Why The X-Files Creator Hated His Most Ambitious Early Episode

To understand why The X-Files showrunner hated “Space” so much, you need to know a bit more about the episode itself. This was a story where Mulder and Scully were investigating who was delaying the launch of NASA shuttles.

In the show’s typical spooky fashion, though, it soon becomes clear that something more is going on, and all of this may be connected to one astronaut’s encounter long ago with a malevolent force in outer space.

With the plot out of the way, just what did Chris Carter dislike so much about this episode? For one thing, he resented how the episode’s tight budget meant that his vision “wasn’t realized in the proper way.”

He acknowledged that it was the “least successful” show, though he remains convinced that what he wrote “wasn’t a bad story,” just one held back by the bad effects.

Speaking of which, the X-Files showrunner later said of “Space” that “I’m still not very happy with some of the special effects in it.” In comparing the episode to the rest of the first season, Carter claimed that it “was the first time I thought the effects didn’t live up to my expectation.”

A major part of the issue is that he and the effects guru Mat Beck were under major time constraints that “didn’t allow us to do what either of us would have liked to.”

Some of this X-Files’ episode’s effects were pretty sketchy, including a creepy image inspired by the so-called “face on Mars.” However, the bigger issue for this particular adventure may have been the effects the show couldn’t include.

For example, the show’s tight budget kept Carter from actually portraying the jeopardized astronauts in space, and all of the cosmic action that we did get to see onscreen came from recycled NASA footage.

Of course, one irony about the X-Files creator’s “Space” complaints is that he knew the budget would be a major issue going into the episode. At one point, he recalled being excited at having access to “pretty cheap” NASA footage and thought using it for this episode would help compensate for the fact that “we’ve been spending too much money.”

He thought that “Space” would be an opportunity to prove to the network that “not only am I producing a good show but I can find ways to produce it for less.”

While Carter didn’t directly comment on the matter, one can assume that he learned his lesson from the attempt at producing such a cheap episode. This X-Files episode was certainly made on the cheap, but nobody who saw “Space” would think that it was part of “a good show.”

Fortunately, future episodes and seasons seemed to find the sweet spot between keeping the costs low and keeping the quality high.

X-Files fans generally agree with Carter’s assessment that “Space” was the worst episode of the first season, if not the entire series. However, it’s worth remembering that the showrunner had very ambitious plans for this adventure, and that ambition should be lauded even when the episode is a failure.

After all, few shows in television history have taken bigger swings than The X-Files, and as baseball superfan Mulder might point out, it’s only by risking striking out that a show can consistently hit home runs.