X-FILES FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Global Conspiracies, Aliens, Lazarus Species and Monsters of the Week by John Kenneth Muir has been a useful guide to watching the series (along with my friend Ross, who’s serving as my X-Files guru for Alien Visitors). Muir covers the various inspirations for the series, the key episodes, what made it stand out from the pack (some of which I covered reviewing S1 last weekend) and its influence on later TV. It also covers stuff less relevant to my project such as Chris Carter’s other series (Harsh Realm, Millennium). A good guide, though I think his list of inspirations for X-Files is reaching — Chris Carter has admitted Night Stalker inspired him but the obscure paranormal anthology One Step Beyond? The Friday the 13th TV series (on the grounds it has a male-female paranormal evil-fighting team)? I’m not convinced.
BUBBLES UNBOUND by Sarah Strohmeyer is a cozy mystery in which blue-collar Bubbles Yablonski (“Everyone thinks I’m a dumb blonde because of my name. And I’m a hairstylist. And I have the exact measurements of Barbie.”) discovers a talent for journalism after flunking out of every other course at community college (I do wish they’d played more with the idea this makes her, like Streisand in What’s Up Doc?, a low-level polymath). After getting a stringer job with the local paper, she’s lucky enough to catch a pillar of local society has run over a man while driving drunk. But the film Bubbles took disappears after someone knocks Bubbles cold. The woman’s family insist she was out of town. And someone’s trying to shoot Bubbles for suggesting something’s going on … A fun mystery in the vein of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books.
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