 During the second week of October 1997, David Duchovny was scheduled to be away from Vancouver for promotional purposes for the movie Playing God. As a result, the producers delayed shooting of the episode "The Post-Modern Prometheus" and developed a Scully-centric episode to take its place in the queue. With the episode scheduled to air during December, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz decided to craft a Christmas episode and put Dana Scully into a situation similar to that of Scrooge in the 1951 film Scrooge, starring Alastair Sim. After failing to write an episode paralleling that story, the writers decided instead to feature Scully being visited by earlier versions of herself, resulting in the flashback sequences appearing in the episode. They also decided to have her be taken on an emotional journey by her descendant.
