Also, how television has changed in 20 years.
The original nine-season run ofThe X-Fileslasted 202 episodes.
Only four episodes were written by Darin Morgan.
Credit: Ed Araquel/Fox
But those episodes loom large in the shows history.
That episode airs Monday night.
EW got on the phone to talk with Morgan about how television has changed and howX-Fileshasnt.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:When did you have the idea for Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster?
Did you always envision it as anX-Filesstory?
We didnt get to do it.
Ive always wanted to, cause Ive always loved the basic story.
But theres not many shows that would allow you to do a Werelizard.
[laughs]
Was that from your time working onThe Night Stalker?
Yeah, that wasThe Night Stalker.
Which was a crazy experience.
I dont know if you know the backstory.
Frank Spotnitz, who was an oldX-Filesguy, was running it.
Or even use the word monster.
And we just couldnt believe it, cause that didnt make any sense.
We never got that far, cause the show was canceled.
But the idea always stayed with me.
Of course, the [original]Night Stalkerhas so many similarities to theX-Files.
It was a huge inspiration.
What was the process of writing this episode?
Has your process changed since your original run onThe X-Files?
No, nothing really changed.
That was one of the reasons why I agreed to come back, and was excited to.
And it turned out to be true.
I didnt get any notes about changing this episode.
We didnt have a writers room then, we didnt have one now.
We all went off on our own to work on our own stories.
So, in that respect, it was just like the old days.
On a personal level, how do you feel about Mulder and Scully in this revival?
Do they feel like they are different people?
Yeah, because theyre older!
Having aged myself, it changes you.
You look at the world differently.
They just question: Did they make the right choice in life?
I know Ive changed.
When youre first starting out as a writer, everything seems wonderful, its a great job.
And then at a certain point you go: Why did I ever become a writer?
So I decided to give a little of that to Mulder and Scully.
We talked about what each character was going through.
But that is very different from a story room nowadays, where everyone sits down and breaks every plotline.
We always used to talk about howX-Fileshad Monster-of-the-Week episodes and mythology episodes.
[Laughs] Thats a scary thought!
To be honest, I didnt pay any attention to the mythology episodes.
I wasnt asked to work on them, so I didnt pay too much attention to them.
The mythology ones were pretty much, for the most part, all Chris and Frank.
Thats how it was then, and thats kind of how it was now.
That sounds kind of crazy, I guess.
You have to know exactly what everybody is doing.X-Fileswas completely different, because you could do complete standalones.
I didnt even know what some of the guys were working on.
As a writer and as a TV viewer, do you miss that era of television?
Now, so much television, every series is a long-running storyline?
Do you miss when it was individual standalone hours of television?
As a viewer, I dont mind.
I watch probably as much as everybody else does, the continuing-story stuff.
As a writer, I honestly dont want to work on those kind of shows.
Ive done it before, and I find them unfulfilling, to be honest with you.
Just because theres just too many people.
Youre not really expressing your own taste, or viewpoint, or anything.
Its a different skill.
Im probably not very good at it.
Another reason why I dont like doing it as a writer.
I always go back toThe Twilight Zone, which isnt fair, because thats a complete anthology series.
Some episodes are really funny, some arent at all.
Theyre sort of standalones, but sometimes the stories linger over an episode or two.
Thats one of the reasons why I like that show.
The first two episodes of theX-Filesrevival havedone well in the ratings.There are rumors of more episodes.
Have you been approached to write another episode?
Youve done five over the course of 22 years.
What does that work out to?
One every four or five years?
[laughs] Thanks for rubbing that in.
I havent been approached.
To be honest, I havent even thought about it.
Unfortunately, thats not how my mind works.
Im not very good at planning my career.
Can you talk a bit about how that came about?
The problem is, we only had the budget for two headstones.
So, I insisted upon Kim, because Kim was just a huge part of the original series.
I actually wanted to cast Kim in Jose Chung.
I named the detective Detective Manners.
You also directed this episode.
What was that like?
Besides being such a well-written show,X-Fileswas always praised for its visuals.
In regards to that, the one good part was being able to lean so heavily on the crew.
Joel Ransom, the DP, I relied a great deal on him for suggestions of camera stuff.
Its a daunting task to do one of these episodes.
Theyre really hard to do.
All the location shooting, and night shooting.
You only have eight days, you know, its not a cable show.
Its really challenging to get all that stuff done, and do it in a visually interesting way.
What was that, twenty-some years ago?
That means theres probably millions of little Flukepeople swimming around the sewers of Jersey and the East Coast.
So, any day now, theyll be emerging.
