Kiivitaja

-- Kim Manners' DVD commentary about the final scene goes exactly like this: "This was David and Gillian's last scene together and we shot it on the last day. As they come together to kiss, you will see the camera pull back out the door and that was the last shot of David and Gillian together. And we wrapped, and David and Gillian stood in that room together alone and held each other for a good five minutes. They didn't talk, they didn't move, they just held each other, with tears running down their faces. It was a very touching moment and one I will never forget. And I think we got the kiss in one take."

July 12, 2001: That final scene would have been significantly different had Duchovny and director Kim Manners not intervened after both were unsatisfied with series creator Chris Carter’s original ending which featured a mundane kiss on the forehead.

“We all sat down with Kim Manners and Chris Carter and said, ‘We’ve been teasing and doing that bull for so long, let’s have a real kiss at this point,'” Duchovny said during his press junket to promote his latest film “Evolution.” “I said, ‘I’m pretty sure I’m not coming back at this point so let’s have a romantic kiss.'”

2001: That last day was surreal. I think a part of my brain was trying to ignore the fact that it was approaching, so I was kind of going about my day as if it were any other day, and then we ended up in this scene with this dialogue that was the end for that stage of our relationship. All of a sudden I think he was more aware of it and was being really mindful of that last scene.

"I blocked it out until the last moment where all of a sudden it hit me, that this person that I was standing in front of as I know him and have known him for such a long time, that this aspect of our relationship was coming to a close. We embraced and I just burst into tears. We held our embrace for a really long time and I think it was just flooding over us, the importance of this agreement that we’ve had to be in each other’s lives in a very powerful way.”

FRIENDSHIPS ON SET -- "Robert [Patrick] and I had a good time working together," David Duchovny noted. "He's a really nice guy and a good actor. It was different because the center of the show had been a male-female relationship, Mulder and Scully, for so many years. And in some of my scenes with Robert, especially the ones in 'Vienen,' there was a different kind of energy -- a buddy energy. It made me regret that we hadn't done it earlier. Maybe we should have brought Skinner [Mitch Pileggi] into the mix a little more fully so you could have had Mulder and Skinner or Mulder and Doggett going off and doing the buddy thing, then coming back and have Mulder and Scully or Scully and Doggett or Scully and Skinner. It would have made for a less claustrophobic feel for the actors. Then again, you don't fix it if it's working."

-- Manners was very glad to be able to work with Nicholas Lea one more time. "Nick was always great," he said, "and he and David worked so well together; they just had this amazing chemistry. I really loved the way they played their last scene together. This episode was David's swan song, and I thought it was a great way for him to go out."

FUN RETURN... AND DECISIVE EXIT

February 2002: So, did Duchovny ever approach Patrick and say, either directly or in essence, ‘I’m not coming back. It’s all yours. Good luck’? “David and I had a couple of conversations about it and they went like this,” Patrick recalls. “David said, ‘Man, I’m having fun. This is fun. I’m really enjoying working with you.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s great. I want you to come back whenever you want and I hope you know that.’ He said, ‘I do and I will, maybe. I’ve got to see how things progress and how they write.’

“That’s how it went for a while,” says Patrick. “Then, as things progressed, I got the sense that he wanted to stick with his game plan of saying goodbye and moving on. But I never got a definitive [answer] until the end. He said, ‘Hey man, you’ve got a great job. You’re doing a great job. Just have fun with it.’

“He probably decided that, after eight years, enough was a enough,” Patrick continues. “I’m not going to speak for him, but I want to convey that it was a great experience working with him. I think he really enjoyed it. But I think as he got back into it, he thought, ‘You know, I said I’m going to walk away and I’m going to stick to that.’ He never flat-out said that to me, but that was the sense I got.”

JUST CRITICISMS

-- In an interview just after he left the series, David Duchovny was asked if there was any part of Mulder that he never got to explore as an actor. "The issue of Mulder's disappearance was never dealt with on an emotional level," he said. "Here was a guy who was abducted, we think. At least that's what *I* think, and I'm playing the guy. And nobody seemed interested in that when he came back. It was, 'Oh boy, you look bad,' and then, 'Here's another case. Want to take a look at this?' What I would have enjoyed playing as an actor was working through the difficulties that being abducted might have created inside the character. I don't think that's an opportunity we would take in the movies, though. It would just be reworking something from the past that not everybody would be aware of."

July 12, 2001, Tom Kessenich: “When I came back, I felt somewhat peripheral,” Duchovny said. “Mulder’s story was one of three or four stories and it didn’t feel like the same show to me.”

Spotnitz responds to such complaints by saying 1013’s hands were tied creatively due to Duchovny’s contract, which called for him to be a part-time participant.

EXaminations, Tom Kessenich: Duchovny also did not care for the paternity tease [in Season 8] since it prevented him and Anderson from establishing any proper dramatic foreshadowing. The two stars were also reportedly unhappy the relationship between Mulder and Scully was not explored more fully since Duchovny planned to leave the series at the end of the season.

ON REFLECTION

THE COMPLETE X FILES, 2008:

As the season wound down, Mulder was refused readmittance to the FBI, and the drama began to focus on establishing the new agents. "I completely thought it was correct that they should be trying to focus elsewhere, and that, since I was going to come back for the second half of season eight, if you were to refocus on whatever Mulder's up to, you'd be in the same lousy situation at the beginning of season nine," Duchovny says today.

BONUS

"We were doing the last two episodes and I felt it wasn't the resolution of my character," recalls the actor, who understandably thinks the writers didn't make maximum use of his presence in the 11 eighth season episodes in which Mulder appeared. "We were resolving things that had nothing to do with Mulder. I felt like there was a lost opportunity. The last two episodes *could* have been a real sendoff for Mulder. We knew we were going to shoot the last scene, but we didn't know what the last scene was. They have this idea over at The X-Files that stuff is going to get stolen and put on the Internet. They want to be secretive about it. And that p-es me off, because I'm an actor and I would like to have the scene more than two hours before I have to play it. I don't care if somebody gets it on the Internet. I would rather it be a good scene.

"So, it was a big mystery. This guy shows up with a briefcase and handcuffs. 'The scene's in there,' he tells me. I ask, 'Can we see the scene?' And he says, 'No, it's not ready.' Two hours before we shot the scene, we finally get it. And it was a nice scene with the baby. I think it was written that Scully gives Mulder a kiss on the forehead. Kim Manners was there [directing], and I was so confused at that point that I didn't trust my feelings about it because I had so many personal feelings. It was eight years of my life. I didn't know what would be an appropriate ending. I didn't know. And when Kim and I read it as we were about to shoot it, he said, 'We've done that 100 times, the whole hand holding and the kiss on the forehead. Let's do a *real* kiss.' I was like, 'Yeah, that feels right.' At least we were giving *something* at the end."

The big question left looming as the season finale faded to black, though, was : Is Mulder the baby's father?

"I guess so," Duchovny replies. "I honestly can't tell you if he is or not because I don't know." [Note: Chris Carter was still teasing the paternity question during Season 9's filming (here.)]

The answer to that and many other questions may have to wait for another X-Files feature. And, yes, Duchovny *is* willing to play Mulder again on the big screen. "If they wrote a good X-Files script, I would look at it," he says. "I would love to do another X-Files movie."

There are other X-Files issues worth briefly addressing, among them sharing scenes with Robert Patrick; his last day on the set; bidding farewell to Carter, who was a close friend until a series of financial and legal sticky wickets got in the way; and his cameo as Mulder in the Lone Gunmen episode All About Yves.

Duchovny more than willingly touches on all of those matters. "Robert and I had a good time working together," he notes. "He's a really nice guy and a good actor. It was different because the center of the show had been a male-female relationship, Mulder and Scully, for so many years. And in some of my scenes with Robert, especially the ones in Vienen, there was a different kind of energy - a buddy energy. It made me regret that we hadn't done it earlier. Maybe we should have brought Skinner [Mitch Pileggi] into the mix a little more fully so you could have had Mulder and Skinner or Mulder and Doggett going off and doing the buddy thing, then coming back and have Mulder and Scully or Scully and Doggett or Scully and Skinner. It would have made for a less claustrophobic feel for the actors. Then again, you don't fix it if it's working.

"The last day was very emotional. My very last day was running shots and little bits of action that we had to do for the last few episodes. I was with Mitch. Chris came down to the set. Chris and I spoke. We had to work together. All that other stuff, in the end, really is business. What we do on The X-Files is business, and yet it's a creative process. If Chris and I aren't speaking, that's a big deficit, a big gap. We had to be adults. We're paid to do a job. And that means speaking to each other.

"But the second-to-last-day, when I shot my last scene with Gillian, was very emotional and very sad," Duchovny says "I really **hadn't** pondered the weight of eight years coming to a close until I was in the middle of the scene and realized that this would be the last time I was going to do Mulder and Scully on the show. It was sad and very heavy, but not depressing. It was an acknowledgement of a lot of time, effort and love.

"As for The Lone Gunmen, I did that as a favor for [writer-producer] Vince Gilligan and the guys," he continues. "The show was on the bubble, as they say, and they thought a guest appearance by Mulder might give the show a boost at a point where a decision was being made to renew it or not. It was a nice little bit, just one scene, and it only took a day to do . I guess it didn't help, though."

Asked if there's any aspect of Fox Mulder that he never got to explore, Duchovny pauses. After a moment, he mentions that the issue of Mulder's disappearance was never dealt with on an emotional level. "Here's a guy who was abducted, we think," he notes. "At least that's what **I** think, and I'm playing the guy. And nobody seemed interested in that when he came back. It was, 'Oh boy, you look bad,' and then, 'Here's another case. Want to take a look at this?' What I would have enjoyed playing as an actor was working through the difficulties that being abducted might have created inside the character. I don't think that's an opportunity we'll take in the movies, though. It would just be reworking something from the past that not everybody would be aware of."

BONUS

THE COMPLETE X FILES, 2008: As the season wound down, Mulder was refused readmittance to the FBI, and the drama began to focus on establishing the new agents. "I completely thought it was correct that they should be trying to focus elsewhere, and that, since I was going to come back for the second half of season eight, if you were to refocus on whatever Mulder's up to, you'd be in the same lousy situation at the beginning of season nine," Duchovny says today.

CONCLUSION

His criticisms stand, but were eventually tempered in hindsight (given time, distance, and perspective.)

Regardless, facts are facts; the past is the past; and it's fun for me to explore both.

Thanks for reading~

March 31, 1997: By the new year, Carter was spending almost no time on The X-Files, and it should have come as no surprise when he announced his intention to leave both shows, The X-Files after season five and Millennium after season two (reportedly the most that Fox had promised him). “I think five years is a good length of time to do something,” he said. “I have said to David and Gillian that I just want to do five really good years and then be able to look back and say that we did our best work. Anything past that is gravy to me.” [...]

Although Carter implied that he would prefer for the show to end upon his departure, Fox responded to his announcement by commencing a search for his replacement – after all, stars Duchovny and Anderson are contracted through to the end of season six, and although Fox has already sold the show into record-breaking syndication deals, it has no plans to kill the only series that continues to show growth.

November 3, 1999: "I don't know what their plans are. But it's their show. They can put it on without any of the principals being involved."

April 22, 2008: AVC: Lost, a show that’s obviously been influenced by The X-Files, made a big deal about announcing a definitive end point. Was that ever considered for The X-Files?

CC: No, the reason… We went to season five and we did the movie. Actually, at the end of season four, I could have left, and I might have opted to. My contract was up, and I could have left, and it would have been a successful show. But it was clear that Fox was going to—because it was a powerhouse for their schedule and for their network—the show was going to go on, and it would have gone on without me. And I had made a pledge to the actors that I would stay with the show as long as they did. And that kept me going, so there was not an end point imagined, which was a result of the fact that Fox was not going to end that show anytime without a reason to end it. And I think that it’s a luxury for the creators of Lost to be able to have an end point, and to have a network that supports it. I’m sure the network is not happy about it, because it is a business first, and entertainment second. And they get to put one before the other, which is a luxury that I didn’t actually have or imagine.

Be that as it may, these two accounts-- Carter's thin line of creative control and Carter's ability to close The X-Files-- appear contradictory.

Turns out, both are true: CC was able to close the show because 20th Century Fox had lost interest.

January 18, 2002: Fox executives had been having informal discussions about the show’s future, but Carter pulled the trigger, according to Sandy Grushow, chairman of the Fox TV Entertainment Group.

January 22, 2002: Carter “had been thinking provisionally about ending the show for a couple of years” because of several “business” reasons, including [D]uchovny’s desire to leave, and Carter’s own contract expiring (he signed a new one for this season).

The Complete X-Files: "Scary Monsters" features the return of Leila Harrison, who refers the X-Files team to a psychotic young telepath who can create the illusion of giant killer insects. The show was significant for The X-Files cast and crew for another reason during its production; Chris Carter announced that The X-Files would end with this season.

Robert Patrick recalls when he heard the news: "We were halfway through season nine, and Chris came on the set and watched me shoot a scene. And he hadn't done that since the first scene I had shot. And when the scene was over, I said, 'Is everything all right?' And he said, 'Walk with me.' And we walked to my trailer, and in this very calm, Chris Carter way, he said, 'I wanted you to be the first to know, this is it.' I said, 'What do you mean this is it?' And he went, 'This is going to be the end.'"

Patrick was devastated. It was then that he noticed that Fox's new series 24 was being heavily promoted by the network even though its ratings were not significantly better than The X-Files. "I was asking people, 'Boy, it seems like you're spending a lot of money promoting this 24. What's going on with our show?'" Patrick recalls. "I vaguely remember getting the feeling like we had been abandoned by Fox. That's probably one of the reasons why Chris decided not to do it."

In a sordid sort of way, it's probably a good thing The X-Files continued until Season 9: if CC hadn't agreed to come back (via a yearly contract basis, signed after Season 7 and again after Season 8), then the studio would have gone on without him.

On the flip side, however, Frank Spotnitz was planning to helm S9 in Carter's absence--

November 21, 2001: The X-Files writer-producer Frank Spotnitz told us that he’s not sure if there will be a 10th season of the SF series, but he added that this year’s episodes are being crafted with an eye towards the possibility. “One of the first things this season, before we even knew if [series creator] Chris [Carter] was coming back, was figuring out how the show would work for season nine, and then how it could work for seasons 10 and 11 and beyond if the audience were there,” Spotnitz said in an interview.

What could have been, we'll never know.

CONCLUSION

tl;dr 20th Century Fox lost interest and Chris Carter seized the opportunity to end on a (relative) high note.

Ultimately, the writers and actors were glad CC stayed aboard-- they gave him great testimonials, enthused about his capabilities, and supported him in his endeavors. While fans (myself included) weren't satisfied with the results, there was, perhaps, a bigger picture at play: outlasting or losing to Fox.

Thanks for reading~

While she continues, there is a distinctive rustling of either material-on-material friction or her fingers rubbing material between them.

Her attention remains fixed where her hand is.

Position A is regained after she says, "Please? Just..." and pouts: her arm snaps abruptly back to her side, leveling her shoulders (and dropping whatever she was fondling.)

When she finishes, "...for me?" we get a glimpse of Mulder's face before Scully switches gears and becomes serious again.

Now, granted, Scully could have been fiddling with Mulder's coat or a button hole or a bunch in his shirt or his hand or her hand (though there isn't an audible skin-on-skin noise) if not his tie, but she was fiddling with something. Otherwise moving her hand forward, keeping it in empty air, then pulling it back only after pleading her case wouldn't make sense.

So, the most plausible explanation would be....

-Timeline: Production Drafts-

Here's a fun little aside I've thought up.

One of the quirks in Rush is its timetable, specifically a date printed on one of the teenager's exam papers (here.) If taken at face value, this would place the episode around Thanksgiving, before New Year's 2000.

After investigating the production dates, I discovered (and will prove) the episode was crafted after Millennium.

Millennium, September 13, 1999:

Rush, September 17, 1999 and Rush, September 24, 1999 respectively:

Which means Millennium's kiss (courtesy of John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz) was written no later than September 17.

Which means Rush was written after the kiss was penned.

Which means Rush was created off in the "after" era.

Couldn't find filming dates of either episode (probably wouldn't matter, regardless), but the on-screen goof can probably be explained by an oversight: Rush was aired December 5, which means a lot of its production was taking place during November (leading up to Thanksgiving.) Some exhausted or misinformed crew member must have accidentally included the wrong detail.

(Besides, timelines were never clear in The X-Files, anyway.)

-Bonus-

Want more content?

You can find a gifset of Scully's insane levels of flirtation (and territoriality) here. And this gifset. And this one. And this. And that. And Mulder's crack here.

@agent-troi's Rush meta here (including a line from Mulder) and here. My entrance meta here. @fringephile's thoughts/screenshots here. @scullysbagelbites's thoughts here. @unremarkablehouse's thoughts on Scully's turtleneck (hickies) here and etc. here. My season of secret sex meta here.

While she continues, there is a distinctive rustling of either material-on-material friction or her fingers rubbing material between them.

Her attention remains fixed where her hand is.

Position A is regained after she says, "Please? Just..." and pouts: her arm snaps abruptly back to her side, leveling her shoulders (and dropping whatever she was fondling.)

When she finishes, "...for me?" we get a glimpse of Mulder's face before Scully switches gears and becomes serious again.

Now, granted, Scully could have been fiddling with Mulder's coat or a button hole or a bunch in his shirt or his hand or her hand (though there isn't an audible skin-on-skin noise) if not his tie, but she was fiddling with something. Otherwise moving her hand forward, keeping it in empty air, then pulling it back only after pleading her case wouldn't make sense.

So, the most plausible explanation would be....

-Timeline: Production Drafts-

Here's a fun little aside I've thought up.

One of the quirks in Rush is its timetable, specifically a date printed on one of the teenager's exam papers (here.) If taken at face value, this would place the episode around Thanksgiving, before New Year's 2000.

After investigating the production dates, I discovered (and will prove) the episode was crafted after Millennium.

Millennium, September 13, 1999:

Rush, September 17, 1999 and Rush, September 24, 1999 respectively:

Which means Millennium's kiss (courtesy of John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz) was written no later than September 17.

Which means Rush was written after the kiss was penned.

Which means Rush was created off in the "after" era.

Couldn't find filming dates of either episode (probably wouldn't matter, regardless), but the on-screen goof can probably be explained by an oversight: Rush was aired December 5, which means a lot of its production was taking place during November (leading up to Thanksgiving.) Some exhausted or misinformed crew member must have accidentally included the wrong detail.

(Besides, timelines were never clear in The X-Files, anyway.)

-Bonus-

Want more content?

You can find a gifset of Scully's insane levels of flirtation (and territoriality) here. And this gifset. And this one. And this. And that. And Mulder's crack here.

@agent-troi's Rush meta here (including a line from Mulder) and here. My entrance meta here. @fringephile's thoughts/screenshots here. @scullysbagelbites's thoughts here. @unremarkablehouse's thoughts on Scully's turtleneck (hickies) here and etc. here. My season of secret sex meta here.