Alone (The X-Files) - Production - Writing and Directing

Writing and Directing

The episode was written by executive producer Frank Spotnitz, and marked his directorial debut. Because of his position as both the writer of the episode and the director, Spotnitz later noted that it was hard to achieve perfection when filming the episode. However, he did note that, as both the writer and director, he had more creative control than usual. Originally Spotnitz did not have plans to direct the episode but was encouraged to do so by David Duchovny; Duchovny reminded Spotnitz that it would be the last Monster-of-the-Week (stand alone) episode to feature his character, Fox Mulder. After production and shooting was finalized, the rough cut of "Alone" was nine minutes over time and in order to compensate for the time, various sections were cut during final editing. Robert Patrick was very pleased with Spotnitz's work, stating, "You're talking about some incredibly intelligent individuals, and they were very willing to let you, as an artist, discover what they were trying to do with the role. That's a wonderful environment to work in."

For the episode, Gillian Anderson's character Dana Scully was written off as a member of The X-Files office, since the next season would mark the creation of the "new" X-Files with Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish taking over for Duchovny and Anderson. Because of this change, Spotnitz called "Alone" the last of the "old" X-Files stand-alone episodes. As with many other episodes, Duchovny did not want his character to have all the answers, giving the reason that it looked too easy for him. Duchovny and Spotnitz later had a long discussion on how to remove the scenes or tweak them. Unfortunately, because the episode was the last stand-alone episode to feature the character of Fox Mulder, Duchovny did not care as much as "usual" about creating a "mystery" for the episode.