According to an undated Special Branch dossier, probably from around 1997-98, the UK police force once feared that Star Trek, X-Files, and other forms of sci-fi entertainment were serious threats to national security.
This sounds crazy—and it is—but there was some basis for Special Branch's concern. In the 1970s, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles founded Heaven's Gate, an American UFO religious group. In 1997, Applewhite and 38 members of the group committed mass suicide, believing that their souls would be transported to an alien spacecraft that was trailing Comet Hale-Bopp.
Each of the 39 dead wore armband patches that read "Heaven's Gate Away Team"—a reference to the Star Trek universe, where the away team visits another spacecraft or planet.
Clearly, UK intelligence agencies were spooked by the circumstances surrounding the mass suicide, and thus decided to investigate whether the same thing could happen in the UK.
The dossier, titled "New Religious Movements (UFO NRM’s and the Millennium)," was obtained from the Metropolitan Police through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by David Clarke, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. The document begins with cautionary exposition: "The purpose of this note is to draw attention to the risk posed by UFO NRMs in relation to the millennium. It should be remembered that UFO NRMs are new and draw inspiration from sources one would not normally associate with religious devotion, particularly rock music, television drama and feature films."
Star Trek, The X-Files, Dark Skies, and Millennium—popular sci-fi shows in the '90s—are all cited as specific examples of, "draw[ing] together the various strands of religion, UFOs, conspiracies, and mystic events and put them in an entertaining storyline.” The dossier continues: "It is not being suggested that the production companies are intentionally attempting to ferment trouble. However [they] know what psychological buttons to press to excite interest in their products. Obviously this is not sinister in itself. What is of concern is the devotion certain groups and individuals ascribe to the contents of these programmes..."
Another sentence in the dossier shows how far things have come since the late '90s, too: It's easy to "to dismiss those who adhere to these beliefs as being mentally deranged, and therefore of no consequence." Society today seems to be a little more understanding of the nuances of sci-fi and geek culture.
One assertion from the report does somewhat ring true, however: "The problem is that growing numbers are not treating this as entertainment, and finding it impossible to divorce fantasy from reality." Being unable to divorce fantasy from reality isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, and use the phrase "growing numbers" without a citation is weasely.
In any case, the Special Branch needn't have worried: the UK wasn't overrun by UFO religious movements, there hasn't been another religious mass suicide since Heaven's Gate, and the intelligence agency's fear that fantastical fervour would be "imported into the UK" obviously never happened.
With news that The X-Files has been renewed for a "limited series" of six episodes, however, it's nice to think that a paranoid government bigwig is spinning up GCHQ's advanced snooping technology. "God help us if the new X-Files episodes land at the same time as season nine of Doctor Who," the bigwig mutters while chewing nervously on a cigar. "We'll be overrun by nerds!"
