page_title: Jose Chung's From Outer Space
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Jose Chung's From Outer Space / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Alex Trebek in 2009.
context_page_description: "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" is the 20th episode of the third season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States on April 12, 1996, on Fox. It was written by Darin Morgan and directed by Rob Bowman. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.5, being watched by 16.08 million people in its initial broadcast, and also received praise from critics.
  The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Mulder and Scully hear, and promptly investigate, a story about an alien abduction of two teenagers. Each witness provides a different version of the same facts. Within the episode, a thriller novelist, Jose Chung, writes a book about the incident.
  The episode is a stand-alone episode of The X-Files. While it follows the normal Monster of the Week pattern of the show, it features more humor than typical via manipulation of point of view, leading to multiple re-tellings of certain events with varying degrees of unreliable narrators.
context_section_description: Disparate ideas that would eventually coalesce into "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" had been developed by writer Darin Morgan long before the script was actually written. The writer was inspired both by works he had read on hypnosis, as well as the theory that UFOs are real ships that can manipulate space and time, but they are piloted not by aliens but by the U.S. military. The episode's unique narrative style was influenced by a casting session that Morgan had attended in which an actor had mimicked the vocal styling of Truman Capote. Morgan soon thereafter developed an idea about a writer, Jose Chung, covering an X-Files. Morgan wanted to cast Rip Taylor in the role, but he was unavailable, so the role ended up going to Charles Nelson Reilly. Jesse Ventura was cast as one of the men in black, while Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek played the other. (Morgan himself had wanted Johnny Cash for the role.) Lord Kinbote was played by series stuntman Tony Morelli.
  The episode contains a number of references and in-jokes. Klass County was named after noted skeptic Philip J. Klass, whose argument that most UFO sightings are really the planet Venus is directly invoked in the episode. The pilots dressed up as aliens were named after authors Robert Sheaffer and Jacques Vallee, who wrote often on the UFO phenomenon. Air Force Sergeant Hynek was named after UFO researcher Dr. J. Allen Hynek. The character of Roky Crikenson is named after musician Roky Erickson, who claims to be an alien abductee. Chung gives Mulder the pseudonym Reynard, after the legendary fox. The alien autopsy video, Dead Alien! Truth or Humbug?, referenced both Morgan's first episode for the series, "Humbug", as well as the real Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction video aired by Fox in 1995. Detective Manners was named after series director Kim Manners, and the character's tendency to swear was directly influenced by his real life counterpart. Blaine is seen wearing a Space: Above and Beyond shirt during his interview. Lt. Schaefer absent-mindedly pushing his potatoes into the shape of a mountain is a subtle reference to the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Roky's job as a power company lineman also alludes to Close Encounters, as Roy Neary, the character played by Richard Dreyfuss held the same position. The cover to Jose Chung's book references the cover of the 1987 book Communion by Whitley Strieber. Lord Kinbote was an homage to Ray Harryhausen, a stop-motion animator, with the footage of the character shot at high speed, which was then edited and manually slowed in post-production, creating the illusion that it was created via stop-motion. 
  This episode would be Darin Morgan's last for the series before its revival in 2016. The writer claimed that he could not keep up with the frantic pace of the show, although he would later write the similarly themed "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense" for the TV series Millennium.
caption: Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek appears as one of the Men in Black.
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