 Director David Nutter had been a long-time staff member of "The X-Files" crew.Carter said the episode was "directed beautifully by David Nutter who added to the project in so many ways, even as it came on, things that he saw visually that were able to actually change and make the script more concise".Although "Pilot" did not open with a literary quote as the series would do from the next episode onwards, its plot heavily features the 1919 poem "The Second Coming" by Irish poet William Butler Yeats.