Tunguska
The following interview with Chris Carter (creator of The X-Files) was included on the Tunguska videotape (UK release) and was transcribed by myself, Richard Preece.
"Tunguska."
This movie is made up of two separate "X-Files" episodes done as a two parter, the
first one called "Tunguska" which is after a place in Russia where some kind of cosmic
event occurred around the turn of the century. And the second half is called "Terma"
which is a reference to a fictional town in North Dakota but also to a buried tablet as
referred to in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
There is something that has been brewing from the end of the second season on, which
is the idea that this conspiracy to keep a secret, the existence of extraterrestrial life, is a
global and multinational conspiracy, not just an American one and there is another
Cold War afoot, a race to find what may be the cure to an alien virus that is on the
planet.
Agent Krycek appears in this episode again, in a very unexpected manner and he says
something to Mulder in Russian, he curses at him, which leads Mulder to understand
that he speaks Russian and could be an ally. Somebody who might in fact be of use to
him as he travels to the Soviet - the former Soviet Union to find out what in fact lies in
the Tunguska rock.
The special effects in this movie were very, very difficult to accomplish, this oil, unlike
the way we have seen it previously, after spilling or escaping from the rock that
imprisons it, turns into a series of oily worms. And those all had to be manufactured
by us for visual effect.
The explosion at the wellhead and the oil that comes out of it is all manmade, that’s
Dave Gauthier our physical effects supervisor who has built a wellhead in the middle of
a rock quarry and run a pipe to it and is blasting this oil out 300ft in the air which
becomes a giant flame when it explodes, which is probably one of the best and biggest
explosions that we’ve done of the show. And explosions are always exciting, there’s
just a lot of tension and excitement that surrounds this kind of effect.
This movie is really one where we decided to stretch the limits of our resources, we go
to Russia in this episode, we are in Terma, North Dakota, we are in Canada. It moves
all over the map and it is an action piece from beginning to end. And I think that it is a
really interesting little piece of the mythology of "The X-Files" but really functions as a
great suspense thriller.