“The X-Files” is one of the best horror TV shows of all time, and its rogues’ gallery of terrifying creatures helped create that legacy. The show sees Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) come up against everything from demons to garbage monsters, but that almost wasn’t the case. In fact, the original plan was to make the series all about aliens.
“I remember being in the room with Howard [Gordon] and Alex [Gansa], and we were like, ‘Does everything have to do with aliens?’ At first Chris [Carter, creator] said yes, but then he changed his mind,” writer Jim Wong told The Hollywood Reporter. “[Episode 3] ‘Squeeze,’ the first monster-of-the-week episode, gave us permission to do anything paranormal.”
Carter added that he was an unknown name in television at the time, so no one knew what to expect from him, allowing the writers of “The X-Files” to experiment. The decision paid off, as some of the best episodes of “The X-Files” don’t involve aliens.
The X-Files was inspired by alien research
Before “The X-Files” became one of the most beloved shows of the ’90s,Chris Carter struggled to get the project off the ground. His first pitch was rejected by Fox, but a follow-up meeting resulted in the sci-fi series being greenlit.
“The second pitch involved me coming in with … a survey that had been done by scientists — actually, a Harvard scientist — about the alien abduction phenomenon,” Carter recalled during a conversation with the Television Academy Foundation. “What he learned was that there was a very high percentage of people in the United States who believed in aliens, alien abductions, and some who even believed they had been abducted.”
Apparently, Carter’s enhanced knowledge of aliens andconspiracy theorieswas essential for convincing Fox executives to send Mulder and Scully into the unknown, but the network still had doubts.
“They weren’t sure you could do a show where you didn’t wrap up the case with a nice little bow and explain everything in the end,” he said. “I said, ‘This is unexplained phenomena. You can’t explain it. That’s the beauty of the show.’ But that was something that no one understood in the beginning.”
