Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
By Chris Snellgrove
| Announce
We usually think of network notes as a form of creative intervention, a way for some executives to mess up with our favorite shows and reduce the creative vision of the Showrunner. However, The X-Files Quite unique in television history for the number of notes from the network that ended to make the show infinitely better. For example, a note from Fox which led to the “Tooms” fan favorite episode presenting the character of Walter Skinner and getting the cigarette smoking man to talk for the first time.
Walter Skinner and Smoking Man Cigarettes
Given how much they become part of the show’s narrative DNA, it is almost impossible to imagine the X-Files Without either Walter Skinner than the cigarette smoking man. But while the CSM lurked through the first season of the show, Skinner only appeared in “Tooms”. Became a circular character starting in season 2, and Showrunner Chris Carter He saw the studio note from Fox to return to a conspiracy story line as “an opportunity to introduce Walter Skinner’s character.”
Fox wanted “Tooms” to be a chapter that brought viewers’ attention back to a conspiracy story line, and Carter complied by adding Walter Skinner and the cigarette smoking man to key scenes throughout the chapter. In most of those scenes, Skinner talks to Mulder about the dangers of ongoing investigations into Tooms Eugene while CSM lurks in the background alone. At the end, Skinner asks the other man if he believes Scully’s report about Mulder’s final conflict with Tooms (the one where the latter is killed by armed mobile steps), and CSM simply responds with “of course I am.”
Although “Tooms” was the first episode to include Walter Skinner, it was not the first episode to include the cigarette smoking man, which made his original appearance in The X-Files‘Very episode first. However, “Tooms” was the first time we heard this restorative character speaking, and producers found at the time that they didn’t even know that actor William B. Davis (whose character had previously had to stand around could look threatening). Once he read about his lines, however, they were quite proud of what his gravel voice brought to the show.
By the way, although no one argues that “Tooms” is the first episode where Walter Skinner appears, some fans argue whether this was the first time the man smoked cigarettes spoke. That’s because CSM actor William Davis appears as an agent CIA to speak in the earlier season 1 episode of “Young at Heart.” Generally, the shared bandom whether this CSM was imitating someone (something we know it was done before) or whether Davis, which was extra in the first season mostly, played just a different role.
As X-Files Fans know, it is almost impossible to overstate how important Walter Skinner and the cigarette smoking man would come to the rest of the series. But if they had not received such a positive response from fans after “Tooms,” none of them could have become big players. That means that only some of the show’s biggest chapters and stories in the future include these characters to Fox, all because the network has reminded shower Chris Carter lightly from the need to focus on his ongoing conspiracy story line in the midst of his growing love of monster stories of the week.
