Talk:The X-Files/history/Season 1

Season 1 (1993–1994)

In the first two seasons, executive producer Carter and co-executive producers Morgan and Wong, along with other writers, helped to define the show's fledgling story arc. The "mythology", as the producers called it, was initially established as a government plot to cover up anything pertaining to the existence of extraterrestrial life, and Mulder's attempts to discover the fate of his sister, Samantha. He believed that she had been abducted by aliens years prior, when Mulder was a child, which profoundly affected him and ignited his obsession with the paranormal. Carter himself wrote the show's second episode, "Deep Throat", which was directed by Daniel Sackheim. It introduced a character named Deep Throat (played by Jerry Hardin), the first of several secret government informants who would at times help or hinder Mulder and Scully's investigations.

"Conduit", the first of many episodes to deal with Mulder's repressed memories of his sister's abduction, was written by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. Gordon became another key writer/producer in the show's first four years, also writing "Fallen Angel" and other episodes in the first season with Gansa. That early mythology episode centered on Mulder's futile efforts to discover a crashed UFO which was being covered up by the government. It also introduced UFO enthusiast and abduction victim Max Fenig, one of many idiosyncratic outsiders portrayed on the show, which helped attract an "intensely loyal" cult following (see below). Fenig, played by Scott Bellis, returned for two episodes in the fourth season. Ironically, "Fallen Angel" also received the lowest Nielsen ratings of the first season. Another early and influential mythology effort, the Wong and Morgan-written episode "E.B.E." (for "extraterrestrial biological entity"), which saw Mulder and Scully tracking another crashed UFO, did almost as poorly; it was the fourth least-watched episode of the series overall until its final season.

Carter and his writers were mostly left to their own devices because FOX was concentrating on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and other shows that they considered more commercially promising at the time. The producers still ran into early opposition on some key episodes, among them "Beyond the Sea", "E.B.E.", and the popular "Ice". According to Carter, "the issue of closure has been an ongoing dialogue with the network, because we've always resisted wrapping up each episode with a neat little bow at the end. You can't do that... because pretending to explain the unexplainable is ridiculous and our audience is too smart for that." Eventually FOX backed down and it was decided "X-File stories would not have forced plot resolutions, but would conclude with some emotional resolution."

Doug Hutchinson as Eugene Victor Tooms in "Squeeze", the first of many "Monster-of-the-week" episodes.

Morgan and Wong's early influence on X-Files mythology led to their introduction of popular secondary characters who would continue for years in episodes written by others, such as the Scully family—Dana's father William (Don S. Davis), mother Margaret (Sheila Larken) and sister Melissa (Melinda McGraw)—as well as conspiracy-buff trio The Lone Gunmen, named after the Warren Commission's disputed theory on the John F. Kennedy assassination.

However, the duo's first episode, "Squeeze", was not a part of the mythology. The episode featured Eugene Victor Tooms, an elastic, liver-eating mutant serial-killer who emerged from hibernation every 30 years. After the first two episodes, the writing staff wanted to broaden the concept of The X-Files; executives had initially rejected Carter's idea for a series centered only around alien conspiracies, having already had one at the time, Sightings. "Squeeze" became a template for the paranormal "Monster-of-the-Week" episodes that would be a mainstay of the series. Wong and Morgan followed it up later in the season with a direct sequel called "Tooms." "Tooms" was also the episode where the writers gave the Cigarette Smoking Man his first lines, and introduced FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), Mulder and Scully's boss. Whilst a relatively in-the-background type character in the 1st season, the character's role and importance in the storyline would evolve over the next seasons, until Skinner became an integral part of the X-Files plot.

Early production issues

Initially, The X-Files was fighting for its life in the ratings, and as a result, there was no long-term plan in the beginning to guide its writers. The only guideline provided by Carter was that the show should take place "within the realm of extreme possibility". The show's first season thus featured numerous standalone stories involving monsters, and also diverse alien/government cover-ups, with no apparent connection to each other — such as the Arctic space worms in "Ice", and the conspiracy of genetically engineered twins in "Eve." Carter himself wrote "Space", a low-budget affair about the manifestation of an alien "ghost" in the NASA space shuttle program, which was subject to cost overruns and became the most expensive of the first season; he later called it one of the worst hours ever produced for the show.

According to Glen Morgan, the writers were inspired by a glowing New Yorker review noting the show's exploration of "suburban paranoia", and planned for more thematic unity in the second season: "the whole year was to be about the little green men that you and I create for ourselves... because there’re not nuclear missiles pointed at our heads, you can’t consolidate your fears there anymore." However, the plan fell through quickly due to the pressure of the network TV schedule.

But by the end of the first season, Carter and his staff had come up with many of the general concepts of the mythology that would last throughout all nine seasons, whose outlines first appeared in Carter's Edgar Award-nominated season finale "The Erlenmeyer Flask", written in early 1994 before he knew whether the show was going to be canceled. In the episode, The X-Files are closed down and Mulder and Scully are to be reassigned. The finale was the first episode directed by R. W. Goodwin, a senior producer (and husband of Sheila Larken, who played Scully's mother on the show) who went on to direct every season opening and closing episode for the next four years.

The X-Files was picked up for a second season despite finishing 102^nd out of the 118 shows in the U.S. Nielsen ratings. It also received its first Emmy nod, for best title sequence. The electronic theme song in the sequence, featuring eerie whistling sounds, was by Mark Snow and became very well known (club versions of the theme song have reached the pop charts in France, the UK and Australia, where a remix by Triple X became a number 2 hit in 1996). Snow's music scores for each episode, often dark, synthesized and ambient, were another distinctive aspect of The X-Files from its earliest years, as the show used more background music than typical of an hour long drama. A soundtrack CD, The Truth and the Light, came out in 1996.

The show's mix of genres, the stressful schedule (22 or more episodes per season) and the shooting in different settings each week, required a large and experienced technical crew. At least 300 in Vancouver were under the supervision of producer Goodwin, who called The X-Files "the most difficult show on television" and "the equivalent of making a feature film every eight days". The first year, budgets were at times as low as $1 million. By 1998, its final year in Vancouver, the show cost $2.5 million per episode, most of which was not the stars' salaries. The longtime crew included producers Joseph Patrick Finn and Paul Rabwin, in charge of post-production; production designer and art director Graeme Murray, who won two Emmys for his work on the show; film editor Heather MacDougall, who worked on 51 episodes and won an Emmy for "Kill Switch"; Emmy-nominated editor Stephen Mark, who also edited the 1998 film; sound designer Thierry Couturier, who won two Emmys, and whose son says "I made this" over the Ten Thirteen company logo; Mat Beck, visual effects supervisor (many were created on computer, unusual in early 1990s TV) for 91 episodes and also wrote the episode "Wetwired"; Emmy-nominated makeup artist Toby Lindala; and props master Kenneth Hawryliw, who later co-wrote the episode "Trevor".