former alien abductees, the agents meet Cassandra Spender (Veronica Cartwright), a woman who claims to be a multiple abductee and wants to deliver a positive message about aliens. Eventually, Mulder has Scully put under hypnosis to learn the truth about her abduction after Cassandra goes missing and her son, Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens), angrily attempts to push his way up in the FBI. The Syndicate, meanwhile, quicken their tests for the black oil vaccine, sacrificing their own to do so. Later, the assassination of a chess grandmaster leads Mulder and Scully into an investigation that they soon discover strikes at the heart of the X-Files; they learn that the real target was a telepathic boy named Gibson Praise (Jeff Gulka). Production Writing Due to the pending release of The X-Files feature film, this was the first season where the course of the season was planned in advance, as it had to set up for the film. Originally, the season was supposed to be the show's last. In this manner, the finale was originally supposed to have segued the television series into a movie franchise. David Duchovny explained, "we were saying, 'Okay, we're going to do five. We'll get out of here at five.' And then five came around, and no one was going anywhere." The series proved to be so lucrative for Fox that two additional seasons were ordered. Thus, the season was created in a way to segue into the 1998 film, as well as the sixth season premiere, "The Beginning". Filming Due to the necessity of filming reshoots for the upcoming movie, both Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are absent in places throughout the season. For instance, the episodes "Unusual Suspects" and "Travelers"—both of which being flashback episodes—do not feature Anderson's character Dana Scully at all. In fact, the former was written entirely as a stop-gap episode when the show's producers were forced to start production of the fifth season in the last week of August in Vancouver, but still needed series stars Duchovny and Anderson for the filming of The X-Files movie in Los Angeles. The producers decided to create an episode dedicated to The Lone Gunmen, and writing duties were assigned to Vince Gilligan. Other episodes such as "Chinga" and "Christmas Carol" feature minimal appearances by Duchovny's character Fox Mulder. The season's fifth episode, "The Post-Modern Prometheus", written and directed by Carter, was filmed entirely in