Carter & The X-Files - Background

Chris Carter was born in Bellflower, Southern California in 1957. He
graduated from Cal State Long Beach University with a degree in journalism
and was stuck with the tough choice of being a writer or a beach bum. In the
end, he decided to split the difference by going to work for Surfing
magazine. He worked there for thirteen years, ending up as senior editor by
the age of twenty-eight.
He eventually settled down and, in 1983, married Dori Pierson. It was
Dori who encouraged him to give up surfing and take up screenwriting. His
first efforts attracted the attention of then Disney executive Jeffrey
Katzenburg, who signed him up. Carter went on to write the Disney TV movies
B.R.A.T. Patrol and Meets The Munceys.
Whilst at Disney, he met the then-president of NBC, Brandon Tartikoff,
who brought him to the network. He wrote and produced a number of pilots, a
detective show called Cameo By Night and a modern-day Brady Bunch sit-com
called A Brand New Life, and then producing the musical comedy
series Rags to Riches.
During this time, Carter wrote and produced a pilot The Nanny, a pilot
episode for The Disney Channel before drawing the attention of Stephen J.
Cannell Productions president Peter Roth. Roth liked a script of Carter's
called Cool Culture, based on his times times writing for Surfing magazine.
Although the script was never used, Roth wanted to use Carter for the CBS
series entitled Palace Guard.
Shortly after, Roth moved over to the Fox Network as head of TV
Production. He hired several producers, including Carter, to develope new
programmes. Around this time, Carter hatched the idea for a TV show that
would utilise parts of two favourite shows from his childhood, The Night
Stalker and The Twilight Zone. That show would become The X-Files.

The idea for the show was helped along by the influence of an old friend
of Carter's, Dr. John Mack at Harvard University who was heavily into
UFOlogy.
Instead of merely concentrating on the paranormal, though, Carter invented
the character of Scully, the sceptic, to give a balance between the the
unexplainable and the explainable.
The pilot episode wasdelivered to Fox around Christmas '92, and, although
Carter was given the go ahead to begin production, the Fox executves had
little faith in the show, weary of the fact that shows about the paranormal
and UFO's have a bad record on TV, believing that another show, Adventures
of Brisco County Jr. would be there Autumn hit and that The X-Files would
last around half a series.
The series went ahead, with the pilot being screened on September 10,
1993, with David Sackheim, an Emmy winner on NYPD Blue, as the producer and
F/X director Robert Mandell handling the directorial work.
When the '93/'94 season began, it quickly became obvious that the viewing
public had little interest in Brisco and that the ratings for The X-Files
were very promising, beginning the X-Files phenominom.

Carter's next foray into the Sci/Fi would be Millennium, a series which
would also feature the directing and producing talent of regular X-Files
director and Co-Producer, David Nutter, the visual effects abilities of
another X-Files man, Matt Beck, and the song writing talents of Mark Snow.
The new show also has a slogan, more chilling than The X-Files's "The
Truth Is Out There', or "Trust No One', namely the blunt 'Who Cares'.

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