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Anne Simon: Scully was really the first time a scientist on TV was being portrayed in a positive light. She didn't just believe. She wanted facts. She wanted to test her hypotheses and do experiments and not just blurt out things. There's the Scully Effect—you have all these fans saying that they became scientists because of X-Files.
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[Chris Carter] knew where he wanted to go with something. So for example, he asked me on the last episode on the first season: "How would you study a microorganism? What would be the first thing that you would do?" So I told him, "Well, you'd grow more of it." He'd say "How would you do that?" "Well it would take ten years…" Well you know television, so you'd already have it growing. What would you do next? Well, you'd put it under a microscope, sequence some of its ribosomal DNA… You wouldn't figure something you were studying was just an alien—you'd relate it to something. Back then, there were specific genes everybody would sequence and compare. So he goes, "What could they find that would instantly scream that it was alien?" So I came up with—and this continued until the revival—"Well how about an extra pair of nucleotides?" From there he'd send me the scripts and I would correct them. And he would use all my corrections. I did this for about five years before I told anyone about it.
When you talk about ways to visualize science, do you think that's gotten better on TV and movies over time?The Creator's Project discuss UFO sightings in Sabrina Ratté's video trilogy.
It's certainly improved in the movies. I haven't seen The Martian, but scientists are very happy about that. I think they take the time in the movies to get the science right. But on television it's very problematic. They don't have the time and they don't take the time. Chris takes the time. Which is why I always give my card to writers and tell them I'm available.
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The thing is it's all fantastical. I'm a fan of science fiction. This isn't supposed to be real. But we want what the scientists are doing to be real. The expression that I always use is that, "Aliens can do almost anything," So when you're trying to come up with something you just go, "Oh, the aliens are real smart, they can do this." There was an episode called "Redux," where Chris wanted Scully to figure out how she got infected by this alien virus. It was my idea to have a virus. So back then we had her do something state-of-the-art. Today it would be something else. It was called a "Southern blot." And I used to do lots of them… And he had her doing this on the show. Almost every single step. So he asked me, "How long would it take to do it?" And I said three days. And he said she has three hours… Well, let's say she needs a blazing hot probe, which is a radioactive piece of DNA. We didn't think we'd get that statement past the censors [laughs].
So you actually wrote for the new mini-series. How did that come about?Back at day job (with new hat!) after fabulous 3 days on set of — Anne Simon (@Annealiz1)August 6, 2015
Well, I'm always trying to give Chris ideas. Now it's a lot easier because you can just email articles you find. I was telling him I thought a really cool monster would be these homeotic flies—what about something where they have legs coming out of its head or its mouth? So he said, "Great!"
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It's funny that this is happening again. When the X-Files was at the height of its popularity, David Letterman wanted me on, I did live TV in Canada, Good Morning America came by, and there was a full page in the New York Times. Then I was asked to write a book. And I think it was worth it. I got a lot of emails from kids who said they weren't interested in science and they couldn't put the book down and now they want to become scientists. I gave a TED talk. It's crazy. I gave a TED talk the same year as Ben Carson [laughs]. He talked about neurobiology. I still remember the talk. It was the best. And now look at him…
I think it's getting worse. There's no question that it has gotten worse. As much as I don't want to be political about it, it does not help that an entire party's representatives are saying that these thousands of climate-change scientists are all lying. Once you have the perception that thousands of scientists are lying you think, Well, what else are they lying about? Then they say evolution. The foundation of biology. It's like saying there's no oxygen. We're not trying to deceive anyone. We're just trying to make hypotheses and test them. And this is our way of communicating that to society. We don't want to kill children with vaccines. We don't want to make people sick with food. We want to make things better for everyone. So maybe with people like me communicating it—with no connection to the food industry or anything—maybe they think I'm trying to help them.
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I used to get hate mail from people saying I was helping to promote pseudo-science. But the X-Files is science fiction. The X-Files is not trying to make science look less real. If people believe in these conspiracy theories, I feel sorry for them. When they ask me, like, "Why were there aliens there?" What are you supposed to say?
Is there any scientific basis behind the black oil?Related: This Scientist Says He Keeps Finding Aliens in the Stratosphere
No. When we were doing the black oil, I was thinking about slime molds. And I still want them to do something on that. They have different stages where they're individual and they all get together and form a big slug and then they form this big fruiting stock. It's a really cool organism. But no, that's one of those "aliens can do anything" things.What really happened to Mulder's sister?
What you're going to see in the new series is what is actually going on. We are going to reveal what is going on. It was my idea. And [Chris Carter] went with it. You will know by the end of the sixth episode what all of this was all about—how everything fits in. How the cigarette smoking man fits in. What happened to Scully and her abduction. You will know how it all fits in. That's why I got so excited because I came up with something that fits.
I'm sure people will be grateful.Watch on Motherboard: On the Hunt for Aliens in the Valley of the UFOs
I've been answering questions about Mulder and Scully's relationship because David [Duchovny] and Mitch [Pileggi] revealed that they're not together. And the 'shippers [the people obsessed with the Mulder/Scully love aspect of the show] went bananas. Mulder's no longer working for the FBI, and he's in a very bad position. He's in the depths, and the only thing he's got is conspiracies. In science, when you're looking at a lot of pieces of data and they're not fitting your hypothesis, it's very frustrating to come up with what's right. You know that what you thought was wrong. Mulder is not a happy person and not together with Scully at the beginning. Chris is trying to create tension in the Mulder/Scully relationship by giving them somewhere to go.Do you feel like an X-Files insider?
I'm an insider and an outsider. I'm an insider to the show but an outsider to the fans. I know an awful lot, but I can't reveal stuff that's coming up.Follow Jonathan Peltz on Twitter.