What, you may ask, is "The Quatermass Conspiracy"? Does it have something to do with The X-Files? Does anybody even care about The X-Files anymore?

If that is what you are asking, you have a point. Though for many, The X-Files was the show of the 1990s, its reputation for tense, spooky and original television drama has suffered mightily during the last two seasons, and so has its popularity. Last summer's much anticipated theatrical film The X-Files: Fight the Future opened big but faded quickly (though it did respectable business globally, due largely to the show's popularity overseas).

Though the series continued to get good first-run ratings last season (remarkably good for a genre show airing on Fox), the reruns have been down in the Nielsen basement with Felicity and the latest UPN sitcoms. Viewers still want to see what happens to our favorite federal employees, but they won't sit through it twice. The only exceptions seem to be Vince Gilligan's better episodes, and season five's "Killswitch" which boasted a story by William Gibson. That did far better in rerun than any of Carter's episodes for the past two or three seasons. I wonder why they never had him back? Or brought in some other SF heavy hitters to liven things up? Strange.

Most of the best writers are long departed, most notably Glen Morgan and James Wong, and the new ones seem to lack both effective guidance and the ability to defend their scripts from excessive tinkering from higher up -- and it shows.

And though the legions of online X-philes have been notorious for their inability to agree amongst themselves about anything X-related, fan discontent with the 6th season two-parter "Two Fathers/One Son" may have been as close to unanimity as 'Philedom will ever get. We didn't agree on what we wanted to see happen -- but it sure as hell wasn't that. Fan reaction to Chris Carter's current penchant for "extravaganza" episodes, like last season's "Triangle" is more mixed, with some expressing admiration for the heavily stylized self-conscious approach, but reruns of those episodes tanked just as badly as the rest -- sometimes worse. And they have failed to earn Carter the Emmy they were pretty clearly intended to win for him.

So, to borrow a line from the now defunct Millennium -- who cares? At least Carter gave us a good ride there for awhile. And the season six cliffhanger wasn't too bad. So it turns out that we are the aliens. That's pretty original, right?

How can I put this?

Complete originality, particularly in a genre where writers borrow from each other all the time, is an unattainable goal -- though it would be nice to see more people out there at least trying to attain it. However, there is a difference between being influenced by someone and robbing him blind without so much as acknowledging the debt that is owed. And if the geezer being mugged is Nigel Kneale, creator of the legendary Quatermass serials and movies, and the man who almost single-handedly invented dark, paranoid, intelligent Science Fiction on television back in the 1950s -- I care. Damn right I care.

Let me lay it out for you. X-Files: Fight the Future is drawn heavily from the 1957 Hammer Film release Quatermass 2. The pivotal fifth season two-parter "Patient X/The Red and the Black" bears a suspicious resemblance in its main plot elements to the 1979 ITV serial Quatermass, which was released in edited form here as Quatermass Conclusion. And the season six X-Files cliffhanger, "Biogenesis" continues the tradition of uncredited "homage" to Kneale. Its fundamental ideas and images are clearly derived from Quatermass & The Pit, this last story being available in both its original 1958 b&w serial version, and also as a 1967 movie. And one other thing, which I'll mention further on.

Basically, the entire "mytharc", beginning with season three, is permeated with plot ideas that seem to come directly from the four basic Quatermass stories, and since season five, there has been an increasing tendency to visually portray these ideas in ways little different from the Quatermass movies, though the SFX are obviously more sophisticated.