Interview with Chris Carter

If you boast any familiarity with my blog, you probably already know that -- across the last five years -- I have written frequently abut the TV and film productions of Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions.

There are many reasons why I find myself continually drawn back to Carter's oeuvre. In broad terms, these reasons involve television history, the artistry of the particular programs, philosophy, and of course, personal taste.

Historically speaking, The X-Files and Millennium have grown virtually synonymous with the decade of the 1990s. Carter's programs captured the Zeitgeist of that epoch in sometimes challenging, sometimes stunning fashion.

By the end of the decade, various Ten Thirteen productions had gazed at the teen culture ("Syzygy,") pondered the Human Genome Project ("Sense and Anti-Sense,") skewered nineties tabloid culture ("The Post-Modern Prometheus"), satirized Scientology ("Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense"), peeked behind the closed-door mores of our affluent gated, McMansion communities ("Arcadia," "Weeds"), considered domestic terrorism ("52266"), dissected the mentality of cults ("The Field Where I Died"), and much more. This is Who We Were.

In terms of my continued appreciation of these series, I find myself again relying on Roger Ebert's insightful and useful refrain -- that it isn't what a movie (or TV program) is about that's important; it's how that production is about the narrative that truly matters.

And the "how" of Chris Carter's genre programs -- The X-Files, Millennium, Harsh Realm, and The Lone Gunmen -- is also the thing that perpetually intrigues and fascinates me. Specifically, I enjoy that these productions invariably deploy symbolism and literary allusion to further their themes. I've written about that facet in regards to Millennium, specifically, in my essays: "Enemies Within: Chris Carter's Millennium and America's Suburban Apocalypse, and "Snakes in the Grass and Snakes in the Open: Animal Symbolism in Millennium's Second Season."

I also admire the unconventional and cinematic visuals forged on these series, which stand apart from the majority of dramatic programs in television history. Television tends be...visual radio.

But not The X-Files, Millennium or Ten Thirteen's other works. They regularly utilize expressive, unconventional camera-work and always seem to find a way for the image to marry theme. If you have any doubt of this fact, just go back and watch The X-Files episode "Triangle," a dizzying, audacious balancing of "real space and time" with "fantasy space and time" in the Bermuda Triangle. It's Alfred Hitchcock's Rope meets the split-screen climax of De Palma's Carrie meets The Wizard of Oz. And that's just one example.

Notably, Carter's programs were also at the vanguard of the movement in dramatic television towards multi-episode, multi-season story arcs. And gazing across nearly 300 hours of filmed entertainment, I find myself fascinated by the connections between Ten Thirteen's many works; and the consistency of world view I see across the spectrum of Carter's universe.

For shorthand, you might call this "the Chris Carter mystique," or his "brand." It's the same thing with Joss Whedon (another artist I deeply admire): the alert viewer will be aware within minutes that he has stepped into Chris Carter's world.

So, after I received a happy birthday note from Chris Carter last week (!), I decided this was a great opportunity to open a dialogue with him regarding some of these ideas. To my delight, he agreed to a wide-ranging interview, and that's what you see transcribed below. I re-arranged the interview to group my questions by themes to present, hopefully, a cohesive picture.

The Building Blocks: Symbolism, Story Arcs, and "The Chris Carter Man"

JKM: One of the threads I've noticed running throughout your work is your use of symbolism.

For example, the Yellow House as paradise and then paradise lost in Millennium. Or the Arthurian Chair in Harsh Realm. I guess my question is simply, why?

CARTER: I don't set out to throw these symbols in as anything other than what interests me.

It's done on a case-by-case basis, and then they only become symbols to everyone else. What I can say about everything that I've created or worked on is that it's been about what interests me at the time.

JKM: In terms of Millennium and the yellow house -- this perfect place of safety and happiness -- where did that idea came from?

CARTER: It came out of the bigger concept of a guy who was trying to paint away the darkness.

I had worked on X-Files for three to four years at that point, and we were dealing with some very dark subject matter. After awhile -- after writing about that dark subject matter and realizing how powerful it can really be -- you try to come up with remedies, yourself, for the darkness. It's not always fun to write about the darkness.

JKM: So the yellow house was a place of safety for you, as well as for Frank?

CARTER: It was. And it's funny, when I look back at Millennium now, I think, in a way, the concept was actually too complex. Especially when I look at shows that have become hits, like CSI, or other procedurals. They don't deal with ideas like the yellow house. They don't deal with things like family, necessarily.

JKM: But that's what made Millennium so great. It had all those elements. I know I wrote once that Millennium must be the most-often imitated show in TV history. But other series have sort of stripped it down to the component parts: the paranormal angle (Medium, Ghost Whisperer); the forensic (CSI) angle, the serial killer (Criminal Minds) angle. Everybody's taken a page from it, but nobody's been able to sort of re-assemble the totality of it.

CARTER: It was also a show set on a specific schedule, which was the countdown to the Millennium, and of course nobody can duplicate that in this decade. It had...complexity.

And it's funny, when it went off the air it did so with ratings that are better than many of the shows that are on the air right now. In a weird way, if you look at Millennium and Harsh Realm, you can say that Harsh Realm kind of booted Millennium off the air, which now -- looking back -- is very unfortunate.

JKM: It would have been good to have them simultaneously.

CARTER: That would have been my preference as well.

JKM: Another aspect of your work that I see repeated throughout is the depiction of men. My wife is a therapist,and as much as she enjoys the way Joss Whedon writes women, she likes the way you write men. She's suggested a clinical classification: The Chris Carter male.

In short, the leading men in your programs are chivalrous and heroic, but essentially unavailable emotionally to the women in their lives. Frank Black blocks himself off from Katherine in the act of protecting her. To save his Sophie, Hobbes elects to stay permanently separated from her in Harsh Realm, and so on. Is this representative of your view of men, or just something that you find dramatically interesting?

CARTER: I'd have to say it's dramatically-interesting to me. It's what's withheld that counts, or that is important.

If the character is remote or unable to speak about these things -- because it's series television we're talking about here -- it becomes something that needs to be discovered. So if you discover these things too quickly; if a person is too emotionally available, it actually takes away from the interest in the character. It makes that character less dramatically interesting.

JKM: And less tragic?

CARTER: The characters are tragic. That's what makes them interesting. Their flaws and their weaknesses. And also their strengths. By not telling his wife about the darkness, Frank is painting it away. By not telling her about the polaroids, he's painting it away. It's a strength, but one which could be viewed as a weakness in terms of how men relate to women.

JKM: Not to push a point, but it does seem that your men seem to suffer from this quality, but the women don't have that level of remoteness.

CARTER: I think that's the women's strength. They stay there. They don't shy away from the entanglement. From the darkness. That says a lot about the women. Look at Scully. She's a very, very independent person. Her strength is measured against Mulder's; it's not measured by Mulder.

JKM: There's a period of rebellion against Mulder, by Scully. Like she's rejecting in a sense, his control, his remoteness.

CARTER: In season five you can say that for sure. They really have a falling out. They're of two different minds. Scully actually pursues Mulder's path, and Mulder, in a weird way, pursues Scully's. That was all a plan.

JKM: You don't see relationships go up and down and back and forth like that on many of the dramatic series today. Take CSI For example.

CARTER: Well, they are murder mysteries and they work very well as that. I think that programs that are character pieces work on an additional level.

JKM: Which brings us to another topic. In terms of genre history -- Star Trek, Kolchak, programs like that -- they were not able feature a story arc.

CARTER: That arc -- which arcs over nine years -- has been the subject of a lot of debate.

JKM: Does that mean you long for the days when TV stories were simpler? When you could just say, "next week, we start over."

CARTER: You look at Law & Order. It's an amazing television series. It really has what you're talking about. It starts anew each week, and it doesn't feature characters' personal lives over and over again. That is not part of the series. It's a luxury. I never figured out how to create something that would interest me that would be as simple as that.

JKM: And that may be the very thing that precludes a series like Millennium from running for nine years. Some people can't take that journey, but the people who do take the journey usually end up feeling very rewarded.

CARTER: We did an X-Files charity day recently, and we had a lot of people there from all over the world. One of the things that someone said to me -- and pointed out as a regular watcher of the show -- she said: "people say the mytharc of the show is complicated. It's not complicated. You just have to pay attention to it."

I think one of the things that happened, certainly -- and this is part of it being a nine year show - is people say that it got too complicated. I think that what it did -- rather than becoming overly complicated -- it became stretched-out. It took on a complexity given there were 202 episodes.

JKM: In some sense, broadcast television in the 1990s -- before DVD box sets -- worked against you there, I think. It's very difficult when you have to stop your story momentum for Thanksgiving, or play-off games, week-in and week-out. This was the case with Twin Peaks as well. But when you watch a season on DVD -- in a week or two weeks -- it's easier to see how it all makes sense. I don't know what this fact says about our attention span, but it seems that series like Millennium and X-Files are much preferable to watch on DVD, back-to-back, rather than with weeks of interruption in-between.

CARTER: Of course, when you're producing the series, it is a week-by-week experience. So you're not thinking about the DVDs. I never thought about the DVDs. You really are thinking about what it is-- week-to-week -- that interests you. You do it simply on that basis. So when you hear that people watch it from beginning to end, it's very satisfying that what you were pondering, and working out carefully, elaborately, and painstakingly plays out on a grander scale.

JKM: It does. Millennium, in my opinion, is one of the most pure works of art I've ever seen on television. It holds so many resonances of things half-spoken and suggested. It's a beautiful puzzle.

CARTER: I appreciate you saying that. That was what it set out to be, and I know that's what the writers set out for it to be. In the second season -- which I had so little involvement in because I was working on The X-Files and The X-Files movie -- Glen Morgan and James Wong came in and put their stamp on it. They added layers to it. It was truly a collaboration of points-of-view, and of I guess you would call it an artistic approach to what was I think, an interesting subject matter.

JKM: Taken together, all the seasons lead you to this inevitable conclusion about what is going to occur at the Millennium. You almost have three meditations from three perspectives-- in three seasons -- on the same subject, about the same man, the same organization, and the same situation.

CARTER: If there is a mystique, it's truly collaborative. On The X-Files it was also truly collaborative. There were so many good people that came to work on the show: who wrote the show, who directed the show, and who became involved in the show. It's one of those things where you have to spread out the accolades for what the series became; and what they did

JKM: I think Millennium is the first time I heard on network television the descriptor "the culture of fear" as applied to the United States. In the last decade, we've certainly become well-acquainted with the culture of fear in this country. But not many of us were thinking about that in the 1990s. But you were. And your shows were. All of your programs feature this brand of "anticipatory anxiety." You know, there's going to be a doomsday. An alien invasion in 2012. Millennium went through many end of the world scenarios. Even Harsh Realm. What were you seeing that other people weren't seeing? How did you tap into this?

CARTER: I don't know. That is a sensibility of mine. I just sensed that there was something bad coming. Probably, the combination of Y2K and the Millennium; the Millennial anxiety everyone was feeling. The word "Millennium" wasn't actually a popular coinage. People didn't know what Millennium meant, by and large, so while there was nervousness, it was truly an instinctual gut nervousness. There wasn't a whole lot of intellectual effort being put into the decade, into the turn of the century.

JKM: But you started doing this in 1993, even before people started talking about Y2K or the Millennium. The Cold War was over. We had peace and prosperity. We had no enemy. We had all this technology, and the economy was booming. But you still found this underlying uneasiness. If you look at it today, your programs are even more timely. People wondering about vaccinations, the government, etc...

CARTER: Oh, there's much more paranoia today.

JKM: In a decade in which a lot of people seem to think nothing happened, your shows were saying a lot's happening. You even issued a challenge in the opening credits of Millennium when you flashed up the words, "who cares?"

CARTER: Right. "Who cares" came up, and then the question mark came up a moment later. It really was a two-edged sword. Frank Black represented the people who had the weight of that worry on their shoulders. The few people who actually were looking forward; or feeling the anxiety. Who weren't lost in, as you say, the good times.

JKM: If you look across Millennium, X-Files, Lone Gunmen, and Harsh Realm, you also see that in addition to the anticipatory anxiety, you return again and again to the idea of the unelected privileged -- a small group, a cabal -- whether it be the Syndicate, the Millennium Group of the military industrial complex in Harsh Realm dominating the many. Is that something really interests you?

CARTER: Yes, it interests me, and it's continuing to interest me. Sometimes, I don't even stop to consider these things, but I'll find something of interest. A conversation with someone, for instance. I'm looking at the Zeitgeist of today and trying to make sense of it in what I'm doing. Sometimes these things are commercial, and sometimes they aren't.

JKM: That's the tragedy of Harsh Realm. The show got better and better and better, but only three episodes actually aired. At the end, you're left mourning what could have been.

CARTER: I feel the same way. I look at a show like Dollhouse, and if we would have been given the opportunity that Dollhouse had...we might have lasted. The same thing happened to Joss Whedon with Firefly. He had a great idea and didn't get a chance to develop it.

JKM: In creating your shows, you had to research the paranormal, conspiracy theories, Scripture, forensic science. Are these all interests of yours?

CARTER: I always had this question that I would ask myself and I would ask the writers as we went forward. Why this story? And why this story now? Those questions set the bar high, and they were relevant philosophically and dramatically to their times. It's important, as a television writer, to ask yourself that question. It deepens the work. That's not to say it's always a good thing. Sometimes it makes it less accessible or more intellectual than it needs to be.

JKM: Which brings up the end of the X-Files series. I'm sure you're aware of the conventional wisdom: that the series sort of petered-out in the last two years and was not so good. But I watched Season 8 recently and it is incredibly creative; it can stand up beside any other season of the X-Files.

CARTER: Thank you.

JKM: Was it just that we had gotten so attached to Mulder that we couldn't make the leap to a new leading man? Or did the culture move beyond The X-Files at that time?

CARTER: It was easier to say, it's not the X-Files anymore, because it had changed. The characters changed. Mulder became the absent center, which was an interesting approach, I think, and made for an interesting season. It changed, though, and so -- like it or not -- people who would tune in to see Mulder and Scully wouldn't see them anymore. But creatively, the show sort of took on a new life. The stories were interesting, and the new characters made the stories interesting.

JKM: Robert Patrick was terrific. And in Doggett you suddenly had a non-veteran set of eyes on these X-Files cases. You saw someone with vulnerability in "Via Negativa," for instance. We always knew after seven years that Mulder and Scully would be there for each other, but we didn't know yet about Doggett. He was alone, in a way, and suddenly you had this new uncertainty, which the show got a lot of mileage out of, in my opinion.

CARTER: It was kind of meta-X-Files because it was commenting on itself at the same time, and the show turned inward, in a way. The characters deepened. The concept deepened. And I think for some people that was interesting and for some people it became inaccessible.

Expressing Terror and Mystery: The Visuals of The X-Files and Millennium

JKM: One thing that's important to me as a viewer and a critic is the visual component of television. Not all TV looks like the X-Files or Millennium. They're very cinematic. Why is that important to you?

CARTER: First of all, in television people haven't quite been given the opportunity to produce things that were so visual. It was sort of by demand on our part. We had to tell these really scary thriller stories, and they couldn't be done from one angle, two-shots. They needed to be done in a multi-faceted, delivery-of-information way. So we got to emulate a lot of what I loved about film, and we got to do it on a television schedule.

It didn't happen right away, but not long after we started, we were given what I call respectable budgets. We needed to tell these stories in interesting visual ways; we took an artistic approach. We were one of the first shows to give credit to the director of photography and the production designer, and other people up front in a television show. So we had the budget and the desire to push the limits. I always say "we didn't understand what we didn't understand" about producing a TV show like this. We tried everything.

I point to something like the conning tower coming out of the ice in season two ("Colony"/"Endgame.") We refrigerated a sound stage, brought in tons of snow and ice and built this conning tower. I didn't know you couldn't do that. So we just started doing things.

JKM: It seemed as if we were watching a movie every week. So much so, that I must hold you responsible for the fact that horror movies in the 1990s didn't do particularly well. Every Friday night, for many years, you could get a better experience at home watching The X-Files or Millennium instead of going to the theater and being disappointed.

CARTER: I always said that we weren't doing horror and couldn't do horror based on the standards-and-practices that were applied to the shows. We did an episode like "Home," and the day after we did it I was given a very stern lecture about never, ever pushing those limits again.

And you see where horror went after The X-Files. The Saw series for instance. It had to push limits that we couldn't push on television.

JKM: Given those limitations, would it be possible to do another series like The X-Files today?

CARTER: I don't think so. I mean, we had 22 days to shoot "Kill Switch" -- that's including second unit work too -- but 22 days. That's just unheard of. That's why I don't think there will ever be another series like The X-Files. People ask me that, and I just don't think there can be in today's climate.

JKM: In general terms, what are some of your film inspirations?

CARTER: For The X-Files, I point to Silence of the Lambs (1991). Another movie that I love -- which is horror in a certain kind of way -- is the David Lean version of Great Expectations (1946).

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

JKM: I want to talk to you about I Want to Believe. Although critics including Roger Ebert, The Flick Filosopher, Whitney Pastorek, Stephanie Zacharek, and myself all appreciated the film, by and large it was met with savage, dismissive reviews. I mean, people -- including critics -- just categorically refused to engage with it.

Do you think this was because it was not at all the typical summer blockbuster -- it featured few big special effects and almost no gunfire --- or because the subject matter was so dark that people just weren't willing to engage with it?

CARTER: I think it was about as you say, the summer blockbuster mentality, and what we delivered and what was expected. What we attempted to do; and what the audience expected.

All these things played into how I Want to Believe was received. It's funny, but on the series, we prided ourselves each week with making a little movie. Then, when it came time to do the second X-Files movie, we were given the money and the opportunity to make, literally, a little movie. That's what we did. We realized we had no money for big special effects. We had to come up with a story that didn't rely on those special effects, and hence wasn't a summer blockbuster kind of movie.

So we came up with a movie that was about faith and forgiveness and redemption. And then you put it up against The Dark Knight in late July, in the heat of the summer, and what happened to us was that we met with some valid criticism, and also what I call lazy criticism.

But we also met with box office results that showed there was a hardcore X-Files audience out there, six years after the series had been off the air. The people who had hoped for another X-Files movie -- or were willing to see another X-Files movie -- were probably hoping to see something bigger than the first X-Files movie.

JKM: In a way what you gave us was bigger emotionally than what you gave us in the first X-Files movie.

CARTER: That's a feature of not having a money to do anything else that was bigger than the first X-Files movie.

JKM: Father Joe is a really fascinating character in the film. And how you use him in I Want to Believe really challenges the audience. You tell us this is someone society has judged as irreedemable, and yet on the other hand, as the film points out, we have this little work called the Bible that preaches forgiveness and redemption. And our culture says it believes in those things. And so Father Joe is looking to be redeemed, and is doing positive things, so why can't people take that extra step and at least try to forgive him?

CARTER: It's an idea I've been holding onto for a long time; the idea that Father Joe lived in this complex with these other men, where they sort of policed each other. I had read about that a long time ago, and I always thought that was so intriguing and relevant to the idea of redemption, the idea of forgiveness, of living life after the point of judgment.

Another thing that wasn't talked about much in the criticism of the film was the Frankenstein idea. I had run across something on the Internet: a Russian doctor creating two-headed dogs. I mean he was really doing this...creating two-headed monsters. It's a Frankenstein story, yet nobody really reviewed it as a kind of modern Frankenstein story.

JKM: Some critics also suggested the film was homophobic or anti-gay.

CARTER: It was the opposite.

JKM: That's how I read it. It was about going to extreme possibilities to save the life of someone you care about. Whether it was the sick boy, Christian, Mulder's obsession with the case, or the villain's obsession...he was going to do anything to save his lover's life....

CARTER: Don't give up. He wasn't giving up. I always said that the film was really a multi-layered love story. There was the love between Mulder and Scully. Then there was the Russian character who had been collecting these body parts and his love for his partner. So the love stories reflected each other. But again, I just want to say that some criticism of the film was valid.

More Millennium? More X-Files? The Truth is Out There...

JKM: Bottom line, did I Want to Believe make enough money to ensure production of a third X-Files movie?

CARTER: I wouldn't use the word ensure. But because of the business the movie did, especially the international business, it is a possibility.

JKM: I know that you're paying attention to this. There's been this fantastic movement, and a group, called Back to Frank Black, dedicated to the resurrection of Millennium. The show seems more popular now than ever. Is a Millennium feature film something you are interested in pursuing?

CARTER: I would like to do it. But it is going to take interest on the studio side for it to happen. Everyone involved with Millennium has left the studio. The people there now know it ran for three years and that it starred Lance Henriksen, and that's all. You have to find reasons to interest them.

JKM: Given that the Millennium is passed -- and without giving away specifics -- what kind of storyline would interest you for a Millennium motion picture?

CARTER: Considering we're engaged in a War on Terror that is ongoing, I'd like to see Frank and the Millennium Group distill something from that war that is...interesting.

JKM: If you could take one episode from any one of your shows and put it away in a time capsule for 100 years...and say this is who we wre in the 1990s, this is who Chris Carter was, what episode would it be?

CARTER: Well, I think maybe "Post-Modern Prometheus." In a weird way, it captures so much. And I really like that moment at the end with Mulder and Scully dancing together. It's just a sweet moment.

JKM: I wouldn't presume to tell you your answer is wrong, but I also really liked The Millennium pilot.

CARTER: David Nutter did a great job shooting that. I love the final moment with the polaroids, when Frank realizes this isn't over. That it's just beginning...

JKM: Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today.

CARTER: Thank you.

CULT TV FLASHBACK #83: Harsh Realm (1999-2000)

"A world exists...exactly like ours. Your family and friends. And though you may not know it, I was sent to save you."

-Opening narration to Chris Carter's Harsh Realm (1999), voiced by Lt. Thomas Hobbes (Scott Bairstow)

In 1999, Chris Carter and 1013 Productions, producers of The X-Files (1993-2002) and Millennium (1996-1999), created a third genre series for Fox television. It was called Harsh Realm.

The series -- about a virtual reality version of America existing after a terrorist attack on New York City -- was advertised with the tag-line "It's Just a Game" and broadcast just three episodes before an abrupt cancellation. In all, nine hour-long installments were made.

The abrupt (and inconclusive...) end to Harsh Realm was intensely disappointing, especially to the dedicated fans who actually followed the series on Friday nights at 9:00 pm (the same slot that Joss Whedon's Dollhouse now struggles in...). Viewing numbers were low in terms of network TV expectations, and the series had been under promoted (though TV Guide named it one of the best new shows of the year).

Making matters worse, Harsh Realm faced more than its share of controversy during its short life. For instance, the series was widely derided by critics as an uninspired copy of 1999's The Matrix, even though Harsh Realm was in production concurrently with that blockbuster. More to the point, Harsh Realm was shot in Vancouver on the same budget as your average network medical drama and thus simply could not compete visually with the trail-blazing Keanu Reeves epic.

Perhaps more significantly, the creators of Harris Publishing's Harsh Realm comic book sued Chris Carter when the TV adaptation failed to acknowledge them or their artistic contributions to the series. [NOTE: Actually, the comic was acknowledged in the end credits in the first episode.] The comic-book creators were victorious in their suit, and beginning with the second episode, Harsh Realm episodes featured during the opening credits a title card which specifically noted that the series was "inspired" by the comic-book work of James D. Hudnall and Andrew Paquette. Finally, some years after the TV series' cancellation, Harsh Realm star Scott Bairstow apparently had some...uh...legal difficulties, and did some jail time.

In short, any good historian could probably enumerate abundant reasons why Harsh Realm never achieved the large-scale, avid following of Chris Carter's other video endeavors, but virtually all of them have nothing whatsoever to do with the program's actual quality.

Because, in point of fact, Harsh Realm is constructed upon the same sturdy pillars of good story-telling, symbolic representation, strong characters and dynamic world view that so ably supported The X-Files or Millennium. Indeed, James D. Hudnall and Andrew Paquette should have been credited for their original work from the beginning and to do otherwise was wrong-headed folly.

Yet by the same token, the TV series Harsh Realm takes relatively little of substance from the comic book beyond the "grunge speak" title. To wit, the TV series features brand-new, original characters and boasts an entirely different narrative thrust (it's a military/political struggle rather than the comic's noir-ish detective story...) Of course, the TV series also appropriates the comic's central concept of a virtual reality world, but the TV "harsh realm" and the comic-book "harsh realm" are completely different in every significant way: both visual and thematic. The comic book virtual world is based on overt fantasy concepts (a world of goblins, elves etc...) whereas the TV show more closely adheres to Chris Carter's personal view of the 1990s world: one of bureaucracy, conspiracy, geo-political turmoil, and domination of the many by the few.

After a brief preamble involving Lt. Thomas Hobbes (Bairstow) on a peace-keeping mission gone wrong in Sarajevo in 1994, the action in Harsh Realm shifts rapidly to Fort Dix, New Jersey in the year 1999. There, a disenchanted Hobbes plans to leave the Army permanently in just a few short months. He wants to relocate to California with his beautiful fiancee, Sophie (Samantha Mathis). But even as Hobbes plans to start a new life, he is ordered to report to a secretive, white-haired colonel (Lance Henriksen) for a new, classified assignment. Hobbes is escorted to a secret bunker and -- after a "final supper" -- ordered to "play a game," a virtual reality game called...Harsh Realm.

This "Harsh Realm" game - a simulated war scenario -- was created by the Pentagon in 1995. Utilizing information from satellite cartography and the latest U.S. Census, the war gamers have created a duplicate of America, down to every last location, person and even pet. But there's an important difference between the worlds. In this virtual version of America, a suitcase nuke was detonated in New York City at noon on October 31, 1995 ("Camera Obscura"). Four million Americans died in 2.5 seconds. "Ground Zero" was located... in Manhattan. The game developers hoped to test American military (and civilian peace-keeping) capabilities after such a catastrophic terrorist attack, but they never could have anticipated what occur ed next.

The hero the Army first sent into the game world -- the most decorated veteran in United States Army history, Omar Santiago (Terry O'Quinn) --took over Harsh Realm. Out of the ashes of the apocalypse, this soldier carved out a brutal, military dictatorship for himself. The so-called "United States of Santiago" now encompasses five states...and a great percentage of the Eastern seaboard. Santiago believes "one man can have it all here..." and ruthlessly protects his position of authority.

Hobbes's mission is to "take out" Santiago by any means necessary. To "remove" Santiago's virtual avatar from the Harsh Realm simulation and restore freedom to the virtual country.

Unfortunately, Hobbes' superiors haven't told him the whole story. He can't return to "the real world" (and consciousness) until Santiago is dead, but much more troubling...if he dies in the game (or is "digitized"), Hobbes also dies in reality. And, Hobbes' isn't even the first man to make this attempt to beat Santiago. Literally hundreds of soldiers have gone to Harsh Realm before him...and none have been successful. None have returned. At the conclusion of Harsh Realm's pilot, we see a Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque shot of all the games players: a hospital room that seems to stretch to infinity; with slumbering men and women on hospital beds, tended to by inscrutable technicians; their minds wired to a different reality.

Back in the real world, Sophie is informed by the Army that Hobbes' died on a secret mission, but she is soon approached by a beautiful -- and perhaps treacherous -- informant, Inga Fossa (Sarah-Jane Redmond), and told about a conspiracy of silence. That if she wishes to be reunited with the love of her life, Sophie must expose the lies of the U.S. Government. This mission becomes even more important to Sophie when she learns that she is pregnant with Tom's child. Fossa promises to get a message to Tom in Harsh Realm...

Once trapped inside the wild terrains of Harsh Realm, Hobbes joins up with other fugitives who are also on the run from Santiago. Mike Pinocchio (D.B. Sweeney) is a rogue soldier who volunteered for duty in the virtual world and was once Santiago's top lieutenant. Now, he's a rogue and scoundrel, a gun for hire. Hobbes' other associate is the mysterious Florence (Rachel Hayward), a mute warrior with the unusual power to instantaneously heal the wounds of others.

Over the course of nine episodes of Harsh Realm, Hobbes' attempts to complete his mission and finally get home. In "Leviathan," he travels to the poverty-stricken Pittsburgh Encampment, where he and Pinocchio are captured by soldiers of fortune and nearly sold to Santiago. This episode meditates on the idea of the human soul, and asks if a Virtual Character can possess one.

In "Inga Fossa," Hobbes steals into Santiago City and locates Santiago's secret portal, from which he can travel from Harsh Realm into the real world and back. Hobbes nearly returns home, until he is told by Fossa of Santiago's "Final Solution." Santiago is planning "The Ultimate Terrorism," the destruction of the real world so that only Harsh Realm, and Santiago's domain will continue to exist. Hobbes decides it is better to stay in Harsh Realm and defeat Santiago there...

In "Reunion," Hobbes ends up a slave in a work camp with Pinocchio, and encounters a virtual representation of his dying mother. In the real world, Sophie visits Hobbes real mother, who is also dying of cancer. A double death (in Harsh Realm and in reality) spurs a strange miraculous (if brief...) connection.

In "3 Percenters," the fugitives arrive in the Adirondacks and meet a strange, ostensibly "peaceful" cult hiding a dark secret. "Manus Domini" finds Hobbes, Pinocchio and Florence protecting a tribe of pacifics "Healers" -- women like Florence -- from Santiago. In "Cincinnati" (one of the best installments), Santiago heads to Ohio to personally assassinate the leader of the Resistance, A Native American whose forces have overrun the city.

Finally, the last episode of Harsh Realm, "Camera Obscura" takes Pinocchio and Hobbes to Ground Zero in Manhattan, where a disfigured, manipulative priest keeps two families in a perpetual state of conflict for strange, personal reasons.

Over the nine episodes of this short-lived series, the virtual reality world of Harsh Realm is developed and expanded upon in fascinating, unexpected ways. "Leviathan" reveals that in Harsh Realm there is no religion...no God, no belief in an afterlife. It's a world "without Christian values," according to one character, and that line of thought becomes an existential undercurrent of future segments. In "Manus Domini," for instance, Hobbes ponders the Healers and their origin. Why do they exist? Why did programmers create them? Or, were they created by a "higher power" after all? One beyond the ostensibly "faithless" world of the game.

In terms of technology, Harsh Realm introduces a number of "game"-oriented concepts. It turns out that "unprogrammed game space" exists, and can form short-cuts from one part of the realm to the other. "Reunion" reveals the existence of "skull bugs," mechanical control devices implanted in VC (and human) brains that...can burrow through brain matter...bloodily. "3 Percenters" presents the idea of a programming error: of VC characters who can absorb and replicate the personalities of others...much to the detriment of the originals. It's sort of Harsh Realm meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And "Cincinnati" introduces the useful "digi-wand," a handheld device by which a digital character can re-shape and re-fashion his features...the equivalent of virtual plastic surgery. Santiago uses it for diabolical, wicked and brilliant strategic ends. Then there's the Camera Obscura of the final episode, a strange oracle or "seeing" device that appeared at Ground Zero after the nuclear explosion and is believed to foretell (or perhaps manipulate...) the future.

In terms of unique characters, Hobbes, Pinocchio and Florence meet not only the mute, female Healers and the "VC" in Harsh Realm, but steely-eyed Trackers ("Reunion"), deformed Mind Readers ("Manus Domini") and bounty hunters armed with digitizing devices ("Leviathan"). The series encompasses pastoral settings ("Manus Domini"), urban locations ("Camera Obscura") and, like all Chris Carter productions, is gorgeously presented. The camera work, in particular, is highly cinematic, despite the relative lack of visual effects.

The big drawback in terms of Harsh Realm, ironically, is the sense of "sameness" that underlines the pilot, "Leviathan" and "Inga Fossa." In all these episodes, either Hobbes, Pinocchio or Florence are captured and rescued, while in the real world, Sophie puzzles out the mystery of Hobbes' "death." Excepting the pilot, the next two episodes are probably the weakest in the series...and these were the only episodes that aired on network television. The shows are good, just a little plodding; a little dull. But beginning with "Reunion," the quality of Harsh Realm takes a noticeable and dramatic uptick as the stories become more creative, more out there, more involving. The run from "Reunion" through "Camera Obscura" is quite extraordinary, with distinctive, memorable, engaging storylines.

Like his other series, Chris Carter's Harsh Realm is a deeply-layered work, one rife with symbolism, social commentary and perhaps most importantly, clever literary allusion. The series, for example, is very clearly a deliberate variation on the Greek epic poem, The Odyssey, by Homer. In that tale, Odysseus -- a soldier -- attempted to return home from Troy but the journey took him a decade. Ten long and miserable years away from his wife, Penelope. The Odyssey, much like a TV show itself, was highly episodic, with Odysseus encountering a variety of nemeses, including sirens, Lotus-Eaters and the Cyclops Polyphemus. Harsh Realm also concerns a heroic soldier's "long journey home," his separation from his wife/fiancee, and as mentioned above, Hobbes becomes involved with a number of nemeses who are both more and less than human. The tenth, unproduced episode of Harsh Realm was even called "Circe," after a character (a witch...) featured in The Odyssey.

In The Odyssey, Penelope had to deal with suitors, who hoped to persuade her that Odysseus was dead. Even this plot point is echoed explicitly in Harsh Realm, as the Army attempts to convince Sophie of the same thing about Tom, though in this case to protect a conspiracy not to inherit wealth.

Harsh Realm also appropriates some core concepts from Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness (1902), which involved a man on assignment to capture a fellow countryman, Kurtz. Kurtz had developed a reputation as a "universal genius" amongst the indigenous people in "The Dark Heart of Africa." Heart of Darkness was refashioned as a war drama in Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), and given the military framework of Harsh Realm, perhaps it is more appropriate to reference that production here. Because Santiago -- like Brando's Kurtz -- has gone "native," in essence setting up the "local" world of Harsh Realm as his personal kingdom. This idea is true to Conrad's story, which warned against the dangers of imperialism. That's the core idea of Harsh Realm: an interloper (and his military minions...) invade the virtual reality world of Harsh Realm and develop it exclusively for their use. The "VC" are just a resource to be used...not "real" people.

The hero of Harsh Realm, Thomas Hobbes, is not just Odysseus, either. He is named after the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the author who wrote Leviathan in 1651. Leviathan -- which also happens to be the title of Harsh Realm's second episode -- concerned autocracy...and its benefits. The philosopher Hobbes believed that government should control religion, the military, the civil apparatus and even the judiciary. He felt that man's natural state was lawlessness, and it was this "natural state" which caused man such hardship, tragedy and strife. Harsh Realm's Hobbes appears to be the antithesis of this autocratic philosophy, at least as far as the nine extant episodes go. He is a man who believes in freedom and liberty, and seeks to free Harsh Realm from Santiago's iron, tyrannical grip. One can never know for sure, but there is an undercurrent in the series that suggests Hobbes may not always feel this way. As he goes along, from episode to episode, he witnesses the lawlessness and inhumanity of Santiago's world. Had the series lasted several years, and Hobbes succeeded in destroying Santiago, one wonders if he would have imposed a Hobbes-ian peace upon the scattered societies of Harsh Realm, essentially becoming the new figurehead. The last scene of the show might have seen Hobbes displacing one Kurtz to become Kurtz himself.

We never saw that happen, but even Mark Snow's score -- which sampled bits of Mussolini speeches -- hinted at some of the autocratic themes and narratives Carter's show deliberated on. How much government? What kind of government? What's the right balance? Today, these ideas are more relevant even than they were in 1999.

As for the Han Solo of Harsh Realm, Mike Pinocchio, his name obviously comes from Curt Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), the story of a puppet who dreamed of becoming a real boy. In the world of Harsh Realm, Pinocchio is a "real" soldier who -- for his own secret reasons -- decides he wants to live as a "virtual" boy in a fake world. As Pinocchio's wooden feet were burned off in The Adventures of Pinocchio, so does Pinocchio lose a leg in the series episode "Manus Domini." In fact, as we learn, Pinocchio was disfigured and (lost a leg) in the real world, and that's the reason he ultimatelychose a "dream" life rather than to continue in the real world. Thus we might say that, like Hobbes, Harsh Realm's Pinocchio is the inverse of his literary namesake.

"Florence" the healer seems named after Florence Nightingale, the legendary angel of mercy. And Harsh Realm's final episode, "Camera Obscura" brilliantly re-stages -- at a post-nuclear ground zero -- the story of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1883). In this tale, two warring families (not the Capulets and Montagues but Stewarts and McKinleys) threaten to annihilate one another over a petty squabble. Meanwhile, young Aethan McKinley (Romeo) and Fallon Stewart (Juliet) have fallen in love in secret and carry on a relationship. They are encouraged to do so by an interfering "man of God," not Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence, but the deformed, prophetic priest played by Robert Knepper.

As many others have noted, there are other literary allusions in Harsh Realm too. As Hobbes is about to enter the Harsh Realm virtual world for the first time, he gazes down at his chair, and scrawled (madly...) on the arms of the chair are the words "Siege" and "Perilous." If you are familiar with Arthurian legend, you may remember that this writing harks back to the so-called Perilous Seat at the Round Table, the Empty Chair reserved for the greatest of knights or heroes (the one who brings back The Holy Grail). That too, is Hobbes' destiny, perhaps metaphorically. Santiago might be the Holy Grail of Harsh Realm, or Hobbes' white whale.

Harsh Realm balances these classic references and allusions with Carter's particular and peculiar (and wonderful...) brand of up-to-the-minute speculative imaginings. You may recall how the first episode of The Lone Gunmen (in March 2001) forecast the 9/11 attack on Manhattan down to the target (the Twin Towers) and the choice of weapon (jet-liners). The same episode also predicted that such an attack would be a tremendous boon to defense contractors...who would suddenly be developing new weapons for our military industrial complex. That too, proved accurate. Harsh Realm also hints rather dramatically at the shape of things to come in the early 21st century and particularly the War on Terror Age. One episode, "Leviathan," laments Santiago's "culture of fear," something we can all relate to after those color-coded DHS Terrorist Attack Warnings. Another episode, "Cincinnati" seizes on the phrase "failure of imagination" as the reason for a battlefield defeat; the self-same phrase employed explicitly by the 9/11 Commission tasked with studying the reasons why the September 11th attacks were successful. Harsh Realm (especially "Camera Obscura") also obsesses on the "ultimate terrorism," a suitcase nuke detonated in an American city. Fortunately, this hasn't happened (and hopefully will never happened), but it is a scenario that, after 9/11, has been widely raised (and feared) by media, security agencies, and the populace.

Also, Harsh Realm undeniably pointed towards the 21st century in terms of technology. In 2003, the virtual platform Second Life arrived, an alternate world where Residents (Virtual Characters based on real life users) had their own currency, clubs, economy, property and spent copious amounts time "in world." Granted, Harsh Realm's virtual world is far more immersive and tactile, but Second Life is certainly a step towards the world Harsh Realm imagined.

The history of television isn't just about numbers; it's about being in the right place at the right time. Imagine, just for a moment. that a program like Firefly or Harsh Realm had aired on cable, or heck -- even the CW. If they had done so, both shows would have likely lasted seven years, been heralded as masterpieces, and would have drawn "blockbuster" level (for cable) ratings that far outstripped those of recent "hits" like Battlestar Galactica (2005-2009) or Supernatural. But because these turn-of-the-century shows aired on Fox, not a smaller channel, they didn't get the numbers that were predicted...and they disappeared after too short a season. I can't claim Harsh Realm is as good as Firefly, but I can state, with confidence...it was headed in that direction. The last several episodes of the series showed incredible development and improvement. The world, characters and situations of Harsh Realm had, by episode nine, become intriguing, and truth be told, more-than-a-little addicting.

If you enjoy The X-Files and Millennium, I suggest you visit Harsh Realm...but be patient. Get to the poetic episode "Reunion," which suggests a kind of emotional/human bridge between the worlds (and the idea that virtual avatars may share our souls with us...), and you'll be glad you hung on. Get to the brilliant "Cincinnati," in which Santiago shows us why he is the most fearsome man in Harsh Realm, and you'll be convinced that you're watching a genre series of unparalleled genius. Get to "Camera Obscura" and its post-apocalyptic Treasure of the Sierra Madre-esque parable about man's quest for wealth (especially gold), and you'll be convinced that Chris Carter caught lightning in a bottle again, for the third time.

Only...those great episodes never even aired in 1999. So the Harsh Realm of the series title doesn't merely refer to a comic book or a virtual world. It actually references something far more dangerous: the cutthroat, no-second chances world of network television at the beginning of the 21st century, a period of decline. Harsh Realm died as dramatic TV died; as reality TV was born. A smart genre series of paranoid speculation and deep philosophy gave way to Who Wants to be a Millionaire five nights a week, Temptation Island, Survivor, Big Brother and the like. Dramatic TV came out of its slump in 2004 (with the advent of Lost, for instance...) but by then Harsh Realm was "virtually" a memory.