X-Files: opening minute released for fans

The X-Files returns to UK television next month and excitement levels have gone up a notch after Fox released the first minute of footage from the series premiere.

The video clip shows former FBI officer Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) laying out his story while leafing through old images of past X-Files cases, fellow agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and his missing sister.

"My name is Fox Mulder," he says. "Since my childhood I've been obsessed by a controversial global phenomenon - since my sister disappeared when I was 12 years old in what I believe was an alien abduction."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

He goes on to tell how his obsession led him to investigate paranormal activity with the FBI and how Scully had been brought in to discredit his work. But she too "had her faith tested", he says. While the FBI closed down the X-Files in 2002, Mulder's obsession remains.

Mulder then throws the photos onto a pile, one by one, and sets them on fire.

The short clip is posted on the website Do You Still Believe.

"It's all part of the social media strategy to draw old and new viewers to the franchise," says the Daily Mail. The series won a cult following around the world with its tales of aliens and the paranormal, "as well as dark conspiracies about shadow government forces".

This is the latest teaser from Fox. Just after Christmas, they released a 21-minute featurette about the new series with behind-the-scenes footage, interviews with the cast and creators and hints about upcoming plot lines.

The new six-episode mini-series will look at developments in Scully and Mulder's relationship and the mystery surrounding their child.

It will also see the return of key characters, such as The Lone Gunmen and Cigarette Smoking Man, as well as introducing new faces such as a web-series host who taps into the underbelly of US conspiracy theories and believes that events such as 9/11, global warming and the Middle East conflicts are a prelude to a military takeover of the US.

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the US military involvement in the Middle East were important influences for this series, says showrunner Chris Carter. "We're dealing with a world that has changed completely from the time when the series ended in 2002, which was not long after the World Trade Centre bombing."

Writer and producer Glen Morgan adds that with all of us tracked on our phones and drones up above, "it feels like a lot of the things Mulder was warning us about came true".

The X-Files returns on Fox in the US on 24 January and on Channel 5 in the UK in February.