| “ | We go in the writer's room to break a story, and we're always having that debate. To be loyal to the fans, you can't pretend like they know everything about Sam and Dean, they're not involved in the Winchesters, but by the same token your hope is that somebody heard about it from a friend and has tuned in for the first time. So you're always resetting things to be clear for the new audience. It's a struggle, though, because there's a lot of things going on, there's a lot for people to catch up on, but I think we do a pretty good job of it. I think if people do pick it up mid-season, it won't take them long to catch up on it. Nine times out of ten they're going to land on a non-mythology, just a good old horror movie episode and hopefully love it. | ” |
— John Shiban [1]
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John Shiban was a writer, executive producer and co-executive producer on Supernatural. Beginning in Season 3, he left his writing position and remained a consulting producer. After Season 3, Shiban left Supernatural and went on to produce Legends of the Seeker.
Shiban has also previously written episodes of The X-Files, The Lone Gunmen (also the creator), Star Trek: Enterprise, Threat Matrix, Legend of the Seeker and Breaking Bad.
| “ | It does have similarities, but the tone is so different. We look at them as sort of what is the scary movie of the week that we're doing. So, for example, the next original that airs on December 7th is called Croatoan, and we kept saying last year that I'd love to do a "28 Days Later" kind of episode. So we're always pulling from much more of a popcorn, movie to movie, Saturday matinee fun place than the X-Files, which pulled from a lot of darker, government conspiracy, evil among us sort of source. So in a way, they're both equally difficult, but they come from a different place. | ” |
— John Shiban on Supernatural's similarity to the X-Files.[2]
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Writer[]
Season 1[]
- "Skin"
- "Hook Man"
- "Scarecrow" (with Patrick Sean Smith)
- "The Benders"
- "Dead Man's Blood" (with Cathryn Humphris)