally to twenty 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:12.039 Century Fox, spelling out what the show was. So it 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:16.039 just happened that I was able to pair with the 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.839 right people to bring the idea of making it a 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:24.080 horror show, a suspense show, a thriller, what have you, 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.120 that it became. Really three fifths of the time it 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.400 was something other than aliens and UFOs. The shows can 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.960 be broken down into two types. The monster of the 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:39.360 Week shows that are primarily standalons, but which also advanced 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:44.120 the Molder Scully dynamic and the mythology episodes which run 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:48.680 throughout the length of the series until the ongoing UFO story. 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:52.560 We did, I think six mythology episodes typically per season, 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.880 a two parter, three two partners actually, and that kind 0:06:55.880 --> 0:07:00.960 of became our formula. The way modern Scully coached the 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:06.320 other typically sixteen to nineteen cases was by taking positions, 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:12.640 by taking hard edged science versus a obdurate and determined 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:17.080 belief in the paranormal on Moulder side, And it became 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.920 kind of competitive, and it became a really a long 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:26.360 uh nine years flirtation between the two characters and a 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:30.720 seduction of sorts. These episodes required the writers to be 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:35.160 able to articulate both a skeptical and a paranormal explanation 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:40.280 for each phenomenon investigated by Molder and Scully. For Morgan, 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.000 who had grown up very open to the reality of 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:47.520 the paranormal, writing from Scully's perspective opened his eyes to 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.520 a new viewpoint. Certainly, working on the X Files, the 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:56.160 Need to be Scully is the first time that I 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.480 started looking at what's the other side of the story, 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.840 Because you always had to have Muhler's explanation. You have 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.560 to have Scullies explanation, and many times you'd have to 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.800 have an explanation was down the middle. So it was 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:12.760 the X Files and having to write for Scully that 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:19.400 I started getting a little more grounded, a little more skeptical. Movies, books, 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:24.040 and television shows that are inspired by or reference purported 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:28.120 actual events make a claim on some relation to reality. 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:33.200 When shows are prefaced by, based on a true story, 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:38.240 or inspired by actual events, the implication for the audience 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:41.320 is that what they are consuming is not mere fiction. 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.160 It is given a stamp of some sort of factual legitimacy. 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.680 In a note to open The Da Vinci Code, Dan 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.880 Brown famously wrote that while the characters and plot of 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.640 the book were fiction, the history it referenced was factual. 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.920 This was, to put it mildly, a ratch. Carter had 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:04.439 to contend with how close he wanted to hue to 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:08.640 actual cases and the stories that were out there. When 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.600 we first started this show, there was something interesting that happened. 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:17.000 Fox had bought my pitch, they had liked my outline, 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.680 they had liked the pilot script. We had begun casting, 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:25.840 and we had filmed the pilot. We had shown the 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:28.960 pilot to the network. They were very happy with it, 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.280 but they wanted me to put a disclaimer up before 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:37.400 the show, saying that for the viewer that these are 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.559 all based on actual events. It was as if we 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.840 were creating a kind of documentary in the network's mind 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:47.040 for the pilot episode. I went along with it, but 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:51.800 then it's like, I realized that's not what the show is. 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:54.240 I was trying to create a sense of awe and 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.439 the idea that science doesn't have all the answers, and 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.760 that religion doesn't have all the ans ers, and that 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:03.440 there are things beyond the pale. I liked all that, 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.000 but I also have to say I come at this 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:11.160 from more Scully side than Moulder's side, with a science bias. 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.920 I really have a kind of prove it to me philosophy, 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:20.360 and so really it was me. The thesis was my 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.640 own troubled perspective on what is true and what is not. 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:29.559 While there were more episodes that were not concerned with UFOs, 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:33.559 the mythology is what many people associate with the show. 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.280 The X Files did pull from the line of UFO 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:41.800 folklore that we've been examining centered around government conspiracy and 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.200 cover ups, but it also took from another strain of 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:51.040 UFO folklore, alien abductions. We looked at alien abductions in 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.680 Season one of Strange Arrivals, and the X Files was 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:59.440 created during the late evolutionary phase of that narrative. For 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:03.520 Carter his collaborators, this was the cutting edge of UFO 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:07.080 studies at the time. There were two things I've been 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.800 reading about UFOs and alien abductions. But also I was 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:16.880 given just my chance a survey called the Roper Survey, 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:20.040 which was done by Dr John Mack, who, in the 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:24.760 UFO afficionado will know well. Mac was a highly regarded 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:29.120 professor of psychology at Harvard who came to believe, along 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:33.400 with Bud Hopkins and David Jacobs, that hundreds of thousands, 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:37.880 if not millions, of people had been abducted by aliens. 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.760 Back to the Roper Survey, and it said that millions 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:47.640 of Americans believed in the UFO phenomenon, some millions less 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.760 believed they had actually seen a UFO, some millions less 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:55.920 believed they had had contact, but that there was interest 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.240 in the phenomenon. And so I thought the first thing, 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:01.480 and I would like to do is play with that 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:05.440 in a personal way Molder, making moulder sister an abductee, 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.880 which is what his entry was into the world of 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.960 the paranormal. I had kind of three go to guys 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.920 was Dr John mac David Jacobs and Bud Hopkins. Those 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:21.560 were the three people that I read mostly and I 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:27.360 had I really developed my sense of all things UFOs 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:37.640 and abductions through reading their books. This is Carol Rainey 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:42.280 Bud Hopkins ex wife and former research partner, talking about 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.200 how Hopkins changed the alien abduction narrative from what had 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.800 been developed over more than two decades, starting with the 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:54.600 alleged abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in the mountains 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:58.440 of New Hampshire. He is writing added to it was 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:03.920 that nobody was safe anywhere, that aliens could enter your 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:08.520 bedroom at night, coming straight through the walls, coming through 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:16.080 the windows. I mean his view of alien beings in 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:20.600 the world was that they were godlike. Really they I 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:26.320 mean ordinary physics did not prohibit them from doing whatever 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:32.920 they wanted to do to take advantage of people's helplessness, 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:39.400 and they were the abductees were used in Budd's thought 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.840 in the same way that we observe, you know, wolves 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:48.840 out on the in the wild, and we experimented on 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:52.560 them to some degree from afar, and that's what he 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:56.840 felt the aliens were doing to us. They might put 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.679 tracking devices in us, what's called an implant these days. 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:03.439 And you know, many of his people came up with 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:10.560 those implants, partly to add credence to Bud's narrative and 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:15.240 because that was the story that was becoming increasingly popular 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:20.880 in mainstream media during the nineteen eighties and nineties. Carter 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.800 had established that a key point in the X Files 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:27.960 mythology would be that Mulder's sister was abducted by aliens, 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.280 and he had taken the Hopkins mac Jacobs books as 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:36.800 the source material for alien abductions. So the question was 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:41.040 how to portray the actual events in the show? How 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:44.760 is she gonna be abducted? I think we start with 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:50.360 a lot of what the accepted mif was that it 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:54.000 was at night, that there was a bright light. You know, 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:58.360 it's it's real monster movie stuff, really the mythology, and 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:01.560 then you go, well, people know what it is by 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.080 now because of the Hills story that you know, that 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:08.560 was a movie of the week. This was the made 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.960 for TV movie. The UFO incident about the Betty and 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:18.240 Barney Hill story and then Close Encounters is like so huge. 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.440 Everybody knew, you know, the the Barry being abducted is 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.560 just one of the great scenes. And so and what 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:28.000 can we do different? And you had read some things 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:31.160 where people had been taken out their window, or so, well, 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:33.400 let's do that, or let's make something up. How can 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:37.360 we make it fresh? And it's here that the writer's 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:40.520 creativity pulled the story a little bit away from the 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:44.920 abduction narratives that had served as their source material. And 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.720 I think actually that's where the damage to the mythology, 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.880 because you made stuff up because you needed to have 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:55.520 something different for a TV show. And so people who 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:59.480 saw this episode came away with a slightly different conception 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.080 of an abduction that had been in the books at 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:07.760 the time, and the folklore subtly changed. The childhood abduction 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:10.880 of Molder sister is the er moment of his obsession 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:16.080 with UFOs. From that event, Carter Morgan and the other 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:20.760 writers built out the X Files mythology. I had what 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:25.480 I would consider to be the kind of foundation of 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.480 the mythology that was based in things that anybody could 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:32.560 read about alien abductions and kind of classic scoopmark stars, 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.000 the triangular shapes, it kind of shape that appeared on 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:39.840 Scully's back and the pilot episode. So I had the 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:44.160 ideas that I had taken from all of the accumulated 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:49.960 science and background on alien abductions, and I created a 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:54.600 world with the episode. Actually, if you watch the first 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.760 and second episode of The X Files and the season finale, 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.600 which is called the erlen Mere Flash, you really get 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:06.119 a foundational view of the X Files mythology that was 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:11.159 established by Chris. You know that Maulder's sister had been abducted, 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:15.000 and what the background was with Malder, you know. And 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:17.840 I think those are things that you you have and 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.320 when you're selling a pilot, especially back in those days, 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:25.200 it's just kind of red meat for executives. And and 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:27.280 then you get in a room. Nowadays you have to 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:29.760 have the whole show figured out for five years. But 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:31.719 back then you gave a piece of paper and this 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:35.440 is what six episodes we could do, and they okay, 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:38.399 So it just becomes a process of sitting down and 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:43.360 going what can it be. Well, we're gonna introduce a 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:47.040 government conspiracy deep background. So you bring a deep Throat, 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:51.959 you bring up more UFO stuff. The conspiracy is a 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:56.400 critical part of the mythology, and in follows iconic characters 0:17:56.440 --> 0:18:00.480 such as the Smoking Man, Deep Throat and the government 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.760 agent Alex Krycheck. I've always been interested in conspiracies, I 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:07.160 think because I was a child of the Watergate era. 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:11.440 You know, I was a disbeliever in what our government 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:14.480 was telling us, and they believer that they were keeping 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:17.560 things from us. So they fit in perfect with the 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:21.800 UFO literature, which is all about government, you know, black budget, 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.919 secret operations, and all the reasons there are for the 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:31.600 government to keep the truth about extraterrestrial life from the 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.960 American public and those who you know, things that are 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:40.359 you know, scientific, cultural, religious. Uh, it would upend a 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:45.720 lot of the institutions in society. There's this idea that 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:49.600 the government has been keeping all this stuff quiet secret 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:54.080 for their own purposes, and that one day somebody will 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:56.879 get them to disclose, or there will be reason to 0:18:56.960 --> 0:19:00.320 disclose the truth. I think that's where the Expiles mythology 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:05.520 took flight from the accepted X Files mythology, and so 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:11.719 we were imagining the world before disclosure and modern Scully 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:16.679 as the people seeking to learn the truth. Of course, 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.119 the best laid plans and all of that. No matter 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:23.720 the amount of planning in foresight, there's always the potential 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:28.640 for circumstances beyond the creator's control to complicate things. If 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:30.440 you look at it the first year, there wasn't a 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:32.879 lot of mythology. I think on the twenty two episodes 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:38.159 five maybe it wasn't a conscious thing. And January of 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.480 the first season, Jillian became pregnant, so she was going 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.040 to have her baby in September, and so that was like, well, 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:47.320 she wasn't gonna be able to work on the first 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:50.040 few episodes that we were filming for a year two. 0:19:50.400 --> 0:19:53.040 We scrambled because we didn't know what to do, how 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:55.280 to if she was going to be pregnant for the 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.920 whole first part of the second season, how we were 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.280 going to do modern Scully. And we figured I had 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.440 a clever way to do that, a way that actually 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:07.800 played into the larger storyline. But I actually had a 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:10.080 network executive saying, I mean, you've gotta get rid of 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.720 her in no uncertain terms, and so you have to 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:16.360 fight against that. You know, you can't establish these two 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:19.760 characters and then just break him up because he uh 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:24.560 doesn't want a pregnant woman working on the show. And 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:27.639 so we all came up with like Skully's gonna disappear, 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:32.680 and that really began the mythology, the need to tell 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:36.720 multiple stories near the end of the first year. We 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:40.720 never set out to be the serialized show. There was 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:44.280 necessity due to Jillian's pregnancy that we sort of shaped 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:46.400 it in the end of the first year to go 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:48.720 into her disappearing for the first few episodes. In the 0:20:48.760 --> 0:21:07.600 second year, strange arrivals will return after the break. During 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.280 our conversation, Glenn Morrigan told me about one of the 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:14.760 Monster of the Week episodes that he wrote, and talked 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.040 about how a fictitious story seeing on a television show 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.840 could come to enter people's consciousness as something real. It's 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:27.760 an example of the larger folklore producing dynamic of popular culture. 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:31.480 I would get a publication every Monday. It was called 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.560 Science News. It was really a pamphlet, no more than 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:39.560 ten pages of findings in the world of science that week. 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:41.760 And so, for example, one week I saw they had 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.520 an article that I think they've broken the record for 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:47.600 drilling into the greenland ice cores I don't remember a 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:51.639 mile or whatever. And they pulled out this stuff that 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:54.080 had not seen the light of day for two fifty 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:58.200 thousand years. That had just happened. That was a fact. 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:01.520 And then I go, well, what could be in there? 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:06.120 What could be in that two? It's like, okay, it's 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:10.360 a creepy show. What's creepy? Like? I find worms, creepy worms, snakes, 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:12.760 they don't have arms, they have too many arms, like 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:14.760 a millipede. Forget it. I don't want to near me. 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:17.479 And so I'm like, okay, oh, there's these worms. And 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:21.760 then without two years of evolution, what would that do 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:24.119 to us? And then that part I would make up. 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:25.959 I don't remember what it was. It gets into your 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:28.280 brain and makes you paranoid or some stuff like that. 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.320 So that's how you make an next him. You take 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:35.720 that science truth and another truth and you try to 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:40.720 fit them together by making stuff up. Inevitably, people would 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:43.560 go I read about worms and make it crazy, and 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:46.639 I'd say, no, no, I made that up, and they no, no, no, 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:48.840 I read that in a nastro geographic like I know 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:51.320 you didn't because I made it up. It isn't even 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:53.439 a thing. It lodged in my head, I just flat 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:56.640 out made it up. And it always fascinated me how 0:22:56.680 --> 0:23:00.520 often people would say not I read about the ice 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:05.800 or from Greenland, or the evolutionary traits of these worms. 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:08.760 I heard about the stuff you made up, and it's true. 0:23:09.119 --> 0:23:12.880 And so when I look at these abduction myths, where 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:15.480 some of the conspiracy theories that are floating around now 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:19.600 you can see where there's both that are people are 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:22.320 believing in fact. There's an X Files where a deep 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:28.120 throat specifically says a lie is the best delivered sandwich 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:30.480 between two truths, and I just I'm sure I didn't 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:33.240 make that up, but that's to me, I always thought 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:37.240 the best way to go about the mythology. So if 0:23:37.960 --> 0:23:42.800 you know that aliens come at night, and you might 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.920 take some other scientific fact the position of the moon 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:48.919 or something and make something up, that's that's how you 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:50.760 did it. That's how I went about it, and I 0:23:50.840 --> 0:23:57.840 see that approach and other myths contemporary. There have been 0:23:57.880 --> 0:24:00.879 other shows that focus more directly on the themes that 0:24:00.920 --> 0:24:05.040 we've been looking at during this season. The History Channel, 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:08.960 for instance, has a show called Project Blue Book, which 0:24:09.000 --> 0:24:12.440 features a more action ready version of Alan Heinek leading 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:18.040 UFO investigations. Another show focusing on a highly fictionalized blue 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:22.640 book style program was Dark Skies, which ran on NBC. 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:29.359 In its tagline was history as we know It is 0:24:29.400 --> 0:24:33.760 a lie. The show was launched based on the popularity 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:37.320 of the X Files. It was created by Brent Friedman 0:24:37.520 --> 0:24:41.760 and Bryce Sable. Zabel in particular, is active in the 0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:45.600 UFO scene. I think in the case of Bryce especially, 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:48.640 but Brent as well, uthology was something that very much 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:52.200 interested them. And I think that between the two of them, 0:24:52.320 --> 0:24:54.399 and Bryce having done a lot of the table reading 0:24:54.440 --> 0:24:56.880 as it were, and Brent having had one or two 0:24:56.920 --> 0:25:00.200 experiences that he was, that between them, they and it 0:25:00.240 --> 0:25:02.359 came together and figured out this is what they wanted 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:06.119 to do. I'm Matthew Cressell. I'm the author of the 0:25:06.200 --> 0:25:10.920 Silver Archive Dark Skies on the television series from the 0:25:11.000 --> 0:25:15.440 ninet nineties at the same name. The series follows two agents, 0:25:16.040 --> 0:25:20.159 John Loane Guard and Kim Sayers as they investigate and 0:25:20.200 --> 0:25:24.120 try to foil the activities of the Hive, an alien 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:28.720 race already among us. The government knows about the aliens 0:25:29.119 --> 0:25:31.720 and is involved in a massive cover up to hide 0:25:31.760 --> 0:25:34.560 from the public their presence and the fact that we 0:25:34.600 --> 0:25:38.879 are actually fighting a kind of covert war against them. 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:43.120 The show presents an alternative history, with major events such 0:25:43.119 --> 0:25:47.080 as the Kennedy assassination the result of actions taken by 0:25:47.119 --> 0:25:53.119 the Hive. The series begins, perhaps not surprisingly with Roswell. 0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:56.840 Obviously Roswell is the big one, but you know, Roswell 0:25:57.119 --> 0:26:00.720 is uthologies, Jack the Ripper. It's this big thing that 0:26:01.000 --> 0:26:04.240 everybody knows what it is. You can say just that 0:26:04.320 --> 0:26:06.520 word and it evokes imagery. You know, if you say 0:26:06.600 --> 0:26:09.040 Jack the Ripper, people are gonna think, you know, fog 0:26:09.040 --> 0:26:13.320 shrouded London streets, guy walking through the shadows. You say Roswell, 0:26:13.480 --> 0:26:18.480 people think soldiers in the desert, crashed flying saucer, little 0:26:18.520 --> 0:26:22.880 gray aliens thrown across the ground, weird debris. So it's 0:26:23.000 --> 0:26:27.160 I think if you're going to write anything since we'll 0:26:27.200 --> 0:26:29.760 say probably the mid eighties that deals with the UFO 0:26:29.840 --> 0:26:32.679 topic in a big way, Roswell is going to be 0:26:32.680 --> 0:26:35.800 your touchstone. I think what Bryce and Brent do that's 0:26:35.840 --> 0:26:38.840