The Nitpicking Thread: Willfully Participating in a Campaign of Misinformation.

[Jac]

A place to discuss all the little things that bother you.

 

Something came up in Wetwired that really bugged the hell out of me. Mulder being red-green colourblind seems like a really poorly thought through deus ex machina. I'm not sure how stringent the FBI are compared to the Australian equivalent agencies (the AFP - Australian Federal Police and ASIO - Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) but colour blindness would likely make you ineligible for service in the field and limit you to a restricted range of desk jobs. 

[Taryn74]

Yeah in retrospect the colorblind thing is just absurd.  Can you just imagine?  "The suspect fled in a stolen vehicle.  I think it was brown, but it may have been red."  LOL.

[HalcyonDays]

This is a fabulous idea for a thread, JacquelineLHope. I love it.

 

I modified the title a bit, but am definately open to suggestions if someone finds a better quote/line (the quote is from Mulder).

 

I rememeber the Mulder doesn't drink throughout the show (excepy Szyzygy), but then in FTF, he's wasted in a bar, until Kurtzweil finds him to tell him something. I could chalk it up to - you know, years of fighting aliens/government - but it seemed to come out of nowhere.

[Taryn74]

Ha, I never really thought about that but good point.

 

Although......Scully had just all but told him she was quitting the FBI.  The idea of her leaving drove him to drinking.  I like that explanation.  >.<

MULDER: They're trying to divide us on this and we can't let them.

SCULLY: Mulder, they have divided us. They're splitting us up.

MULDER: What? What are you talking about?

SCULLY: I have a meeting with OPR day after tomorrow for remediation and reassignment.

MULDER: But they're the ones who put us together.

SCULLY: Because they wanted me to invalidate your investigations into the paranormal. But I think this goes deeper than that now.

MULDER: This is not about you, Scully. They're doing this to me.

SCULLY: They're not doing this. (pause as she collects her thoughts) Mulder, I left behind a career in medicine because I thought that I could make a difference at the FBI. But it hasn't turned out that way. And now if they were to transfer me to Omaha or Cleveland, or some field office, it just doesn't hold the interest for me that it once did. Not after what I've seen and done.

MULDER: (realizing what she's saying) You're quitting.

SCULLY: Maybe you should ask yourself if your heart's still in it, too.

 

[Jac]

 

I modified the title a bit, but am definately open to suggestions if someone finds a better quote/line (the quote is from Mulder).

 

 

Thank you for doing this, I could not for the life of me think of a title for it last night.

 

Also, someone in another thread linked to The X-Files In Joke List, which has Mulder listed as dropping his gun no less than 22 times. Does he have dyspraxia/apraxia in addition to his colour blindness? Seriously, I have a disability which includes dyspraxia amongst its symptoms and which means that I score a two on a test of manual hand dexterity when the normal range is defined as 20-40. I also have a fine motor tremor in my right hand. I would drop a gun less frequently than Mulder.

Edited April 18, 2015 by JacquelineLHope

[Jac]

Another nitpick I was reminded of by the X-Files Files podcast, in a very early S1 episode, probably Conduit, Scully is performing CPR on a person she describes as being 'alive but unconscious.' That is a super basic medical error. It seemed particularly ridiculous in light of the fact that Scully is a trained doctor.

[SnideAsides]

How about the alternate tagline from Closure?

[Taryn74]

Snide, your pic doesn't show up.

 

We had some severe thunderstorms tonight and I was reminded of the scene in Rain King where Mulder had to ask Scully what "red" on the weather radar meant.  She replied "Thunderstorms....I think."  Really?  I know I was a bit obsessed with the weather as a child, but I'm pretty sure most adults know how to read a weather map.

[SnideAsides]

How odd. It's showing up for me. I was thinking "Believe to Understand".

[Taryn74]

Well now it's there for me!  LOL.

[queequeg]

The fact that they completely changed the Samantha abduction story drives me insane.   First she was abducted out of bed and Mulder saw it happen, presumably because they shared a bedroom?  But then later we get the living room abduction scene.  Like did they think we wouldn't remember?  

[HalcyonDays]

I like "Believe to Understand" line - short and sweet.

 

I picked the misinformation line but the nitpicking usually occurs because of a mistake or continuity problem. But if people like this better I can change it.

[AntiBeeSpray]

The fact that they completely changed the Samantha abduction story drives me insane.   First she was abducted out of bed and Mulder saw it happen, presumably because they shared a bedroom?  But then later we get the living room abduction scene.  Like did they think we wouldn't remember?  

 

Maybe *shrug*. They figure that they can pull things out of their butts and people wouldn't notice the difference. Wrong :P. They did.

[Bastet]

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

 

Like when they're writing a Christmas episode, and want to work in Scully's cross - the fact they'd previously established she received it as a birthday gift didn't stop them from retconning it into a Christmas present.

 

They knew they were going to get razzed about any and all errors, since online fans were so notorious for dissecting the show it was worked into a script as a shout-out (the LGM hopping on the internet to nitpick the scientific inaccuracies of Earth 2), but they went with it anyway.  Hell, with the necklace, even Gillian and her horrible memory spotted the error and called CC upon reading the script to point it out.

[AntiBeeSpray]

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

 

Like when they're writing a Christmas episode, and want to work in Scully's cross - the fact they'd previously established she received it as a birthday gift didn't stop them from retconning it into a Christmas present.

 

They knew they were going to get razzed about any and all errors, since online fans were so notorious for dissecting the show it was worked into a script as a shout-out (the LGM hopping on the internet to nitpick the scientific inaccuracies of Earth 2), but they went with it anyway.  Hell, with the necklace, even Gillian and her horrible memory spotted the error and called CC upon reading the script to point it out.

 

Yep. And they still don't think they need a show bible. *shrug*

 

XD Nice.

[HalcyonDays]

Has anyone ever read or currently has a copy of Phil Farrands The Nitpicker's Guide for X-Philes.

When I was my geeky teen self, I have a copy of the Next Generation and DS9 version of his books. Very, very detailed. Like insanely detailed. But interesting if you are into continunity difference and tech info, etc.

 

But I never knew the X-Philes one existed until looking it up now, to see if the author included TXF. He did.

[AntiBeeSpray]

Has anyone ever read or currently has a copy of Phil Farrands The Nitpicker's Guide for X-Philes.

When I was my geeky teen self, I have a copy of the Next Generation and DS9 version of his books. Very, very detailed. Like insanely detailed. But interesting if you are into continunity difference and tech info, etc.

 

But I never knew the X-Philes one existed until looking it up now, to see if the author included TXF. He did.

 

Nope never heard of that one. I'll have to see if I can find it some time.

[Jac]

Detour is set in western Florida, albeit in November and Scully spends the first third of the episode in a pants suit and OVERCOAT. Several characters are wearing parkas in the daytime. I get that shooting in Vancouver in October neccesitates the wearing of warm clothing but having everyone running around in their winter best really pulled me out of the episode.

Maybe *shrug*. They figure that they can pull things out of their butts and people wouldn't notice the difference. Wrong :P. They did.

Exactly. The story of Scully getting her cross being changed by the writers deliberately by the writers because 'the opportunity was too good to pass up' or something to that effect gets on my nerves almost as much as the writers changing the Samantha abduction story.

Edited April 26, 2015 by JacquelineLHope

[tzus86]

Detour is set in western Florida, albeit in November and Scully spends the first third of the episode in a pants suit and OVERCOAT. Several characters are wearing parkas in the daytime. I get that shooting in Vancouver in October neccesitates the wearing of warm clothing but having everyone running around in their winter best really pulled me out of the episode.

Yes! I live in Florida and that was one of the first things I noticed when I watched that episode. I couldn't agree more.

[Hidebehind]

I started re-watching season 1 in HD and noticed some ridiculous dialogue in Jersey Devil:

 

Dr. Diamond: If it is a primate, it would have a natural fear of heights. It would also want to stay close to its food source.

 

Uh... whatever you say, professor (?!?). I guess hundreds of arboreal primates missed that memo.

[SnideAsides]

So I finished my rewatch over the weekend (spoiler: a lot of season nine does not improve with age), and I got everything about the mytharc with two exceptions. Unfortunately, they're huge exceptions: (1) If Mulder's breakdown in Biogenesis was because of his exposure to the oil, why didn't it also affect Krycek, and why didn't his exposure affect him with that other alien ship in the movie? (2) If William is a super soldier - which seems to be the case given he survived the apparent oil radiation in Canada - why didn't he have the neck bump?

[AntiBeeSpray]

So I finished my rewatch over the weekend (spoiler: a lot of season nine does not improve with age), and I got everything about the mytharc with two exceptions. Unfortunately, they're huge exceptions: (1) If Mulder's breakdown in Biogenesis was because of his exposure to the oil, why didn't it also affect Krycek, and why didn't his exposure affect him with that other alien ship in the movie? (2) If William is a super soldier - which seems to be the case given he survived the apparent oil radiation in Canada - why didn't he have the neck bump?

 

Fair points. Maybe Krycek got infected differently than Mulder? Maybe he was one due to his father being affected by the black oil, so the neck bump didn't show up?

[Taryn74]

This is not definitively backed up by canon, but I think by the end we were supposed to understand that "super soldiers" were created by our government (using alien DNA and technology) and had the neck bumps and such, that natural aliens did not necessarily have.  All of the talk about William being a super soldier (created) was not entirely the truth.

[AntiBeeSpray]

This is not definitively backed up by canon, but I think by the end we were supposed to understand that "super soldiers" were created by our government (using alien DNA and technology) and had the neck bumps and such, that natural aliens did not necessarily have.  All of the talk about William being a super soldier (created) was not entirely the truth.

 

Ah.

 

Well all of the mytharc gave me a headache back in the day lol. It's so messed up it's not even funny.

 

 

 

Just found this: Chris trying to defend the later seasons

 

Source: outerplaces.com

 

 

 

"When you set out to do a show, you don't imagine it's going to go nine years. And all of a sudden, you have to start looking at it in new ways. The mythology was complex, and I think complexity equals, in people's minds, confusing. I don't accept, necessarily, this idea that it folded in on itself. I think if you go back and watch it from beginning to end - I've actually talked to people who have done that recently, and they say, 'It all holds up. It works together.' Whether you like where it went after season 5, you can cavil with me there. But I think all of the choices were still lovingly made, and I would back every one of them."

 

It still is confusing, Chris. There's NO excuse for pulling things out of your butt. Up to season 5 it was the aliens and the black oil. But after that iirc, it went off the deep end with the other aliens, religious stuff, super soldiers, etc. It was a mess imo.

 

XD That cracks me up. Sure some of it makes SOME sense, but it's still a mish mash. 

 

 

"No. I think some of the best work was done in seasons 6, 7, 8 and 9. I would point to those seasons, and there are episodes in those seasons that I think are among the best."

 

I'd say some of it was pretty good. But the earlier seasons were stronger.

 

Any thoughts on this article?

[SnideAsides]

I think there are more good episodes in seasons eight and nine than most people give the show credit for (season eight doesn't actually get shitty until Per Manum, and season nine has 4-D, John Doe, Audrey Pauley, and Release). But the problem is that in order to placate Duchovny's massive ego, it went from The Mulder and Scully show to The Mulder Show (Featuring Scully!) sometime around Patient X and never really recovered.

 

I mean, pretty much the only Scully-centric episodes from Patient X until Requiem are All Souls, Tithonus, Milagro, Orison, En Ami, and all things. And out of those six, only four were written by professional writers, one of which was an underwhelming and out-of-date sequel and one of which was still about Mulder's neighbour. Pretty much everything else in that time period is about Mulder except for the Skinner and Lone Gunmen episodes (and he was still the main character in both SR 819 and First Person Shooter). And then in season eight we all knew the first half was just filler because Mulder was coming back in the mid-season two-parter, while the back half was crap because having so many main characters meant they didn't do a good job with Scully, Mulder, Doggett, Skinner, Reyes, Knowle Rohrer, or Krycek, and season nine had basically the same problems in that they spent so much time on Mulder and Alien!Baby that made it feel like the show was failing to move on from the past. Which was a huge mistake, especially for a season airing in the shadow of 9/11.

[Bastet]

Any thoughts on this article?

 

Yeah - CC is as delusional now as he was then.  And thus I hope he's strictly an Exec Producer, and not a writer, for the revival.

 

If he wants to claim that the mytharc became much more sci-fi after season five and thus those fans who - like me - loved the show in spite of it being sci-fi lost interest in it for our own reasons, that's fine.  But the majority of fans I know (or "know" online), even those who love sci-fi and even those who, like that TWoP poster whose screen name I am completely blanking on who was a huge 1013 supporter and tried valiantly to make sense of the mytharc, not just stuck with but enjoyed the show - including the mytharc - through the end, still say the mytharc lost its way as time went on, and was a jumbled mess by the last few seasons.  To hand-wave that away rather than saying he made many a wrong turn (because he never thought he'd have to stretch things out that long, because he smoked too much pot to keep track of his own storylines, whatever) and, having learned his lesson, he's going to pare down to something cohesive and accessible (not dumbed-down, just accessible) now ... this is why I've always loved the show in spite of him more than because of him.

 

As for what any of my babbling has to do with nitpicking ... I've got nothing.  Just that the mytharc was one of the many reasons for the "conti-what?" joke popular on the newsgroup, referring to the idea CC and the writers were unfamiliar with the concept of continuity.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Bastet

[Jac]

Yeah - CC is as delusional now as he was then.  And thus I hope he's strictly an Exec Producer, and not a writer, for the revival.

 

 

...

 

As for what any of my babbling has to do with nitpicking ... I've got nothing.  Just that the mytharc was one of the many reasons for the "conti-what?" joke popular on the newsgroup, referring to the idea CC and the writers were unfamiliar with the concept of continuity.

 

Agreed, re. CC's continued delusional understanding of who people became massively frustrated with the mytharc. I think I might move the rest of my reply to the speculation thread to keep this on topic.

Edited April 28, 2015 by JacquelineLHope

[queequeg]

From what I read on tumblr (so take it with a grain of salt), CC is indeed writing.

[AntiBeeSpray]

Yea I read an article about it. So it's legit.

[Taryn74]

even those who, like that TWoP poster whose screen name I am completely blanking on who was a huge 1013 supporter and tried valiantly to make sense of the mytharc, not just stuck with but enjoyed the show - including the mytharc - through the end, still say the mytharc lost its way as time went on, and was a jumbled mess by the last few seasons.

 

 

ejluther.  I used to search for his posts every time a new question popped into my head, because he was the only person who ever even came close to making that convoluted mess make sense to me.

[M.F. Luder]

Theory: ejluther was Chris Carter :)

 

 

To hand-wave that away rather than saying he made many a wrong turn (because he never thought he'd have to stretch things out that long, because he smoked too much pot to keep track of his own storylines, whatever) and, having learned his lesson, he's going to pare down to something cohesive and accessible (not dumbed-down, just accessible) now ... this is why I've always loved the show in spite of him more than because of him.

I like to think that he has always publicly defended everything about the show because he doesn't want to in any way discredit the work that the writers and actors did in those late seasons because he knows they were all working in a situation where it was almost impossible to please any fans. But privately, he must know that there were many mistakes that were made.

 

At least that's what I want to believe. His comments in the recent interviews make me worried because he seems to think that open-ended ambiguity in both the storyline and the Mulder/Scully relationship is what people loved about the show. But, I mean, it would be impossible for him to basically not take any critical feedback about the failure of the last 2 seasons and the 2nd movie and just wave it all away by saying that it's just too complex for the average person to understand...right?

[AntiBeeSpray]

Theory: ejluther was Chris Carter :)

 

I like to think that he has always publicly defended everything about the show because he doesn't want to in any way discredit the work that the writers and actors did in those late seasons because he knows they were all working in a situation where it was almost impossible to please any fans. But privately, he must know that there were many mistakes that were made.

 

At least that's what I want to believe. His comments in the recent interviews make me worried because he seems to think that open-ended ambiguity in both the storyline and the Mulder/Scully relationship is what people loved about the show. But, I mean, it would be impossible for him to basically not take any critical feedback about the failure of the last 2 seasons and the 2nd movie and just wave it all away by saying that it's just too complex for the average person to understand...right?

 

Fair point in regards to the recent interviews.

 

He's kind of stuck in a damned if he did, damned if he didn't situation. I think at least to a point, he's taken some of the criticism. But I still think that he doesn't get all of it.

[Taryn74]

Something I've noticed off and on while watching and re-watching over the years, and I can't for the life of me figure out why, is that the Biblical references (when they actually "quote" chapter and verse) are almost always incorrect.  Sometimes it's a very subtle difference (in Existence, "Water from the rock ~ Exodus 7:16" is painted on one of the windows, in actuality it should be Exodus 17:6) and sometimes it's more glaring (in 3, the vampires wrote "John 52:54" on the wall, which Mulder quotes as "He who eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood shall have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day" which is a direct quote, but not from John chapter 52.  There is no John chapter 52, the book of John ends at chapter 21.  That quote is from John 6:54).

The only time I've noticed that the quotes and references are correct, in fact, is in The Field Where I Died.  Both the reference to Revelation 12:17 and the quote from 1st John 3 are correct.  There may be more, because I only check them as I think of them or run across them during a rewatch, but those are the only ones I've found so far that are correct.

I just find it interesting, but puzzling.

Edited November 22, 2016 by Taryn74

[eleanorofaquitaine]

13 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

Something I've noticed off and on while watching and re-watching over the years, and I can't for the life of me figure out why, is that the Biblical references (when they actually "quote" chapter and verse) are almost always incorrect.  Sometimes it's a very subtle difference (in Existence, "Water from the rock ~ Exodus 7:16" is painted on one of the windows, in actuality it should be Exodus 17:6) and sometimes it's more glaring (in 3, the vampires wrote "John 52:54" on the wall, which Mulder quotes as "He who eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood shall have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day" which is a direct quote, but not from John chapter 52.  There is no John chapter 52, the book of John ends at chapter 21.  That quote is from John 6:54).

The only time I've noticed that the quotes and references are correct, in fact, is in The Field Where I Died.  Both the reference to Revelation 12:17 and the quote from 1st John 3 are correct.  There may be more, because I only check them as I think of them or run across them during a rewatch, but those are the only ones I've found so far that are correct.

I just find it interesting, but puzzling.

There is also the fact that Scully says that St. Ignatius appeared in two places in the Bible, which definitely isn't the case, in the episode "Revelations" (not to mention the fact that it is Revelation).  Here are some others.  I wonder if it wasn't deliberate on the writers part, as a way of heading off any controversy?  Like, they get to talk about Christian themes but by making such glaring errors, they also get to say, "hey, this is fiction."  Because otherwise, it doesn't make a lot of sense - I know that 1996 was pre-widespread Internet, etc.  But I also remember doing research in the early 1990s, and it would not have been that difficult to crack open a Bible to get the citations right.

[Taryn74]

5 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

I wonder if it wasn't deliberate on the writers part, as a way of heading off any controversy?  Like, they get to talk about Christian themes but by making such glaring errors, they also get to say, "hey, this is fiction." 

I wondered if that had something to do with it, too.

Also, what a great website!  I've saved it in my favorites to check out more in depth later.  Thank you!!