Carter's initial pitch for "The X-Files" was rejected by Fox executives. He fleshed out the concept and returned a few weeks later, whereupon they commissioned the pilot. Carter worked with "NYPD Blue" producer Daniel Sackheim to further develop the pilot, drawing stylistic inspiration from the 1988 documentary "The Thin Blue Line" and the British television series "Prime Suspect". Inspiration also came from Carter's memories of "The Twilight Zone" as well as from "The Silence of the Lambs", which provided the impetus for framing the series around agents from the FBI, in order to provide the characters with a more plausible reason for being involved in each case than Carter believed was present in "Kolchak". Carter was determined to keep the relationship between the two leads strictly platonic, basing their interactions on the characters of Emma Peel and John Steed in "The Avengers" series.