all things

"All things"

"all things" is the seventeenth episode of the seventh season of American science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written and directed by lead actress Gillian Anderson. The episode first aired in the United States and Canada on April 9, 2000 on the Fox Network, and subsequently aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1. "The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "all things" earned a Nielsen household rating of 7.5, being watched by 12.18 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed critical reception but was well received by fans.

The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Scully is led by coincidences to a married man with whom she had an affair during medical school, and a look at the life she did not choose, forcing her to make choices about her future.

"all things" marked the first time series star Gillian Anderson had written an episode of The X-Files. Originally, Anderson's draft was fifteen pages too long and did not feature a fourth act, but after working with series creator Chris Carter and executive producer Frank Spotnitz, the script was finalized. The episode also marked the directing debut for Anderson. The cast and crew helped Anderson adjust to directing and were happy with the finished product. Anderson's directing style was later described as "right on the money". Furthermore, the episode has been analyzed for its themes of pragmatism and feminist philosophy.

Plot

The opening scene shows FBI special agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) getting dressed in front of the mirror. As she is leaving the bedroom, we see her FBI partner Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) laying in his bed, half his body covered by his bedsheets, seemingly implying that their relationship may have become romantic.

After the opening sequence, a series of coincidences bring Scully into contact with a former professor with whom she had an affair during medical school. Scully has an existential crisis when she questions whether she made the right decision to leave him and medicine to pursue her career in the FBI. Mulder, who is in England investigating crop circles, contacts Scully and asks her to go to meet a contact of his to pick up some information. On her way to pick up the information, Scully nearly gets into a car accident because she is talking to Mulder on her cell phone. As she is pulling the car out into traffic, a woman appears in the crosswalk forcing Dana to apply the brakes to keep from hitting the woman. As she does this, a diesel truck then whizzes by at a high rate of speed. Had it not been for the woman in the crosswalk, Scully might have been killed.

When Scully arrives to the house of the woman that Mulder had asked her to meet she recognizes her as a woman that she had seen earlier that day in the hospital when she was visiting with her ex-lover. At first Scully is dismissive of the woman who seemingly knows that Scully is going through some sort of personal crisis and is trying to offer some guidance to her. A few strange coincidences later, however, Scully decides to return to visit the same woman to offer an apology for being so dismissive and to see what she has to say. The woman tells her about Eastern philosophies of Buddhism, the collective unconscious, and her own personal aura that might explain why she is experiencing these strange occurrences. As Scully leaves the woman's house she is walking through Chinatown and sees the same woman who had appeared in the crosswalk before, so she follows her. The woman goes into a small Buddhist temple and seemingly vanishes. Scully, who has followed the mysterious woman into the temple, has a vision while looking at the statue of the Buddha.

The next scene then shows Scully back at the hospital visiting her ex-lover and accompanied by the woman who she spoke with earlier about the Buddhist philosophies. The woman and another healer provide alternative treatment to Dana's ex and the man later fully recovers. He proclaims that he still wants a relationship with Dana, but she has now realized that she is no longer the same person she was ten years ago, and she leaves the room. As she is sitting outside on a bench on the hospital grounds she sees the mysterious woman from the crosswalk and Buddhist temple again and chases her down. When she catches the woman and the woman turns around, she sees it is actually Mulder.

The next scene shows Mulder and Scully sitting on the sofa together in his apartment talking about the events of the last few days. As Mulder begins to speak more existentially about what transpired with Scully and seemingly implying that fate has brought them together, he turns to her and sees that she has fallen asleep.

Production

Conception and writing

I was happy that it had an essence of what I was intending. […] It veered quite a bit from what my original intention for it was […] but the overall experience was a good one..

—Gillian Anderson, expressing her satisfaction with the episode

"all things" marked the first—and only—time Gillian Anderson directed and wrote an episode of The X-Files.

Gillian Anderson originally approached series creator Chris Carter about writing and directing an episode of the series during the sixth season. At the same time, Anderson was getting offers from various networks to direct shows, despite having never directed an episode of television before. She decided to "learn the ropes" with The X-Files and then branch out from there.

The inspiration for a majority of the episode came from Anderson herself. Long a believer in the power of spiritual healing and Buddhism, Anderson crafted a script that would see Scully pursuing a "deeply personal X-File, one which in [she] is taken down a spiritual path when logic fails her". Anderson had only a rough outline of the script until one day she wrote a majority of the story in one sitting. She explained, "A certain concept began to form, [and] I just wrote the entire outline for 'all things' right then and there. It all just kind of came together on the page". The next day, Anderson pitched the script to Carter, who approved of the "personal and quiet" characteristics of the story.

The first draft of the script was fifteen pages too long and did not feature a fourth act. Anderson approached Carter and executive producer Frank Spotnitz for assistance. Carter and Spotnitz worked closely with Anderson, although the former two acknowledge that the majority of the work "was all Gillian". Despite her satisfaction with the final cut, Anderson regrets a handful of the "necessary" script cuts and edits that were made, most notably, the painting of Scully as "the other woman". Originally, Anderson did not want it to be implied that Scully and Waterston had had an affair. In the original script, they came close to having an affair, but Scully ended the relationship when she discovered he was married to another woman. She explained that, "what had actually transpired [...] was that there had been an attraction and that they were starting to spend some time together. [...] It started getting heavier and Waterston began talking about divorce. [...] Scully didn't want that to happen because she didn't want to be a homewrecker". The final conversation scene between Scully and Daniel Waterson was reduced in length by 10 minutes. Anderson had to cut out the scenes during the editing process due to the maximum length of 42 minutes.

When Anderson first wrote the episode, she did not try to hint at the fact that Dana Scully and Fox Mulder may have spent the night together. But Executive Producer Frank Spotnitz and the production crew felt it was natural hinting that Scully and Mulder's relationship had evolved into a romantic one. The crop circle idea was included because Anderson wanted "whatever Mulder was involved in that took him away from me, away from Washington, to somehow tie into what it was that I was going through—the journey that I was going through". She and the production crew started researching crop circles which had to deal with the "heart-chakra". Spotnitz was heavily involved during the researching process during this episode's development.

Directing

The episode, being directed by series actress Gillian Anderson, marked the first time a woman had directed an episode for the show. At the original meeting that Anderson pitched her idea for "all things", she iterated the fact that she wished to direct the episode too. While Carter accepted the script, he wished to take the "risky journey [of directing] one step at a time". He originally told Anderson to write the entire script for "all things", and then he would determine whether or not she would direct the episode. After the script was accepted, Anderson was approved as the director.

Being new at directing, Anderson worked with director Kim Manners for a majority of the episode. She noted that, "if I had any questions, I would go to Kim". Manners helped Anderson by giving her directing homework: he told her to make a shot list of every scene in her script. Anderson's directing helped to energize The X-Files production. The cast and crew "pushed extra hard" to make sure that everything was in order for the series star's directorial debut. Production designer Corey Kaplan made that the episode featured a Buddhist temple at Anderson's request and casting director Rick Millikan helped Anderson pick actors and actresses for her episode. Millikan later noted that, "I loved working with Gillian. It was fun for me to watch her go through the casting process because it was all new to her".

On set, Anderson's directing style was described as "right on the money". Marc Shapiro, in his book all things: The Official Guide to The X-Files, Volume 6, noted that "Anderson wielded a deft hand in her directorial debut, prodding the actors to her will, making decisions on the fly, and handling the complex special effects sequences". Fans of the show later sent in calls and letters to express that they were impressed with Anderson's directing abilities.

Music and effects

"all things" featured the use of the song "The Sky is Broken" from electronica musician Moby's 1999 album Play.

Once, when driving home after work, Gillian Anderson was listening to "The Sky is Broken", a song from Moby's 1999 album Play, and immediately wanted to include it in her script. She noted, "I was driving home one night after work and listening to ["The Sky is Broken" by Moby] and this song started playing and it was [...] important that I use it and I was determined that we were going to use this track. And the more I actually listened to the words and the dialogue the more it fit with my idea that was unfolding for the script." She also felt that the "words" and dialogues fit with her idea of the script. The first shot after the opening credits, which involved the dripping water, was something Anderson wanted to include to create a "continuation of sound, rhythmic sound". She added that it was important for the musical part of the show.

Anderson was heavily involved working with composer Mark Snow in the post-production process of the show. After filming the episode, she sent Snow several CDs and asked him to "come up with something that had certain flavors to it". The music they worked on together for this episode eventually became "Scully's Theme", which was not broadcast until the episode "Within". According to Snow, "the idea of using a solo female voice, where there was certainly no lyrics, just incantations" was meant to represent Scully's alienation and loneliness. Originally, the song featured the lyrics "we are near, we are near", but Carter did not want the song to feature any words and asked Snow to change it into a more ambiguous "oscillating sound".

The meditation scene required various clips from pervious episodes to appear by in a flash back. Originally, Paul Rabwin and the special effects crew cut the various scenes and place them in bubbles. According to Rabwin, "we really didn't know, it was all just experimentation." Eventually, the crew decided that the bubbles looked too "hokey" so they adopted a more standard slit-scan. In order to create the image of Scully visualizing Waterston's heart condition, Nicolas Surovy had to lie naked onto of a platform surrounded by a blue screen. A spherical ball was the matched via motion control as a marker for a prosthetic beating heart that was crafted and filmed separately. The two shots were then combined together into one scene.

Themes

In the chapter "Scully as a Pragmatist Feminist" of the book The Philosophy of The X-Files, Erin McKenna argues that "all things" represents an "important shift" in Scully's approach to science, knowledge acquisition, and the pursuit of the truth. She reasons that events the of the episode open her mind to news ways of knowing, specifically citing, "auras, chakras, visions, […] and the importance of coincidence".

McKenna argues that Scully's shift in perspective deliberately mirrored the shift in American pragmatism, a view that believes reality is ever-changing. In this manner, pragmatists believe "the truth is out there" much like Mulder. In "all things", Scully begins to embrace pragmatism, although she clings onto her skeptic roots. Mixing the two, Scully begins to represent "the pragmatist approach to knowledge and the truth". Scully soon evolves from a mere skeptic who demands proof to prove a truth, to an empiricist who wants proof but is open to other perspectives.

In addition, McKenna reasons that "all things" is heavily influence by feminist philosophy. According to McKenna, feminism rejects dualistic ways of thinking. Feminist philosophy, instead, calls for a pluralistic way of thinking, noting that there is not one consistent set of truths about the world, but rather many. McKenna further deduces that the opening scene, in which Mulder and Scully are implied to have slept together, shows the merging of Scully's pragmatism with feminist philosophy.

Broadcast and reception

"all things" first aired in the United States on April 9, 2000. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 7.5, with a 11 share, meaning that roughly 7.5 percent of all television-equipped households, and 11 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 12.18 million viewers. The episode aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Sky1 on July 9, 2000 and received 0.58 million viewers and was the seventh most watched episode that week.

The episode received mixed reviews from critics but received positive reviews from fans. Kevin Silber of Space.com gave the episode a negative review. He was critical of the script and characterization and said "nothing much seems to happen, and what does occur is substantially driven by coincidence and arbitrariness". He did not like the character of Colleen and disapproved of Scully's philosophical "reverie", calling it "facile, and hard to reconcile with the determined rationalism she's displayed over the years in the face of events no less strange than those that occur here". Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode one star out of five, calling the premise and characters "dull". The two criticized Anderson for looking at the "minutiae of life too intensely", which resulted in many of the actors and actresses coming off as "ciphers". Furthermore, Shearman and Pearson were critical of Anderson's directing style, calling it "pretentious" and noting that the plot's significance was drowned out by needless "flourishes". Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a negative review and awarded it one star out of four. She called Anderson's directing "heavy-handed" and bemoaned the story line because, according to there, it "plays havoc with Scully's motivations and character as established in the past seven years".

Not all reviews were negative, however. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations, gave the episode a largely positive review and called it "wonderful". He praised Anderson's tenacity to present a darker moment from Scully's past—her affair with a married man—and favorably compared the episode to "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" in terms of character development. Rich Rosell from DigitallyObsessed.com awarded the episode 4 out of 5 stars and wrote that the episode was "not as much as X-File as it is an introspective character study [but] the leisurely pacing, along with Scully's Buddhist temple revelation, are worth the trip". While the episode received mixed review from critics, fans of the show reacted very positively to "all things". The X-Files staff later received calls and letters explaining that viewers, "loved the vulnerability and quiet determination that Scully revealed in the unusual episode".

Footnotes

References

• McKenna, Erin (2007). "Scully as a Pragmatist Feminist". In Kowalski, Dean A (ed.). The Philosophy of The X-files. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813124549.
• Kessenich, Tom (2002). Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files. Trafford Publishing. ISBN 1553698126.
• Shapiro, Marc (2000). All Things: The Official Guide to the X-Files Volume 6. Harper Prism. ISBN 0061076112.
• Shearman, Robert; Pearson, Lars (2009). Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen. Mad Norwegian Press. ISBN 097594469X.

External links

• "all things" on The X-Files, an external wiki
• "all things" at IMDb
• "all things" at TV.com