One evening a few weeks ago, I happened to see the pilot episode of the X-Files TV series once again. What struck me most (apart from all the achingly fresh faces) was how well the whole drama worked: within only a few minutes, the viewer was presented with the themes, cliques and tensions that got played out over the nine seasons the series eventually ran to. Very impressive, both as a piece of writing and planning.

So far, so inconsequential: but yesterday, it struck me just how similar this is to the Voynich Manuscript. There, the pilot episode was effectively the 1665 letter from Marci to Kircher: this laid out all the themes and tensions we have been dealing with for basically the last century (i.e. since 1912). Effectively, we’re currently in Season 97 of “The Voynich Files” – and even if The Truth Is In There, we remain blind to it.

Dramatically, what kept the X-Files in balance was the tug-of-war between Scully (Science) and Mulder (Belief) – there is no ambiguous phenomenon yet found that cannot be split down the middle and held in a kind of dynamic stasis between these two poles. In the end, though, this has a kind of sad, dismissive logic to it: that all phenomena are worthless, because we can draw two views on anything and watch them fight, like miniature robot sumo wrestlers.

So, will the Voynich Files ever be closed? Will there ever be a series finale, where all our old friends briefly surface only to be mown down by The Conspiracy? Or is it, in some kind of vapid Wikipedia-esque way, doomed to a slow-motion death by analysis-paralysis?

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