8x21 Existence, Существование Опции

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Сценарий: Крис Картер
Режиссер: Ким Маннерс
Первый показ в США: 20 мая 2001

Комментарий Кима Маннерса о последней сцене (надо же, даже сняли эту сцену последней):

"Это было одновременно и горько, и сладко. Но мы сделали все так, чтобы Малдер захотел вернуться в конце 9-го сезона. Это была последняя совместная сцена Дэвида и Джиллиан вместе. И мы решили, что они должны слиться в поцелуе. Это был долгий поцелуй, долгий совместный кадр Дэвида и Джилл. И когда все уже было отснято, и мы все уже вышли с камерами из той комнаты, Дэвид и Джиллиан остались вместе стоять в той комнате одни и держали друг друга в объятиях добрых 5 минут... Они не разговаривали, они не двигались, они просто обнимали друг друга, и по их лицам катились слезы. Это был очень трогательный момент".

Duchovny also noted that he had very little warning that the eighth season would end with a kiss between Mulder and Scully. "They have this idea that stuff might get stolen and put on the Internet," he said. "It's frustrating to me because I'm an actor and I'd like to have the scene more than two hours before I play it. I think the scene was written that Scully gave Mulder a kiss on the forehead, but I didn't trust my own feelings about it at that point. I had so many personal feelings -- it was eight years of my life -- and I didn't know what would be an appropriate ending. Kim Manners and I were discussing it, and he said, 'We've done that a hundred times, the whole hand-holding and kiss on the forehead. We should do a real kiss.' And I thought, 'Yeah that feels right. At least it's something different at the end.'"

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-- The episode title of both parts of this two-parter ("Essence" and "Existence") come from Mulder's voiceover in the teaser: "We call it the miracle of life: Conception. A union of perfect opposites. Essence transforming into existence, an act without which mankind would not exist and humanity cease to exist."

-- "Existence" also received a viewer warning: "Due to some violent content, parental discretion is advised."

-- "I love dripping water," director Kim Manners noted, referring to "Existence's" opening shot. "I use dripping water a lot in my episodes. It sets a great tone and a great rhythm."

-- The stainless steel vertebrae fished from Billy Miles' remains was the only part of the vertebrae shown in the teaser that was real. The piece was placed on the exam table in a precise location so that a drill motor could be used from underneath the table to spin the piece around. Visual effects supervisor John Wash used the small piece of vertebrae as a model to "paint" the rest of the replicating vertebrae, and used the initial placement as a "mark" to create the rest of the vertebrae around that first piece through computer generated images.

-- The Season 9 DVDs contain a deleted scene that followed the spinning vertebrae shown in the teaser. In the scene, the Pathologist's Assistant returns to the morgue and finds Billy Miles' remains spilled on the floor. As the Assistant bent down to investigate, the viewer saw the shadow of the newly regenerated Miles leaving the morgue. The scene was cut for time.

-- During his DVD commentary for "Existence," director Kim Manners revealed that he directed the sequence added to the Season 8 opening titles of Mulder falling away from the camera, suggesting Mulder's absence in an abstract way. "It's called a 'descender,'" Manners explained. "The actor is attached to a cable, dropped backward 36 feet, and the cable stops him just before he hits the floor." Manners mentioned that David Duchovny did the stunt himself and "really enjoyed doing it."

-- Speaking of the opening titles, Season 8 differed from all other seasons of The X-Files in one unique way: It had absolutely no tag line changes throughout the entire season. Every other season had at least one. Which season had the most? It was a tie -- Season 4 and Season 9 both had four.

-- In the original script, Scully and Reyes were to drive to a deserted farmhouse in which all the action of Scully giving birth would take place. But Kim Manners asked for the location to be changed in order to spread the scenes out and add more drama. "We ultimately shot those scenes in an old Western town at Paramount Ranch," Manners said. "We changed the script to explain that it was a ghost town because the healing waters associated with the town had dried up." The change allowed Manners to spread out the action and make Scully's impending delivery "much scarier."

-- The building Reyes selected in which to set up the Water from the Rock Maternity Ward had "Water from the Rock: Exodus 7:16" painted on the window. Exodus 7:16 reads: "And thou shalt say unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath sent me unto thee saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness: and behold, hitherto thou wouldest not hear."

-- Manners applauded the set decorators for the excellent job they did dressing the sets to make the buildings and rooms appear as if they had been deserted for quite some time, including the "miles of cobwebs that were blown in." "Supposedly Reyes cleaned all that up to make a nice place for Scully to give birth," Manners joked. "I told Annabeth [Gish] that before joining the FBI, Reyes must have worked for the Molly Maids."

-- Kim Manners said that while he was enjoying the "new" mythology, and "bad-guy" characters like Knowle Rohrer, he really missed working with the "syndicate" and the actors who played its members. "John Neville, Bill Davis, Don Williams. I really miss them all," he said. "I loved shooting those scenes. Rob [Bowman] set the tone for the way we did that. A big face in the foreground and shady faces in the background. When the show moved from Vancouver, the syndicate took on a different look and it was never the same after that."

-- Manners noted that the Biblical references in the episode (such as the bright star in the sky, "swaddling" for the baby, the alien replicants serving as the "shepherds" witnessing the baby's birth, and the three Lone Gunmen bearing gifts) were quite intentional.

-- The Season 8 DVDs contain another deleted scene from the episode. It followed the scene between Doggett and Rohrer (in which Rohrer tried to find out where Scully had gone) and showed Mulder and Krycek discussing the Supersoldiers with Mulder questioning how Krycek knew so much about them. Frank Spotnitz noted the scene added no new information and was cut strictly for time constraints. "As I recall, there were a lot of little trims for this episode," Spotnitz said. "It ran long and every second counted."

-- A steel arm was used in the scene where Billy Miles punched his hand through the elevator door, hitting Skinner. "The arm was very heavy and the scene was actually quite dangerous to shoot," Manners said. "We needed to use Mitch [Pileggi] instead of a stuntman to make it look real, but if Mitch had moved even an inch or two as the arm came through the door, he could have been badly hurt or killed."

-- The elevator scene sent Skinner to the hospital, and Kim Manners noted that it was hard to keep a straight face on the set the day the hospital scene, with Mulder at Skinner's bedside, was shot. "There was quite a bit of joking about the 'feminine napkin' that Skinner was wearing on his forehead," Manners said.

-- Looking at the stitches Mulder sported in this episode and in "Essence" made Kim Manners wonder how Mulder and Scully would look if they were shown with all the scars they had accumulated over nine years from their various wounds and injuries. "They'd look like the Elephant Man!" he laughed. Luckily, he added, "They sure heal good, don't they?"

-- The infamous "whale song" scene between Reyes and Scully was of course a Chris Carter creation. "A friend had given me this Paul Winter album when I was a kid," said Carter, "and it had whale sounds incorporated into the music. It was always a sort of interesting thing and it was probably kooky. But I just thought it was much like Reyes' character to appreciate that."

-- "Annabeth really suffered a lot of wrath for doing that whale song scene," Kim Manners recalled. "At the time, I told her if the acting thing didn't work out, she could become a marine biologist. But she was a trooper. They gave her a tape of whale songs, and even though it was embarrassing for her standing in front of the whole crew making a fool of herself, she did it. That's really what acting is all about."

-- Gish did not have much experience working with firearms, so before filming "Existence" she was sent off to the firing range with a shooting expert to work on her form. "She had a habit of closing her eyes when she was shooting blanks," Manners said. "So we got her some special gun training where she worked with live ammunition at the shooting range. After that, she did a great job."

-- The scene where Reyes' faced down the Game Warden's truck was accomplished using a crane shot, with the crane swooping down, the truck (attached to a cable) driving straight toward the camera, and the stuntwoman filling in for Annabeth Gish stepping out of the way at the last second. "The cable attached to the truck only lets the truck go so far," said Manners. "But the truck kept getting closer and closer and it looked like it wasn't going to stop. It did -- but only about six inches from the camera lens. If we had hit that camera, it would have cost us about $60,000."

-- The scenes in the underground parking garage were shot in Century City, across the street from the Fox studio.

-- "Robert [Patrick] and I had a good time working together," David Duchovny noted. "He's a really nice guy and a good actor. It was different because the center of the show had been a male-female relationship, Mulder and Scully, for so many years. And in some of my scenes with Robert, especially the ones in 'Vienen,' there was a different kind of energy -- a buddy energy. It made me regret that we hadn't done it earlier. Maybe we should have brought Skinner [Mitch Pileggi] into the mix a little more fully so you could have had Mulder and Skinner or Mulder and Doggett going off and doing the buddy thing, then coming back and have Mulder and Scully or Scully and Doggett or Scully and Skinner. It would have made for a less claustrophobic feel for the actors. Then again, you don't fix it if it's working."

-- "For some reason, we shot the scene where Reyes and the Game Warden dragged Billy Miles' body around over and over and over again," recalled Manners with a laugh. "I don't remember why, but I remember that the girls were really getting tired." On his DVD commentary, Manners shared the directing trick that when a camera shot comes from "underneath" a body laying on the ground (to focus on a person kneeling beside it), the body is actually on an elevated platform a few inches off the ground and the camera shoots over the body's shoulder. "In that shot, when someone is kneeling next to the body," said Manners, "you can't tell that the body is not on the ground on the same level as the person next to it. I don't know why, you just can't."