From X-Files 2002 Yearbook (June 2002)
Transcribed by Megan. Thanks Marie-Eve for the scans.

THE X-FILES MAGAZINE: Let's start off by looking at the past and a bit of X-Files minutiae. After all these years are there any stories that you just never got around to telling, for whatever reason? Budget? Political correctness? Etc.?

FRANK SPOTNITZ: I used to think in Season Three that we were going to run out of story ideas. I stopped worrying about that so long ago and I really felt like with the introduction of the new characters a whole new world of possibilities opened up to us. Over time I realized that this is the biggest subject matter you can ever hope to tackle. It really is endless. I don't think we would ever run out of story ideas. Having said that, what you do find in terms of specific genres when we're telling horror or suspense stories is that, increasingly over time, you start to bump into the same type of situations. So it becomes harder and harder to devise set pieces that are unlike anything you've done before. I think all of us thought we could've gone on as writers beyond this season and I think that's what our hope was in launching the Doggett/Reyes era of the show this season. It wasn't to be.

Where did ideas actually come from?

All over the place. A lot of it came from the newspapers, Scientific American, Discovery Magazine, documentaries. Some of it came from the things we were afraid of, the stuff that comes out of your nightmares when you're a kid.

What little signature thing on the show came most personally from you. In other words, who the heck thought of the bees?
The bees were all Chris. The first episode I worked on was "End Game," which was where Mulder thought his sister would come back. The most powerful component of the mythology for me all these years was the longing for a missing sibling and the desire to find someone who may or may not be dead. That was the thing that sustained my interest the most. It's not really a science fiction thing so much, but we turned it into a sci-fi thing by having clones and false reunions that were heartbreaking.

When did you actually decide Samantha's fate?

Honestly, I think we had a different ending in mind, but when the show went on beyond Season Five we changed our minds about the Samantha storyline and to us, the bold and unexpected move -- and ultimately the right move -- was what we did in Season Seven in "Closure". You learned that Samantha was in fact dead. She lived on through all these clones but the real, original Samantha had died many years ago. I know so many people hate that episode and other people love it. I'm one of those who love it. I was very touched by it. I thought there we so many people out there in the real world, forget the TV series, who've lost people. Children have disappeared. The truth is that 90-odd percent of those people never find those missing loved ones again. The more moving thing to me, the thing that is more like real life, was to do with we did -- which was to say he lost her. In a way, spiritually, he'll always have her with him. I was very touched by the resolution. As it turned out, we didn't know when we made the decision to have Mulder get the answers in the Samantha storyline that was in fact going to be David's last full season on the show. It turned out to have been a really good decision because it would've been very hard to resolve the storyline in Season Eight and Nine.

Moving to the present day, have you been pleased with the way Season Nine has come together?

I've been very challenged and satisfied by the work this year. I think there were a number of really exciting episodes where we got to explore new dimensions of the show and new dimensions of Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish's characters. Obvious examples of that would be "4-D", "John Doe" and "Audrey Pauley."

What worked best in each of those episodes?

I thought the mystery of "4-D" ended up being kind of a real sci-fi story. Even though The X-Files is considered a sci-fi series, it rarely becomes overt sci-fi. This was a pretty hardcore sci-fi idea -- that there are parallel universes. I thought we handled it in a very X-Files-ish fashion. It gave Annabeth an opportunity to shine as an actress, to really show a lot of sides of her character's personality -- tenderness, toughness, and vulnerability. And the episode was scary to boot. It was a really good scary story. I was very pleased with that. Beyond being scary it was a great showcase for Annabeth. I thought it was just a great ensemble piece because everyone got something interesting to do in that show. Robert becoming a quadriplegic was interesting, and Cary Elwes and Mitch Pileggi and Gillian Anderson all had interesting things to do in that episode. A lot of good elements came together in one hour.

"John Doe" was a complete departure from anything we had ever done before. It looked a lot like Traffic from a production design standpoint and from a cinematography standpoint it was very exciting. Also, in terms of the way we tell our stories, The X-Files aspect wasn't even defined for a very long time. The audience is left to scratch its head well through the first act and into the second act. In a very unusual move for us, we didn't even go back to anybody in Washington until Act Two to show the rest of the world what happened to John Doggett. You really were in Doggett's head for a long period of time. It felt like an old-fashioned western in many ways. Robert is a very honest, intense actor and you really got to see his strength in that show and how well he carried the hour. It was also the first directing assignment for our co-executive producer, Michelle MacLaren, and I thought she hit a home run. Just fantastic work. So for so many reasons, I was really pleased with the episode and even though she has a much smaller role than Robert, I thought Annabeth's scenes were exceptional.

"Audrey Pauley" again was a very high concept for us with the idea that there is this other realm that this woman who works in a hospital has somehow created inside her head -- this imaginary hospital. And these people's souls get caught before they go off to death. It was another one of those teasers where you thought, "How could it possibly be?" It was also a great acting opportunity for both Robert and Annabeth. You got to see how desperately Robert wanted to save Annabeth and you got to see Annabeth stuck in this great mystery. It really played the unfulfilled romantic tension between Doggett and Reyes in a way we hadn't done before.

For a while there we'd had the romantic scenario in which Follmer wanted Reyes who wanted Doggett who wanted Scully. Then the Doggett-wanting-Scully part of the equation seemed to disappear. What happened there?

I have my own psychoanalysis of Doggett's character and to me [the pining for Scully] is still there. I believe that John Doggett is incapable of giving himself happiness. I think he punishes himself for the death of his son, blames himself and buries himself in his work and can never do enough to redeem himself in his own mind for his son's death and not finding the killer. To me, it makes perfect psychological sense that he would go after the woman he could never have and that he would be attracted to something that's impossible -- that that's what he would allow himself to do with Scully. The woman he should be with and the woman who does understand him and supports him is Monica Reyes. The very fact that she is available to him -- and he knows she has feelings for him -- is what would keep him from ever responding.

Where are you at on the finale?

It is written and has been filming over a week. It films for more than a month. the last few years we went on each season finale not knowing whether it was the end of the show or not. In both Seasons Seven and Eight we didn't know and we had to write as if it might be the end even though it might turn out hat it would go on. This is the first time we've known that yes, indeed, we truly are at the end of the series. Knowing that has allowed us not to just write the finale with a certain degree of confidence, but all the episodes leading up to the finale. I think you'll see, starting with the Lone Gunmen episode, "Jump the Shark", and then going through "William", which David Duchovny directed, and "Release," which focuses on the mystery of Doggett's son's murder, and "Sunshine Days," which Vince Gilligan wrote, and then finally, the finale, you'll see there is definite sense of heading toward the end. The two-hour finale attempts to be as comprehensive in resolving many of the outstanding questions or uncertainties people may have about the series -- specifically the mythology. I think we provided a lot of these answers in that part, but unless you were taking notes for the past nine years, it's understandable if you may have forgotten or been confused by certain issues. For the first time in one place, you're going to see a pretty coherent explanation of everything the show has been about and, even more than that, a coherent explanation of everything the show has meant.

If all the characters were to wake up the day after the events of "The Truth," would there still be X-files to deal with?

Big things happen in the finale but The X-Files is certainly free to go on the movie franchise route after the finale's over.

The last day is fast approaching. What do you think it will be like for you to not have an outlet when you've suddenly got a story in your head that's begging to be told?

Hopefully I'll have some other outlet for it. I hope to be doing X-Files movies and right now I'm writing a movie for Dimension Films. Things just seem to work out for a reason, as if there is some unseen hand guiding you creatively. I'm sure I'll find some way to express whatever it is I want to say in the future. The most amazing thing about The X-Files has been that it's been huge hit, which is like being struck by lightning. To have a hit show that's been on all these years is a gift. It's also been an enormous stroke of luck to have not only talented, but agreeable, people to work with. And we had great resources. This has been a very well funded show and we've been able to do things production-wise that other TV producers just dream about. We've really been spoiled. It's a terribly privileged position to be in. The good thing is I'm aware of it and I haven't taken it for granted. I'm sure I will miss all of that.

Frank Spotnitz, thank you very much.