 Consequently, Gillian Anderson, who had just given birth to her daughter Piper days before this episode spent the majority of the episode in a hospital bed.Chris Carter described the opening scene—in which Scully discovers the truth about death, sadness, and sorrow—as "a way he would never imagined an "X-Files" episode to begin with", and that the related scene with Scully's tombstone was "a soft but beautiful opening" that "sets up the episode in a frightening way".The image of Scully in the boat was meant to symbolize "being tethered to something very tenuously, and that there was a chance for you to be cut adrift and slip into the unknown".