X-Files Retrospective - Glen Morgan And James Wong: The Creators and Deconstructionists of Ten-Thirteen
Part 1: Origin Stories
Chris Carter is the creator of The X-Files but it can be argued with some rationality that the reason the series managed to develop a following was because of Glen Morgan and James Wong.
These two men had worked as a team for more than a decade in several Vancouver based series, such as 21 Jump Street and The Commish. After The X-Files was picked up to a series order the writers room for Season One consisted of Carter, Morgan & Wong and another writing team: Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa. (Gansa departed the show after Season One; Gordon remained until Season 4.) They wrote almost all of the episodes that season with only a few exceptions, most of whom would never write for the series afterwards.
Morgan & Wong were among Carter’s most gifted writers but to truly measure their impact one has to remember they had two separate stints for The X-Files. They would write for the series from October of 1993 until February of 1995, when they departed to helm their own series Space: Above & Beyond. The show received rave reviews but it was ultimately too expensive for Fox to justify its only middling ratings and it was cancelled at the end of its first season. Morgan & Wong returned to The X-Files in Season Four for four scripts, all of which were radical and designed to pulling back the curtain on the series that had become one of the biggest phenomena since they had left. They also returned to each write and direct several scripts in the revivals in both 2016 and 2018. An argument could be made they continued to build on the work they had done.
The best way to pay tribute to their work is to divide it, so the first article will deal with their work in the first season.
In a sense Morgan & Wong helped create the Monster of the Week in their first script ‘Squeeze’ the first episode of the show not written by Carter. Scully is called in by an old colleague (Donal Logue in an early role) to deal with a killing that took place in a locked room with no way in or out. The victim’s liver had been torn out. We already see what the rest of the Bureau thinks of Mulder, and when he shows up at the crime scene Mulder leans in to that reputation when Colton brings up if he thinks this was done by Little Green Men.
Mulder notices that there is a way in — an air duct. He also finds what appears to be an elongated fingerprint, both of which Colton dismissed. Mulder eventually connects this to three other murders in Baltimore and also matches the print to a series of killings in Baltimore in 1963..and 1933…and 1903. Scully is understandably skeptical and goes to work developing a profile of the killer.
Eventually Mulder determines that one of the suspects is a man named Eugene Victor Tooms, a member of the custodial staff. Tooms is played by the memorably creepy Doug Hutchison and in a burst of genius Morgan and Wong give him no dialogue save for a polygraph he takes where he only answers ‘Yes’ and No’. The rest is done purely by expression and Hutchison makes it register.
Eventually Mulder and Scully discover that Tooms has a genetic anomaly in which the livers are what he uses for sustenance: they find his home (the images of Mulder and Scully opening the doors would be part of the opening credits for most of the series run) and they find what amounts to a cocoon. Mulder gives a superb one liner when he realizes the substance he’s touching is bile: “Is there anyway I can wipe this off quickly without blowing my calm exterior?” Tooms ends up being caught after he tries to kill Scully and Mulder foils it (a trope the series came back to far too many times) but the story is left open.
The episode makes it clear the X-Files could be more than just alien abductions. The next two episodes Morgan & Wong wrote demonstrated just how extraordinary the series could be.
The teaser for ‘Ice’ is one of the great set-pieces in television. We get a shot of a station in the Arctic, and inside we see a mass of carnage and bodies. One of the researchers, his undershirt covered in blood and a gun in his hand, turns on a camera and says: “We are not who we are. It goes no further.” Another man pulls him and the two turn their guns on each other. They pause, and then point the guns at their own heads. We cut to the exterior as two separate shots ring out.
Mulder and Scully are called in to the Bureau to investigate the aftermath, though they don’t know the depths of the consequences. Nor are they alone when they fly out. They are accompanied by Bear (Jeff Kober) and three researchers played by three of the best character actors to work in TV: Xander Berkeley, Felicity Huffman and Steve Hynter. Hynter’s character has the strongest impression: he seems to be listening to a football game and we quickly learn its an audio recording of it.
The researchers arrive at the base and find that the only survivor is a dog, who attacks Bear not long after they arrive. Soon after they begin to study, they learn that the base had been responsible for drilling into ice core samples that might have existed since the stone age. These samples take the form of worms (which are used with primitive special effects that actually help the show’s mood) and we see very quickly that they when introduced a host that lead to psychotic behavior. This becomes very clear when Bear, who was bitten, refuses to be tested becomes violently angry, has to be subdued — and then dies.
By now, the casual sci-fi fan has recognized this is the set-up for the classic John Carpenter film The Thing but even those who recognized the influence realized what a masterpiece it was. The setting of a claustrophobic base with no way to easily get out is a great set-up for a TV episode (it’s a different kind of bottle episode) and it was one The X-Files would return to every season or so, sometimes to the same affect. In a TV series in 1993, of course, there’s the problem that we all know Mulder and Scully will be the last people standing so there should be no suspense in the same way. The reason the episode is still a masterpiece is because Mulder and Scully do get infected, not by the worms but by the rampant paranoia. It’s early enough in the show’s run so that the trust between Mulder and Scully is not ironclad but its rare to see the two of them disagree to the point that they not only have a shouting match but at one point Scully believes Mulder might actually be infected with the worm. Scully locks him in a freezer — for his own safety — but there’s a cold fury in his eyes. The last words he says to her are: “In her I’ll be safer than you.” In a sense, he’s right — though I will not reveal who actually the killer is on this base nor how they manage to get out alive.
Their next episode was ‘Beyond the Sea’ one of the greatest episodes in the entire run of the series as well as the most radical one they had done to that point. In the teaser, Scully’s parents are leaving to go home after a visit having had dinner with their daughter. There’s a certain awkwardness between Scully and her father, particularly when he asks her about how things at her job are going. That night Scully is watching TV and looks at the couch to see her father, mouthing words she can’t hear. Then the phone rings and she wakes up. It’s her mother. Her father is dead.
Gillian Anderson gives her best performance to date as Scully, as we see her for the very first time open to extreme possibilities, as she briefly looks through Mulder’s file cabinet. When Mulder sees her, he’s awkward, calling her ‘Dana for the first time. (By now, we’re used them calling each other Mulder and Scully.) Mulder tells her that a teenage couple have been abducted (we saw that in the first scene after the opening credits). He tells her that a similar abduction happened a year ago and a week later both teenagers were found dead. Mulder was called into the case by Luther Lee Boggs, a serial killer who he profiled and got sent to the gas chamber. Boggs was actually in the gas chamber when a judges granted a stay. Since then Boggs has claimed to be a psychic and says his vision will lead them to the kidnapped teenagers — if his sentence is commuted to life.
For the first time Mulder is skeptical — not of psychic vision but Boggs. He knows the kind of monster Boggs is and he believes that Boggs is orchestrating events to save his skin. Scully agrees to come with him after she attends her father’s funeral. Here we have our first real introduction to Margaret Scully (Sheila Larken) who remembers her father warmly. Dana wonders if her father was proud of her and despite Margaret’s words, its clear she has doubts.
Boggs is played by that extraordinary character actor Brad Dourif. In our first meeting like Mulder we’re convinced he is faking his channeling, and when Mulder pulls a con we believe him. Both he and Scully walk out… but as she goes Boggs starts singing Beyond the Sea, which we heard at Mr. Scully’s memorial and which we know has a deeper meaning to the Scully family. Dana whirls around and hears Boggs call her ‘Starbuck’, her father’s pet name for her. Scully is clearly emotionally vulnerable and for the first time opens herself to extreme possibilities.
When Mulder learns that she listened to Boggs, he’s actually angry — more for the source than her beliefs. As the case progresses Mulder and Scully eventually find one of the victims but in the rescue attempt, Mulder is shot and seriously wounded. Scully returns to Boggs’ cell and unloads a righteous fury at him saying: “If Mulder dies I’ll gas you out of this life myself, you son of a bitch!” Immediately afterwards, she hears her father’s voice — and then sees his face in Boggs’ prison uniform.
Boggs claims that he has a message from Scully’s father for her but he will only give it to her unless he gets a deal. The governor refuses too but Scully lies. When she reveals the truth, Boggs says he already knew. The killer is caught — he is one of Bogg’s suspected accomplices on some of the previous killers — but dies in part because Scully heeds a warning that Boggs gave in his last channel. In the aftermath Scully says she does not believe Boggs orchestrated the murders — and Boggs says he’ll give her the message from her father if he’s a witness for her at his execution.
In the final scene we find that Scully has chosen to stay by her partner’s bedside and in typical fashion is trying to backpedal from her position of belief. Mulder presses her, but not that hard. His final question is: “Don’t you need to know?” and Scully says. “I already know. He was my father.”
‘Beyond the Sea is a triumph on many levels, not the least because Morgan and Wong found two themes that the series did well for the next few years. The first is the idea that Scully’s skepticism, even halfway through the first season a source of frustration for fans, is not done out of obstinance but trying to face that the paranormal — ghosts, aliens, the supernatural — aren’t aberrations of the status quo but are the status quo. That’s a terrifying thing to accept for anybody, and in a way Scully’s skepticism is that of someone who isn’t being bullheaded but is afraid. The other important part is Scully chooses the well-being of another person over the truth. While that may be contrary to the message of the series, it’s fundamentally more emotionally rewarding — and there’s an argument that when The X-Files began to move away from that idea, the mythology lost a lot of its power.
The mythology may not have been clear in Chris Carter’s eyes at this point but in their next episode ‘E.B.E.’, Morgan and Wong made two contributions. The more significant one was that of one of the most popular recurring characters in history: The Lone Gunmen. In a few minutes Byers, Langley and Frohike do make a clear impression and you can understand why the show would use them throughout the series. What’s more interesting is that in their inaugural appearance they don’t seem so much funny as they do creepy and its unsettling both that Mulder knows these people and tellingly that even they aren’t fully onboard with his theories. “Your ideas are stranger than ours,” Langley actually says.
The more interesting idea is that while Mulder and Scully spend the episode trying to chase down a U.F.O, they spend it being led by the nose. This is done by Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin) Mulder’s avuncular informant who has spent his previous appearances wanting to help Mulder, but for the first time openly lies to him. This is the first time its been suggesting point blank that even the people who claim to be on Mulder’s side are themselves using Mulder to serve their own interests. We spend the entire episode trying to find proof of the title reference ‘an extra-terrestrial biological entity’ and by the time its over, Mulder and Scully find themselves in an empty room in a government facility. Deep Throat then proceeds to explain why he has decided to help Mulder in his work — and it is incredibly powerful, moving monologue. But by this point Mulder is so cynical that when its over he says in a voice of contempt: “I’m wondering which lie to believe.” We’ve seen signs as to just how dangerous Mulder’s pursuit of the truth can be throughout the first season; this is the first (but far from the last) time we have cause to wonder if Mulder doesn’t truly know what the truth is. It’s a fascinating theme that the series will go back to quite a few times before deciding to abandon it.
Morgan & Wong’s final episode of Season 1 ‘Tooms’ is significant for many reasons. It’s the first sequel and it’s the first episode where the Cigarette Smoking Man has a line of dialogue. (He won’t have another one until ‘Little Green Men’ so you can say Morgan & Wong gave him voice.) There are two other important tangents to this episode.
The most famous is that it is our introduction to AD Walter Skinner, Mulder and Scully’s immediate superior and by far the regular who lasts the longest in the series’ run. (As all fans know, he made it not only to the end of the original series but appeared in both revivals.) Mitch Pileggi was already a fairly well known character actor at the time but this is the role he will be remembered for the same way that Duchovny and Anderson are remember for Mulder and Scully. Skinner will spend most of the series run as a strange figure in the show’s history: he has a very careful line to walk and much of the first few seasons, the viewer is never certain how much we can trust him. It is telling that in this episode and indeed many of Skinner’s initial appearances the Smoking Man is in Skinner’s office, so the viewer is never sure how trustworthy he is. Morgan and Wong made it very clear of that in much of Skinner’s initial appearance: he talks in a brusque, military fashion to both Mulder and Scully about their work on the X-Files speaking more like a bureaucrat. When he’s reading Mulder’s report, he asks the Smoking Man if he believes this, which makes us believe he is lower on the food chain. When Skinner becomes a regular in Season 2 (and several appearances will have been authored by Morgan & Wong) we are still uncertain of how much Mulder and Scully — and the viewer — can trust him.
The other critical issue is that for the first time, the writers tackle the subject matter of the series with a flavor of comedy. It’s subtle, particularly in comparison to the kind that we’ll get over the years (some of which Morgan and Wong themselves will write) but it’s there all the same. There’s the scene where Mulder tells a psychiatric board the nature of Tooms’ mutation and comes across as the one they should commit. There’s the way that Mulder spends much of the episode stalking Tooms and how Tooms finds a way to fight back. And there’s the way the unfortunate case work comes into Tooms’ apartment, sees him tearing paper for his nest, and is glad to see that he has a hobby. It’s almost hysterical as it is inevitable that he becomes Tooms’ final victim.
Without question Morgan & Wong were the most consistently great writers in Season 1. Only their second script ‘Shadows’ a barely adequate ghost story (and one that actually has gotten worse when you consider the context thirty years later) is truly mediocre. They don’t deserve all the credit for making a series that was on the bubble earning its renewal at the end of the 1993–1994 season earning a second season renewal, but they played a big part. The second season of The X-Files would be a galvanic leap forward for the show on almost every level. In the next article in this series, I will look at the scripts they wrote for Season Two right up until they thought they were leaving for good — and show all the ways they helped secure the series future.