Boreanaz, who directed “The 200th in the 10th”, rejects the idea of the episode only being a Hitchcock homage. As he told interviewers at the time, he didn’t review any Hitchcock films before shooting, nor did he try to emulate the director’s filming style (there are no “Vertigo” dolly zooms, for instance).
The episode’s writer, Stephen Nathan, was more enthusiastic about the comparison in an interview with Collider; he names not only “To Catch A Thief,” but also “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “Notorious,” and “North by Northwest” as influences. Indeed, there’s a scene pulled right from “North by Northwest” when Booth is getting information from Aubrey (John Boyd), only for the latter to be stabbed in the back mid-sentence. Booth pulls the bloody knife out and the crowd assumes he’s the murderer.
Then there’s the musical score. Many of Hitchcock’s Hollywood films were scored by Bernard Herrmann, with grand, sweeping orchestral compositions. “Bones” composer Sean Callery had to throw out his playbook. “This is the equivalent of a complete rebooting of the series, almost like we were doing a pilot episode,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
The episode opens with Booth entering a mansion for a heist, while Brennan follows behind him. There’s no dialogue, but the score is timed to accentuate the mood; like a true Bernard Herrmann composition, the score is no background player. To get the sound right, Callery had to supplement his electronic composing with a real orchestra: “I lobbied very strongly to at least get a string section to play the score for the episode, and I was lucky enough that Fox found the resources so we were able to get about 20 instruments.”