Years ago, before I started driving The Wife crazy with plot ideas, I plied at her sanity with a briefly popular game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. At the time, Bacon (star of the very
XF-ish film A Stir of Echoes and Michael Jordan’s chump in the Hanes underwear commercials) was appearing in an average of, oh say, 2,134 movies a year. I exaggerate, but the man was prolific. This gave rise to the theorem, propounded by Pennsylvania college students, that any reasonably well-known actor or actress could be linked to Kevin Bacon within six moves.
To wit: Bela Lugosi — the screen’s greatest Dracula — appeared in Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein (1948) with Vincent Price. Vincent Price was in The Raven (1963) with Jack
Nicholson. And Jack Nicholson starred in A Few Good Men (1992) with — who else? — Kevin
Bacon. Believe it or don’t, I am separated from the Baconman by only two moves: I was a
crowd extra when they filmed Eight Men Out in Indianapolis. David Straithairn co-starred in both EMO and The River Wild, the Meryl Streep outdoor horror flick with, of course, Kevin Bacon. Impressed?
Well, The Boy was, with both my Baconly status and my prowess at Six Degrees. In my time,
I have linked Benji the Dog, King Kong, and W.C. Fields with the omnipresent Kevin. During
Saturday lunches out, T.B. and I would play endless rounds of Six Degrees, to the inevitably
eventual consternation of T.W. (“Why don’t just we sit quietly with our fajitas for a few minutes, OK?”). T.B. moved out, Kevin B. found film work more difficult to obtain, and I found other distractions known chiefly to our guests at the Virtual Season.
But as the VS14 Crossover Special pulls once again into the way station of the unknown, I find myself feeling a bit Bacony (could be the thick layers of fat laced throughout my muscular structure, or merely my profound relationship with pork. Therefore, let’s play a bracing round of X Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
First, I must note, The X-Files occupies a unique place in the universe — specifically, the
Televerse, a parallel region of space and time charted most brilliantly by Toby, blogger extraordinaire at the Inner Toob. It bridged three networks: FOX, NBC (Det. John Munch of
Law and Order: SVU encountered Mulder and the Gunmen in 1997), and CBS (Picket Fence’s
Sheriff Jimmy Brock once referenced the mysterious Affair of the Red Museum and the even
more mysterious fed who investigated it). It bridged universes (Mulder and Scully traversed
dimensions to grill Homer Simpson in the Tooniverse, pursued big-screen aliens in the Cineverse, and joined the COPS of our own universe).
We therefore know certain things about the Televerse of The X-Files. For instance, it occupies
roughly our own geo-temporal space: Unlike 24 or The West Wing, the XF-linked Law and Order has repeatedly referenced the Bush White House, the late Pope John Paul II was featured (and in fact witnessed a murder) on Picket Fences, and actors Garry Shandling, Tea
Leoni, Minnie Driver, and David Alan Grier share the Hollywood spotlight in both Mulder and
Scully’s universe and our own. They are, therefore, very real to us, as any animated conversation on the Forums would demonstrate.
So let’s see how The X-Files links up to Earth Citizen Kevin Bacon:
1. Mulder and Scully take The Great Mutato to see his icon Cher at the conclusion of Post-
Modern Prometheus. Cher was harangued by fellow fan Jack on Will and Grace, who also
harassed visiting Kevin Bacon in two episodes.
2. Mulder and Scully meet and greet Garry Shandling on the set of a film based on the xploits
of the X-Files (Hollywood A.D.). Shandling starred with Greg Kinnear in What Planet Are You
From? Kinnear was Jack Nicholson’s neighbor in As Good as it Gets, and Nicholson shared a
courtroom with Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men. Further, Minnie Driver, a guest at the XF-based movie’s premiere, co-starred with Bacon in Sleepers.
3. Mulder and Scully settle down for an evening in front of the tube featuring Caddyshack (Je
Souhaite). Caddyshack star Chevy Chase starred with Steve Martin in The Three Amigos, and
Steve Martin’s cab was stolen by Kevin Bacon in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. OK, it’s a
stretch.
4. Mulder and Scully’s appearances on The Simpsons links them up with almost every pop culture icon in the known universe, providing innumerable links to Kevin Bacon.
And with that, we welcome you to tonight’s schedule of crossover entertainment:
-The twisted residents of “Twin Peaks” suck a few more of the FBI’s finest into their web of surreal secrets in “Another Piece of Cherry Pie,” by Vickie Moseley. Cover Art by Lisa
-Mulder and Scully join Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his crew at “NCIS” to combat an otherworldly
threat to mankind in “Semper Fi,” by XSketch. Cover Art by XSketch
-LAPD Detective Michael Raines “sees” dead people — the victims he conjures to solve their
murders. But things only get weirder for “Raines” as he joins Fox Mulder to investigate a high-profile death in “Judgment Call” story and artwork by Martin Ross.
Martin Ross
For the VS14 Producers
AUTHOR: Vickie Moseley
RATING: E for everybody
CATEGORY: X, MSR, A, some MT
DISCLAIMER: Characters here in are supplied by Twentieth Century Fox, 1013
Productions, CBS Television and David Lynch and his production company. No copyright
infringement intended.
ARCHIVE: Two weeks exclusive VS website.
SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully investigate a murder in Twin Peaks, Washington and stumble into a world unlike any they have ever encountered.
AUTHOR: Martin Ross
RATING: PG-13 for language
CATEGORY: Crossover, casefile
DISCLAIMER: In loving tribute to Chris Carter, Graham Yost, and Raymond Chandler, the
greatest storyteller of them all.
ARCHIVE: Two weeks exclusive VS 14, then everywhere
SUMMARY: Detective Michael Raines “sees” dead people, but when a judge takes the big sleep, he experiences an even more bizarre phenomenon — Agent Fox Mulder.
AUTHOR: XSketch, Artwork by XSketch
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: X, XF/NCIS Crossover, MSR
SPOILERS: No direct episode spoilers, but there are references to events up through
season 7 of the televised XF universe and 14 of the Virtual Season, and near the end of
NCIS’s televised season 4.
DISCLAIMER: They’re not mine – all character and show kudos go to Chris Carter and 1013 for Mulder, Scully, Skinner and the Lone Gunmen from the X-Files, while Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill own the awesome NCIS. I’m making no money from this and no copyright infringement is intended – I just love these shows sooooo much! 🙂
ARCHIVE: Two weeks exclusive to Virtual Season 14, and then it’s yours as long as you
let me know where and keep my name attached.
SUMMARY: The X-Files duo and NCIS’s team are forced to work together after their current cases turn out to be the same one. When deception and misdirection block their path, though, teamwork and loyalty to each other are the only things that will help them through.
Artwork
Virtual Season X 