PREMIERES: THE X-FILES Season 10 Event Premieres With Chris Carter, David Duchovny & Mitch Pileggi

Mulder and Scully are back. Thirteen years after the television finale of the long-running The X-Files series —  which broadcast for nine seasons on FOX, five of them filmed in metro Vancouver. This week The X-Files premiered season 10 at World and American events, delighting international TV buyers at MIPCOM in France on Tuesday night and fans at New York Comic-Con today, many of whom had either grown up watching the UFO conspiracy hit or discovered it on Netflix.

Liveblog: Chris Carter talks new X Files: “Believe it or not, I’m a sceptic” http://t.co/Nu0pzGI6ga pic.twitter.com/dhXc4B5yCN

— MIP Markets (@mip) October 6, 2015

What disappointed audiences? Former FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are no longer involved. “Mulder and Scully are not living under same roof,” Carter confirmed at NYCC. Seven years have passed since they were a couple in the last X-Files movie and “Mulder and Scully have hit a [bump in the road],” Carter explained. They’ve had some difficulties. “It’s true to the passage of time,” he added.  The X-Files isn’t pretending that Mulder and Scully are younger than they are “even though they look fantastic”, Carter said at a post-screening Q&A at MIPCOM. But one NYCC fan was having none of it: “Don’t you think they’ve earned [being together] after 20 years?” Carter said her question sounded like a network note. An estrangement — while unpopular — does give season 10 somewhere to go,  the NYCC moderator and episode 3 guest star Kumail Nanjiani argued. A better question might be: Will Mulder and Scully be together by the season finale?

Screenshot of NYCC Livestream.

At NYCC, David Duchovny talked about how surreal it was on the first day of filming the revival at North Shore Studios in early June. He had a “huge long speech” to do but hadn’t been Mulder for years and so was “searching for that Mulder flow”. Luckily the cast has a “group memory”. It’s instinctive, Duchovny says. “We can kind of feel when Mulder’s right or when Scully’s right.”

Mitch Pileggi told NYCC that he based his character Walter Skinner on his father, who was with the Department of Defence in the Middle East. And in the season 10 premiere when Skinner walks into the room with pencils stuck in the ceiling and Mulder kicking his “I Want to Believe” poster, Pileggi ad-libbed a line — “Calm the hell down Mulder before we both get pissed off”  — as his father would have said it.

Group selfie at NYCC today.

Also returning in the season 10 premiere — the nefarious Cigarette Smoking Man/Cancer Man (William B. Davis).

Plus the premiere introduces a new character: Tad O’Malley (Joel McHale), an online star on  MindQuad (YouTube equivalent)  and a conspiracy theorist who might be even more paranoid than Mulder.

Related: The X-Files’s Chris Carter Directs David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and Joel McHale in Downtown Vancouver

Mythology episodes bookend season 10 with four standalone monster-of-the-week episodes in between. And that’s where we’ll see other fan favourites like the Lone Gunmen, Chris Carter says.

MIPCom.

The X-Files returns to FOX with a special two-night event beginning at 10 p.m. (ET/PT) on Sunday, January 24th next year, following the NFC Championship Game, and then moving to its regular time period on Monday, January 25th at 8 p.m. ET/PT.