Director-producer Ralph Hemecker has died aged just 65 (Deadline). Ten Thirteen fans know him from his work on three episodes of Millennium, one for each season (and among the most memorable of the entire series) and one episode of The X-Files season 5 (not the most memorable):
Millennium 1X08: The Well-Worn Lock, one of the boldest and darkest episodes, dealing with child molestation
Millennium 2X06: The Curse of Frank Black, a mostly silent episode and truly an all-time classic
Millennium 3X02: Exegesis, a soft-reboot of the series but with very prescient themes
The X-Files 5X09: Schizogeny, the “killer trees” episode that wasted guest star Sarah Jane Redmond (but, to be clear, any shortcomings from the episode sure are not due to the directing or the acting!)
IMDb page. He was involved in many projects, more recently Once Upon A Time and Blue Bloods.
June 14 – Panel with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and Mitch Pileggi.
Mitch: during season 1, David said “this thing won’t last 7 episodes”!
David would enter chat rooms, nobody believed it was him
Mitch watched the show with hs brother, “this is dad!”: he was a defence contractor for the military, bald, glasses, suit, “constipated”
Gillian: “because Scully was fearless, I became more fearless because of her”
Chris would dictate them new script changes over the phone, Daivd could pick it up very easily, Mitch was slower and he was pissed off at David
Gillian’s 10 month old daughter hit her in the eye, she had a scratched cornea, so they had to shoot a scene from one side of her face onl (that was the greenhouse scene with John Neville in Paper Clip)
David was multitasking, while he was in the toilet in his trailer he called Chris with questions, Chris said “are you trying to prove to me you are a producer?”
David tries to tease Mitch on Avatar, Mitch says the Skinner episodes are not his favourites. Later, when talking about sexy shows, David tells him “remember I wrote you as Skinman”
Only David has heard of the IWTB director’s cut, he hasn’t seen it himself
Gillian acknowledges the director of photography John Bartley
David announces that Marty McInally passed away recently, a focus puller and camera operator in the Vancouver seasons
What David remembers is the new things, the first episode David Nutter directed, the first Chris directed, thr esprit de corps they had to pull off something good with so much work. Gillian says that the comedy episodes got them going for such a long time.
After years in Vancouver, shooting FTF in Los Angeles felt much bigger
Shooting the bee domes: David had to be in his trailer for hours because they were shooting the bees first, it had to be before sundown because then they go to sleep or turn aggressive. He asked Josh [McLaglen, the first assistant director] why can’t the actors go first? The bees got a better agent than him!
Liverpool Comic Con
May 2-3 – Panel with Gillian Anderson, Nick Lea, Annabeth Gish and Brian Thompson. Not much here.
Nick Lea’s favourite episodes are the Tunguska/Terma two-parter
Brian Thompson listens to podcasts and mentions Donald Hoffman‘s theory of consciousness, a bit out there
Annabeth Gish talks about the latest conspiracy theory of the day, about the death or disappearance of scientists; unfortunately it has been debunked and she is just spreading misinformation; it would make a good X-File though.
Denver Fan Expo
May 28-31 – Two panels, one with the full cast (it’s the first time they were all together since a 30th anniversary panel in 2023), and one with just David and Gillian.
Nothing of note. Like, nothing. David remembers being scared of a 1979 B-movie: Parts: The Clonus Horror.
At least some nice photos came out of this!
Marty McInally
As mentioned by David above, Martin (Marty) McInally passed away recently. He was a focus puller and camera operator in the original Vancouver seasons — starting from right after the pilot, and for all episodes of seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5 + on the second film, I Want To Believe. As a single-camera production (as opposed to multiple cameras working simultaneously, like on live TV or soap operas), The X-Files probably had one or two camera operators working at any point in time: Marty must have been among the people most present on set across the entire shooting!
Here he is (right) with director Kim Manners (left, also RIP), in a photo from the “X Marks the Spot” book.
I think his character could have been used more in the series, but he was a busy actor in theatre, TV and movies. Most relevant for TXF, he was the main antagonist in one of the big paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, Klute, where he acted opposite Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda. I am guessing that Carter cast him because of that role.
Lest we forget: actor Tom Noonan passed away a few weeks ago, on February 14 (The Hollywood Reporter article). The X-Files fans will remember him for his very memorable portrayal in one of the series’ best episodes, as child serial killer and Mulder’s dream tormentor John Lee Roche in Vince Gilligan’s 4X08: Paper Hearts.
Noonan had previously portrayed the serial killer Francis Dollarhyde in Michael Mann’s Mindhunter (1986), the first adaptation of a Thomas Harris novel and certainly an influence on Chris Carter on The X-Files and later on Millennium. Noonan had a very varied career, mixing high-brow with low-brow roles, all memorable: I remember him from Robocop 2, Last Action Hero, Heat, Synecdoche, New York, Anomalisa, and the short They’re Made Out Of Meat… Here’s to one of the great guest roles of the series.
Unfortunately, there has been another big, big death in The X-Files family. Ken Hawryliw, prop master for TXF seasons 1-5, passed away a few days ago.
Kenneth Harvey Hawryliw headed the props team: he designed and realized the props seen on the show. There’s a lot that the props team did: all the files and paperwork handled by Mulder and Scully, all the badges and guns, all the alien implants. In many cases the prop was a star of the episode, with perhaps the most iconic being the alien stiletto, with its simple and elegant design. But there’s a lot more we can mention: the alien fetus from The Erlenmeyer Flask; the sea shell from Fresh Bones; the demon drawings and sculptures from Grotesque; the Martian rock from Tunguska; the alien Rebels’ firewand from Patient X; the doll from Chinga; and many, many others, big or small.
The props department was also responsible for all the documents, newspaper clips, crime scene photos, or photos as part of the set design, all meticulously created to fit in with the item’s use within a scene. The UFO photo from Deep Throat; the DAT tape from Anasazi; the thought photos from Unruhe; young Fox and Samantha’s photo that the CSM had from Redux II; etc, etc.
In the late 90s, the “Unrestricted Access” CD-ROM showcased his work, with photos and videos and detail that was not visible on the few seconds these things are visible on the screen (although retrospectively this was very low-resolution!).
Ken also had a cameo appearance in the show as Byers’ co-worker in Unusual Suspects. He contributed with a script for the show, season 6’s Trevor. And he was also someone full of stories to tell, about his creative process and the behind the scenes adventures that went into making the show. Apart from TXF, he worked on “Battlestar Galactica” and many other shows shot in Vancouver. We covered here some of his long and detailed recent interviews (Conspiracy, TXF docu) and we reposted some behind the scenes photos he published on his social media Sci Fi Props Guy.
Please consider donating to the GoFundMe set up to support his wife and two minor children during this devastating time — his last credited work dates back to 2020, and the page explains Ken’s family’s situation. If you’re unable to donate, please share.
The image above was sent from Ken to Jesse J. Adams who shared it with me.
I also want to take this opportunity to share a piece of work from Ken, along with his assistant Jim Pate. I cannot tell you how elated and nervous I was when I acquired this recently. I have in my possession Scully’s medical file in the Strughold Mine from 3X02: Paper Clip, and this is the screen-used item. It is an excellent example of an expertly created prop fit for purpose. The paperwork, the numbers pointing to an archiving system, the pages design mimicking medical forms with fields to fill in, additional material such as a WHO vaccination card, and of course the biological sample box containing Scully’s DNA sample. An iconic prop for an iconic scene.
We close the year with, unfortunately, another death in The X-Files family! Graeme Murray passed away earlier this year in April, in his native Vancouver. Together with John Bartley, who also passed away in 2025, he was one of the most important members of the crew that defined the visual style and quality of the show.
He is credited as art director for the first 3 seasons (starting from 1X06: Ghost in the Machine) and as production designer for seasons 4 and 5, plus as production designer for the pilot of Harsh Realm. One of his first credits was actually on John Carpenter’s The Thing, and interestingly his second episode was Ice — here’s an interview of the time with Glen Morgan being impressed with his sets!
His work along with colleagues Shirley Inget, Gary Allen and Greg Loewen got them a nomination for an Emmy in Outstanding Art Direction for a Series in 1996 (for 3X20: Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space”); they would win the award in both 1997 (for 4X15: Memento Mori) and 1998 (for 5X06: The Post-Modern Prometheus).
Here are photos from the Vancouver Sun articles on those wins, taken from a 2024 exhibit in Graeme’s honor around the set of 3X19: Hell Money.
