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Cinescape

Aug-??-2000
Cinescape

[typed by Athena Xphile]

“For seven years Chris had an end to the story in mind and he just couldn’t tell that story as it turned out,” reveals X-Files executive producer Frank Spotnitz. “We played it out differently than he ever imagined we would.”

After seven years of aliens, conspiracies, black oil, abductions and delayed sexual gratification, the truth is as elusive as ever on The X-Files, even for the show’s creator. With the series’ future up in the air for most of last season, Chris Carter scrapped his long-planned X grand finale in favor of a season ender featuring FBI agent Fox Mulder getting beamed up by a UFO while his partner Dana Scully sat in a hospital bed pondering her surprise pregnancy.

“For seven years Chris had an end to the story in mind and he just couldn’t tell that story as it turned out,” reveals X-Files executive producer Frank Spotnitz. “We played it out differently than he ever imagined we would.”

But when an 11th-hour deal renewed the series for an eighth season, with David Duchovny agreeing to return as Mulder in up to 11 of 20 episodes, Carter and company had to go back to the drawing board. To help compensate for Duchovny’s dwindling role, ‘Terminator 2′ co-star Robert Patrick was hired to play Scully’s new sidekick, FBI agent John Doggett. (X-Phile trivia alert: Carter, who named Dana Scully after legendary L.A. Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully, gave the new character the same surname as longtime Dodgers co-commentator Jerry Doggett.) In an intriguing switcheroo of the series’ original concept, Special Agent Doggett is a by-the-book former cop skeptical of Scully’s paranormal investigations.

“We don’t look at him as a replacement for Mulder, he’s really an addition to the cast,” Spotnitz explains. “He’s a former police officer, a sort of blue-collar guy who has risen up the ranks to become a highly regarded FBI agent. And so his skepticism is more through the lens of a great investigator, someone who understands human psychology and behavior. It’s much more of a criminal approach to the X-Files than a scientific one. It changes the whole dynamic of the show.”

Patrick is slated to appear in every episode of the upcoming season and will get third billing in the show’s opening credits behind Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. But Spotnitz is quick to point out that despite Mulder’s abduction, Duchovny isn’t about to disappear. “I think you’re likely to see more of Mulder toward the end of the year than the beginning of the year,” he says. “He’ll never be completely absent from the show. That’s not to say he’s going to be in every episode, because he’s not going to be in quite a few, but his presence will be there even when Mulder is not.”

As for other season eight secrets, Spotnitz in typical X-Files style, would rather keep the details murky. When asked about Scully’s apparent immaculate conception in the season seven finale “Requiem,” he remains cagey: “All I can say is that we’ve got an answer in mind. But the truth is that we still don’t know if this is the last year of the show.”

So could the X-Files actually come back for season IX? “I don’t know,” Spotnitz admits. “We want to be prepared for the decision in our heart but we don’t want to make any final decisions until we know the cards we’re playing with.”

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