#one of CC's shows wasn't picked up partly because he didn't want to do a show bible

[baronessblixen]

Went down the En Ami rabbit hole a bit, and it seems WBD was trying to achieve a few things:

S7 was considered to be the last season right from the first ep, so a lot of threads were wrapped up and actors/directors encouraged to put whatever they wanted out there (hence All Things and Hollywood A.D., etc.) WBD wanted to do a script on his character (having not liked how CSM was protrayed in Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man) showing his menace and his twisted yearning.

En Ami was supposed to be CSM's attempt to seduce Scully with science and FAIL, even making himself ridiculous to "humanize" himself to her. I wonder what the original draft was (which included water skiing, a callback to his mild threat? to Tena in Talitha Cumi about their past) and how much it was tampered with.

WBD is very much on the side of "CSM is a repulsive baddie", going to cons faux-pretending to take his side so fans could say how awful he is, then follow it up with (loosely quoted), "Yes, but HE doesn't think so."

All in all, not a great episode-- but knowing the track record of other ideas the actors (namely David Duchovny) gave the writers only to have them hacked up and leaving said actors (namely DD) frustrated enough to finally direct their own episodes makes a lot of sense.

Interesting! Thank you. I think parts of the original script were going around once? I feel like I read some of it - and didn't really care for the episode then either. I just watched Hollywood A.D. last night and it makes sense to make such a silly episode when you think the show is going to be over soon. Though I feel by then they must have known it wasn't over.

I don't know how it is on long-lasting shows and whether actors are generally interested in writing/directing. I feel it happens quite a bit. At least the directing. DD must have been frustrated a lot cause he pitched in long before he wrote a whole episode. And can anyone blame him?