By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
It’s almost impossible to overstate the sex appeal that The X-Files had back in the ‘90s…in addition to the sizzling onscreen chemistry between attractive leads David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, these two appeared in several sexy photoshoots, including the infamous cover of Rolling Stone where they are snuggling in bed. Honestly, after the photo shoot for that issue served as a sexual awakening for an entire generation, we didn’t think this show even knew the meaning of “too hot.” As it turns out, though, one episode was nearly too hot for television: “Gender Bender,” a season 1 episode whose concept and story kept changing due to concerns that the network would reject it.
Gender Bender
For the writers of The X-Files, the first season was about testing boundaries, determining what worked best for the show’s story and its characters as well as what they could get past the network censors. In “Gender Bender,” writers Larry and Paul Barber began with a simple and provocative question: how to make the sex just as scary as creepy aliens or chainsmoking government creeps? Answering this question was basically a mandate from on high, with co-executive producer Glen Morgan later saying that the creative staff demanded “an episode with more of a sexy edge.”
As the X-Files producers and writers soon figured out, this was easier said than done, and Morgan admitted that “It was difficult to find a story that shows sex as scary.” The episode “Gender Bender” was the answer to that question…sort of. The writers came up with the idea of aliens who could shift gender, but the episode went through many revisions due to concerns about how the Fox network would react to certain story beats and general concerns about how the audience would feel about an episode questioning preexisting ideas of gender and sex, especially in the ‘90s.
The Missing Parts
Even all these years later, the X-Files writers and producers haven’t opened up completely about what they had to change for “Gender Bender.” One thing we do know, though, is that they originally developed a creepy moment for the episode’s teaser in which a character’s crotch began rotting away. This emphasized the whole sexual horror angle a little too much, and co-executive producer R.W. Goodwin later offered a simple explanation of why they cut this moment out entirely: “if I was watching that episode with my kid, I’d turn it off.”
While the gender-bending elements remained thanks to some shapeshifting baddies, this X-Files episode arguably lost its original focus on sex and sexuality. As Glen Morgan put it, the concept of the final broadcast episode was the answer to a very different kind of question: “what if there are people like the Amish who are from another planet?” That answer wasn’t very engaging and “Gender Bender” is rather (ahem) limp, but it did have the upside of introducing audiences to Nicholas Lea, who would later return as fan-favorite recurring villain Alex Krycek.
As X-Files fans, we can’t look you in the eye and say that “Gender Bender” is a good episode, but the story of its development is still fascinating. It’s interesting to know that the episode began with an intent to focus on scary sexuality but that concerns about network censors and audience pushback kept the show from descending into full body horror, David Cronenberg style. Without those constraints, it’s possible we would have gotten a bleeding-edge episode where a melting crotch is probably the least freaky thing in the entire episode.
