X Files

For a Tuesday, there's a lot going on, including special events on Fox and HBO and another fresh episode of "NYPD Blue" on ABC.* "The X-Files" (8-9 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) -- This is the month when the networks tinker and tweak their schedules a bit, trying out promising but low-rated shows in different time slots in hopes of building a larger audience. Later this month, NBC will throw an episode of Sunday's "seaQuest DSV" onto Thursday night. Tonight, Fox complements its normal Friday showing of "The X-Files" with a special repeat showing -- a spooky episode, guest-starring Carrie Snodgress,about a possible close encounter of the third kind.

Starring David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson. Directed by Chris Carter. Fox Home Video. $29.95, blu-ray $39.95 *** The X-Files may have ended its television run in 2002, but interest in agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and all that stuff the FBI isn't telling us continues. Which is why, six years after the weekly series left the air, The X-Files: I Want to Believe hit the big screen in July. Fans will be glad to run across Mulder and Scully once again: She's a dedicated surgeon trying to eradicate the world's ills over which she has some control, while he's become pretty much a basket case, burnt-out, disillusioned and basically not giving a darn anymore.

Two years ago, the in-crowd huddled around the television each Wednesday night to watch "Seinfeld." The rest of the world, meanwhile, was merrily watching "Home Improvement."Soon, the rest of the world discovered "Seinfeld" -- and the show surged ahead in the Nielsen ratings.Now another show is making its way from the backwaters of cult status into the mainstream. It's "The X-Files," the Fox sci-fi show that has become a Friday-night ritual for die-hard fans, who call themselves X-Philes.

That terrific TV critic Joyce Millman rightly called the first chaotic X-Files movie, The X-Files: Fight the Future, "an overgrown sweeps episode." Ten years later (and six years after the series' demise), The X -Files: I Want to Believe resembles those TV-series reunions that bring the cast of a hit together for a not-so-special occasion. The plot about a clairvoyant defrocked priest, Father Joe (Billy Connolly), who may lead the FBI to a kidnapped agent, sutures together tropes from serial-killer movies, horror classics such as The Body Snatcher and Frankenstein, medical suspense films like Coma and psychic jamborees like The Dead Zone.

The truth is out there.And FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully will seek it on a new night next fall. Fox is boldly shifting "The X-Files" to Sunday nights, the key move in the network's 1996 fall schedule, announced yesterday.The switch means that "Married With Children," a fixture on Sunday nights for a decade, is heading to a new night. Al Bundy & Co. now will be lewdly bodacious at 9 p.m. Saturdays.Fox's fall schedule features five new series, including three sitcoms and two dramas.

Lots of sci-fi season premieres are on the tube tonight."Maryland Teacher of the Year Awards" (7 p.m.-8 p.m., MPT, Channels 22 and 67) -- The best teacher in the state will be chosen from a field of seven finalists in a live presentation."

The best thing about Friday the 13th, in terms of TV? Being able to mark the occasion with a first-run episode of "The X-Files." The worst thing? As always, a jag of Jason movies. At least, by next week at this time, we should finally be able to see some other hockey masks on TV.* "The X-Files" (9-10 p.m., Channel 45) -- Bruce Weitz, Belker on "Hill Street Blues," portrays Agent Bocks, in a story about a serial killer whose deviant behavior isn't limited to murder. Fox.* "Homicide: Life on the Street" (10-11 p.m., Channel 11)

My family watches very few television shows together, but each week we all gather in our family room to catch the latest episode of "The X-Files."This quirky show on the Fox network is about the adventures of FBI agent Fox Mulder and his partner Dana Scully, who always find that a dark, sinister conspiracy in the top levels of the federal government thwarts their investigations into unexplained phenomena, particularly those cases contained in the highly confidential...

On paper, "The X-Files" sounds like the worst new TV series this side of "The Trouble With Larry.""The one-hour drama features a pair of FBI agents who investigate cases involving the paranormal," the synopsis from Fox Broadcasting says.Based on that, file "The X-Files" in the circular file.But TV series don't play on paper. They play on videotape. And what producer Chris Carter got on tape in the pilot for "The X-Files" just might make for one of the most unexpected ratings winners of the new season.

That terrific TV critic Joyce Millman rightly called the first chaotic X-Files movie, The X-Files: Fight the Future, "an overgrown sweeps episode." Ten years later (and six years after the series' demise), The X -Files: I Want to Believe resembles those TV-series reunions that bring the cast of a hit together for a not-so-special occasion. The plot about a clairvoyant defrocked priest, Father Joe (Billy Connolly), who may lead the FBI to a kidnapped agent, sutures together tropes from serial-killer movies, horror classics such as The Body Snatcher and Frankenstein, medical suspense films like Coma and psychic jamborees like The Dead Zone.

SALIQUELLO, Argentina - Daniel Belot has seen his share of dead cows. As a veterinarian in the heart of the cow-full pampas, Belot has written off bovine deaths to causes as diverse as foot-and-mouth disease, bloat, lightning, killer bees and cattle thieves who butcher their loot in place, a crime that has become increasingly common as Argentina's economic crisis has extended to the countryside. Then, in April, he discovered a case that stumped him. A rancher had found a nearly 1,000-pound Aberdeen Angus lying on its belly "like a rabbit," in Belot's words.

LOS ANGELES - After nine seasons and countless conspiracies, The X-Files will finish its run on Fox at the end of this season, series creator Chris Carter says. "This has been an incredible decade of my life," he says. The show has taken a hit in the ratings this season, the first not to feature David Duchovny as Agent Fox Mulder, whose dogged pursuit of the conspiracy to hide alien life from the people drove the show's mythology for much of its run. Duchovny appeared in only half of last season's episodes, and sued producer 20th Century Fox TV over his share of profits from syndication sales.

David Duchovny wore a dress in "Twin Peaks," flirted with Garry Shandling on "The Larry Sanders Show" and re-created the voice of "The X-Files'" Fox Mulder on "The Simpsons." But he faces his biggest challenge in the new movie "Evolution": He wants to make us laugh -- out loud. "Everyone always says that broad comedy is really the toughest thing to do," he says in a recent telephone conversation. "After 'Evolution,' I definitely believe it." Duchovny may file "The X-Files" in a been-there, done-that basket.

Aliens are taking over Earth and the only person who can stop it is a smart-aleck prodigal son leading a band of misfits against them and an obstructive military. Wait, cut! This isn't "The X-Files"! It may be a sci-fi project starring David Duchovny, but it's different, really, it is! What distinguishes "Evolution" from the series most is that it proves intelligent life on Earth is a much more precious commodity than we realize. Spoofy sci-fi works best when it zaps audiences with full-on audacity - "Men in Black" comes to mind.

How many geeks does it take to carry a prime-time series? That's the question Fox will try to answer in the next three weeks with the tryout of "The Lone Gunman," a spinoff from "The X-Files" featuring Byers, Frohike and Langly, the computer-hacking conspiracy geeks occasionally called upon to help FBI agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) in their search to find the truth "out there." Tomorrow night's pilot is filled with talk of: patriotism, cover-ups, Pentium chips, anagrams, JFK, gigabytes and demanding fathers.

Two years ago, the National Security Agency began posting previously classified documents on its Web site to deflect the growing number of requests each year for information about flying saucers and space aliens. But the plan backfired. Rather than relieving suspicions that the agency is hiding information about unidentified flying objects, the result has been more people than ever demanding to see UFO documents. A record 36,000 people perused the UFO page last month. What has piqued UFO believers' interest is not so much what the documents on the Web site say - often little or nothing between the blacked-out censored sections - but their extraordinary volume: thousands of pages of unofficial reports and antiquated radio interceptions from abroad.

Unlike the paranormal events it chronicles every week, the hit television show "The X-Files" can be programmed, categorized and easily referenced.It appeals to the conspiracy buff in all of us, with the siren call of government cover-ups, shadowy well-dressed cabals and -- bonus! -- extraterrestrials of the Roswell, N.M., variety. It is science fiction at its most sophisticated -- no pie plates on strings, no time warps, just the stuff of the human imagination on its darkest, wildest day.Its stories teem with memorable and often recurring themes and characters, all of which will one day connect in the Grand Unified Theory that will link the Kennedy assassination, Area 51 and why you can't find a decent cup of coffee on I-95.

Baltimore: a nice place to be introduced to The Conspiracy.At least that's how Fox Mulder of "The X-Files" has come to regard Charm City. For it was right here, in a Fells Point warehouse, that Mulder was transformed from your run-of-the-mill, bad-guy-chasing FBI agent to the guy who sees conspiracies everywhere and the truth nowhere.Tomorrow night's episode of "The X-Files" (9 p.m.-10 p.m. on WBFF, Channel 45) takes a break from the season's litany of conspiracy twists -- Is Cigarette-Smoking Man really dead?

LOS ANGELES - After a season that was mostly a disaster, Sandy Grushow, the new chairman of the Fox Entertainment Television Group, said he wanted to announce a "new day at the network" and the "beginning of a major rebuilding process." But Grushow, who has been on the job only seven months, and Gail Berman, who has been in her job as network president for just three weeks, spent most of their press conference here yesterday defending past fiascoes like "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire," as well as apologizing for problems with their signature series, "Ally McBeal" and "The X-Files."

It has come to this: I am now dreaming about Santiago.It's dark and wet, and Santiago -- with that fierce, black slash of a pencil mustache -- is chasing me through the woods. A chorus of faceless people in rags -- right out of "Blade Runner" -- is chanting, "Get Santiago, get Santiago, get Santiago or die, fool."Thanks a lot, Chris Carter, for burning "Harsh Realm" into my brain. Just what I needed, another scary TV dream and more weird video characters running around inside my head.I am not kidding about the dream.