Blame it on the Files.
“Unc-slop?”
I love aliens. I can’t say that I’ve ever met one, but I like them conceptually. Just the idea that there might be weird little guysexploring out there among the stars . I love thinking up all the possibilities about what they might be like, and I love the archetypes that tend to keep coming back around. I love what they say about us, culturally. I love how they work as a narrative device to reflect upon our own fears and desires. I love them aesthetically too: the mischievous Little Green Men with antennae and the mysterious Greys with huge black eyes. I love the iconography of that old-school, saucer-flying, gleep-glorping, cow-abducting alien. I love them in horror movies as much as I do in comedies, dramas, and blockbusters. I love all the conspiracies, the Men in Black and the secret black-ink CIA reports. I know all this about myself, so, why then, did I not feel excited when I read that legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s next film was set to be a contemporary science fiction thriller titled “Disclosure Day”?
If you haven’t been keeping up to date with the on-goings of the alien-truther community then, frankly, you’re more well-adjusted than I am, but I’ll give you the flying-saucer-crash course. For context, I don’t really consider myself a full blown believer by any stretch but I do keep my ear to the ground and my tinfoil hat within reach, just in case. The first thing to know is that, even though the old-school rotatingsaucer shaped spacecraft are alive and well in our pop-culture, as far as the modern theorist is concerned they are no more, dead and buried; crashed and burned somewhere out in the desert. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course UFO’s aren’t real”, said theorist will say, and if you do have the misfortune to ask said theorist why this is, they’ll tell you that UFO’s literally don’t exist anymorebecause now they’re referred to as UAP’s—Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and they’re realer than ever.
If this exchange happens in person, enjoy the next twenty-five minutes of pretending to pay attention. If it happens online though, they’ll probably link you to a YouTube video of US Navy Officers testifying before Congress, or to a podcast episode featuring one of the many aviators involved (I’m not going to name it, but yes: it is that podcast), or, if you’re particularly sceptical, to a blurry black and white gimbal video of a blur zipping back and forth against a background of clouds or the surface of the ocean. They’ll tell you that this is real. “The US Government confirmed it”. If you’re real unlucky, you might even get a "Miami Mall Incident” TikTok link—but trust me, don’t open it. It’s really not worth your energy.
I’m not going to speculate here on whether or not these videos actually show anything of substance. What you can see in them are these so called “Tic Tac shaped” craft that seemingly defy physics, and the people who recorded them have no idea what they are, or if they even are physical aircraft at all (hence the initialism change). One one hand they really do just look like balloons, lens-flairs, visual camera artefacts, or heat signatures, but on the other hand one must assume that the people who recorded these videos know how to use their equipment and radar sufficiently enough not to keep making this mistake.
What I can comment on though is the broad and general apathy around the whole ordeal, from both the believers and the sceptics alike. No matter which way you cut it, it’s just not all that exciting or dramatic. You can barely even see anything, and if not for the accompanying audio recordings, I don’t think they’d have nearly half the (already pitiful) traction they do get online. Even at the most incredible, like “there-are-littlealiens-inside-these-things-pulling-levers-and-piloting-the-craft” incredible, they look, well, really boring. They really do just look like Tic Tacs. Not to sound ungrateful for potential first contact, but where’s the style gone? The strong, bold silhouettes and colourful iconography? Where are the flashing lights and graviton beams? Where’s the pizazz? I found myself asking if this was the reason that the idea of Disclosure Day wasn’t exciting me: are aliens just not alien enough anymore?
So, when the first trailer dropped some three months ago, I must admit that a part of me was pleasantly surprised. It was nice to see that they were (apparently) going in on the mystery side of things, and that there was going to be a bona-fide flying saucer, if the trailer was to be believed. None of this modern, boring flying Tic Tac faff that has been dominating good old fashioned rational UFO discourse for years. They even had Roswell and crop circles shown in there for good measure. Great! Old-school aliens, just like Grandma used to make, right? Well something still didn’t sit right with me about it, and I wasn’t really entirely sure why. Why isn’t this hitting the same for me? Am I just getting older, more disillusioned? Are UFO’s truly just “unc slop” like that one tweet said?[1] Am I spending too much time thinking about taxes and not enough time looking up into the night sky? In this time of crisis, I did what every believer with floundering faith does: I went back to the sacred texts—the original scripture—The XFiles (1993).
This pilgrimage back to the mysterious world of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully was both comforting and revelatory, and even though I’d seen it all before, I still found myself going along for the ride. Of course there was a nostalgic element (the show was huge to me back in my early teens[2]), but upon some more critical, analytical review, I really do think there are genuine elements that you can point to that perfectly exemplify why the world of the X-Files (still) draws me in, and the world of Disclosure Day makes me shrug. I’ve thought a little about what those elements are, and how they all coalesce into the perfect mix of mystery and intrigue, and I think it’s worth writing about.
Going back into the first season (and already beginning to cook up the idea for this blog post) I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to bring up, but I’ll start with the one that surprised me most: the actual format of the show itself. For the most part, it’s what would typically be referred to as a “Monster-of-the-Week” format[3], where each episode features some sort of cryptic encounter, a conflict, and clue towards the big, overarching background story. Looking back, it’s not hard to see that it’s not exactly the most sustainable format for the long term (how long can Agent Scully truly stay so sceptical when she’s been abducted every other week?) but I do think that it matters in selling the world, because it means that the big background story that gets moved along incrementally over the course of the season (usually involving the Deep State; the Big Cover Up; Full Disclosure etc) feels hidden away, as opposed to just presented to the viewer immediately[4]. It brings you into the game so to speak; it tells you that the truth is out there, but you have to wait and uncover it piece by piece alongside Mulder and Scully. Maybe for some people that just sounds slow and frustrating, but I think that’s why it works so well for those that do want to believe, because the show knows: to believe is to be the scrappy underdog, working from the basement, holding out on a dream. It’s all a game, and the X-Files plays it perfectly. I just don’t think it’s the same thing to go into a movie theatre hunting the truth, and know you’ll come out two and half hours later next to a Nando’s knowing it.
Another aspect that isn’t doing Disclosure Day any favours is just how clean and crisp everything looks. I understand the desire for wanting your multi-million dollar movie to look good, but the lo-fi grainy visuals of nineties television do so much to add a certain texture to the experience which I love. This isn’t necessarily a debate about the look of film over digital (some of the most famous UFO-looking footage of all time is shot on digital recording devices[5]) but has far more to do with the visual possibilities of what you’re shown. Old VHS-era fuzziness and blocky low-resolution video leave space for unknown things to hide in the shadows and behind static—I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that the most effective sequence in A24’s recent Backrooms (2026) was the one “found-footage” section shot on an old digital camcorder. It’s the horror trope as old as time: what you can’t see is far more terrifying than anything you can. When I watch the X-Files, I find myself sometimes literally moving towards the screen to see if I can get a glimpse of what’s in the shadows, but when I watch that trailer for DisclosureDay, it feels like someone turned on all the lights.
And funnily enough, that’s not the only way that the contemporary technology of The X-Files really makes the whole premise work either. Within that world video and audio recordings are tangible, analogue things which could be stolen, broken, lost, etc. They were physical loot to be obtained, and that had to be moved; the gold from the dragon’s horde; the secret weapon to be wielded. Communication was done via shady payphone in the dead of night, and torches were big bulky tools that could run out of battery at the worst times. When you were alone, you were really alone. The technological tools were all bulky, separate, and less reliable, and that gave so much space for conflict to develop. Now, if you have a recording of an Extra-Terrestrial tourist, it’s literally on your phone (where your torch, tape recorder, and compass also are) and immediately on the internet, where it’s just another drop of data in the ocean of information. Especially now in the age of AI generated pictures and videos; in a time where the internet feels like nothing but a raging maelstrom of lies and misinformation, why would anyone believe what they see?
So yes, the Nineties had a lot to do with why the X-Files worked so well, from the standard formatting of Television shows to the technological limitations of the time, but there’s one other element that really drives it home for me, and it’s the biggest, most stubborn hurdle that I can’t seem to get myself over to be excited about aliens again. Like I alluded to above, the whole mystery-conspiracy genre is like a game, and, like any game, it needs players. For this game it’s the aliens, the shady government agency trying to cover up their existence, and the ardent truth seekers who we follow (and in a way, play as). This worked perfectly in the Seventies, the Eighties, and the Nineties because it was a post-Watergate-but-pre-internet era, where people were distrustful of the Government, but where that Government still had the aura of authority, competency, and capability. In other words, you couldn’t trust ‘em to be good, but you could trust ‘em to be good at being bad. So yes, in geopolitical terms they might be acting shady sure, but you could trust that they’re doing these things for broader ideological reasons, or national security, or public interest, as opposed to just lining their own pockets. In that way, the Government back then acted as a sort of parental stand in for stories in the genre. Even if you think your mum and dad were harsh, generally you understood that it was for a greater good, or at least they thought that. I just don’t think you can say that about politics anymore.
Now I’m not trying to say that Nixon and Bush Sr. et al. were just doing things all in the name of tough love, there was some serious messed up stuff going on in the name of “protecting democracy”, but undeniably, there was—at the very least—a sense of decorum about the Office. Political controversies were boring and serious, like they ought to be. I shudder to think now of little green men touching down on the White House lawn only to see a gaudy UFC fighting ring and two red-necks going at it in the mud four feet from the port-a-loos. I think it’s debatable whether the UFO genre still works at all in the post-internet age, but specifically now? Under the second Trump Administration? The one that can’t stop haemorrhaging Epstein files and evidence of insider trading? Yeah, sure thing pal. I’m certain the US Government couldn’t hide evidence of aliens, hell, I don’t even think they’d try. Not before booting up Polymarket to get a few more insider trades anyway. We have found ourselves in a profoundly unserious time culturally, and as a result, it’s just harder to take these kinds of stories seriously.
And I think that’s it really. Beyond the formatting and the technological limitations, its the culture that doesn’t exist anymore. Back then it was different. It was the time when the dam holding back the flood of omni-information was cracking, but not yet bust; the dramatic transitionary state between blind trust and information-overload where mystery could still hide. When The X-Files shows us the extra-terrestrial and the incredible, we can suspend disbelief because we have a firm base belief in all other aspects of the show: we believe the characters do their jobs, we believe the basement office, the bureaucracy, and the fact that “The Government” are capable and willing to hide the truth, but it is out there. It shows us a time when such a story was possible. When I watch the trailer for DisclosureDay, it’s not the idea of aliens on Earth I scoff at, it’s the concept of a contemporary Government that would care enough about hiding the truth in the first place. That’s the real science-fiction at play. And when you lose that, the game doesn’t really work anymore, not without all the players. Now it’s just us and the ET’s kicking a ball around, waiting for that phone call home. Game over man, game over.
Harry James Forkan is a Writer, Photographer, and Illustrator who is going to go to the cinema this weekend, and who is going to do his best to enjoy it, for old time’s sake. You can find more of his work @h_forkan_ on instagram, or right here on Scribbled.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/comments/1sy321s/conspiracymaxxing_is_unc_slop/
[2] I actually still have an ill-fitting “I want to believe” t-shirt knocking about somewhere that I refuse to throw out, and that would take on an entirely new meaning if I tried to squeeze into it again.
[3] I once heard someone describe this as “serious Scooby-Doo”, which has lived in my head rent free since.
[4] Shout out Signs (2002), now that’s an alien reveal that works.
[5] Shout Out to the Phoenix light incident, IYKYK.