From a creator’s perspective, scripting on television is all about making fiction seem like reality. Even if something is based on a true story, the elements that are brought together to tell that story aren’t “real” in any sense of the word. It’s just about making it seem real to the audience. That’s not always easy, and the fan-favorite TV series “Bones” was no exception. Emily Deschanel learned that while filming one of the long-running series’ most popular episodes.

Bones: The Official Companion provides a lot of background information on the Bones Season 2 episode “Aliens in a Spaceship,” arguably the best episode of the series. In this episode, Booth and Brennan are on the trail of a notorious killer known as the Gravedigger, who kidnaps his victims and buries them alive for ransom. During the investigation, Brennan and Hodgins become the killer’s latest victims and must try to solve their own abduction from an underground tomb.

Filming the “underground” scenes, in which Brennan and Hodgins are trapped in a buried car, was challenging for both the actors and crew. As first assistant director Kent Genzlinger explained:

“We used what we call a ‘buck.’ Essentially, it’s a car that’s been cut into pieces. We took a standard vehicle and cut it in half. Then we had the front of the car with the two front seats that you can shoot from the back. And we had the back of the car that you could look through to the back seat and the rear window. We also had a second car where we cut out the side doors so you could do front and rear shots from the side. So for this episode, we had three bucks on stage ten.”

Bones has consistently found ways to make things seem realistic for the actors. In the episode “The Boy in the Shroud,” for example, they had to contend with real bugs and turkey carcasses. But there’s no safe way to trap actors underground and film the scenes while still making them feel as realistic as possible, so Deschanel had to push the boundaries of her imagination to convincingly portray the drama of the episode. Here’s what she had to say about it:

“The car wasn’t as locked as it seemed. The challenge of this episode was really believing that you’re all alone in that car. I knew that in reality I could open the door and I’d be fine – I’d be in a recording studio. You have to use your imagination to understand the feeling of being trapped. Then you have to think about what you do when you’re trapped. And what does a character like Brennan do? You would try to get yourself out of there and use your skills to do that. She’s going to do whatever she can and use her mind to figure out how to get the others out.”

It’s just part of an actor’s job, especially in this day and age. Christian Bale wasn’t too fond of the green screen in Thor: Love and Thunder because it makes the process monotonous. Be that as it may, it’s an occupational hazard when you make a living telling fictional stories. Given the outcome of this episode, it’s fair to say that Deschanel did an admirable job under difficult circumstances.

“Bones” is currently streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.