By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Normally, we think of network notes as a form of creative interference, a way for some stuffy executives to mess with our favorite shows and diminish the showrunner’s creative vision. However, The X-Files is rather unique in television history for the number of notes from the network that ended up making the show infinitely better. For example, it was a note from Fox that led to fan-favorite episode “Tooms” introducing the character of Walter Skinner and having the Cigarette Smoking Man speak for the first time.
Walter Skinner And The Cigarette Smoking Man
Given how much they become part of the show’s narrative DNA, it’s almost impossible to imagine the X-Files without either Walter Skinner or the Cigarette Smoking Man. But while the CSM had lurked through the show’s first season, Skinner only appeared in “Tooms.” He became a recurring character starting in Season 2, and showrunner Chris Carter saw the studio note from Fox to return to the conspiracy storyline as “an opportunity to introduce the character of Walter Skinner.”
Fox wanted “Tooms” to be an episode that brought viewers’ attention back to the conspiracy storyline, and Carter complied by adding both Walter Skinner and the Cigarette Smoking Man to key scenes throughout the episode. In most of those scenes, Skinner talks to Mulder about the dangers of continued investigations into Eugene Tooms while CSM simply lurks in the background. At the end, Skinner asks the other man if he believes Scully’s report about Mulder’s final confrontation with Tooms (the one where the latter gets killed by a weaponized escalator), and CSM simply responds with “Of course I do.”
While “Tooms” was the first episode to feature Walter Skinner, it wasn’t the first episode to feature the Cigarette Smoking Man, who made his original appearance in The X-Files’ very first episode. However, “Tooms” was the first time we heard this reclusive character speak, and producers at the time joked that they didn’t even know that actor William B. Davis (whose character previously had to just stand around looking menacing) could talk. Once he read for his lines, though, they were quite pleased with what his gravelly voice brought to the show.
Incidentally, while nobody disputes that “Tooms” is the first episode in which Walter Skinner appears, some fans argue about whether or not this was the first time that the Cigarette Smoking Man spoke. That’s because CSM actor William Davis appears as a speaking CIA Agent in the earlier Season 1 episode “Young At Heart.” The fandom is generally split on whether this was CSM impersonating someone (something we know he has done before) or whether Davis, who was mostly a glorified extra in the first season, was simply playing a different part.
As X-Files fans know, it’s almost impossible to overstate how important Walter Skinner and the Cigarette Smoking Man would become to the rest of the series. But if they hadn’t gotten such a positive reaction from fans after “Tooms,” neither one of them might have become major players. That means we might just owe some of the show’s greatest future episodes and stories involving these characters to Fox, and all because the network gently reminded showrunner Chris Carter of the need to focus on his ongoing conspiracy storyline amid his growing love for monster-of-the-week stories.
