Why I Do Not Support The Mulder/Scully Relationship
By: Dana Doggett

When I began watching "The X-Files" in the summer of 1998 I was told by a fellow Phile that I had 
to 'ship Mulder and Scully because everybody else was. I didn't know much about the show at the 
time, Mulder and Scully are two attractive people, so why not, right? So I declared myself a 
shipper and claimed to be one throughout season six.

During season six I tried to read MSR fanfic. I liked MSR on the show at the time and wanted 
more stories about my favorite TV couple. I read a fanfic and was highly disappointed. The 
characters were not the ones I knew and loved on the show. I tried another MSR fic, same thing. 
This is when I should have figured out I really wasn't a shipper. As I continued to watch season 
six and reruns on FX, seeing more and more episodes, I began to think about the long term 
effects that an actual relationship between Mulder and Scully would have on the show. It would 
ruin the dynamic and the uniqueness of the partnership/friendship. I still enjoyed moments of UST 
so during the hiatus between season six and season seven, I declared myself a fence-sitter. 
Season seven began and I saw the end of "Amor Fati" and came to love the idea of Mulder/Scully 
together again. That was the last great MSR moment for me on the series…

… then along came the season seven episode "Millennium". I was a spoiler whore back then and 
knew Mulder and Scully were going to kiss. I admit I was excited about that, but unsure of what it 
would mean for the show at the same time. Then it happened. They kissed. It felt wrong. It felt off. 
Something didn't feel right. It wasn't natural. At that moment I became a Mulder/Scully Noromo 
and have been ever since. I saw that hooking them up, kissing, that wasn't who Mulder and 
Scully were. That's not who they had been and from what I read and heard in articles and 
interviews with Chris Carter, he never intended to do anything to ruin the Mulder/Scully 
partnership/friendship as it had been. This moment in "Millennium" wasn't the beginning of the 
Mulder/Scully deterioration, but it is most certainly a landmark in the destruction of the dynamic 
duo.

As the years have gone by I've been able to think more about why the Mulder/Scully relationship 
does not appeal to me. I've had friends in the past who have been in emotionally abusive 
relationships and I see those characteristics in the relationship between Mulder and Scully. I first 
realized this with Scully's relationship with her family. In early seasons we saw her mother much 
more than in the later years. In season five, Bill Jr. doesn't like Mulder because he sees what 
Mulder is doing to his sister. He saw that Mulder was controlling Scully, creating distance 
between her and her friends and family. Bill saw that over the years his sister had started shutting 
her family out of her life. Even when first diagnosed with cancer she doesn't immediately tell her 
family, rather she tells Mulder. It is a well-known fact that the controller/abuser in a relationship 
will try to separate his victim (in this case, Scully) from friends and family. If you watch "The X-
Files" you can clearly see that Mulder succeeded in tearing Scully away from her friends and 
family (that is until he's gone missing in season 8, gee, funny how he's not around and Scully will 
contact her mother and form new friendships).

I don't think that Mulder knowingly did this to Scully. He loves her, he would never intentionally 
hurt her, but the fact is that he did. Over their years together he didn't treat her right. He was 
always quick to say her opinions and views were wrong. Over and over again he'd belittle her for 
not believing him. I believe all this negativity toward her, from his, broke her down. So much that 
she started to think like Mulder instead of being herself. This is another common trait of a person 
in an abusive relationship, the victim takes on the opinions of his/her abuser in order to please 
him and to not make their situation more complicated (please note that when I type "abusive", I do 
not mean "physically abusive", there are many different types of abuse). Scully began to change 
who she is in order to please him. To me this emotional abuse is the most unhealthy aspect of 
their relationship. The unfortunate thing of it is the fact that Scully feels so dependent on Mulder, 
he's all she has, that she probably doesn't realize how unhealthy her relationship with him is.

It hurts me to see any woman in a relationship that is emotionally abusive (or any other form of 
abuse for that matter). Giving up your own hopes, dreams, friends and family because you think 
you love a man, and he loves him back, is not right.

Mulder doesn't treat Scully as an equal. More times than not he acted as her superior, telling her 
what to do. From performing autopsies when she expressed she'd rather not (Bad Blood, Sein 
Und Zeit/ Closure), to ordering her to investigate a case while he takes a vacation (Never Again), 
to ditching her while on a stakeout at a crummy area of town (Chimera). Mulder treats her as an 
inferior, someone he can give orders to without any hassle. That's not right. They're supposed to 
be equals, but Scully lets him walk all over her.

His treatment of her emotionally and professionally shows her no respect. I don't know about you, 
but shouldn't a loving relationship contain equal respect from both partners? That is not the case 
with Mulder and Scully and hence does not encourage me to support a romantic relationship 
between the two of them.

Mulder does not view Scully as the most important thing or person in his life. Things that come 
before Scully on his list of priorities include 1) his quest to expose government conspiracies, 2) 
reveal the truth about alien existence, 3) try to prevent alien colonization, 4) his sister, Samantha, 
and 5) his own selfish needs.

If Scully were on his list of priorities, don't you think he'd have had her come with him in season 
nine when he ditched her and her child (which he believes is his)? If she were a priority to him 
why would he have hauled ass out of D.C. to save himself, leaving Scully alone to raise her child 
– who actually turned out to be the one in danger, not really Mulder, from what we were shown. 
Mulder was thinking of himself, not Scully. Yes, I know, Scully told him to leave, which is 
interesting… I hope her doing that was a first step in her going in the right direction for her life, 
ease Mulder out so she can live our her life's dreams. Unfortunately he came back and she 
hadn't found the strength to tell him she doesn't want to live his life, she wants to live her own. So 
now she's stuck with him. Thank goodness for fanfic to correct the wrong in that, right?

Once Mulder and Scully hooked up as a couple we see that Scully isn't happy. In season seven 
she seems annoyed with Mulder, angry with him, but giving up hope that he'll change for the 
better. And she shouldn't hope for change, she should love Mulder for everything that he is, but I 
sense that she hopes some things will change. This is a dream, not exactly something that will 
happen. In season eight she is sad that he's missing. He is her friend and her lover, but… just 
when you think she'd be happy that Mulder is back in her life, she seems more upset and 
unhappy with him around. Mention Mulder to her and she gets mopey and depressed. When 
Mulder is not around she seems to be enjoying herself more, reaching out to the person she used 
to be before Mulder broke her down and formed her to his liking. The same thing happens in 
season nine. No Mulder mentions and she's fine, happy, enjoying herself and her new 
friendships. Mention Mulder and she's sad and unhappy. Mulder doesn't make her smile often 
when they are a couple. After all Scully's been through because of Mulder and the X-Files, don't 
you think she deserves better? Someone that will actually make her happy? I like to think so.

"They are friends beyond what lovers could ever be." – Sheila Larken about Mulder and Scully

This statement defines the best of the best of Mulder and Scully before Chris Carter ruined them 
by making them a couple. Mulder and Scully love each other, I don't doubt that or deny that, but 
they didn't hook up at the time that would have made a smooth transition from partners/friends to 
lovers. They held out and remained only friends for seven seasons. I came to believe that they 
got themselves stuck in the "Friends Zone".

The "Friends Zone", to me, is the "place" a man and a woman who are friends go once the point 
where romance could have blossomed has passed them by. Once in the "Friends Zone", there's 
no going back, the opportunity to let your friendship turn into something more is gone. To me, 
Mulder and Scully entered the "Friends Zone" in season six. Through season five we see the 
writers building the relationship, it changed ever so slightly. In "Fight The Future", there was a 
near kiss. After all that, Mulder and Scully went on as if it had never happened. They didn't talk 
about it, they didn't act upon it, and that was them entering the "Friends Zone". This told me that 
neither one of them really wanted to go down that road with the other. Their opportunity 
presented itself and they chose not to follow through. That is why any MSR moments in seasons 
six through nine don't work. Suddenly the moments between them were not sincere. The writers 
missed the chance to make the Mulder/Scully relationship work and they tried desperately to 
recreate another moment for them and they failed miserably. As the seasons went on the 
Mulder/Scully moments got worse and worse, and finally Chris Carter caved into the rabid shipper 
desires for them to hook up, and he did it, he actually turned his back on his original idea for 
Mulder and Scully and said they were romantically involved. This ruined the characters and their 
partnership/friendship for me forever. I can never again watch any given X-Files episode and 
enjoy Mulder and Scully (together, interacting) the same way, knowing how Chris Carter screwed 
it up and ruined their friendship and chemistry by making them a couple. The MSR coming to 
actuality ruined the show for me and I can never enjoy it as much as I did when I first started 
watching.

Season eight of "The X-Files" brought big changes. David Duchovny left the show and starred in 
half the season's episodes and in the season seven finale Scully announced that she was 
pregnant. This is a classic example of the MSR ruining the show. The way I figure, Chris Carter 
freaked out. David was leaving, the show was continuing without him, and Carter needed to 
please the shippers who through season seven had become even more persistent in their 
whining about wanting Mulder and Scully to hook up romantically (thanks to episodes such as 
"Millennium" and "all things"). The shippers felt they were getting their way and suddenly one half 
of their favorite pairing was leaving. Chris Carter had to do something drastic (desperate?) so he 
knocked up Scully, leaving the paternity a mystery, but all the shippers automatically assumed 
Mulder was the father (and please, pay attention to the timestamps in season 8 episodes and you 
know for a fact that Mulder couldn't have possibly fathered William). I believe the pregnancy was 
only done to try to keep the rabid shippers watching the show without Mulder. It was done to 
signify to the shippers that MSR was happening and also to help keep up the ratings when the 
show premiered its eighth season.

With the pregnancy, Carter could keep the short attention span of the rabid shippers, they could 
go on chat boards and declare Mulder the father even though there is no evidence that was the 
truth. They could write baby fic, conception fic, etc. This pregnancy kept them invested in the 
'storyline', which in turn kept up the ratings. The pregnancy was nothing more than a ploy to try to 
keep viewers. It had nothing to do with any creative storytelling on the series. It also gave the 
rabids a reason to be even bigger buttholes to fans of the series that don't share their shipper 
opinions. For all that, any MSR anything on this show is not appreciated by me.

It's hard to be a fan when most of the online fandom thinks you're an asshole just because you 
don't like MSR and don't share the same fluffy, butterflies and cotton candy vision of the 
Mulder/Scully relationship.

I can't support a relationship on any TV show that was done to 1) please rabid shippers, 2) is an 
attempt to hold up ratings, and 3) has nothing to show for how the couple came to together, it's as 
if Carter made it up on the spot because Duchovny was leaving and the shippers were pissed off.

In the first five seasons the Mulder/Scully dynamic was unique. Here you have two attractive 
characters who are nothing more than friends and the creator of the series has declared romance 
would never come between them and ruin what they had. They love each other in a way no other 
TV characters had before. They weren't "in love", they weren't hopping in and out of bed. They 
were platonic. They fought, they cried, they comforted each other, they laughed, they lounged 
around all without the threat of their dynamic being ruined by a romantic relationship.

The moment Chris Carter decided to hook them up, that was the moment that ruined Mulder and 
Scully forever for me. They were no longer unique, no longer in a class by themselves. They had 
done what every other TV show likes to do with it's male and female leads, hook them up.

That didn't just ruin it for me, it ruined it for everyone. Noromos got fed up, some stopped 
watching the show. Shippers got angry because Duchovny left the show. In the two seasons 
where we know Mulder and Scully were a couple… you go to any shipper forum and I'm sure 
most of the members will tell you how much they despised seasons eight and nine. They'll blame 
it on Robert Patrick/John Doggett or any of the other new characters, but it's really just because 
Mulder and Scully hooked up and they felt gypped they didn't get to see much of the relationship. 
Noromos and shippers suffered through the realization of the Mulder/Scully relationship.

And wasn't it the Noromos that stated long before that fiasco began that hooking up Mulder and 
Scully would ruin the show?

In the end it came down to the fact that the Noromos were right all along. Unfortunately we had to 
see the MSR happen for that to be proven.

Until my next essay "Why I Don't Support The Doggett/Reyes Relationship"…

AMF
Cassie