Brianne Kane: Mulder believes that the truth is still out there, and I wanted to know, do you, Chris Carter, think the truth is still out there?
[CLIP: The X-Files series opening]
Hi, Chris Carter. I’m so glad-
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Chris Carter: Hi.
Kane: … to be able to talk to you today.
Carter: Thank you.
Kane: I have to admit, I’m a huge X-Files fan. So this is a bit of a big deal for me.
Carter: Thank you.
Kane: With this new director’s cut coming out, was there any particular scene that you’re glad is making this new cut and can be seen with audiences?
Carter: The Frankenstein elements I felt were not appreciated as Frankenstein elements.
[CLIP: The X-Files: I Want to Believe: Woman: Cheryl Cunningham, 34, never made it to work last night.
Fox Mulder: Scully?
Dana Scully: Mulder? ]
Carter: That’s why we’ve added, uh, “Vrash Frankenshteyn,’ Dr. Frankenstein to the title. Very early on, uh, it’s somewhat ambiguous, but there is a search party searching the snow following this guy, Father Joe, to a place where he drops to his knees and they go digging in the snow and they find an arm with a hand that has been wounded.
Knowing this is a Frankenstein story going in, it’ll draw the viewer in, in a way that, uh, it might not have otherwise.
[CLIP: The X-Files: I Want to Believe: Scully: Someone’s come forward with some promising evidence, a psychic
Father Joe: I see a face. I see eyes staring at us. ]
Kane: I mean, we owe all a huge, uh, debt of gratitude to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the original science-fiction story that has…
Carter: Yeah.
Kane: …that has inspired hundreds and thousands of science-fiction stories since then. I can definitely see the inspiration in your work- Yeah … which I always appreciate as a huge- Thank you … Mary Shelley fan myself.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Scully: Am I to understand that you want me to debunk the X-Files project, sir?]
Man: Agent Scully, we trust you’ll make the proper scientific analysis. You’ll wanna contact Agent Mulder shortly. We look forward to seeing your reports.]
Kane: Agent Scully is such an amazing and enjoyable example of women in STEM and women working in science.
I mean, I’ve heard you say previously that the Scully character was really important to you to legitimatize the show and to ground it in science. Yes, yes. So I wanted to know, actually, if you could tell me what is the real science that you wanted to show the X-Files audience, and why did you think that was so important to the story that you wanted to tell?
Carter: It is really the beating heart of the show is Scully’s science. If it weren’t for Scully, the X-Files would’ve been about a guy poking around in the paranormal, uh, no one challenging him, and he’d be in that FBI basement office a forgotten man.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Mulder: Sorry, nobody down here by the FBI’s most unwanted.
Scully: Agent Mulder, I’m Dana Scully. I’ve been assigned to work with you.]
Carter: But Scully goes down, uh, in that fateful meeting and challenges him. He asks her if she believes in extraterrestrials, and she gives him the scientific explanation for why they probably don’t exist.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Mulder: I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me.
Scully: If you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials…
Mulder: You’re a medical doctor. You teach at the academy. You did your undergraduate degree …]
Carter: Mulder, it, it’s like his dream comes true. He’s got someone to try to prove that it is science, not science fiction. That’s simply the reason for the show.
They are both passionate. They are both opinionated. They are both stubborn. They are both funny. They are both, uh, respectful. That we had to wait all those years to see them, uh, come together was, for me, one of the most beautiful parts of the show is that, uh, they could function as boyfriend and girlfriend without it ever becoming ph- physical, which would’ve been the easiest thing for them.
Kane: Yeah, I mean, the Mulder dynamic with Scully, they, they butt heads in, in a really fun way. You know, Mulder believes that the truth is still out there, and I wanted to know, do you, Chris Carter, think the truth is still out there? I mean, I’ve heard you say before that you think science will one day solve our more philosophical questions.
So what…
Carter: Yeah.
Kane: … do you, what truth do you still think is out there that we haven’t had the answer to yet?
Carter: I’ll go for the big one, uh, which is what, what was there before the Big Bang? That’s the question of the ages. If and when that is solved, it will take everything that’s wrong with planet Earth right now and, uh, turn it possibly upside down and solve so many problems when we realize why we are here, what we are doing, and, uh, what we are missing.
Kane: So you’ve mentioned a lot about your different inspirations for X-Files. There’s no one piece of story or history that inspired you, and you’ve mentioned Kurt Vonnegut to David Lynch, Nancy Drew, Stephen King. So I wanted to ask you, what was your biggest science fiction inspiration for what inspired a lot of future science fiction?
Carter: It’s funny. Uh, uh, I wasn’t the biggest science fiction fan as a kid. My brother was the big science fiction fan, and he became a scientist. I became a writer, and I think my interest is in telling stories. There’s something I, I’ll tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody, but one of the most inspirational movies for me starred Christopher Plummer, and it’s about Jack the Ripper, and it’s called Murder by Decree.
And in that movie we have some of the same dynamics of the X-Files. And it is really Sherlock and Watson, I think I think that, uh, that has gone largely unappreciated.
[CLIP: Murder By Decree: Sherlock Holmes: Stay away from me.
Man: They used you. We used you. You did exactly what we wanted you to do.]
Kane: You’ve mentioned a lot of other mysteries and mystery writers…
Carter: Yeah.
Kane: …that you’re big fans of, and you’ve mentioned before this brother who works in science. He’s an MIT material scientist, right?
Carter: That’s right, yes.
Kane: Do you like to ask the questions, the big mysteries, and he helps you solve them with science? Is that what’s going on here?
Carter: He was really good at making me honest, uh, to science. I tell this story about the pilot episode.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Mulder: Yeah, I’m just, uh-
Scully: What are you looking for?]
Carter: I wrote it and I sent it to him.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Mulder: We lost power.]
Carter: If you remember in the pilot- Brakes failing … there is a moment when Mulder and Scully pull over and Mulder says, “We just lost nine minutes.”
Mulder: … lost nine minutes. Oh, yes. Abductees, people that have made UFO sightings, they’ve reported unexplained time loss.
Scully: Come on.
Mulder: Gone, just like that.
Scully: No way. You’re saying that, that time disappears?
Carter: And Scully says, “We couldn’t have lost nine minutes. You can’t lose time. Time is a universal invariant.”
[CLIP: The X-Files: Scully: fundamental invariant.]
And when I had sent the script to my brother, it read: “Can’t lose time, time is a universal constant.” And my brother says, “Time isn’t a universal constant. It’s a universal invariant.” It’s stuff like that that he was really helpful with, uh, for me. But, you know, it’s funny, he wasn’t my science advisor. I had a science advisor named Anne Simon, who teaches at the University of Maryland.
He was my task master, I should say.
Kane: Nice. So I wanted to ask you, what would a Chris Carter X-Files episode look like today? I mean, would it be about dwindling attention spans or the explosion of AI usage?
Carter: I think it would be about, and I intend if we come back ever, um, to explore immortality. I think it’s something that everyone has imagined.
There’s some people pursuing it vigorously right now through science. Everyone wants to know what it would be like to live forever, and I think everyone imagines it at some point or another in their life.
Kane: If I have you on the call, I have to ask, Chris, what’s your favorite X-Files episode?
Carter: You know, I get asked this question, um, and, uh, I like to say that I love all the Darin Morgan episodes.
He’s one of the best comedy writers in the world, and I’m not saying that lightly. They are so idiosyncratic. He has got such a vision. And, uh, he actually wrote an episode of Millennium, which is still one of the best episodes of Millennium. He directed that one as well. Um, anyway, uh, the one that is closest to my heart is the black and white episode, Post Modern Prometheus.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Scientist: Who sent you here? Your father. My father is a simpleton farmer. He understands nothing of my scientific achievements.
Scully: What achievements are those?
Scientist: What makes you think you would understand them any better?
Scully: Well, I’m a scientist, for one.]
Carter: It was an episode I wrote with Frankenstein in mind. It was an episode I wrote using the science from our science advisor, Anne Simon, uh, with a drosophila fly.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Scientist: Drosophila was first born. Notice the elegant symmetry with which the pupa grows into a series of beautiful segments. What we have found, what I have found….]
Carter: Beyond the fact that it was in black and white, I got to explore it visually in a way we wouldn’t typically explore a, an X-File because it was in very, uh, big close-ups, and the actors are staring essentially right into the camera, just beside the camera. The camera was right in the actors’ faces through the shooting of it.
So it, for me, was another challenge in directing. This is going deep into the, uh, into the episode. I had a conversation with Cher. I said, “I’m gonna write the episode, a perfect episode for you.”
[CLIP: The X-Files: Cher: Yeah, I got a first class ticket. But I’m as blue as a girl can be …. ]
Carter: I wrote it and I sent it to her and she was ready to do it, and then something happened and she couldn’t do it.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Cher: Walking in Memphis, do I really feel the way I feel?]
Carter: In a way, it was better without her because we, she would’ve stolen the scene at the end, and now she, o- only her song stole the, uh, stole the scene.
[CLIP: The X-Files: Cher: Down in the Jungle Room. When I was walking in Memphis. ]
Carter: Uh, so it had all the elements for me of a good X-Files movie, but personal elements that made it very satisfying.
Kane: Well, now I’m waiting for a Cher episode of X-Files. I mean, how could we top that?
[CLIP: The X-Files: Cher: Walking in Memphis. I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale. Walking in Memphis. Do I really feel the way I feel?]
Kane: Thank you so much for your time today, Chris, and thank you for working on The X-Files. Like I said-
Carter: Thank you.
Kane: … I’m a huge personal fan, so I’m really glad to be able to talk to you today for Scientific American.
Carter: Thank you so much. That’s so nice of you to say. Thank you, and I appreciate your saying so. Thanks.
