It seems like there has been a new Stephen King series appearing on television every other week for as long as I can remember. We had The Stand and Golden Years and The Langoliers and Kingdom Hospital (not to be confused with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace) and a myriad of others. The man has a longer television and movie resumé than Donald Sutherland (well, maybe not).

Now King is returning to the airwaves with Haven, a series based on his novella The Colorado Kid. The premise is about a small town in Maine (as usual) where cursed people live in exile. A female FBI agent named Audrey Parker arrives to solve a mystery and fight supernatural forces.

Is it me or does this sound a lot like the episode of The X-Files that King wrote? In that episode, Scully is in Maine and Mulder only appeared on screen from his office for counsel.

King has been known to recycle ideas. We'll see how this one turns out.

The X-Files creator Chris Carter has been hospitalized for exhaustion. This was brought on by "physical exhaustion and an acute sleeping disorder."

The pressure on the man must be enormous. He's working on a new movie Fencewalker and just finished The X-Files: I Want to Believe movie. While reviews of the movie weren't great, it did make $60 million in the worldwide box office (from a $30 million budget). That's not including the inevitable DVD sales (which will probably be strong due to the number of X-Files enthusiasts out there). How much does a movie have to make in order to be considered a success by Hollywood standards?

I admit that I know nothing about Chris Carter, so the skeptic in me can't help but wonder if "exhaustion" is a euphemism for some other addiction. Perhaps he and David Duchovny will run into each other while hospitalized and chat about old times.

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of classic TV shows.

(S02E20) I was never a regular X-Files viewer, so I can't say that I had a favorite episode, or that I really liked or disliked certain plots or narrative directions taken by the show. For the most part, all of the episodes run together in my head -- with the exception of one.

I saw it only once, when it originally aired back in 1995. I didn't remember the details of the plot. Instead, it was just the images that still randomly come to mind over a decade later. A guy hammering a nail into his face, another covered in tattoos and eating a live fish, and a fetus in fetu that made me terrified of ever having children.

Since this week is X-Files week for Retro Squad, I knew that I had to talk about Humbug. I didn't want to, but I knew it was time to re-confront my nightmares.

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of classic TV shows.

(S01E03 & S01E21) We almost take it for granted these days that a DVD set of our favorite shows will be forthcoming. We might not always agree with the scheduling, but it's a pretty safe bet that most everything we watch in the coming season will be arriving on DVD eventually. It wasn't like that back in the wilds of 1993. But things were about to change.

I'm not sure if The X-Files was the first show to embrace the home video market, but it was the first one that I took notice of. And it was the first one that I actually bought ... on VHS. That gorgeous three tape box set in the picture is one of three that I have, and each of them carry a whopping six episodes on their oh so delicate tapes. For X-Files week, I dusted this one off and fed my VCR the tape containing "Squeeze" and "Tooms," two of my favorite early episodes.

The X-Files was a one-of-a-kind, groundbreaking show. It took the typical FBI detective show and spun it, but good. Add some aliens and government conspiracy and you've done one better than a weekly FBI caper.

And the extraterrestrial and supernatural make for some good quotes, starting with the pilot, when Scully refers to Mulder by his nickname from the academy: "Spooky Mulder."

Or how about Mulder's understatement of the millennium: " ... in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seems to apply."

The summer movie season. A time of year filled with action, adventure, sequels, big Hollywood stars, big Hollywood explosions, big Hollywood egos and, apparently, TV-related films. In recent times I don't think there have been so many television-related films on the big screen at one time as there will be this summer. We've already seen the release of Speed Racer, the Sex in the City movie comes out next week, and the Steve Carell-starring remake of Get Smart premieres in June.

The last TV-related project to appear this summer will be the long-awaited return of The X-Files to the big screen. Premiering July 25th, the movie, subtitled I Want to Believe, will be directed by series creator Chris Carter and reunite FBI Agents Mulder and Scully in another adventure featuring mysteries not of this world. And, that's all we, the viewing public, know about the film since the plot is being kept hush-hush. Even the official movie trailer, which you will see after the jump, doesn't really tell the fans much about what the film will be about. Heck, it barely features the two main characters of the series.

For some, like Entertainment Weekly's Michael Slezak, knowing very little about the movie's plot is okay as it keeps the anticipation level high for the fans. For others, the lack of information is confusing and angering them at the same time. After you review the trailer let us know if you fall into Michael's camp or the camp of the confused.

Character: Eugene Tooms
Show: The X-Files
Episodes: "Squeeze", "Tooms"

Eugene Tooms is, hands down, the scariest monster I've ever seen on television (including my fear of some Muppets). He showed up twice during the first season of The X-Files, in episodes called "Squeeze" and "Tooms". He was a freak show who was more than 100 years old. He went into a long hibernation every 30 years after eating five human livers. Tooms had evolved so that he could lengthen his body and squeeze himself into the smallest of places, such as a toilet or an air vent. Part of what scared me about him was that he could easily bypass typical safety features in your home!

(S01E09) Real events inspired this episode. Chris Carter says he wrote Space after seeing the real 'face on Mars' photograph. According to the experts over at The X-Files wiki, this episode was meant to be a cheaply made one with lots of NASA footage but the construction of the command center pushed them over budget and made Space the most expensive episode of the season. Whoops.

X-Files creator Chris Carter is suing FOX claiming that he's been gypped out of payments that were owed to him. Apparently Carter enrolled in what's called a "profit guarantee" before the show's sixth and seventh seasons yet he still hasn't received payments regarding that or other syndication deals which he was involved in.

Now I'm no lawyer and half the legal jargon listed in the article is gibberish to me, but you can get the full details of his lawsuit here. I will say though, it's lousy when a great show like The X-Files (and especially it's creator) gets embroiled in a lawsuit that just comes down to money. It's always about the bottom line. Now I could say something cheesy about "the truth" and how "it's out there," but I won't do that.

[Thanks "evadnefenn"]