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The following Abyss transcript
presents a commentary by creator/writer/producer Chris
Carter that was added to the beginning of United Kingdom
editions of a Millennium "Pilot"/"Gehenna"
videotape. Just as it was with many an X-Files
video before it, Carter's recorded comments lend some valuable
insight into the creative process behind the episodes.
Here, Carter takes the opportunity to explain, at some length,
the inspirations behind the Millennium series and his
personal feelings towards it.
"After
the success of The X-Files, it was about the middle of
season two when FOX came to me and asked me if I would do
another series and I'd told them subsequent to this that I'd
had a idea rattling around in my head to do a show about the
approaching millennium. It really is an exploration of evil on
the show, the now scientific approach to the explanation of
evil which is a psychological one, which says everyone is a
victim of something. I was interested in the unscientific
approach. The Bible plays an important role in the show, it's
not a show about the Bible yet you'll find a lot of these
stories are in there and have been told before, it gives the
show a nice foundation, it attempts to explain things on
various levels not just in the modern scientific way."
"Pilot"
"In the pilot episode we set up the visual and seed of the
show, we get into Frank's head for snippets of disparate and
disconnected images. People get confused about Frank Black's
gift, his ability, his facility, which is to get into the
heads of violent criminals, to get into the heads of murderers
of serial killers, to think like they think and they confuse
it with him being psychic or clairvoyant. I really see it as a
perfection of technique as art.
"People have said to me that they think Millennium is
the darkest show on television, I really don't think that it
is, I defend that regularly because I think that it actually
has a very, very bright centre, a very bright hero. I think
his dark is the world he lives in, works in, he is a person
who has a tremendous amount of optimism and hope and I think
if you look at what this man does, what his motivations are,
they're very bright and noble and very interesting to me in
that way. A yellow house to me represents happiness and I
wanted that to be a very happy house, a sanctuary, a place
where Frank could keep his family safe. He was literally by
painting the house yellow, painting away the darkness which I
think is really what Frank's goal is, is to keep his family in
the light away from the darkness.
"I had tried to cast Lance Henriksen on The X-Files
several times, he had always been either unavailable or
uninterested. Anyway, I remained a fan of his, I was in bed
working in Vancouver and I realized he was working there too.
So I found out where he was staying, wrote a note and had a
fan note slipped under his door and told him that I'd tried to
get him on the show and hoped to work with him in the future.
Little did he know when I was then writing Millennium I
was writing with only him in mind, with no idea whether or not
he'd actually do the project. So I wrote the project,
approached him, he was very excited about it, we made a deal
and the rest is now history.
"As on The X-Files with Mulder and Scully, Mulder being
my mother's maiden name, Scully being the name of Vin Scully, Millennium
has the lead character Frank Black. Black actually should have
been my name, the family name changed from Black to Carter in
some mysterious episode in my history that I still don't know
much about. So my name should actually be Chris Black.
Catherine is my mother's name, so Catherine Black gets her
name from my mother, so there are little nods to my own family
history on Millennium as there are on The X-Files.
"The image that appears on the main title of the show which is
a snake eating its tail, a circular snake, the snake is a
classic and ancient image. I think it's come from several
different cultures it's called the ouroboros and
it has many different meanings. One is eternal return,
everything being circular, everything recurring and also of a
snake eating its tail, of it devouring itself which is a more
negative context. I thought for Millennium it had equal
parts of each and left some then to the imagination of what it
might mean. But it's a very powerful image and I think it's
really perfectly representative of the show."
"Gehenna"
"The title of the episode, the second Millennium
episode, which is a very important episode to the series is 'Gehenna' which is the Hebrew word for Hell. That
was an interesting word that had some type of strange,
mysterious, historical significance.
"I came up with this idea to have these boys, these telemarketers
who were driven by greed, to have them motivated by these
words that flash up on this screen. There were many different
sins expressed up on that screen. The idea that evil could be
carried out over the telephone is also a very scary idea and
one that I think is all too real and common these days. People
can reach right into your homes in so many ways now, by fax,
over the telephone, through your computer and I think this is
one of the ways that we're scared these days. This is
something I was trying to communicate.
"The approach of this date the year 2000 is very significant
whether you believe in it or not because there is a certain
nervousness about the future, about change, about what might
lay beyond that date. It's a significant date because people
believe it's significant, we don't know what lies on the other
side of that date and I'm playing with that as a storyteller."
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