In 1990, the Gansa-Gordon team was signed to a two-year deal with Witt-Thomas Productions, during which they produced several pilots. One was an ABC project called Country Estates, which caught the attention of producer Chris Carter.
Soon after, Carter invited Gordon and Gansa to join The X-Files as supervising producers; Gordon wrote or co-wrote several scripts each season, before departing from the series in 1997 to pursue other projects.
After co-writing one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gordon created his own show, the short-lived Strange World in 1999. Strange World went to seed 13 episodes in, but Gordon and Strange World writer Tim Minear's services were quickly snapped up by Buffy creator Joss Whedon on another project: Angel. After two years with Angel, Gordon jumped ship in 2001 for FOX's successful 24, where he would write several episodes in Seasons 1 & 2, then crafted the entire story arcs for Seasons 3 and 4. Gordon temporarily left 24 in the middle of the 2004 season to re-join Minear, this time as co-creator of another FOX series, The Inside. Despite The Inside's cancellation and short run, talk circulated of including the two Minear-Gordon series, Strange World and The Inside, on a special DVD set sometime in 2006.
Beginning in 2006, Gordon became 24's showrunner, a title he held through its final season. The successful deal led up with his continuing deal at Fox. That same year, he was made partner with 24 creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran at Real Time Productions to develop projects, until the duo quit in 2008. In 2019, after a stint at Fox through Teakwood Lane Productions, he signed a deal with Sony.
Homeland
In 2010, after finishing 24, Gordon began co-developing (along with Gideon Raff and Alex Gansa) the thriller Homeland for Showtime. Based on the Israeli series Prisoners of War, it centers on a woman (Claire Danes) who works for the CIA and is convinced a recently returned American prisoner of war (Damian Lewis) has been turned by al-Qaeda. The show premiered Sunday, October 2, 2011, at 10/9 central. It has been met with major critical acclaim and maintained a steady viewership rating throughout its first season. Showtime premiered its fourth season on October 5, 2014.
In 2012, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for writing the "Pilot" of Homeland and the series itself won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series.
