He’s Mulder, she’s Scully

After 10 years, ‘The X-Files’ is back on the big screen. Here’s a quick quiz to help you remember who’s who.

By BOBBY BRYANT - blbryant@thestate.com

This time, no aliens.

The last time “The X-Files” played on theater screens, way back in 1998, audiences were mostly dumbfounded by the maze of plotlines involving FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully’s battle against alien invaders and their human co-conspirators. (Viruses? Bees? Secret Arctic bases? Martin Landau?)

And even diehard viewers of the Fox network’s TV series were puzzled by some of the odder twists and turns, and frustrated that the feature film, which promised to reveal everything about the show’s long-simmering alien mysteries, actually revealed almost nothing.

So, 10 years later, when “X-Files” creator Chris Carter got the chance to write and direct a second “X-Files” movie, he tossed out the aliens and the conspiracy and took the story back to its most basic roots — Mulder, Scully and a scary, spooky mystery we can’t discuss because the studio is saying N-O-T-H-I-N-G about the movie’s plot.

The film, shot on a modest $30 million budget on penny-pinching Canadian locations and subtitled “I Want to Believe,” opens Friday. The trailers for the movie show snow. Lots of snow. People digging in snow. People walking in snow. People driving through snow. The movie’s plot is somewhere under that snow. All lips are sealed.

However ... fans have been chewing on a chunk of text from what is reputed to be the back cover of the upcoming paperback novelization of the movie. It hints at abductions of women in rural Virginia, “grotesque human remains that begin to turn up in snowbanks along the highway,” a disgraced priest’s “visions” and a “bizarre secret medical experiment.”

And — oh, yeah — Mulder and Scully are in there somewhere.

Mulder and Scully, long time no see. It’s been six years since the long-running TV series ended with the two pals, played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, becoming fugitives from the federal government. Where have they been? In pop culture, six years might as well be a lifetime.

“It has struck me over the last several years talking to college-age kids that a lot of them really don’t know the show,” Carter told The Associated Press. “If you’re 20 years old now, the show started when you were 4. It was probably too scary for you or your parents wouldn’t let you watch it. So there’s a whole new audience that might have liked the show. This (movie) was made to, I would call it, satisfy everyone.”

If your memories of “The X-Files” have faded to not much more than “spooky show, spooky music and intense guys talking on cell phones,” here’s a quiz to get you back in the mood for more Mulder and Scully. Just remember, Mulder is the guy and Scully is the gal. And no aliens this time. They promise.

1. On the TV series, Mulder and Scully’s arch-enemy was:

a. The Cigar-Chewing Man

b. The Pipe-Puffing Man

c. The Cigarette-Smoking Man

d. The Tobacco-Spitting Man

2. The event that haunted Mulder all his life was:

a. His sister’s mysterious abduction

b. His father’s mysterious death

c. His brother’s mysterious illness

d. His parents’ decision to name him “Fox”

3. Mulder and Scully’s most frequent means of communication was:

a. The walkie-talkie

b. The cell phone

c. The computer

d. Passionate notes left in each other’s lunch box

4. Scully’s typical telephone greeting to Mulder was:

a. “Mulder, it’s me.”

b. “Mulder, what’s up?”

c. “Fox? It’s Dana.”

d. “Can you hear me now?”

5. In a plot twist late in the series’ run, Scully got pregnant and gave birth to a boy who later was given up for adoption. The baby’s father turned out to be:

a. An alien

b. Mulder

c. The Cigarette-Smoking Man

d. Special guest star Alex Trebek

6. Scully often complained about the FBI failing to give her:

a. A gun

b. A desk

c. A laptop computer

d. A vacation

7. The series’ official catch phrase, which usually appeared in the title sequence each week, was:

a. The truth hurts.

b. The truth is out there.

c. The truth will set you free.

d. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, amen.

8. The actual X-Files — the FBI’s unsolved reports of paranormal cases — were kept in:

a. A desk drawer

b. A file cabinet

c. A broom closet

d. A bread box

9. On the series, Scully was a doctor of medicine who most often served as:

a. A pathologist

b. An ornithologist

c. An endodontist

d. An ichthyologist

10. On the series, Mulder had an unhealthy interest in:

a. Oceanography

b. Geography

c. Pornography

d. Stenography

11. Usually, the relationship between Mulder and Scully worked like this:

a. He’s the believer; she’s the skeptic.

b. She’s the believer; he’s the skeptic.

c. They’re both believers.

d. They’re both skeptics.

12. Just to show how long it’s been: When “The X-Files” went off the air in May 2002, the average price of a gallon of unleaded gas in South Carolina was only:

a. $1.26

b. $1.75

c. $2.10

d. $2.85

ANSWERS: 1. c; 2. a; 3. b; 4. a; 5. b; 6. b; 7. b; 8. b; 9. a; 10. c; 11. a; 12. a