The prevailing intensity has taken its toll on Duchovny, still smarting from a recent wipeout on his long board — a Christmas gift from surfing aficionado Carter. ''You don't want to risk blowing a whole take because you just see air when someone's punching you,'' Duchovny laughs. ''So these guys are manhandling me. I could win an Emmy for most bruises. I think that's one of the categories they award the week before they give out the big ones.''
There's a certain sense that ''Triangle'' represents Carter's own bid for Emmy recognition, which has thus far eluded him despite four nominations for writing and directing. ''Ridiculous,'' he says dismissively. Instead, Carter echoes the rationale offered for last year's live season premiere of ER, or that single-take episode of Mad About You. ''If I'm going to do six years of a TV series, I [need] ways to get myself excited again.''
Casting about for a concept that would work effectively without cutaway shots, Carter decided from the outset to flirt with the idea that Mulder's adventure should be a dream. ''We dream in linear narrative,'' he offers. ''I don't look at things in cuts or from different angles when I'm dreaming.'' In addition to the obvious nod to The Wizard of Oz, Carter says he was inspired by the Ambrose Bierce short story-turned-Twilight Zone episode ''An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,'' in which a captured Confederate spy fantasizes in convincing detail about his escape from the gallows.
After writing the script, it was largely filmmaking on the fly. Duchovny admits he questioned attempting such a challenging shoot so soon after the show's relocation from Vancouver to L.A. (ironically, a move famously made at Duchovny's urging). ''It's long hours and very demanding stylistically, and I thought it might be too early to do that to this group,'' he says of the mostly new crew. ''It's only their third show. But everybody's really excited — it's brought them closer together.''
Or closer to madness. One of the most difficult feats for cast and crew is maintaining the illusion of continuous action (something even Hitchcock managed rather clunkily). The Steadicam holds no more than four minutes' worth of film at one go — and even that little time without a break seems an eternity to the actors. In a scene of comparable length in a typical episode, there are easily a dozen time-outs to reset for different camera angles. But shooting the scene is just the beginning; all of the episode's 40-odd shots then have to be seamlessly melded in the editing room. Observant viewers will spot a few different tricks for masking cuts: using the whip pan, a device popular with technical virtuosos like Brian De Palma, in which the camera swings so quickly from one image to another that the transition is blurred; moving action through a doorway or onto an elevator; or underlighting shots so that it's too dark to notice cuts (not exactly a stretch for the notoriously gloomy X-Files).
Still, ''it's not as easy as it sounds,'' says new editor Louise Innes, who's had the dubious luck of drawing this episode as her first. As she runs through the footage on a computer workstation at the Fox lot, you see what she means: Even shots linked by those no-brainer elevator-door snippets can have problems. When the end of the first shot is spliced together with the beginning of the second, the color doesn't quite match, and one of the doors has been obviously scratched between shots. Innes has to hope the show's postproduction troubleshooters can digitally repair the inconsistencies.
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