The X-Files (1993–…): Season 5, Episode 18 - The Pine Bluff Variant - full transcript

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Hi, this is John Shiban- I was co-producer
of The X-Files during season Eve,

and I wrote this episode you're watching,
The Pine Bluff Variant.

This was supposed to be Folger Park
in Washington DC. There's the Capitol.

This is actually shot in Vancouver:

We chose this park because of the
cherly blossoms, to match Washington DC,

and the Capitol dome was put in.

Those are CGI shots, that we did two of
there, which worked pretty well.

I always wanted to do
a story that was a thriller;

and the great thing about The X-Files
is that you can do different genres.

We did comedies, we did horror;
we did drama



The paradigm The X-Files
can stretch to do a lot of things,

and we hadn't done a thriller like this
in a long time, or even at this time.

I was inspired by the movie
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,

the Martin Ritt movie from 1965.
It was based on the John Le Carre novel.

I had been thinking about
doing a story like this for a long time-

I had a card up on my bulletin board
that said "Mulder undercover".

And a couple of years went by

before we found the right moment
in the show to do it.

I was inspired by that
and I was inspired by the movie Heat,

which had a lot of good action sequences
and some surveillance sequences-

And we talked about just doing something
very different from the beginning.

In fact, what's great about this to me is
from the start you're questioning Mulden

That was the thing about season Eve,

starting with the season ender from the
previous year; and Redux and Redux II,



the episodes that started,
where Mulder has faked his own suicide,

there's a tension
between Mulder and Scully.

That was the idea, to sort of
mix it up so that we don't know.

Scully doesn't know whether to
trust Mulder; in a way, this season-

She doesn't know what his motives are,
and she's still dealing with her cancen

Of course, his motives were pure,
he was trying to End a cure for her cancen

But that environment
was perfect for this episode.

The way this is shot, too,
was very different for an X-File.

Rob Bowman directed it
and did an amazing job.

Look at all the pieces
that are in this teaser;

which is the piece that starts the show.

Long-lens surveillance-type shots
mixed in with Steadicam shots,

mixed in with traditional close-ups,
makes for a really exciting...

There's Action Mulden

We like to say '3¢\ction Mulder"
when we come up with these stories.

The great thing about Mulder;
and about David Duchovny,

is he can play a lot of roles.

He's great with comedy
he was great with action,

he was great with the cool, detached,
cynical character that Mulder is.

But it was always a pleasure to see it,
to get him running.

In fact, I understand
he quite enjoyed this episode

because he got to play
a different side of Mulden

This is all about paranoia,
and so is The X-Files in a lot of ways.

But what was exciting
about this story for all of us

was that the first half of the story
is Sou/ly's paranoia about Mu/den

And it's set up here in the teaser;
where she sees him do something

that is very un-Mulder-like, which is
apparently conspire with this terrorist.

This shot is not David Duchovny
it's his double.

Unfortunately when you're
on a TV schedule,

you have to pick up shots
at different times,

sometimes the principals
are shooting the next episode.

We had to do that piece without Mulden

It works pretty well, though, in the context.
I don't think you would notice.

The thing about
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

is that it's an intricate mystery:

lies upon lies upon lies.
The audience doesn't know who to believe.

And we were trying to do that
in 43 minutes,

the running time of a television show,

real time, not counting the commercials.

And I think we did a terrizic job
of telling this kind of intricate story.

The Hrst half in a lot of ways, is Scully's,

and it starts with this scene
that you're watching now.

She wants the truth from Mulden

And her character is such that
she would just ask him.

And what was, I think, shocking
to the audience and part of the fun of this,

is that Mulder won't tell hen
He's got a secret.

And in the context of season Eve,
you really believe it might be true-

This episode also calls back to an episode,
I think it was number 13,

called "Patient X
where Mulder spoke at a UFO conference.

And that's actually spoken about
during the course of the show

as the point when,
possibly Mulder was recruited

by these government-hating
domestic terrorists to join them.

That's actually mentioned later
by our bad guys.

One thing also to keep an eye out
in this episode,

and again, being praise of Rob Bowman,
it has a very movie-like feel.

If you look at the wide shots contrasted
with the long-lens tight shots that he does,

a lot of tie-ins,
it's really amazingly directed.

Especially considering that you shoot
these things in about eight days,

where you shoot your average movie
in three, four, Eve, ten times that.

So it was really a pleasure.

The other thing that is special when you
look at other X-Files in that season,

and throughout,
is the score by Mark Snow.

He chose a very sort of thriller-like...

Where I would characterize The X-Files

as usually having a haunting
and moody scaly type of music.

This drives throughout,
which I was very pleased with.

I think it works really well.

This character that is leading the brieHng__.

This character leading the brieHng

is US Attorney Leamas,

and the name Leamas is from
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

That was the character Richard Burton
played. That was my little nod to that.

I and the other writers like to put in little
nods in these things whenever we can.

I'll point out a couple as we go.

The title Pine Bluff Variant
comes a little from truth.

There is a government lab
in Pine Bluff Arkansas,

that, up until the late '60s,

was part of the bioweapons program
in the United States.

And, as mentioned in the episode,

that lab was... The bioweapons program
was shut down by President Nixon,

but the speculation that we 're doing here
is that maybe it wasn't.

And this harks back to something
that Chris Carter has been saying

since the beginning of the shovm
"it's only as scaly as it's real".

We make a lot of effort
and do a lot of research

to try to give the illusion
that this could be happening- That's---

I was pleased with the Internet
response I got to this episode,

a lot of people said things like

"Vampires are scary,
but I don't think I 'll meet a vampire-

"But this could happen.
This could happen to me. "

Watching this episode again
in light of the World Trade Center attack,

sort of underscores...

It's a creepy feeling
because, as a storyteller;

you push the envelope,
make things as scaly as possible.

And when they come true, it makes you
think about your role as a storyteller:

And I still believe drama
is supposed to face

those things in the world that are scaly.

It's how we deal with it.

This movie theater is a real theater
The Dunbar is in Vancouven

The actress playing the ticket taker
is Kate Braidwood,

daughter of Tom Braidwood,
who plays Frohike on our show.

She actually read for the part
and was very good. So we cast hen

Frohike's daughter:

This kind of shot here I love,
and it's very Rob Bowman.

That wide shot in the lobby
that sets a mood.

He called me from the set saying "I just did
a Kubrick shot. You're gonna love it. "

And in a lot of ways it is.

It's unconventional for television,
but it really works

to set this man, Bremmen
who is the bad guy August Bremmen

to make him scaly to the audience,
because placing him in that environment,

putting some distance to him,
has that effect.

These kind of shots are so efHcient,

that go from a close-up to tight
on this little canisten

We 're really careful
about props on The X-Files.

I should say this, Aaron Burr Motor Court,

was my little nod to the history books
for another American traitor

I'm hoping people got that, that the whole
idea of this episode is "ls Mulder a traitor?"

And it's fun
to make those little comments,

whether in character names
or place names, etcetera.

This is a motel that we've used
several times in The X-Files,

if you watch the show carefully.
Vancouver is a great place to shoot.

There are a lot of locations, but sometimes,
when you're trying to match America,

you end up using the same places
again and again.

Because there aren 't many motels

in the same style that we have
in the States, that kind of thing.

The character that Dan Von Bargen plays,
Jacob Haley

who is talking to Mulder right now,
is Mulder's Contact in the---

With the domestic terrorist group
called the New Spartans.

He's done a lot of movie acting.

He has a role in the Fox show
Malcolm In The IVliddle.

He's a terrifc actor:

We're back at the Dunbar Theaten

My inspiration, actually for this moment...

I spent many years working as an usher
at various movie theaters in Los Angeles

and always wanted to do
something in a theaten

We were a little nervous
about this moment,

because one thing
Chris is always talking about

and we always try to do on The X-Files

is keep it from looking like a horror movie.
Again, to keep it real.

The more real it is, the scarier it'll be,
and I think that's true.

But the make-up department,

and the way Rob Bowman shot this,
worked tremendously well.

Die Hard with a Vengeance
is what's playing on the screen.

Because it's a Fox movie, to be honest,
we can get it cheap. So we picked that.

It seemed like it also had
a terrorist theme to it, so it Ht.

Here's another little nod of mine.
We hear the name George Kaplan here

as Mulder's alias, and that is
a nod to North by Northwest.

That's the mysterious character
that Cary Grant is following

and is mistaken for in that movie.

It's another one of my little references.

And here's the point
when Mulder gets fully sucked in.

He is inside.

The terrorists have accepted his excuse

for what happened in the park
and why they were nearly caught.

And now he's going to be
taken into their inner Sanctum.

And this is when the story begins to shift,
although not until later in this act

do we completely go
to Mulder's side of things.

But up until now,
or through this scene, I should say,

we 're still in Scully's head,
and this is still "ls Mulder a traitor?"

"Has he gone that far?"

And this is the moment now.

This is what we call an act-out. When you
do a TV show as opposed to a movie...

Movies have acts as well, but in TV
they're divided by commercial breaks.

And so what we call an act-out
when we're boarding a story outlining,

is that you want to engage the audience
so that they'll wanna know what happened.

This is a perfect example,
men with guns coming out to stop Scully.

What does it mean? Is it the terrorists?

Is it the government?
Is she in trouble? We don't know.

And it's a good place to end an act,
because, hopefully then the audience says

"I've got to tune in to see what happens".
And we do-

Again, we're in Vancouver:
This was a building downtown,

and our art department actually painted
the hallway and this entire ofllce.

Graeme Murray's palate
in this deep green...

Really it's interesting to me
because not only is it spooky

but it gives it a government feel,
gives it an ofHcialdom feel.

He was very good at playing
with the palate of the Show,

but keeping it dark and moody at all times.

This is the scene where the first
deception is sort of unveiled.

Scully learns that Mulder is undercoven

But what's fun, and what we've tried to do,
is make this seem the truth.

And it is the truth
as far as Skinner is concerned.

But as you peel back the onion
you see more layers in this thing,

and, hopefully you're shocked at the end
to learn that this isn't the whole truth.

Of course, on The X-Files
we 're blessed with an amazing cast.

Not only the principals,

but we had some excellent casting people
who always found great guest casts.

And we used some of the same people
several times because of that.

Because when you End a good actor;
you try to keep him-

I've been on The X-Files...
I started at the top of season three.

The show has grown, not only technically...

The technology has gotten betten
digital technology has gotten better

The effects that are in here,
the CGI of the Capitol dome,

the man with the flesh-eating bacteria
in the teaser was also CGI,

that kind of thing has gotten
so much better in a small amount of time.

It's amazing to me.

But what also happens,
because the show was such a success,

as it continues,
you need to End ways to make it grow

in directions that are unexpected
and interesting to keep it alive.

And also to keep your actors interested.

You don't want to play
the same thing every week.

And what l think is great about this episode
is that both Scully and Mulder;

David and Gillian, got to play
different things for their characters.

This moment here, the torture of David...

Not the torture of David personally
the torture of Mulder..

We just wanted to do an intense scene.

This line here,
"Is this the Pepsi Challenge?",

was David Duchovny's improvisation, and
we loved it so much we put it in the show.

David did a lot of that over the years.

He came up with some great
Mulder lines that we would use.

Other things that have changed...

What I was saying was,

as the show grew and has grown,
and the characters have changed,

we try to challenge ourselves
and the actors with a new direction.

Like season Eve, which did have a lot
of distance between Mulder and Scully,

opened up, dealt with
Scully's cancer in new ways.

Chris Carter's feeling and our feeling
was that if you don't mix it up,

even though the audience worries
that the show's gonna change,

I think the show stagnates,

and wouldn't have continued on
to be as successful as it was.

I always loved that head butt.
And David, l believe, loved doing that, too-

It's something
you've never seen on The X-Files,

but it's very cool for Mulder to have
that kind of guts. You want a hero like that.

I thought this scene in particular was
marvelously edited by Lynne I/I/i//ingham-

Just to keep the tension going
and to make your stomach hurt

for grabbing the man's Hnger
and breaking it.

We had quite a debate
among the writing staff

over which Hnger was the scariest,
whether it was the thumb or the forehngen

We finally... I went for the pinkie

because it was so easy to break
and it seems so fragile.

But that's the kind of stuff
you talk about for hours and hours

when you are on writing staff
on The X-Files.

"What's the scariest this?
What's the most disgusting that?"

So it's a fun job in that way.

It really is, if you have
a slightly twisted point of view.

When we broke the Hnger in act two,

we didn't anticipate that it would become
so important, but as we started shooting...

One thing about shooting a TV show
is you need a new script every eight days,

because you have to HI/
20 to 22, 24 episodes of television.

So the crew keeps shooting
and the staff keeps writing.

And we were still working on the script.
I was still rewriting as we were shooting,

and there was a plot point
that we couldn't quite Hgure out.

And I remember talking to
Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz,

how would Scully
recognize Mulder in act four

on the videotape
that is taken of the bank robberies?

And suddenly it just occurred to us,
"Wait a minute. That Hngen

"He broke his Hngen He 'd have a cast. "
Those serendipitous things happen a lot,

especially in TM
because you don't have the time always

to write as carefully as you'd like,

and you have to keep
making it better as you go.

I love the way that this scene,

Scully and Skinner's Search
of the movie theater; was handled-

The danger in television, and in any
dramatic art, movie-making, etcetera,

you don't want it so graphic
your audience is turned off

but you want it to be graphic enough
that it's scaly and impactful_

And one of the things Rob did well here
was covered the bodies in plastic,

then used the famous Xenons-
There's a specif c Xenon flashlight

that, sort of The X-Files made famous,
and you see it a lot in the show.

With that piercing light
that cuts through the smoke.

I thought that the way that was handled
really played, not only the scare,

but also allowed us
to show it on television.

Standards and Practices prevent you
from showing things that are too graphic,

although we often argue
with them about what that means.

Now, here, toward the end of act two,

again, we're hoping to
turn the tables on the audience.

And instead of just ending on
this nice Mulder and Scully scene

where they actually come together

and Mulder; in a way,
admits what's going on

because Scully has been informed...

But instead of letting the act end there
and the audience think

"OK things are going to be better

"because Mulder and Scully
at least are talking now",

you take it away from the audience by
showing that August Bremmer is listening.

And we know our characters are in danger;
even though they're in concert now.

The X on the wall is a reference to earlier
in the year when Mulder removed the X

they used to put up whenever he would
want to speak to Deep Throat orX

So that tape residue, which, in retrospect,
probably looks a little too obvious,

was our little nod to that moment.

Here you see that
the bad guy knows what's going on.

The cigar was the actor's idea,
and I think it worked,

although it never occurred to me.

But he said "Can I smoke a cigar
in this scene?" And Rob said "Sure

You just saw a legend go by there
that said "FBI Headquarters, 3.14am."

There's another big thing we debate,

what's the right time
to put on these legends.

Sometimes they mean something.
Sometimes they're birthdays.

Other times it just sounds right. And 3.14,
for some reason, sounds better than 3.15.

It's really a taste thing, but it's
another writer thing we debate about.

This scene, part of the purpose of it
is not only to drive the plot forward,

to learn what the terrorists intend to do,
which is rob a bank,

but it also plants a seed in Skinner:
And you can see it right there-

He begins to question Leamas' plan here.

He's protective of his agents- That's
one of the great things about Skinner:

Even if he disagrees with Mulder and
Scully he's very protective of them.

Even though it's not
his jurisdiction to alter this,

he lets them know
that he's wary about it.

And this is not only...

It's a writer's way of planting a seed
that will pay off at the end of the show.

And this nice ending shot
of Mitch Pileggi as Skinner

lets you know
what's going on in his head.

This is our patented
Scully science-lab scene,

which we do, actually
less and less over the years,

again, to mix up the show
and do things differently.

But she is a scientist
and this is her specialty.

It's why she's on
The X-Files in a lot of ways.

And Gillian is very very good at playing
these scientizic mumbo-jumbo talk scenes.

Not only just for clarity but emotionally
Scully is really concerned with this.

Cos to hen this is the key.

This is how you're gonna solve an X-File,
is by the science.

A couple of shots where there are things
on the monitors,

we did what we call a burn-in.

Because when the scene was shot
by Rob Bowman,

they didn't have the playback,

which is what goes on the monitors.
They didn't have the materials,

the cells dividing, etcetera. So they
project a little blue onto the screen,

and then later; in postproduction,

we burn in or rotoscope in
the image on that screen.

That's one great change, as
digital technology gets better and better;

it makes it easier and easier
to solve problems and Hx errors,

and do things on a television show
that you never could do before.

So you feel like you're watching a movie.

And it's a challenge and a lot of fun
for all of us to do a new movie every week.

Jacob Haley Dan Von Bargen's bad guy
says a very important line here

which is another subtle clue that
something else is going on in this show,

where he talks about lies within lies. And
that was kind of the heart of the episode.

"What's the truth?
Who do you believe? Who knows what?"

And, in a way everybody
in this episode is lying.

Mulder's lying, because he's not
a sympathizer with these terrorists.

And this character; Jacob Haley, is lying

because he suspects his leaden
August Bremmen

to be actually a government agent.

And August Bremmer is lying
in a way that unfolds at the very end.

So it's__.

We were afraid the audience might have
trouble following the lies within the lies,

but I think because we plotted it
so carefully and it was shot so well,

I do believe that you're taking on
the experience with our characters

rather than running behind them
and not understanding what's going on.

Here, too- Skinner; also-

His suspicions mount, because he keeps
some information from Leamas.

He has his lies as well.

It's a very paranoid...

It's a very paranoid story and it's taking
the paranoia that is inherent in The X-Files,

the "trust no one"

that has been sort of behind the show
for years.

What I like about this episode
is that it makes it just about that.

You can't trust anyone in this episode.

Even though it's a stand-alone episode,
"stand-alones" versus "mythology"___

Mythology episodes
deal with Samantha's abduction

and the conspiracy in the government,
Cigarette-Smoking Man, Deep Throat,

and then the stand-alones were the
"monsters of the week", as we call them.

And even though this is a stand-alone,

it still plays on the basic themes
of the show.

This location was fabulous.

It's an abandoned greenhouse outside
Vancouver; near Vancouver Airport.

And Rob Bowman, when we were scouting,

the minute he saw those sheets of plastic

that are hanging from what I guess
were arbors for vines, etcetera...

He saw those and it became a theme

that he had the art directors
run through the show,

"Keep the hanging plastic."

Not to sound like a Hlm student,
but it's hard to see through, it obscures.

And that's kind of what's behind this show.
And you'll see a lot of this hanging plastic.

It's used at the end with the hazmat teams,
it's used right there behind Mulden

It's used during the death-march scene,
which is coming up.

So it's a way to...
And it was inspired by the location.

It didn't occur to anybody until we saw
the location and how cool that looked.

The terrorists use these masks, and the
Dracula mask actually was David's request.

In the script, I wrote a Wolf Man mask.

He called us and said that Dracula
was one of his favorite characters

when he was growing up,
and could it be a Dracula mask?

Those masks were terriHc_

You'll see more of them shortly
as the bank is robbed.

But it was a notion that was kind of
inspired from a couple of sources.

A Clockwork Orange
is probably the earliest one.

Or The Killing, even before that,

had masks,
another Kubrick Hlm.

And when we saw these, we were a little
wary, we didn't want it to look comical.

But these masks were just great. We went
for the Christopher Lee Dracula version.

I love the Skeletor mask
that this fellow has,

who was in the script as "Skin-Head Man",
the man who breaks Mulder's Hngen

This bank was a real depository
in Vancouver

that once held, I believe,
several billion dollars.

It was closed when we took oven

but all the vaults were real,
the actual vaults in the place.

This is an amazing shot
that Rob Bowman designed and executed.

One shot takes you from that money

all the way to bringing the terrorists
out of the van.

And not only is it artistically beautiful
and Hlled with tension,

but it also makes it producible
on a television budget and schedule.

Television is very tight,
and to get this kind of scale

he had to design some things that were
done as what we call "oners”, one shot.

And that's what that was.
And it works so well

that you don't miss that you're not
getting close-ups or things to cut to.

This bank-robbery scene, in particular;

for me at least, as a writer;
was inspired by Heat

and a number of other bank-robbe/y Elms.

You always try to do things your own way.
You always try to bring new wrinkles to it.

And obviously Mulder being
in the middle of this and having to...

What was interesting about this for us
was "How far will Mulder go?"

Will he let innocent people get killed?

Will he kill an innocent person
to keep his cover?

It's a great quandary.

What comes up here is
a different type of act-out.

It's something we call a play-through.

When this poor teller gets shot

for trying to push
the little red button there...

Actually the button, if you'll notice,
is flashing,

they added the flashing afterwards

because you couldn't see it
in the original shot.

So that was a way to help tell the story
again, through digital technology.

But here Mulder is faced with a dilemma.
And what we often try to do,

but usually change our minds
at the last minute, is a play-through,

which is the same piece of action, Mulder
with a gun, aiming the gun at this man.

When we come back after the commercial
break, which you'll see in a second,

we're back where we left off

Those don't always work, to be honest,
because it's sort of an old-style television,

Mission: Impossible kind of thing to do-

Part of the problem, for me at least, is that
when you do those tension can go out.

It doesn't feel real.
You've been away from the show.

But I felt here it worked, and we all agreed
that it felt like the best thing to do

because the tension was so high
and you're moving so fast when you return

that I don't think the audience
feels they've missed anything.

This, of course, is Mulder's moment
of truth, will he shoot this man?

And again, in a story
about lies and deception,

somebody saves Mulder
from that decision.

Part of the reason why we chose money
as the delivery system for this biotoxin

as the centerpiece of this terrorist act
is, again, what Chris always said to us,

which is "It's only as scary as it's real. "
He said while we were boarding the story

"I want people to be afraid
to touch their money

"thinking 'There could be biotoxin on this.

There's actually research that shows that
most of the large bills in circulation now

probably have
microscopic bits of cocaine on them

just because they've passed
through some drug dealer's hands.

And we wanted to play on that idea
that it wouldn't take much.

Again, it's scaly in that America
has been attacked by terrorists.

In retrospect, it's creepy
that we talked about things like that,

but, again, drama is here
to deal with our fears

and to help the audience
deal with their fears.

Here August Bremmer
is burning the money

that they apparently robbed the place for

And this is where Mulder Hgures out

that the whole idea of the heist
was a deception.

It seemed we were working toward that,

that's what the FBI
and government thought,

but, no, it's to put the biotoxin
on the money

to facilitate a larger terrorist act.

Then another deception is revealed here.

This was a very hard scene
to write, actually

because of the twists and turns in it.

Jacob Haley saves Mulder
from being executed by Bremmen

then he levels his accusations at Bremmen

Then Bremmer counters
with the tape of Mulder

that he took from Mulder's apartment.

So it's a back-and-forth
that can be convoluted.

And, luckily, when you're a writer
on the show, it's quite collaborative-

We always give notes, help each other
to make each other's scripts better

And I can recall doing
a lot of drafts of this one

and getting a lot of notes
trying to make this scene

and this moment as strong as possible.

And this is the moment when...

Now Haley realizes
that Mulder has set him up,

and both of them are going to die.

This is the moment I spoke about earlier;

"How does Scully recognize Mulder? He's
in a Dracula mask, she can't know that. "

And that's where the inspiration
of the broken Hnger came to us,

at just about the last minute
before they were gonna shoot.

This is another example
of the efhcient shooting of Rob Bowman.

That Hrst shot that shows you
all the screens

and brings Scully in, it's just wonderful.

And now the deceptions
are beginning to unravel and be exposed.

And what we want the audience to think
is "Now Mulder's in dangen "

And we didn't have her End the Hnger yet.
We save it.

So you leave the audience hanging,
"She doesn't know. Will she know?"

This scene and the scene that follows,

what we call "Mulder's death march
what Rob Bowman kept saying,

we talked a lot about
and were all, in a weird way excited to do.

Because it's very hard
in a returning TV series

to put the audience in the frame of mind

that they think a main character
might get killed.

Cos they know this is David Duchovny
he's gonna be back next week.

So the trick is to make it
as tension-Hlled as possible

to solve that problem.

Cos the audience knows
you're gonna save Mulder

because the show is coming back.

This long dolly shot, I think,
was the longest section of dolly track

ever set up by The X-Files
before or since.

All the coverage was done from this dolly
but it's beautiful that it tracks through

these haunting layers of plastic.

This was done with the Steadicam,
which is different than the dolly.

We try to use all of the tools of Hlmmaking
that we can on The X-Files.

The trick here,
and I think it worked pretty well,

is to make the tension in the audience
be "How will they solve this?

"How will they get Mulder out of this?"
Things look worse and worse and worse.

And hopefully you have no suspicion
by this point in the story

that Bremmer has a secret too.

And that's the heart of the show,
and that's kind of what was at the heart,

and what excited me about
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,

my original inspiration for this episode.

In that, it was the spy
that Richard Burton is trying to catch

actually turns out to be working for us.
He's a bad man, but he's working for us.

It's a moral dilemma that
every country has to face.

I mean, do you work with these types
of people who swim in these dark waters

in order to try to stop others?

And it's kind of what Mulder
has to face here.

So August Bremmer has saved Mulden

The very man that he started the show
to thwart, the leaden

is actually Mulder realizes,
working undercover for the government.

But, again, there's still layers here
that have yet to be uncovered.

I like that shot
that leads Mulder away and I wish...

One of the restraints is
you're limited to about 43 minutes,

and in movies you can be more flexible-
That shot went on for much longer:

I wish we could have kept it,
but the networks won't let you do that.

Again, the plastic that I talked about,
just as a design element.

Here's something coming up

that is always a joy to write
and to see for Scully's characten

Cos Scully's always been reasonable,
scientiHc, a very very smart characten

And then every once in a while in the show
we've allowed her to get angry.

And when she does. and Gillian
is so good at it, it's shocking for us,

as audience members who love Scully, to
see her; as we say, "Scully takin' names".

She gets in there and she goes off
on the government lawyer here.

And it's always nice to see that in hen

You don't want to see that every week,

it's not Scully's personality
she's the rational one,

but it's great when it happens.

Here we leave,
and what we like to do often on The X-Files

is not answer all the questions
for the audience and not...

There she is takin' names.

We don't always wanna tie the loose ends.

And we left the audience with a moral
dilemma here, and a question for Mulder;

"What are you trying to do, Mn Mulder;
with your quest for the truth?

'3¢\nd if your quest for the truth means
exposing this government operation

"that is trying, ostensibly
in theory to stop terrorists,

"are you gonna actually help terrorists?"

It's a very interesting quandary for Mulden
it's something for the audience to considen

And, to me, the best of
The X-Files is that you can do that

in the context of a fantasy science Hction,
whatever you want to call it, show.

You can actually deal
with real-world dilemmas.

How do you Hght these people, and do you
Hght them using their own weapons?

And our little denouement here
is the demise of Jacob Haley.

As you recall, August Bremmer
gave him car keys that were...

We hope the audience gets, I think they do,
the car keys were tainted with the biotoxin_

We have a wonderful... We've always had
great make-up departments on the show.

And once again you get a hint of what
you know is there, the eaten-away flesh.

And the last lie is supposedly exposed.

But hopefully the audience is left with

some questions to ponder

I was very very happy with this episode.

Not only in the directing
and the acting and the art direction,

but also in where it Ht
in the grand scheme of The X-Files.

I felt it was a nice twist, a nice
change of pace for Mulder and Scully.

And a nice place to step off for next week,
when, hopefully the audience came back.

Thank you for watching.

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