The X-Files (1993-2002) ou le jeu des niveaux narratifs

• Main Author: Frédéric Gai
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures 2015-06-01
• Series: TV Series
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/280

The X-Files keeps questioning the limits of beginning and ending: the closed episodes are a sequence of police investigations and, although they do have an ending, they often remain unresolved however, and give a little more value and sustainability to the department of unsolved cases. Moreover, the mythology episodes extend the range of questions, switching from a conspiracy fomented around the secret about the aliens to the fate of humanity, including both its birth and extinction. The series has thus been then able to explore different narrative paths. It provided loops and reminders during nine seasons, sometimes used cliffhangers and thus postponed its own completion. It likewise turned the first feature film distributed in cinemas into an « episode » dropped out of the Fox release cycle.