The Lone Gunmen

[kg redhead]

saving the world in an X Files spinoff...

[kg redhead]

he Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of the popular series The X-Files, was a television show that aired on FOX. The show first aired in March 2001, and it was soon cancelled with its last episode airing in June 2001. The show revolved around a Bohemian trio of computer nerds and conspiracy theory aficionados named Melvin Frohike, Richard "Ringo" Langly and John Fitzgerald Byers, who published a magazine that was entitled The Lone Gunman (which was previously titled The Magic Bullet in earlier episodes of The X-Files, notably so in the episode Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man) in the X-Files series. The name was derived from the lone gunman theory.

Unlike the X-Files, whose storylines dealt mainly with supernatural creatures and government alien conspiracies, the Lone Gunmen episodes generally featured more "plausible" plots, such as cheating husbands, corporate crime, arms-dealers, and escaped Nazis. The show had a very light atmosphere and heavily focused on physical comedy.

The cancellation of the show is considered by many to be somewhat mysterious, as its ratings were in fact higher than the first-season ratings of X-Files.

In a foreshadowing of the September 11, 2001 attacks, subsequent conspiracy theories, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the plot of the March 4, 2001 pilot episode of the series depicts a secret U.S. government agency plotting to crash a Boeing 727 into the World Trade Center via remote control for the purpose of increasing the military defence budget and blaming the attack on foreign "tin-pot dictators" who are "begging to be smart-bombed." This episode aired in Australia less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, on August 30.

This alone has made the DVD extremely popular for such a short-lived series...

[kg redhead]

released on DVD this monday

[kg redhead]