After seven seasons and a movie of chasing down monsters of the week and unraveling an increasingly vague and decreasingly compelling conspiracy, Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny opted to take a back seat, ceding the spotlight to Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish. To keep the show's balance intact, Patrick's John Doggett was the skeptic and Gish's Monica Reyes the believer in the paranormal. A "will they or won't they" dynamic was introduced, as it always is, and efforts were made for Reyes to be more outwardly sweet and endearing, in contrast to Dana Scully's often icily pragmatic demeanor. The show chugged along for two more seasons and a belated movie before its rebirth in 2016, but there are very few X-Files devotees who would call the Doggett/Reyes years anything better than serviceable.
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