melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2008-03-13 08:58 pm

I AM A GEEK. I ADMIT THIS.

So, RE: discussion about monsters and mutants and humanity in vescoiya's LJ t'other day, I went back to my old notes for A Time of Dark, Dark Despair (which I may even write more of. In another three years,) and finished filling them out.

The result? A spreadsheet of all human-like Monster of the Week characters ever to appear on the X-Files.

They are listed by full name, episode number (production number/DVD number, I hope), how they qualify as an x-file, how they got that way, what criminal things they did, and their status at the end of the episode. Full of spoilers, obviously.

It's up on my webspace as a .csv (spreadsheet) file and a very ugly HTML table. Download them and have a look. (The .html is sorted by episode number, the .csv file you can open in your spreadsheet program and sort by whatever.) Sources were memory, re-runs, and a variety of XF sites around the 'net, none of which provided a complete resource.

Notes:
To get on this list a character had to be either human, passing for human, or human-descended, so no green pixel-bugs or AMTDI fungi are listed. I also did not include characters whose x-filishness clearly originated from either pure technology or ritual magic. Demons, angels, and other metaphysical spirits were also disqualified: I limited it to characters whose weirdness seems in some way inherent to their biology. I listed only a few mytharc-related characters, the ones who most closely resembled MOTW x-files.

The last three columns are kind of roughly divided into just a few categories each; most of them should be self-explanatory, but there were a few that were a bit slippery.

origin:acquired means that the weird characteristics were apparently picked up either from someone else or environmental factors.
origin:inherited means that at least one first-degree relative (sibling, parent, or child) was shown sharing the unusual traits.
origin:kin group means that we were shown an apparently long-lasting community of less-closely-related people sharing the traits.
origin:unknown is the plurality: many of these were strongly implied to be genetic, but there was no real explanation of *how* genetics would have led to said traits.
origin:mystical means it's implied that the abilities were, to at least some extent, learned, through meditation or study.

crimes: manslaughter means they killed either in self-defense or accidently.
crimes: must kill means the odd traits included a compulsion to murder.
crimes: revenge means they used their powers or traits primarily to get revenge for wrongs done, usually involving murder.
crimes: serial killer means they killed repeatedly, with no comprehensible motive, or in classic serial killer modes; there's some crossover here with the revenge category.
crimes: other crimes means they were just generally scumbags in ways not centered around murder.

"mytharc" in any column basically translates as "makes no sense"; and a (?) means the outcome is more-than-usually unsure.

A few very quick stats:

Out of 201 total episodes, 67 entries showed up on my list; some of them are multi-episode, but it still comes close to 1/3 total XF episodes were about apparently human "monsters". (It would be interesting to run a similar analysis on related genre shows.)

17 episodes had the characters end up alive and free, 9 in prison, 30 ended up dead, 3 were apparently kidnapped by Shadowy Figures, 2 (both minors) ended up in psych institutions, and 3 episodes had multiple "monster" characters with different outcomes. There were also two who died of natural causes, but I slotted them into the categories they'd have been in if they weren't dying anyway. (What I find most interesting there is what a terribly bad job the conspiracy does covering up this stuff - apparently all sorts of odd powers are allowed to run around free and unmolested, and yet they harass poor Gibson Praise?)

Of the dead characters, 6 were killed by bad guys, 19 killed by good guys (pretty much all in the heat of action) and 5 were died as a direct effect of their unusual traits. All of the "killed by good guys" characters fell into either the "serial killer", "revenge killer", or "must kill" categories, with the exception of two which were of questionable sentience. (XF didn't really go for the moral dilemmas.) None of the other categories are as easily predictable.

Of the nine "must kill" characters, six were killed by Our Heroes, one got away, one ended up in prison, and one died when he was prevented from killing.

Kin groups are mostly likely to come out alive and free; characters with a close relative sharing traits are mostly likely to end up alive, in prison.

The average number of these episodes per seasons is 7 (mean, mode, and median); the most is 13 in season 1, when they were presumably still finding their range and over half of the episodes featured these guys. The min is 5, in season 2 and season 7 (which were both mytharc-heavy seasons).

You could probably mine more data (especially if you did more than just back-of-the-envelope stats.) Please do! And discuss! And write thinky fanfic! Please? Especially the fanfic. Who wants to help me start an RPG where they all team up and fight aliens? :D

(BTW, not in the spreadsheet, but racial stats, to the best of my assisted memory? Hispanic: 2 episodes. Black: 2. Asian: 1. White: 61. Go you, XF. *sigh* oh, and gender? Female: 10, male: 46, unknown or mixed-gender groups: 11.)