Described as counterculture patriots, they were ardent conspiracy theorists, government watchdogs, and computer hackers who frequently assisted central X-Files characters Mulder and Scully, though they sometimes had their own adventures. The Lone Gunmen authored a news publication called The Magic Bullet Newsletter, (later renamed The Lone Gunman) of which Mulder was a loyal subscriber. None of them had day jobs; they relied on financial backers who believed in their cause. They shared a loft apartment (where they also worked) and used a 1970VW Transporter (minibus) to commute.
Unlike The X-Files, whose storylines dealt mainly with supernatural creatures and government alien conspiracies, The Lone Gunmen episodes generally featured more "plausible" plots, such as cheating husbands, corporate crime, arms-dealers, and escaped Nazis. The show had a very light atmosphere and focused heavily on physical comedy.
Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood), a former '60s radical and the oldest of the three. Though a skilled computer hacker, Frohike was primarily the photography specialist for the newsletter. Frohike had a lascivious attitude toward women and secretly coveted Mulder's collection of pornographic videos. However, he had a more purely romantic attitude towards Dana Scully; when she was gravely ill, Frohike appeared at the hospital in a tux carrying a flower. His unique sense of fashion made him stand out: leather jackets, furry vests, combat boots, fingerless gloves, etc. Frohike considered himself the "action man" of the trio and would often be seen doing very intense stunts (many rigged to look more impressive than they really were). Despite his childish scraps with Langly and others, Frohike's age and experience gave him a kind of quiet wisdom that occasionally surfaced when he consoled his friends about the sorry nature of their lives. In the episode "Tango de los Pistoleros," Frohike was revealed to be a former tango champion who danced under the stage name "El Lobo."
John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood) was once a menial office worker for the FCC. He was a conservative dresser with a neatly trimmed beard; a stark contrast to his grungier comrades. He is known for the famous line, "That's what we like about you, Mulder. Your ideas are even weirder than ours." He was born on November 22, 1963, the same day that President Kennedy died. His parents named him after the fallen president. His name would have been Bertram otherwise. Byers was the most "normal" of the three, and while Frohike and Langly were seemingly born angry misfits, Byers dreamed of a quiet, uneventful, suburban life. Byers' father was a high-ranking government official, but they never saw eye to eye and when Byers' father appears in the "Lone Gunmen" pilot, the two haven't spoken for some time.
Richard Langly (Dean Haglund) resembled Garth from Wayne's World and was the most confrontational and socially immature of the three. He was a big fan of The Ramones and enjoyed critiquing the scientific innaccuracies of the short-lived sci-fi series Earth 2, and he had a long-running competition with Frohike over who was a better computer hacker. He also had "a philosophical aversion to having his image bounced off a satellite." His nickname was "Ringo". Langly was a Dungeons and Dragons player and enjoyed violent videogames like Quake. (In the William Gibson-penned "X-Files" episode "First Person Shooter" Frohike and Byers were also avid videogamers, an uncharacteristic development for both men and one that was dropped in later stories.)
Supporting characters
Kenneth Soona aka The Thinker (Bernie Coulson) - an unofficial fourth member, a computer hacker, who succeeded in accessing Majestic 12 files and encrypting them onto a digital tape in the last episode of season 2 titled "Anasazi". He was killed by assassins working for the Cigarette Smoking Man, who eventually re-acquired the tape. He was referred to in the first episode of season 3 titled "The Blessing Way" as being murdered but he was not in that episode.
Jimmy Bond (Stephen Snedden) - another "fourth member", who joined the trio in The Lone Gunmen series. In a stark contrast to his namesake, he is rich but not very bright, and is fascinated with the trio, who often consider him a nuisance. His saving grace is his boundless optimism, coupled with an idealistic view that the jaded Gunmen wish they still held.
Kimmy the Geek (Jim Fyfe) - an expert hacker and a Star Trek fan who occasionally helps the trio. He is the twin brother of Jimmy the Geek, a character killed by a bus in an X-Files episode, played by the same actor.
In the X-Files season 5 episode "Unusual Suspects", it is revealed how the Gunmen initially got together.
In 1989, John Byers meets a woman named Holly in an electronics expo. Holly claims that her ex-boyfriend (Mulder) is stalking her and has kidnapped her daughter. She gives Byers an internet address which is supposed to locate her daughter. The file is encrypted, so Byers enlists the aid of computer hacker/cable salesman Melvin Frohike. Frohike decrypts the file, but when they confront Mulder, they discover he is an FBI agent. Suspicious, Byers and Frohike get Richard Langly to hack into the FBI network. They discover that Holly's real name is Suzanne Modeski, and she is wanted for bombing an FBI lab. The three confront Modeski, and she admits that she works for the Army Advanced Weapons facility at Whitestone, NM. She has developed a gas that causes fear and paranoia, and the military plans to test it on civilians. She then enlists the help of the three to stop the government's plan. They track the material to a warehouse, where the gas is in a shipment of asthma inhalers. Mulder follows them and is about to arrest them when all five of them are ambushed by two hitmen sent to kill Modeski. A shootout ensues, and Mulder takes cover.
Modeski kills the hitmen and promptly flees. A team led by X sanitizes the scene, cautioning the guys to stay out of trouble. The trio got their name as a result of Byers questioning X at this point about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his namesake. X's reply was, "I heard that it was the work of a lone gunman."
The police arrive soon after. All three of the Gunmen are arrested, and Byers recounts his story to Detective John Munch. Munch is skeptical, but Mulder verifies the story, so the guys are released. They find Modeski, and she admonishes them to tell as many people as they can about the government conspiracy. Without warning, a black rental car pulls up, and the occupants force Modeski inside. Later, the guys are visited by Mulder, who says that he has weird ideas in his head that he can't seem to shake.
Despite only minor appearances in the X-Files, the Gunmen became fan favorites, getting their own T-shirts. They also appeared prominently in episodes written by acclaimed science fiction authors William Gibson and Tom Maddox.
Since becoming X-Files mainstays, Gunmen styled technogeeks have appeared on other television series, such as Brian Roedecker on Millennium and Abby Sciuto on NCIS. Similar characters have appeared in many genre series: a trio of geeky would-be villians in season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a pair of nerdy "paranormal investigator" bloggers who appear in the first season Hell House episode of Supernatural, while Invasion featured Dave, a rather Frohike-esque blogger journalist who was determined to bring the truth about alien "hybrids" to the world.
One or all of the Gunmen appeared in the following X-Files episodes, as well as all episodes of The Lone Gunmen.
Season 3 * "The Blessing Way" * "Paper Clip" * "Nisei" * "Apocrypha" * "Wetwired"
Season 4 * "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" * "Momento Mori"
Season 5 * "Redux" * "Redux II" * "Unusual Suspects" * "Emily" * "Kill Switch" * "The End"
The X-Files: Fight the Future (feature film)| width=50% valign=top| Season 6 * "Triangle" * "Dreamland II" * "One Son" * "Three of a Kind" * "Field Trip"
Season 7 * "First Person Shooter" * "En Ami" * "Requiem"
Season 8 * "Within" * "Via Negativa" * "The Gift" * "DeadAlive" * "Three Words" * "Existence"
Season 9 * "Nothing Important Happened Today" * "Nothing Important Happened Today II" * "Provenance" * "Providence" * "Jump the Shark" * "The Truth (Series Finale)"
The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of the popular series The X-Files, was a television show that aired on FOX, featuring the characters of the same name. The show first aired in March 2001, and it was soon cancelled with its last episode airing in June 2001.
Their spin-off series involved investigating mostly corporate crime, aided (and sometimes hindered) by a mysterious thief named Yves Adele Harlow (Zuleikha Robinson). Despite fan loyalty, the show was ultimately canceled after 12 episodes. The Gunmen themselves died in the season 9 X-Files episode "Jump the Shark", sacrificing themselves to stop a bio-terrorist. They briefly reappeared in the series finale, as ghosts whom Mulder seemed to have acquired the ability to communicate with.
The cancellation of the show is considered by many to be somewhat mysterious, but in fact its ratings fell consistently throughout its 13 episode run, with the pilot being watched by around 13.2 million viewers, and the final episode by around 5.3 million. [1]
Pilot episode "predicts" 9/11
In a foreshadowing of the September 11, 2001 attacks, subsequent conspiracy theories, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the plot of the March 4, 2001 pilot episode of the series depicts a secret U.S. government agency plotting to crash a Boeing 727 headed for Boston into the World Trade Center via remote control for the purpose of increasing the military defense budget and blaming the attack on foreign "tin-pot dictators" who are "begging to be smart-bombed." This episode aired in Australia less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, on August 30.
This alone has made the DVD extremely popular for such a short-lived series (see below).
After fans had waited since the show's cancellation, Fox Home Entertainment officially released the series (along with the episode of The X-Files entitled Jump the Shark which finishes the cliffhanger that ended The Lone Gunmen as an additional episode) on a three disc Region 1DVD set on Tuesday March 29, 2005. In the UK it was eventually released on the 31st January 2006. Some fans claim the DVD will have "collector value" in the future because of the episode that depicted an attempt to crash a jumbo jet into the World Trade Center months before 9/11 actually happened.
