[Some of this is a little OT, but why not? This article appeared on www.exonews.com in May 2002. Ed.]

By FLAtRich

Hollywood May 1, 2002 (eXoNews) - Well, they finally wrote out Scully's baby. Agent Scully gives the kid away! I don't know about you, but I just don't care.

I was getting really tired of that Scully kid. For two seasons, X-Files tried to cover for the absent Mulder by playing the baby card and it never really worked for me. I think there are lots of X-philes out there who agree but are probably just too paranoid to admit it. I blame that kid for the decline in X-Files' ratings, not Doggett and Reyes!

It's not just William either - he was kind of cute twirling his crib toys with those little alien super powers of his - there are all those other babies who have populated TV for the last few seasons.

Enterprise was only a few episodes old before Trip got pregnant! Where are the old values! Can you imagine Scotty with child?

Even TV's most urban plotlines have fallen prey to the baby buggy! Angel had no excuse getting Darla pregnant! As a topper our vamp anti-hero loses his kid in a demon dimension! I mean, what more proof do we need that TV good guys just aren't ready for fatherhood? Then the kid comes back fully grown! Talking about ducking responsibility! What about the formative years? The first bike? (Or would that be first bite?)

What's next? A Fox "reality show" featuring a different live birth each week? (Hey! You saw it here first!)

Didn't I read somewhere recently that there are more single people than married people in the US? Didn't Hitchcock once complain (greatly paraphrased) that the most repellant scenes in cinema involved bodily functions and people getting out of cars? (He had his reasons!)

And if it's not the babies, we get the clones! This has gone way beyond the old evil twin thing. I mean, Bizarro Superman and the alternate DS9 universe were classic, but now everybody has to have a clone!

Mulder's cloned sister was confusing enough, but now we have to accept that Spender had Mulder's exact DNA? Come on! We suspected that the CSM was Mulder's real father, but does that exact DNA match mean Mulder is a clone? (Or that his real mother was Cassandra Spender? Think about it!)

The ship on Andromeda has not one, but two different alternate embodiments (clones, I suppose, but they are both played by the lovely Lexa Doig, so who cares?) The alien kids on Roswell had a full set of punk clones living in NYC. (Max also got Tess pregnant, come to think of it, and is still looking for his kid.)

And Moya, the ship on Farscape, somehow got pregnant and had a baby ship! (Not to mention all those cloned Crichtons and alternate Scorpies on Farscape.)

What ever happened to the simple good guys versus baddies? Where did all the loners go? We used to have heroes and heroines who were solid and had their own apartments that we rarely saw and were basically the same person week after week. They had sexual aspirations, of course, but they weren't out prowling for a lifetime mate and a basement playroom. They just wanted a good old roll in the hay once in a while in between hiding their secret identities and saving the world.

Now even sidekick characters waste whole episodes worrying about wedding plans or how they'll support a family.

Hollywood needs to hire some new writers - single writers! The current crop is definitely obsessed with car payments, hair, clothes, marriage, relatives, and, well, babies. Maybe the scribes are just too young or just too old or just too married, but they definitely need to get out of the house and out of suburbia!

And I told you not to mention alternate Crichtons! Sci Fi Channel finally lets us see the Season Three Farscape finale this week and guess what the cliffhanger leaves us with?

Nah, I won't spoil it. I don't have to. Even if you didn't see it, I'm sure you can guess.