lot of characters and voices, so I wanted to incorporate that ... I wanted to write something for her that challenged her". To prepare for her role, Cloke researched dissociative identity disorder, and she based the many personality states that she plays on people that she knew. Morgan also stated that he "wanted to write something for David Duchovny that challenged him." When pitching the idea to director Rob Bowman, Morgan and Wong stated they wanted "this episode to feel like the part in Ken Burns' Civil War documentary where they read the Sullivan Ballou letter." Michael Massee, the actor who played Vernon Ephesian, wanted his character to be "normal looking" and "nondemonic", explaining, "You have to believe that he believes his own rap. When he speaks, he's just explaining that 'this is the way it is' – and that's when it gets very scary." The name "Vernon" comes from the real name of Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh (né Vernon Wayne Howell), whereas "Ephesian" is taken from the biblical Epistle to the Ephesians. Ephesian's Temple of the Seven Stars was built on a soundstage at North Shore Studios, and at the time was one of the show's most expensive sets. To create an authentic looking citizen's registry, the show's props team reached out to officials at Apison, Tennessee, who lent them a genuine form, which was then carefully reproduced by the show's art staffers. The old photographs featured in the episode are "hybrids" of different freely-available photographs, which were "meld[ed]" together with the help of computers. The face used for Sullivan was chosen because it bore an "uncanny" resemblance to Mulder. The poem Mulder reads at the beginning and end is from Paracelsus by Robert Browning. The first cut of "The Field Where I Died" was over an hour long, resulting in eighteen minutes being cut; this resulted in removal of two of Melissa's personalities. Sarah Stegall later noted that the penultimate scene, which features federal agents raiding the religious compound and finding that everyone inside has committed suicide, bears similarities to the Waco siege. Reception Ratings "The Field Where I Died" originally aired on the Fox network on November 3, 1996. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 12.3, with an 18 share, meaning that roughly 12.3 percent of all television-equipped households, and 18 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. "The Field