Paper Hearts - Production

Production

"Paper Hearts" was written specifically with Tom Noonan in mind for the role of Roche, and was amongst the first television work the actor had done. Writer Vince Gilligan came up with the concept for the episode when thinking about the series' longest running storyline, the abduction of Samantha Mulder. Gilligan came up with a story questioning whether Samantha had not been abducted by aliens, but was rather murdered by a child killer instead. He decided to help convince Fox Mulder of this through a series of prophetic dreams. The laser lights in Mulder's dreams were influenced by Gilligan's experience with laser holograms while he was a film student. The laser was supposed to be the color blue, but was changed to red in production to reduce costs. Wanting to include some kind of fetish for the killer, Gilligan settled on having Roche cut heart shaped fragments from his victim's clothing, thinking that having him mutilate his victims bodies would be going too far.

Guest actor Tom Noonan, who played the killer John Lee Roche, recalled filming the scene in which his character is introduced, playing basketball in prison. Noonan, a capable basketball player, was asked to "downplay" how well he could play; although he regretted not being able to play against David Duchovny, who had played basketball for Princeton University. Episode writer Vince Gilligan and director Rob Bowman assert that Duchovny's successful basketball shot in this scene was filmed in just one take, without special effects. While the episode was the eighth produced in the season, it was the tenth aired, having been delayed to free up production resources for the two part episodes "Tunguska" and "Terma". The episode's climactic scene was filmed in a "bus graveyard" in Surrey, British Columbia, a location which had been scouted months previously with the intention of eventually including it in an episode of the series; although filming at the location did not even last a full day despite the long wait to use it.