From Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Usually we consider network notes as a form of creative interference, a way for stuffy managers to deal with our favorite shows and to reduce the creative vision of the showrunner. However, The X files is quite unique in television history for the number of notes from the network that improve the show infinitely. For example, it was a note from FOX that led to the fan favorite episode “Tooms” introduced Walter Skinner’s character and let the cigarette smoker speak for the first time.
Walter Skinner and the cigarette smoker
Given the fact of how much you become part of the narrative DNA of the show, it is almost impossible to imagine this X files Without Walter Skinner or the cigarette smoker. But while the CSM was running through the first season of the show, Skinner only appeared in “Tooms”. He became a recurring character that started in season 2 and showrunner Chris Carter I saw Fox’s studio grade to return to the conspiracy as an “opportunity to introduce the character of Walter Skinner”.
Fox wanted “tooms” to be an episode that was due to the attention of the audience to the conspiracy, and Carter showed that he added both Walter Skinner and the Cigarette Smoking Man throughtail scenes throughout the episode. In most of these scenes, Skinner talks to Mulder about the dangers of continued investigations on Eugene tooms, while CSM simply lurks in the background. In the end, Skinner asks the other man whether he believes that Scully’s report on Mulder’s final confrontation with tooms (in which the latter is killed by a weapon roic staircase), and CSM simply reacts with “Of course I do”.
While “Tooms” was the first episode in which Walter Skinner was seen, it was not the first episode in which the cigarette smoker was present, which was subsequently presented by his original appearance The X files‘First of all. “Tooms”, however, was the first time that we heard this withdrawn character speaking, and those at the time joked the producers that they didn’t even know that the actor William B. Davis (whose character had to look so threatening before) could speak. As soon as he had read for his lines, they were very satisfied with what his gravel voice brought to the show.
While nobody denies that “tooms” is the first episode in which Walter Skinner appears, some fans argue about whether this was the first time that the cigarette smoker spoke. This is because the CSM actor William Davis appears in the former episode of the first season “Young at Heart” as a speaking CIA agent. The fandom is generally divided whether it was CSM who spent someone (something we know about before) or whether Davis, who was largely a glorified extra in the first season, simply played a different role.
As X files Fans know that it is almost impossible to exaggerate how important Walter Skinner and the cigarette smoker would become for the rest of the series. But if they hadn’t received such a positive reaction from fans after “tooms”, none of them could have become the main players. This means that we have some of the greatest future episodes and stories of the show that deal with these characters with these characters, and everything because the network gently reminded the showrunner Chris Carter to concentrate on its ongoing conspiracy, in the middle of his growing love for Monster-of-Week stories.
