Chris Carter likes to read things such as Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines and the MIT Technology Review.
"I have the soul of a geek," said the creator and producer of The X-Files. "I understand them."
That’s why when the three actors who comprise The Lone Gunmen –- the clownish but ingenious hackers who pop up occasionally in The X-Files –- told Carter they thought they were "spinoff material," they found a ready ear.
The Lone Gunmen, the series, premieres Sunday on Fox. Like The X-Files, the show’s protagonists risk their lives exploring weird conspiracies. Unlike The X-Files, they bungle their missions much of the time.
"I talk to some people who say their kids are too young to watch X-Files," Carter said. "The message (in The Lone Gunmen) is, don’t be afraid to watch."
It’s hard, after all, to be too afraid when your intrepid heroes are getting unintentionally mauled by blind football players chasing radar-emitting footballs, or are hauled off to emergency rooms for treatment of gas, or confront little old Nazi ladies with birthmarks shaped like Germany on their fannies.
These aren’t exactly guys who strike fear into the hearts of men. There's Richard "Ringo" Langly (Dean Haglund), a hawk-nosed, stringy-haired scarecrow who can hack a Defense Department computer in the blink of an eye; and Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood), a sixtyish, balding little guy with a perpetual 5 o’clock shadow; and John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood), a serious, suit-wearing fellow whose good intentions are generally overwhelmed by his mishaps.
Add a dollop of good-natured satire: Frohike is lowered upside-down by a cable into a heavily guarded lab (think Mission Impossible), then bounces up and down like a yo-yo when his cohorts muff an attempt to pull him back to safety; a powerful Octium microprocessor ("Octium Inside"); and a sax-playing senator with a Southern drawl named Bill Jefferson who can’t resist playing "hide the salami" with his aides.
"I watched every episode of Get Smart as a kid," Carter said, referring to the hit '60s TV show about a hapless secret agent (played by Don Adams). "That was camp. I hope we don’t go that far."
To balance out the humor, Carter adds lots of X-Files-style intrigue, suspense and mayhem –- somehow managing to compress into the premiere episode a murderous assault on Byers’ father, plots by government goons and an out-of-control jet loaded with passengers heading toward New York’s World Trade Center.
"Our hope is that the X-Files audience will come over and embrace this," Carter said. "It’s for them primarily, but not exclusively. You don’t have to know X-Files to appreciate this show."
Carter’s love of technology and gizmos comes through in the show, although not everything he’s gleaned comes from his technology-based readings.
"All these ideas are so hard to communicate to a public that is technophobic," he said. "The minute you start talking about hardware and software, people get nervous, because they can’t program their VCRs."
Privately, Carter clearly loves to talk about the latest cool stuff he’s read –- such as the MIT Review's prediction that in the future "we won’t have computers anymore because everything will have intelligence," or Kurzweil’s experimentation with a new personality through a computer-synthesized rock star named Ramona.
"I don’t know (Kurzweil), but I’d like to know him," Carter said.
With 12 episodes of The Lone Gunmen completed, Carter is now waiting to see whether his loyal X-Files fans will buy into his own technological experiment.
"The truth is, the audience you live by is also the audience you die by," he said. "We have to get those Nielsen ratings."
