Remember "The Lone Gunmen"?

The success of "The X-Files" spawned the spin-off show called "The Lone Gunmen," the trio of nerdy conspiracy buffs who, during the course of the X-Files, helped Mulder and Scully from time to time. Their own show, according to my meager memories and the help of Wikipedia were less of a serious sci-fi entry, and more of a slapstick comedy about more realistic government conspiracies. The characters were killed off in the second to last season of "The X-Files."

Who cares about a stupid show starring nerds made for, basically, nerds?

The pilot episode has an interesting storyline. It aired in March 2001, and had one character on board a plane leaving New York heading to Boston. The plane gets hijacked, turned around, and aimed for the World Trade Center. The hijackers in the episode are not foreign radicals, but government controlled autopilots, and the plot has the government planning and (almost) pulling off the attack to get a boost in funding after blaming foreign radicals.

Some 9/11 conspiracy buffs point to the show, combined with it being on Fox, as proof that the media knew about the government's plans all along, and were even foretelling it. That seems a little ridiculous. Those conspiracy buffs could probably sound more persuasive and less lunatic if they stated that this was more likely art imitating life...

In any case, for shows built on mythology, shadowy conspiratorial governments, alien colonizers, and old-fashioned monsters, the 9/11 attacks were the deathblow, since here were actual real world problems, real world death, no flying saucers or yetis necessary to make the skin crawl.