The mysterious Cigarette-Smoking Man (also known as Cancer Man) received his moment in the spotlight in 4th season episode 'Musings Of A Cigarette-Smoking Man. A fascinating, episodic entry which may or may not have revealed the past of The X-Files' most famous bad guy.

As he awaits to assassinate Lone Gunman Frohike, "CSM" reflexes on his decades in the shady business of conspiracy, including his involvement with the murders of JFK and Martin Luther King, along with the discovery an alien being. Despite being very much in the mainstream of the ongoing X-Files storyline (including a cameo by the late Deep Throat), this episode was lighthearted and satirical in places. The entire episode was extremely stylish, with one flashback sequence shot in black and white.

'Musings Of A Cigarette-Smoking Man' was met with raves from critics and fans, and director James Wong received an Emmy nomination for his efforts.

Wong and partner Glen Morgan were two of the most crucial behind-the-scenes individuals on The X-Files during several seasons, turning out a wide array of impressive scripts. With 'Musings…', Morgan provided the story, and Wong took a shot at helming the script. This proved to be an excellent career move, though it resulted in a realization for the duo.

"Our feeling was that Cancer Man had become a bore," explains Wong. "He comes in, says some lines, but we're never really seen him do anything. We really wanted to make him horrifying, and we figured that Tom Braidwood [who plays Frohike] already had a job as assistant director on the show, so we wouldn't be putting an actor out of work. But Chris wouldn't go for it and made us change the final scene. At that point, we realized it wasn't our show anymore."

For William B. Davis, the actor who's been playing CSM since the beginning, this episode was a very rewarding experience. "It was a fabulous, very gratifying show," Davis says. " I was very happy that the producers scheduled the episode as a sweeps period show. That said to me that they think the audience has a lot of interest in the character, too. It was fun to shoot. As an actor, I was exposed to many different kinds of situations that we hadn't seen the character in before. We saw a number of different sides of him, including a certain vulnerability, which I loved."

Davis loved making the episode, "but the concern I had from the beginning was, 'Is this real information about the character?' It didn't seem to fit in a number of ways with my back story or some of the information that had been revealed in other episodes. Quite honestly, I think there was some confusion between Chris and the writer [Morgan] as to whether this was real information or simply conjecture. It would have been simpler, if we just said somehow, 'This is a supposition,' or, 'This is a hypothesis about the character,' and then played it that way. Instead, the episode was billed as 'Find out the truth about the Smoking Man'"

Morgan and Wong left The X-Files to work on other projects, but years later they can look back on the series, including 'Musings...', and still be proud of what they did. Recently, as they were working on the feature film Final Destination, that particular episode cam into play, as Morgan explains. "One of the cast wanted to see the 'Smoking Man' episode Jim directed, and I hadn't watched it in years, and I was looking at it the trailer and going, 'Well, that was great'."