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Season One Fired Showrunner?

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In the 2018 “Millennium after the Millennium” documentary, Frank Spotnitz makes reference to Chris Carter early in Season One, letting go of individuals that he had intended to run the series. It seems the writing and production staff seemed relatively consistent over the first season with the exception of Morgan and Wong leaving halfway through as they did with The X-Files Season 4 (which I believe was the expectation from the start), so I was surprised to learn this and am curious who this individual or individual(s) was/were. As inconceivable as it is to me that Chris and Frank could serve as showrunners of two series at once, I never realized there was an intent from the start to let someone else guide the show. Perhaps I misunderstood Frank’s comment, but does anyone know more about this? Obviously Michael Duggan didn’t work out in Season 3, but I’m fairly certain that is not what Frank was referring to.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Elders (Admins)

Hello there PeterWatts,

Firstly welcome and secondly apologies for the issue with your posts needing moderation. I've tracked it down to inadvertently a anti-spam word filter that was set to loose instead of strict mode, which meant your posts were needing approval before they appear. Apologies sincerely for this again and the delay in resolving.

Secondly you raise a good an interesting question. It's not something I know much about and I haven't seen the documentary personally, but in relation to Michael Duggan, I recall we did a fascinating interview with Patrick Harbinson and our much loved team member Ethsnafu some years ago, in which he mentioned Michael Duggan, in that he intended himself to be in a temporary transition role during Season 3. You can find it here...

In terms of the staff movement from Season One, CJ was probably best right not to mention anyone specifically by name but we can speculate a bit by looking at the list of Millennium writers in order of episode in our Episode Guide for clues.

Chip J (great to see how well he did after MLM!) could perhaps have been referring to writer and co-producer Jorge Zamacona who left after 14 roles.

Perhaps it was Waylon Green, he worked as a Creative Consultant on 5 episodes of Season One, and wrote Paper Dove.

Robert 'Bobby' Moresco (who Patrick Harbinson mentions in his interview perhaps), joined midway way through season 1 and worked until the end season 2 as co-producer and he also wrote Covenant and co-wrote Broken World with Patrick.

Maybe perhaps he could have been referring to Writer and Consulting Producer Ted Mann, who worked on Season 1 only.

Or possibly Charles D. Holland who wrote the 1 episode Wide Open and otherwise served as Story Editor from Gehenna up to The Wild and the Innocent.

Harold Rosenthal also only worked once on Millennium, having written S1's Powers, Thrones... 

I don't think it was Tim Tankosic, he wrote/worked on only 1 episode, Walkabout. Actually, he seems to have left the industry with just this single credit accordingly IMDB, I'd like to learn more on that.

Regards,

Graham

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I don't specifically remember Frank S.'s comment in MATM about that, but it was a little while ago I saw it. I just remember the talk about how you really had to be a self-starter and not need much help or oversight as a writer. They didn't apparently have writers' rooms in the way we usually think of them. They were able to do that in S-1 & 3 where the episodes were self-contained, but S-2, M&W kind of serialized, adding mythology.

Anyway, it had to be extremely challenging, especially when CC was doing XF, an XF movie, along w/Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen. His involvement had to be, by necessity, minimal. I think Frank S. in particular learned a lot about work ethic from his days w/CC--to his credit. I've enjoyed watching his career advance over the years. 

I do think peoples' memories fade over time, and sometimes gets rewritten for posterity. At the time, they may not have had things as planned as they say they were today, though it would be interesting to go back in time and find out, to be sure.

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