page_title: Dæmonicus
section_title: Writing and directing
hierarchical_section_title: Dæmonicus / Production / Writing and directing
caption_attribution_description: Frank Spontiz
context_page_description: "Dæmonicus" is the third episode of the ninth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files and the show's 185th episode overall. It first premiered on the Fox network in the United States on December 2, 2001. The episode was written and directed by executive producer Frank Spotnitz. The episode is a "monster-of-the-week" episode, a stand-alone plot which is unconnected to the mythology, or overarching fictional history, of The X-Files. The episode earned a Nielsen rating of 5.5 and its premiere was viewed by 5.80 million households. The episode received mixed reviews from television critics.
  The show centers on FBI special agents who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files; this season focuses on the investigations of John Doggett, Monica Reyes, and Dana Scully. In this episode, Doggett, Reyes, and Scully investigate a series of bizarre killings that seem to be due to demonic possession but which Doggett believes is a hoax. The agents soon meet Josef Kobold, a man who seems to be playing some sort of demonic game.
context_section_description: "Dæmonicus" was written and directed by executive producer Frank Spotnitz, marking his third credit as a writer and first credit as director for the season. The episode also marked the second time that Spotnitz helmed an episode's directing, with the first being "Alone". "Daemonicus" is the first Monster-of-the-Week episode of season nine, meaning a stand-alone episode unconnected to the series' wider mythology; as season nine was promoted as the "new" X-Files, it was important to develop new settings for the show. One of these new settings was to move Dana Scully from the X-Files office to the FBI Academy at Quantico. The scenes at the FBI Academy were shot at a lecture hall at UCLA. Spotnitz’s wife, Melissa, appears as one of the students in Scully’s class.
  Spotnitz later called Kobold, the episode's main antagonist, "the devil, in a cell." When creating Kobold, Spotnitz researched various crimes and criminals, until he came across the name of Caryl Chessman, who had been sentenced to death on a technical charge of kidnapping. He was then able to connect the word "chessman" to the idea that, for Kobold, his crimes were all a game. Spotnitz wanted the villain to be a character that "could help", and not a character that would just tell the viewers "what The X-Files was again".
  Series co-star Robert Patrick had issues remembering and delivering his lines due to the theme of demonic possession, which reportedly "was freaking" him out. He later explained, "It was the first time that I couldn't do my lines. Usually I would show up, and they'd always put the camera on me first [but this time] I couldn't do it."
caption: "Dæmonicus" was written and directed by executive producer Frank Spotnitz.
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