Conception and writing directed and wrote an episode of
The X-Files.|175px|thumb|right|alt=A redheaded woman, who is smiling at the camera. Sometime during the
sixth season of
The X-Files, Anderson approached series creator
Chris Carter and asked if she could write a script for an episode that explored her own interest in "Buddhism and the power of spiritual healing"; ultimately, she wanted to write a script in which Scully pursued a "deeply personal X-File, one in which [she] is taken down a spiritual path when logic fails her". She wrote the basic outline of what became "all things" in one sitting, which Carter approved due to the "personal and quiet" nature of the story. Carter and executive producer
Frank Spotnitz thus began to work with Anderson to finish the episode, although Carter and Spotnitz later acknowledged that the majority of the script "was all Gillian". In the commentary for the episode, Anderson elaborated on Scully and Waterston's original backstory: after Scully and Waterston came close to having an affair, Scully left to study at
Quantico to become an FBI agent. After she left, Waterston become depressed, and his family began to suspect the affair. The emotional turmoil was too much for Waterston's wife, who killed herself, which made Waterston's daughter, Maggie, resent Scully, as shown in the finished episode. Anderson believed that the removal of this backstory made it hard for the audience to understand Maggie's disgust with Scully. When Anderson first wrote the episode, she did not intend to imply that Mulder and Scully had had sex; Spotnitz and the production crew, however, felt it was natural to suggest that their relationship had evolved into a romantic one. The idea of
heart chakra crop circles was included because Anderson wanted "whatever Mulder was involved in that took him away from me, away from Washington, to somehow tie into what it was that I was going through—the journey that I was going through". As such, Anderson dedicated much of her time researching both crop circles and heart chakras, but she later gave additional credit to Spotnitz, who aided her in the research process.
Directing and music Around the same time that she approached Carter about writing an episode, Anderson was being solicited by television networks, who were interested in having her direct shows. She, however, had never directed before and decided that she would first helm an episode of
The X-Files before working on other series. Consequently, when Anderson pitched her initial script idea, she also expressed her desire to direct the episode. Carter accepted her story, but did not appoint her as director until all the revisions and rewrites had been completed. 's 1999 album
Play.|150px|thumb|right|alt=A bald man with glasses is looking intently at a camera. The meditation scene required clips from previous episodes to appear in flashback. Initially,
Paul Rabwin and the special effects crew arranged the necessary scenes and placed them in animated bubbles. However, the crew was unhappy with the bubbles and felt that they were too "hokey", so they adopted a more standard
slit-scan effect. Anderson wanted to include "The Sky Is Broken", a song from
Moby's 1999 album
Play in the episode, as she felt that the song's lyrics "fit with [the] idea that was unfolding for the script". Anderson crafted the first shot after the opening credits, which involved Scully getting ready while water dripped from a sink, to create a "continuation of sound, rhythmic sound", because it was important to the show's musical aspect. Anderson and series composer
Mark Snow worked together in post-production; after filming, she sent Snow several CDs of music and asked him for compositions that were similar in style and feel. A certain melody that the two worked on later became "Scully's Theme", which was not broadcast until the
eighth season episode "
Within". "all things" also featured the use of the
gong, an instrument that Anderson called "very Tibetan" and "appropriate for this episode". ==Themes==