WRITING THE X-FILES By ANDY MEISLER LOS ANGELES -- Now that the prime-time season is over, regular viewers of most television series will become regular viewers of something else, whether it be baseball, movies or the pages of a book. Not so followers of "The X-Files," consistently one of Fox's top-rated shows. With its idiosyncratic blend of suspense, paranoia and the paranormal, "The X-Files" has been compared to influential shows like "The Fugitive" and "The Outer Limits." And though it just finished only its third season on Fox, its fans already treat it like a classic: the audience for a rerun is virtually as large as the audience for a new episode, about eight million households. For devotees of "The X-Files," which is broadcast Friday nights at 9 (it will move to Sunday nights at 9 in the fall), summer isn't down time so much as it is a welcome second chance to reassess episodes title by title, as if they were cherished volumes written by masters of science fiction. Which, in a sense, is exactly what they are. While David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have unquestionable star appeal investigating the unexplainable as the F.B.I. Agents Mulder and Scully, the basic building block of a hit series like "The X-Files" is the writing team, a complex melding of individual creativity and assembly-line productivity. And the basic building block of the writing team is the lone writer, struggling to bring a single episode into production. First Shuffle of Index Cards Although he holds the title co-executive producer, Howard Gordon is a writer, working in a medium in which the writer's authority and responsibility are as close to unchallenged as they have ever been anywhere. One day last January he was in the first stages of creating "X-Files" Episode No. 3X20, a $1.3 million production that was to begin filming in Vancouver, British Columbia, in less than two months. A 35-year-old graduate of Princeton University (and of the television series "Beauty and the Beast" and "Sisters"), Mr. Gordon sported a two-day stubble and was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Tipped back in a chair, he sat motionless for several minutes, staring at the far wall of his ramshackle office on one corner of the 20th Century Fox studio lot. On the wall was a bulletin board. On the bulletin board were two dozen blue index cards, which were most of what then existed of Episode 3X20. In "The X-Files," Agents Fox Mulder (Mr. Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Ms. Anderson) track poltergeists, demon-possessed serial killers and aliens, and battle skeptical bosses and shadow-government conspirators. One of their allies in this murky crusade is the F.B.I. Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). Written on an index card in a corner of Mr. Gordon's bulletin board was the dictionary definition of something called Old Hag syndrome. On the other cards, arrayed horizontally in five rows labeled "Teaser," "Act I," "Act II," "Act III" and "Act IV," were summaries of plot points. These consisted of terse phrases like "Skinner Finalizes Divorce -- Goes to Hotel for Drink," "Skinner Meets Woman, Agrees to Spend Night W/ Her" and "Skinner Awakens From Erotic Nightmare -- Finds Woman Dead." The final card read, "Skinner Sees Old Hag Outside Hearing Room." The material on the board represented three days of work by Mr. Gordon. There were significant gaps in the chain of cards. Seated behind him, in similar postures of contemplation, were two other people: Vince Gilligan, a New York University film school graduate and former movie screenwriter from Richmond, and Darin Morgan, a 30-year-old native of Los Angeles, who says that his work on "The X-Files" has constituted his first real job. Mr. Gordon had brought in his colleagues to help him work out the story. His basic question was: Within the logic of the "X-Files" universe, how could a man kill a woman in his sleep without intending to? Eventually, the silence was broken. "How about a sleep disorder?" asked one of the men. "What about demonic possession?" asked another. There was talk of succubi, female demons who the ancients believed had sex with sleeping men. There was talk of Old Hag syndrome, "a nocturnal phenomenon involving suffocation, paralysis and supernatural smells, sounds and apparitions, blamed on night terror, demons or witches." For the next hour and a half there was much revision, movement and removal of index cards. There were also oddly businesslike sessions of Nerf-ball tossing and recollections of old series. Finally, after little apparent progress had been made, Mr. Gordon broke up the meeting. He had to move on. In addition to writing Episode 3X20, he was rewriting another episode, advising on the structure of a third and supervising the editing of a fourth. During the television production season, Mr. Gordon works seven days a week. He has a wife and a small son, whom he usually kisses goodbye in the morning before they wake up and rejoins at night after they have gone to bed. Alone or with his former partner, Alex Ganza, Mr. Gordon has written 14 "X-Files" episodes. "Sometimes," he said, "I wake up in the middle of the night in an absolute panic." Keepers of an Eerie Agenda That Mr. Gordon wakes in a panic has little to do with the eerie subject matter of "The X-Files" and much to do with his role in the show's creative hierarchy. Behind the cameras, Mr. Gordon is arguably one of the eight most important people on "The X-Files." The other seven are Chris Carter, Mr. Gilligan, Mr. Morgan, Kim Newton, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz and Jeff Vlaming. They are all writers. They are all very well paid for writing under often grueling conditions (a writer of Mr. Gordon's rank makes between $800,000 and $1 million a year). The public knows none of them, with the possible exception of Mr. Carter, the creator of "The X-Files" and its executive producer. Nevertheless, on this series, as on virtually all successful series, they wield the ultimate power: They set the tone, style and message. They set the agenda for the rest of the 200-odd people working for "The X-Files." "On this show, we've never used an idea that came from the outside," said Mr. Carter, a trim, blond, curly-haired man in his 40's who would look like an aging California surfer were it not for his pale complexion and a face tight with fatigue. He was sitting in his office, which was somewhat larger and better furnished than Mr. Gordon's but had a bulletin board identical to Mr. Gordon's tucked behind the desk. The problem with freelance writers, he continued, is that they tend to build scripts around an external threat to the main characters. "What they don't understand is that the main characters, and the relationships between them, drive the story from the inside." Hence, all ideas for "X-Files" episodes are generated in house, then evaluated by Mr. Carter, then assigned to either a single staff writer or an impromptu teaming of two or more. Which is not to say that Mr. Carter is inflexible on these points. In fact, Episode 3X20, in which a lovelorn Skinner finds his way into the arms of a strange woman, was dreamed up by Mr. Duchovny. (Mr. Carter contributed the notion of a succubus, "which I've wanted to do for a long while," he said.) The Characters' Care-Giver A few days later, Howard Gordon emphatically stated that he had no problem sharing story credit with David Duchovny. But he admitted to having a few basic qualms about the collaborative nature of series television. "Somebody told me very early on," he said, "that the idea of episodic television is to give the audience the pilot episode again and again and again. Which isn't necessarily true, but it's not entirely wrong either. What is absolutely true is that any good series has a specific voice. And I think that voice is almost exclusively the domain of the executive producer. In this case, the voice is Chris." "As a staff writer you're not being called upon to be the great creative person," added Mr. Gordon, who at Princeton won an English department prize for his senior thesis, a novella. "You're sort of being called upon to understand the characters and their voices and put them through certain paces." By mid-January, Mr. Gordon had made considerable progress on Episode 3X20. In his estimation, however, not nearly enough. On his desk was an opened copy of Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience. "I don't really know where I'm going," he said in disgust. In fact, the plot had solidified. And it was now established that Skinner was being visited in his dreams and during his waking hours by horrific visions. What was also certain was that Skinner was being framed by extragovernmental forces determined to sabotage his efforts on behalf of Scully and Mulder and the X-Files unit. Fleshed out, too, was the new role of Skinner's soon-to-be-ex-wife; she was connected in some way to the Old Hag manifestation. Unfortunately, a satisfactory ending remained elusive. Also to be pinned down was the most crucial element of all: the attitudes of Agents Mulder and Scully toward their colleague's predicament. There was no doubt, Mr. Gordon said, that this was among the more difficult episodes he had undertaken. But he was sure he could solve the problems. "I have to," he said. "There isn't any alternative." Fate, Time and Money By the end of the month, Mr. Gordon, working alone most of the time, had solved several of his problems. Reversing precedent, he assigned Mulder the role of skeptical, down-to-earth bloodhound and Scully the role of grasper at supernatural straws. He made Skinner's estranged wife both a sympathetic figure and the unwitting source of his visions. "Essentially, it's about destiny and love and fate," said Mr. Gordon. It was also about more practical concerns like money and time, and increasingly complicated combinations of the two. Mr. Gordon learned that the director originally assigned to Episode 3X20 had been pulled off the episode to direct the pilot of "Millennium," a new series Mr. Carter was creating for Fox. That gave Mr. Gordon another week and a half to work with while a replacement director, Jim Charleston, was brought in for the episode, now renamed 3X21. On Feb. 1, after several postponements, he carried his bulletin board to Mr. Carter's office. Mr. Carter rose from his desk to greet him. On his computer screen was the script for the pilot episode of "Millennium." Mr. Carter again looked very tired. The two sat side by side on a nearby couch. Mr. Gordon propped his bulletin board against the far wall; for the next 15 minutes he softly read each index card. "We need Scully or Mulder's point of view here," Mr. Carter said more than once. Mr. Gordon scribbled notes and promised to get them closer to the action. Afterward, Mr. Carter gave his O.K. to proceed to the scriptwriting stage. "The story's there, but for a board, it's a little thin," he said. Mr. Gordon took this to mean that he was still short on action and special-effects sequences. He could not address the problem immediately. He was overdue for a meeting with Ms. Newton, a staff writer junior to him, to critique her Episode 3X22. Night Into Morning Howard Gordon's workday keeps him too busy to do much writing. Most of that takes place in the hours between 6 P.M. and dawn. Hence, the bulk of the 56-page first draft of "Avatar" -- 3X21 finally had a title to be savored by "X-Files" cultists -- was written in a burst of all-night work sessions. It was circulated to Mr. Carter and the rest of the "X-Files"' writers and senior production staffers on March 4. Mr. Carter read the script, but his and the show's tight schedules prohibited an immediate critique. Right away, he set a time for the episode's initial production meeting. The morning of March 5, Mr. Gordon again walked into Mr. Carter's office. On a conference table sat a speakerphone; an assistant began to patch in about a dozen men and women on telephones from the Fox lot, their homes, the show's Vancouver production office, and Los Angeles and Burbank airports. "How important is all this rain, Howard?" squawked a skeptical voice from the Canadian end. Mr. Gordon explained that as light as he was on action and special effects, he had decided that several scenes should be filmed at night and in the rain to heighten the moodiness and sense of foreboding of the piece. All well and good, replied the voice, but the problem was that Vancouver nights in early spring were still cold enough to cause rainmaking equipment to freeze up. Mr. Gordon shot a beseeching glance at Mr. Carter. The final decision was postponed. Other questions were raised and decisions were generally made -- on finding a "Washington, D.C." police-station location in Vancouver, for example. ("Not an old-fashioned building," said Mr. Carter. "A sterile Mies van der Rohe building.") Mr. Charleston complimented Mr. Gordon on his script and asked him deferentially about filming one scene, suggesting that he use a complicated tracking shot pointed through a rain-slicked skylight. Mr. Gordon said that sounded fine to him. On this agreeable note the meeting broke up. Mr. Gordon, who had been visibly energized by seeing his words and ideas put into motion, deflated more than a little. He had slept only briefly the night before. "I still think I've got some big problems in the fourth act," he said wearily. The Best Criticism Forty-four scenes," said Mr. Carter at 10 the next morning. "Yes, thanks," beamed Mr. Gordon. Both knew that 44 was about a dozen "setups" fewer than the average for an hourlong script. As a result, the episode would be less complicated and expensive to film than usual. It was good news, and Mr. Carter, who seemed another step closer to exhaustion, apparently needed it. He was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt; his office blinds were drawn, and the only lighting was his desk lamp. He talked in a near-whisper. Yet for the next hour, while Mr. Gordon made notes, he conducted a detailed, page-by-page verbal edit of "Avatar." At one point he looked up from the script and spoke directly to Mr. Gordon. "Remember," he said, "this isn't just Skinner's episode. It's Mulder's episode, too. He has to be drawn into it in a very personal way. Keep making that argument." Mr. Gordon nodded vigorously. Then they discussed the final scene, in which Skinner confronts the fact of his wife's and the Old Hag's kinship. A change in stage directions appeared to solve the problem. Mr. Gordon exited exhilarated. "That was great," he said. Mr. Carter's criticisms sharpened the script without criticizing the basic approach. But there was more work to do (the script would eventually go through three more revisions), but he felt that the bulk of this particular job was accomplished. On Tuesday, March 12, a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of his office to drive him to the airport, where he would leave for Vancouver to help in the production of "Avatar." He got into the car with his laptop computer and a few changes of clothes. "The problem with this job," he said, "is that there's no time to recharge. Working at this level, I give myself five more years." "Avatar" -- story by Howard Gordon and David Duchovny, teleplay by Howard Gordon -- was broadcast on April 26. It won its time period, earning a 9.6 rating and a 16 audience share. Copyright May 26, 1996 The New York Times