Conception , along with several other episodes. California native
Chris Carter was given the opportunity to produce new shows for the Fox network in the early 1990s. Carter was tired of the comedies he had been working on for
Walt Disney Pictures. A report that said 3.7 million Americans believed they may have been abducted by aliens, the
Watergate scandal, and the 1970s horror series
Kolchak: The Night Stalker all contributed to trigger the idea for
The X-Files. He wrote the
pilot episode in 1992. Carter's initial pitch for
The X-Files was rejected by Fox executives. He fleshed out the concept and returned a few weeks later, whereupon they commissioned the pilot. Carter worked with
NYPD Blue producer
Daniel Sackheim to further develop the pilot, drawing stylistic inspiration from the 1988 documentary
The Thin Blue Line and the British television series
Prime Suspect. Inspiration also came from Carter's memories of
The Twilight Zone as well as from
The Silence of the Lambs, which provided the impetus for framing the series around agents from the
FBI, to provide the characters with a more plausible reason for being involved in each case than Carter believed was present in
Kolchak. Carter was determined to keep the relationship between the two leads strictly platonic, basing their interactions on the characters of
Emma Peel and
John Steed in
The Avengers series. The early 1990s series
Twin Peaks was a major influence on the show's dark atmosphere and its often surreal blend of drama and irony. Duchovny had appeared as a
transgender DEA agent in
Twin Peaks and the Mulder character was seen as a parallel to that show's FBI Agent
Dale Cooper. The producers and writers cited ''
All the President's Men, Three Days of the Condor, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rashomon, The Thing, The Boys from Brazil, The Silence of the Lambs
and JFK'' as other influences. Episodes written by
Darin Morgan often referred to or referenced other films.
Casting Duchovny had worked in Los Angeles for three years prior to
The X-Files, focusing on feature films. In 1993 his manager Melanie Green gave him the script for the
pilot episode of
The X-Files. Green and Duchovny were both convinced it was a good script so he auditioned for the lead. Duchovny's audition was "terrific", though he talked rather slowly. While the casting director of the show was very positive toward him, Carter thought that he was not particularly intelligent. He asked Duchovny if he could "please" imagine himself as an FBI agent in "future" episodes. Duchovny, however, turned out to be one of the best-read people that Carter knew. Anderson auditioned for the part of Scully in 1993. "I couldn't put the script down", she recalled. Carter insisted that Anderson had the kind of "no-nonsense integrity that the role required." For portraying Scully, Anderson won numerous major awards: the
Screen Actors Guild Award in 1996 and 1997, an
Emmy Award in 1997, and a
Golden Globe Award 1997. Before the seventh season aired, Duchovny filed a lawsuit against
20th Century Fox, claiming that Fox had undersold the rights to its own affiliates, thereby costing him huge sums of money. Eventually, the lawsuit was settled and Duchovny was awarded a settlement of about $20 million whereas the lawsuit put strain on Duchovny's professional relationships. Neither Carter nor Duchovny was contracted to work on the series beyond the seventh season. That said, Fox entered into negotiations near the end of that season to bring the two on board for an eighth season. After settling his contract dispute, Duchovny quit full-time participation in the show after the seventh season. This contributed to uncertainties over the likelihood of an eighth season. Carter and most fans felt the show was at its natural endpoint with Duchovny's departure, but it was decided that Mulder would be abducted at the end of the seventh season and would return in 12 episodes the following year. The producers then announced that a new character, John Doggett, would fill Mulder's role. More than 100 actors auditioned for the role of Doggett, but only about ten were seriously considered.
Lou Diamond Phillips,
Hart Bochner, and
Bruce Campbell were among the ten. The producers chose Robert Patrick. The eighth-season episode "
This is Not Happening" marked the first appearance of Monica Reyes, played by Gish, who became a main character in season nine. Her character was developed and introduced due to Anderson's possible departure at the end of the eighth season. Although Anderson ultimately stayed through the ninth season, Gish became a series regular.
Minor recurring characters Glen Morgan and
James Wong's early influence on
The X-Files mythology led to their introduction of popular
secondary characters who continued for years in episodes written by others: Scully's father, William (
Don S. Davis); her mother, Margaret (
Sheila Larken); and her sister, Melissa (
Melinda McGraw). The conspiracy-inspired trio
The Lone Gunmen were also secondary characters. The trio was introduced in the first-season episode "
E.B.E." as a way to make Mulder appear more credible. They were originally meant to appear in only that episode, but due to their popularity, they returned in the second-season episode "
Blood" and became recurring characters. Cigarette Smoking Man, portrayed by William B. Davis, was initially cast as an extra in the pilot episode but his character grew into the main antagonist.
Filming until the revival in 2016. During the early stages of production, Carter founded
Ten Thirteen Productions and began to plan for filming the pilot in Los Angeles. However, unable to find suitable locations for many scenes, he decided to "go where the good forests are" and moved production to
Vancouver. It was soon realized by the production crew that since so much of the first season would require filming on location, rather than on sound stages, a second location manager would be needed. The show remained in Vancouver for the first five seasons; production then shifted to Los Angeles beginning with the sixth season. Duchovny was unhappy over his geographical separation from his wife,
Téa Leoni, although his discontent was popularly attributed to frustration with Vancouver's persistent rain. Anderson also wanted to return to the United States, and Carter relented following the fifth season. The season ended in May 1998 with "The End", the final episode shot in Vancouver and the final episode with the involvement of many of the original crew members, including director and producer
R.W. Goodwin and his wife Sheila Larken, who played
Margaret Scully and would later return briefly. With the move to Los Angeles, many changes behind the scenes occurred, as much of the original
The X-Files crew was gone. New production designer Corey Kaplan, editor
Lynne Willingham, writer David Amann and director and producer Michael Watkins joined and stayed for several years. Bill Roe became the show's new director of photography and episodes generally had a drier, brighter look due to California's sunshine and climate, as compared with Vancouver's rain, fog and temperate forests. Early in the sixth season, the producers took advantage of the new location, setting the show in new parts of the country. For example, Vince Gilligan's
"Drive", about a man subject to an unexplained illness, was a frenetic action episode, unusual for
The X-Files largely because it was set in
Nevada's stark desert roads. Although the sixth through ninth seasons were filmed in Los Angeles, the series' second movie,
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008), was filmed in Vancouver, According to Spotnitz, the film's script was written for the city and surrounding areas.
Music The music was composed by
Mark Snow, who got involved with
The X-Files through his friendship with
executive producer Goodwin. Initially Carter had no candidates. A little over a dozen people were considered, but Goodwin continued to press for Snow, who auditioned around three times with no sign from the production staff as to whether they wanted him. One day, however, Snow's agent called him, talking about the "pilot episode" and hinting that he had got the job. The theme, "
The X-Files", used more instrumental sections than most dramas. The second episode, "
Deep Throat", marked Snow's debut as solo composer for an entire episode. The production crew was determined to limit the music in the early episodes. Likewise, the theme song itself first appeared in "Deep Throat". Snow was tasked with composing the score for both
The X-Files films. The films marked the first appearance of real orchestral instruments; previous music had been crafted by Snow using digitally sampled instrument sounds. Snow's soundtrack for the first film,
The X-Files: Original Motion Picture Score, was released in 1998. For the second film, Snow recorded with the
Hollywood Studio Symphony in May 2008 at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox in
Century City.
UNKLE recorded a new version of the theme music for the end credits. Some of the unusual sounds were created by a variation of silly putty and dimes tucked into piano strings. Snow commented that the fast percussion featured in some tracks was inspired by the track "Prospectors Quartet" from the
There Will Be Blood soundtrack. The soundtrack score,
The X-Files: I Want to Believe, was released in 2008.
Opening sequence The opening sequence was made in 1993 for the first season, and remained unchanged until Duchovny left the show. The premiere episode of season eight, "Within", revealed the first major change to the opening credits. Along with Patrick, the sequence used new images and updated photos for Duchovny and Anderson, although Duchovny only appears in the opening credits when he appears in an episode. Carter and the production staff saw Duchovny's departure as a chance to change things. The replacement shows various pictures of Scully's pregnancy. According to executive producer
Frank Spotnitz, the sequence also features an "abstract" way of showing Mulder's absence in the eighth season: he falls into an eye. Season nine featured an entirely new sequence. Since Anderson wanted to move on, the sequence featured Reyes and Skinner. Duchovny's return to the show for the ninth-season finale, "
The Truth" marked the largest number of cast members to be featured in the opening credits, with five. The sequence ends with the tagline "The Truth Is Out There", which is used for the majority of the episodes. For certain episodes, the tagline was changed to be more thematically-relevant; a list of the episodes that received alternate taglines is as follows: == Broadcast and release ==