Tooms vs Mulder and Scully in new X-Files movie?

Christian Cullen, earlier this year, won a Den Of Geek prize to go to the UK premiere of X-Files: I Want To Believe. And this has spurred him to fight for a new film, based on Eugene Victor Tooms. We asked him to jot a few words down about his project…

Although a mythology-based X-Files sequel is widely anticipated in 2012 to coincide with the date of the ‘final alien invasion’ as known by millennia of shadow governments, 2012 is considered by many X-Files fans to be too long a wait for the next movie instalment, as only one X-Files movie has been released since the series ended its ninth and final season in 2002.

Hence, to bridge that four-year gap, before President Obama campaigns for re-election, the London Olympics close and Daniel Craig appears in his fourth Bond film, hard core fans have decided rally behind the very first monster-of-the-week ever confronted by Mulder and Scully: Eugene Victor Tooms. As the most appropriate choice, fans say that, on one hand, the move would re-invigorate the franchise, yet at the same time Tooms would be recognised by millions of even the most casual viewers, stirring memories from the 1990s.

Christian officially launched the popular Facebook group, “Bring Back Tooms!” on 1st October, and he still longs for the series to return on a full-time basis. “I enjoyed every second of I Want To Believe”, Christian declared enthusiastically, “But I felt that the six year wait caused by the legal wrangling after the end of the series had caused the X-Brand to lose momentum and prominence in people’s minds. Obviously, Season 15 at this point would have been amazing, provided David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson stayed around. But since they are both enthusiastic about sticking around for the films, then I hope this is taken full advantage of by Fox and Ten Thirteen!”.

But why Tooms? “Every X-phile I have spoken to loved the Tooms episodes, and would be thrilled to see a return. I loved the psychology about it. Tooms was fiercely intelligent, yet a pure, classic monster. The responses have been amazing since ‘Bring Back Tooms!’ was launched seven weeks ago; people have messaged me with a plethora of exciting ideas and support, and even created posters of a Tooms 2010 movie. Hmmm, two years away; that seems far more reasonable to me! I also have one other request: a return of the Lone Gunmen… their apparent demise caused me to shed a very unmanly amount of tears.”

The first two ever X-Files episodes featured alien-related stories, which were revisited throughout the series. Creator Chris Carter had decided that it was going to be more than a single-topic programme, and that success would likely arise from variety. Hence, the third episode featured something completely different – stumping veteran viewers of the show at the time – and featured a genetic mutant murderer, who consumed his victims’ livers (five per spree) to provide him the required sustenance to hibernate for 30 years at a time. He didn’t appear to age (his official records note him to be 30 years old), and had a bizarre physiology that could enable him (through the crunching dislocation of bones and abnormal stretching of muscular tissue) to contort his body and squeeze through impossibly small spaces for his typically adult frame.

Although the X-File case was reported by the agents as closed to their new superior, Assistant Director Skinner (whose first appearance was in Tooms’ second episode in season one), it was on the basis that Tooms was presumably killed, having been squashed under an escalator when Mulder pressed a button during a confrontation in the shafts and vents of a new shopping mall on the original site of Tooms’ apartment. However, Tooms was capable of the most elaborate deception. Previously, Tooms was able to deceive polygraphists by somehow controlling his bodily reactions to such questions as, “Have you ever killed a human being?” He may have even deliberately shown that he lied on his only two failed answers to the questions, “Are you over 100 years old?” and “Have you ever been to Powhatten Mill… in 1933?” in the episode Squeeze, as Mulder’s subsequent protestations about those answers simply made him appear irrational.

In Tooms, Tooms squeezed through tiny air vents into Mulder’s fourth floor apartment – not to kill Mulder – but to eliminate himself from suspicion altogether by printing marks on his face with one of Mulder’s trainers and mutilating himself (including dislocating his own shoulder), and heading for the hospital to file for assault charges. If Tooms was capable of this, viewers have thought of a whole range of ways in which Tooms could have survived, ranging from squeezing out of the escalator (where the blood seen on the steps was caused by the amputation of one of his limbs) to his body being recovered and buried in a state of hibernation.

In true X-Files fashion, however, if Chris Carter indeed chooses to bring back Tooms, he may well wish to pull the rug from under the fans by coming up with a completely different scenario.

See Christian’s group, ‘Bring Back Tooms!’ here.

Tomorrow, Christian chats with Doug Hutchison, the man who played Tooms…