X-Cursions: A farewell to fans and a warning to Chris Carter.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Stories are about people. "War and Peace," the landmark yarn about the Napoleonic Wars, was, at its heart, about people. Tolstoy's epic used a grand sweep of historic events played out nearly two centuries ago to pry open human hearts and expose all of their nobility, pettiness, bravery, cowardice, evil and good.

And so it is with "The X-Files." Sure, the monsters and the mayhem, the conspiracies and the extraterrestrials have provided an amazing backdrop of mysteries and revelations, truths and lies for all of us to poke through.

But most importantly, for its first eight years, it was the story that told us of the journey of two heroes, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. At its best and at its worst, "X-Files" was primarily the tale of two FBI agents who began their journey as antagonists, traveled most of those dark paths as fast friends, and ended it as the other partner's one in 5 billion.

We stuck with it because we wanted to see how the Mulder-Scully story would end. With "Existence," we were treated to a sweet conclusion to their adventure.

The last episode informed us that the Mulder-Scully professional partnership is being supplanted by a very personal relationship whose center is their child. As the curtain falls on their odyssey, we take leave with the sense that all will be well with Spooky and Starbuck.

Unfortunately, we can't quite extend the same feeling of comfort to the entire series. While series creator Chris Carter and his accomplices did a fine job of spooling out Season Eight and leading the audience to the culmination in the two-part finale, they also opened a huge void that will make it difficult to keep people interested in "X-Files: The Next Generation."

Carter bungled things when he fiddled during Seasons Six and Seven while his franchise was burning. Carter was given the gift of two seasons to wrap things up. Instead, he dawdled, creating the necessity for a drawn-out eighth season that included an uneasy hand-off of the X-Files to agents Doggett and Reyes.