The Truth is Right Here

Data Nully (Gillian Anderson) and Fax Modem (Scott McNeil)

The computer-generated print-out of Data Nully and Fax Modem was on my bedroom wall for years. My heroes. Literally. The bodacious binomes who launched my TV career…

When I received the tour of the Mainframe office back in 1995, it seemed like everyone already knew me. Almost everyone I met greeted me with: “You’re The X-Files writer!”

I wasn’t an X-Files writer or a TV writer and certainly not an animation writer. I was a playwright, journalist and comedian. A few nights earlier I’d been on-stage doing my comedy act in a Vancouver theatre and one of the audience members, Helen DuToit, thought I was funny. She worked for Mainframe and told our mutual friend, Joan Watterson, ReBoot could use a funny writer and asked if I’d ever written for kids. Fortunately for me, Joan was the only person in the packed theatre who knew the answer was yes. I’d written plays for kids.

Helen asked if I had any writing samples.

A few years earlier I’d met a guy who said he wanted to hire me to write for TV and that he thought I’d enjoy it. So, at the urging of future ReBoot: The Guardian Code showrunner, Larry Raskin, and an agent who’d urged me to try my hand at writing TV so I could afford a car one day, I wrote a “spec script.” A spec script is a fake episode of a real show that writers do to prove they have what it takes to write television. These episodes are never shared with anyone working on the show being specced because lawyers ruin everything.

I thought this was a waste of my time, but I was friends with a lot of people working on The X-Files and asked if they could send me old episodes so I could see what a TV script looked like. I studied the scripts (especially Chris Carter’s “Duane Barry”) wrote my own episode of The X-Files and I don’t think anyone other than my agent had seen it when Helen asked for a “TV sample.”

The next thing I knew I was downtown, getting a tour of ReBootheadquarters and being asked if I could write an X-Files parody episode. X-Files star, Gillian Anderson, was married to someone who worked for Mainframe, so they knew she’d at least read a script. She not only read it, but agreed to voice the role of Data Nully.

When David Duchovny declined to play, I suggested Mainframe audition one of my oldest friends from high school — an actor I used to write everything for — Scott McNeil. I’d written a few plays for Scott. I recently wrote a book about one of the plays I wrote for Scott — Free Magic Secrets Revealed (available at your local bookstore or click here to buy on Amazon). Scott scored the gig and not only played Modem in my episode, he also appeared as a roller-skating binome working at Al’s Diner and became a fixture at Mainframe.

My first outline for my episode was absurdly ambitious and didn’t just include CGI special agents, Data Nully and Fax Modem, but Special Agent Spinner and the mysterious Smoking Can.

The Smoking Can had to go because not only would the dreaded censors at ABCKids balk at the idea but, at that time, smoke was impossible in CGI. I assume Spinner was cut for time and cost because it took time and money to build characters.

The gig was a blast and my main contact and story editor was Susan Turner, the unsung hero of Team ReBoot.

I was allowed to watch the local actors record their roles — which was, well, alphanumeric — but didn’t get to attend Anderson’s recording session because everyone wanted to go and freelancers don’t get dibs on such things.

Years later, I interviewed Anderson on-set for The Hollywood Reporter, when she was shooting The X-Files season three episode, DPO, just outside an arcade in North Vancouver. Jack Black was guest-starring before he was THE Jack Black. I never thought to tell her I’d written her cameo, but I did tell her I thought Mulder’s relationship with aliens reminded me of Big Bird’s with the Snuffleupagus and Scully always went AWOL just before Snuffy appeared. Anderson laughed, so I didn’t push my luck.

I did finally get to write for The Smoking Can, or at least William B. Davis (aka Cancer Man). He was a guest host for the CBC TV variety series, Terminal City and I wrote a monologue where he took credit for every Canadian conspiracy including the FLQ crisis and several key Stanley Cup losses.

I was ordered to change the monologue because the show’s producers didn’t think anyone would get the jokes, because they wouldn’t know who this X-Files character was. Instead, I came up with a list of Canada’s unsolved cases like… “If a tree falls in a forest will Greenpeace hold a press conference? If you play a Tragically Hip CD backwards will you be able to understand the lyrics?” And, my fave, “If Bruce Cockburn had a rocket launcher — which son of a bitch would die?” That joke didn’t make it on the air either.

Adventures on CBC’s Terminal City — a long time ago on a broadcaster far, far away.

Everyone knew my ReBoot/X-Files episode was going to be fun, but no one knew my TV debut would score a story in Entertainment Weekly and a rave review in the New York Daily News that actually mentioned I wrote it.

Who knew TV was so glam?

As I was working on my ReBoot parody episode I was asked to turn it into a two-parter and script the season finale.

That led to my pitch that provided a key twist in Trust No One, set up the season (and network TV) finale and turned into a key part of the lore that fueled future seasons. “What if the Guardians are dicks?”

To be continued…