The X-Files Episode Nearly Ruined By YouTube-Style Censorship

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 30 seconds ago

As an aging Millennial, one of the things that continuously confuses me is the special phrasing that content creators have to use to avoid getting flagged on platforms like TikTok or YouTube. Ironically enough, part of me dies whenever I see someone use phrases like “sewer slide” or (even worse) “unalive” to refer to the act of suicide. In addition to sounding dumb and juvenile, it’s also completely pointless: after all, if everybody knows what the code means, then this weird self-censorship loses all meaning.

I used to think of this phenomenon as relatively recent, but it’s not. It turns out the streaming platforms of today are just echoing the restrictive practices of yesterday’s television networks. For example, the X-Files creator Chris Carter wanted to feature an episode (“Irresistible”) with a particularly creepy necrophiliac villain. But Fox told him that he couldn’t use that term, causing the showrunner to create a more acceptable nonsense term: “death fetishist.”

50 Shades Of Decay

First, some context: “Irresistible” was a Season 2 episode featuring Donnie Pfaster, an assistant funeral director who gives everyone the ick. He gets fired from his job for removing hair from a corpse, and he is eventually the focus of Mulder and Scully’s investigation into who has been disturbing local corpses. They believe that Pfaster is a “death fetishist” who is destined to escalate, eventually resorting to outright murder rather than desecrating local cemeteries. Those suspicions proved correct: Pfaster kills and mutilates a prostitute before kidnapping Scully; she is narrowly saved from becoming his latest victim, eventually breaking down in Mulder’s arms because of her recent trauma.

The original script for “Irresistible” straight-up called Donnie Pfaster a “necrophiliac.” Fox immediately rejected it on this basis, claiming that such a portrayal was unacceptable for broadcast standards. X-Files showrunner and episode writer Chris Carter later elaborated on this: according to The Complete X-Files, he said, “When I handed the script in, it was really for a necrophiliac episode, and that just didn’t fly. You cannot do the combination of sex and death on network television.”

Instead of throwing out the story altogether, though, Carter began to make tweaks to his script. The primary tweak is that the word “necrophiliac” is never used: both in the script and onscreen, Donnie Pfaster is referred to as a “death fetishist.” Accordingly, the showrunner trimmed down some of the character’s more obvious sexual obsession. Later, in a special feature in The X-Files: The Complete Second Season, Carter claimed that his viewers were smart enough to figure everything out and that the character’s clear necrophilia fetish is “implied and understood by audiences.”

The Threat You Never See Coming

Of course, he’s right: even as a very young man watching “Irresistible” when it first premiered, it’s abundantly clear what kind of sexual freak Donnie Pfaster is. However, that just goes to show how silly Fox’s concerns were. Why did they freak out over the use of the word “necrophiliac” when the rest of the episode clearly portrays him as one? Plus, Chris Carter’s term “death fetishist” is an absolutely hilarious substitute. Instead of calling the villain a word that means “he’s attracted to dead people,” the showrunner called him (checks notes) a word that means “he’s attracted to dead people.”

Some of the villains of The X-Files once warned Mulder that it was impossible to fight the future, and maybe they were right: the restrictions of ‘90s broadcast cable have become the restrictions of modern streaming platforms, forcing content creators to replace real words with nonsense. Honestly, it’s enough to make me “unalive” myself, but I won’t do that. After all, there’s no telling what you “death fetishists” in the comment section would do to my body afterward!