Biogenesis (The X-Files) - Production

Production

The episode started a new mythology for the series questioning the origin of human life. Series creator Chris Carter claimed to be interested in the subject for a while, citing the possibility of extraterrestrial involvement in great extinctions that had happened millions of years ago. Carter claimed that early in the show he had met with a man who was one of the people responsible for leading the project of mapping the human genome and that he was interested enough in the subject to tie it into the show's alien mythology. The scientific basis for extraterrestrials pursued the writers to help Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully's (Gillian Anderson) beliefs come together, which was furthered in the later seasons of the show. Frank Spotnitz claimed that the ideas used in this episode had been discussed between him and Carter for a few years, and had become easier to bring up after clearing away elements of the conspiracy in the episodes "Two Fathers" and "One Son". Carter developed the script in Vancouver, Canada while working on the pilot for his series Harsh Realm, providing pages to the production crew via the fax machine.

Professor Solomon Merkmallen was portrayed by Michael Chinyamurinidi, who had moved to the U.S. ten years earlier and had previously tried out for the episode "Teliko" in season four. A number of Los Angeles, California based African immigrants were used for the fishermen on the African coast. Duchovny expressed anxiety during filming due to the imminent birth of his first child, who was born two days after filming concluded.

The University scenes were shot at UCLA. The African coastline was filmed at Leo Carillo State Beach. Conditions meant that the crew only had approximately 45 minutes per day for filming there. The spacecraft was created digitally and the effect ended up costing approximately $150,000. The extraterrestrial writing on the artifacts was based on the Kecksburg Incident, where an extraterrestrial object appeared in a small town in December 1965. Hosteen Etsity, who previously assisted with the episode "The Blessing Way" oversaw the Navajo symbols and religious ceremonies in the episode.

A large portion of the episode was based on the ancient astronaut theory, which proposes that intelligent extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth in antiquity or prehistory and made contact with humans. Frank Spotnitz later remarked that he was astounded at how little negative fan mail the show received, despite the fact that the "Biogenesis"/"The Sixth Extinction"/"Amor Fati" story arc heavily hinted that aliens were the originators of the notion of God and religion. He credited the manner in which the show handled this delicate subject, saying, "Often in the past, we've done stuff where I was sure we would get angry letters. But we rarely do. And the reason is because of the way we handle things. In 'Amor Fati' we treated the religious side with respect." The ancient astronaut themes were later revisited in the two season nine episodes "Provenance" and "Providence."