 Glen Morgan began writing the episode after he read a Science News article about men in Greenland who found a 250 @,@ 000 @-@ year @-@ old item encased in ice . The setting — an icy , remote research base overcome by an extraterrestrial creature — is similar to that of John W. Campbell 's 1938 novella Who Goes There ? and its two feature @-@ film incarnations : The Thing from Another World ( 1951 ) , directed by Christian <unk> and produced by Howard Hawks , and The Thing ( 1982 ) , directed by John Carpenter . Chris Carter has cited them as the main inspirations for the episode . As in the novella and films , the characters cannot trust each other because they are uncertain if they are who they seem to be . Carter particularly enjoyed this aspect , because it pitted Mulder and Scully against each other and provided " a new look on their characters early on in the series " . 
