1x09: Space

It seems to me the best blogs, the ones that last, are frequently the ones that are rooted in obsession.  You know, one day you look at the X-Files and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere.  And the show that was just a show is suddenly the only thing you can think about.

Oh Sweet Zombie Jeebus, Space. There are very few episodes of TXF that I actively dislike, but this is one of them. It's even more painful coming after an episode like Ice, which I really enjoyed.  But I promised - every episode of The X-Files in chronological order - and I will deliver. But we're going to do this one quick-like-a-Band-Aid because otherwise I may have an aneurism.

As we go forward with these reviews, I'm going to keep the following themes in mind:

1. The show is as much about Scully's journey toward becoming a believer as it is about the paranormal events she and Mulder encounter.
2. Scully is only a skeptic when viewing things from a clinical distance; when the shit hits the fan, she acts on Mulder's crazy beliefs because she knows it will keep her alive.
3. Mulder isn't right nearly as often as he thinks.
4. The evolution of the Mulder/Scully relationship - not just the romantic involvement that eventually occurs, but their dynamics of trust and distrust, the changing ways they view each other, and the friendship that grows over time.
5. Assault on a federal officer never seems to lead to jail time.
6. Mulder is kind of a dick.
7. Hotels, car rental places, and apartment landlords must be crazy to rent to FBI agents.
8. The enormous top-secret government conspiracy actually really sucks at keeping things quiet.
9.  There are some serious homoerotic undertones in this show.
10. The X-files department is super toxic to anyone who comes close to it.
11. Mulder and Scully are both terrible at their jobs.
12. Local law enforcement is protrayed in an extremely negative light.
13. This show is white-washed as fuck. And almost all the non-whites are villains or stereotypes.
14. Bathtubs are scary, terrible places that should be avoided at all costs.

I reserve the right to add more items to this list as the series progresses and you can't stop me!

Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, California
1977

A reporter tells the audience that NASA has a nerd boner over the discovery of water on mars, but that they're denying the famous Mars Face is evidence of an alien civilization.  An astronaut, Marcus Aurelius Belt, whose name is the best thing in this episode, comes on to explain it's nothing but a natural formation.

Later, Belt tucks himself into bed and starts having a nightmare about his time in space, where he sees something coming at him. He wakes with a start to see the Mars face floating on the ceiling above him; he screams as it comes at him.



Shuttle Space Center
Cape Canaveral, Florida
Present Day

After the opening credits, we're treated to a series of really crappy stock images of a shuttle launch.  We hear radio communications of a bunch of random launch procedures, that don't seem to mean much, and then cut to Houston Mission Control, where an older Belt is standing in the control room. We get a lot more crappy stock footage as they count down to liftoff, and then abort at the last possible second due to system failure.

Washington, DC
Two Weeks Later

Mulder and Scully share a bag of sunflower seeds as he tells her there's some cloak-and-dagger shit going on at NASA, and they're apparently here to meet someone. One of the control room people from Houston shows up - Michelle Generoo -



and tells them she thinks there's a saboteur inside the space program - apparently that system failure that caused the launch to abort was the result of physical tampering with one of the valves, and if they hadn't aborted, the shuttle would have exploded on the launch pad. She wants M&S to help because of their "expertise in unexplained phenomena", as the valve was made of titanium and no one can explain how it was damaged. She has personal reasons for wanting to get to the bottom of this - her fiancee is a shuttle commander whose mission is due to launch the following day.


Houston Space Center
Next Day

 M&S are riding in one of those adorable Austin Powers airport golf cart things, discussing who would want to sabotage the shuttle: terrorists attacking a symbol of American progress, anti-science extremists who resent all the money NASA receives, futurists who think the shuttle is too archaic for modern use... and "certain fringe elements" who believe the government is hiding evidence of alien civilizations.



They're on their way to meet Belt, and Mulder gives Scully some brief background info on how Belt nearly died on the Gemini 8 mission. They go into his office, and Mulder turns into a gushing fangirl about how as a kid he stayed up all night to watch Belt's space walk. Belt is clearly less than comfortable about this.

To be fair, this is the exact same face I would have upon meeting just about any member of TXF crew or cast.

Anyway, Belt denies that there's any evidence of sabotage (the official reports say it was simple mechanical failure) and is unwilling to postpone the next launch. Mulder practically vomits with excitement when Belt grants them permission to watching the lift-off from Mission Control.

Later, M&S show the photo of the damaged valve to some tech guy who can't believe what he's seeing. He tells them there are a shit-ton of safety measures in place, and people making sure everything's in order before launch... and that ultimately the final go-ahead is given by Colonel Belt (who has been listening this whole time from a balcony above them). They walk away, wondering if maybe Belt knows more than he was saying.

We're treated to a bunch more shitty stock footage and NASA gibberish as Mulder and Scully watch the launch from Mission Control. This time the launch is successful, and Michelle is quite relieved her fiance didn't get blown to pieces.

Cut to Mulder and Scully walking down the hall of a fairly swanky hotel, where Mulder is still high on the joy of watching a large phallic object explode powerfully and thrust into space. (Could we call this #9, please?) Just as he's about to pass out from all the excitement, Michelle comes running up behind them and says they've lost communication with the shuttle.

They hop in their rented car and follow Michelle through the dark and stormy night. While M&S discuss the possibility of sabotage, Michelle gets run off the road by a HIDEOUS FLOATING FACE SO SCARY OMG.



That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell. Also, at least this time it was someone else's car that crashed, which must be a pleasant change of pace for our dynamic duo.

Mulder manages to extract her from the wreckage of her vehicle, and she's kind of hysterical, saying something came at her in the fog and she has to get back to mission control.

They make it back to the control room and Michelle hops on the headset. Mulder explains to Scully (and therefor to us) that the maneuvering system on the shuttle is down and they can't rotate it away from the sun to keep cool, so they're getting slowly roasted up in space.

Michelle and some tech argue about telemetry and how they can't remotely operate any of the shuttle systems from the ground... as if someone is blocking their signal. She and our intrepid agents head for the data banks, where the jamming must be coming from, and all the lights go out. Mulder nearly shoots some tech geek in the head, who was just trying to do his damn job, thank you very much (#11); the lights come back on

Please don't kill me, Mr FBI Man, I'm just here to fix the computer.

and what the hell was the point of this scene? They go in a room, the lights go out, nothing happens, the light comes back on. They don't learn anything, and they don't even learn that they didn't learn anything. They just go barging in with their guns drawn and then stand there with egg on their faces when nothing happens. It's like the writers realized they had to fill 3 or 4 more minutes of air time and shoved this scene in for no reason. Mulder says he doesn't want anyone coming in or out of the building without proper clearance... but isn't that pretty much routine? This is freaking NASA. It's not like they're just going to open the door for Snidely Whiplash because he says "please." Everyone in that building already HAS proper clearance, and obviously a pretty good knowledge of shuttle design and launch procedure. So it basically has to be someone who already works there, who thus already has proper clearance, and who thus wouldn't be barred from entering the building. It feels like everyone's being incredibly dense around here. #11

The trio goes back to mission control and Michelle and Belt argue about... something. It's all spacey-wacey shit we don't really care about

but boils down to: Belt wants to do something that could cut them off from the shuttle completely, and Michelle doesn't want him to do that thing. They do Belt's thing anyway.  The thing works and suddenly everyone's all happy.

Considering that, like the rest of us, Scully had no idea what was going on in this scene, her smile
seems a little less than genuine.

Mulder, Scully, and Michelle watch from the sidelines as Belt holds a press conference, talking amongst themselves about how Belt's actions could have killed everyone on the shuttle. Belt, meanwhile, tells the press that the shuttle has "performed magnificently" and makes no mention of the little potentially deadly snafu... totally tarnishing Poor Mulder's view of his boyhood hero. After the press conference, Mulder chases him down and asks why he lied, and Belt says something about how astronauts don't make the news anymore unless they fuck up, but he's going to bring the shuttle back to earth.

That night, Belt has more nightmares about being in space, and then his face starts turning into the Mars Face.



A white ghostly figure pulls itself out of his body and goes floating out the window and up into the sky... and the shuttle astronauts report that something really weird just happened. We hear over the radio at mission control that something is banging against the side of the shuttle. They've got an oxygen leak. Michelle, Mulder, and Scully enter and Mulder explains (to Scully and to us) that the same kind of thing happened on Belt's mission. The shuttle has 30 minutes of backup oxygen, but after that, shit's gonna get real.

M&S go to Belt's apartment, since he's the one who'll know best what to do, and drag his ass out of bed to get to the control room. He gets on the radio and tells the shuttle crew to hop into their spacesuits and then vent the excess CO2, and use their emergency oxygen systems while they deliver the payload.

What the fuck is this payload they keep talking about? It's been mentioned a few times, but I don't think we ever figure out what it is or where they're taking it or why. All we know is that Belt's super determined that it gets done, because apparently if they fail, Congress with shut down NASA. Seems like a mission that important could have been explained just a wee bit to us, the viewing audience, so we'd understand what's at stake here.

Michelle runs crying into the hallway, because Belt is about to get her fiance killed, and M&S take the opportunity to discuss with her whether Belt is the saboteur or not. Mulder still thinks Belt is the only one who can save them. He's also being uncomfortably familiar with Michelle...

He doesn't move his hands for this whole scene. She's got a fiance, dude, who's ABOUT TO DIE.
Boundaries, Mulder. Boundaries. #6

which I find a little weird. Hands on her shoulders would have been a bit more professional there, Moose.

Mulder and Scully have a tech guy lead them through files on the Hubble Telescope, Mars Observer, Shuttle Challenger, and the current Orbiter mission looking for proof that Belt knew about sabotage.

Meanwhile in Mission control, the shuttle crew delivers the payload, which is shitty stock footage of, like, a satellite or something, maybe?



and then see a ghost outside the ship. Belt starts to scream.

Back in the file room, Scully finds a copy of the same photo that was sent to Michelle - sent by Belt himself, who knew about the faulty valve. Mulder has found a file on the O ring that failed in the challenger dated January 21, 1986 (which is the day I was born, which is kind of weird)... and the analysis was ordered by Belt a week before the shuttle blew up.

Michelle comes in and says Belt's collapsed; they find him curled up under his desk, crying, screaming that something is tearing him apart. He keeps screaming and thrashing as the EMTs get him on a stretcher, and it takes way too long for Scully to remember her medical training and give him some diazepam.

Mulder holds up a finger in front of Belt's face and tells him to focus - focus his breathing, his pain... Belt gets all calm, like he's been hypnotized or something.

God this scene is awful.

Can you hypnotize me to believe this episode never happened?

Belt says the shuttle can't survive reentry because the fuselage is damaged, which he knows because he couldn't stop "them" and "they don't want us to know." It or they or whatever has been living in him since his mission in the 70s, and his face starts morphing into Mars Face again. Michelle appears far more shocked that it's the face she saw in the fog than the whole "alien ghost thing has possessed my boss and is trying to murder my fiance" thing.

Belt goes into cardiac arrest just as a tech shows up to tell them the shuttle is out of oxygen and is now on emergency backup.

Michelle goes back to mission control to talk the shuttle through reentry, which is a stupid thing to try given that she was standing RIGHT THERE when Belt was talking about how reentry will kill all of them. As if sensing this, Belt (who is still with Mulder outside his office) says they have to change the reentry trajectory to 35 degrees.

M&S run to mission control and tell everyone they have to change the trajectory; Michelle sends the info to the shuttle but they're not sure if it was received before transmission blackout (which I guess is a thing that happens upon reentry?).

TL;DR There's like 2 tense minutes where no one knows if the shuttle crew is still alive, but then they are and everyone's happy.

Once again, so happy that something she doesn't understand has been successful or whatever.

Later, Belt is in his hospital room watching a press conference in which Michelle is lying through her teeth about how nothing at all went wrong on this totally routine shuttle mission. Belt does the face morph thing again, then rips out all his IVs, fights with the Mars Ghost Face whatever and finally flings himself out the window to his death.

Back at the X-files office, Mulder is reading a newspaper article about Belt's death. (Actually, he has like 6 copies of the same paper spread out all of the table, which is really weird.) Scully comes in and they attempt to give the audience some sort of explanation for what the hell we've been watching for the last 44 minutes but it's something like, "Well, that was weird." They manage to snag some good seats for his funeral, where Michelle is sitting with some dude we're supposed to figure is her fiance. The minister delivers some line about his soul rising to the heavens, higher than he could ever go as a man, and I guess we're supposed to feel a pang of sorrow over this great hero or something, but all I feel is gratitude as the credits finally roll.

This may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

So, let's go over WHY I hate this episode, shall we? First things first, we get way too clear a picture way too early of the "Mars Face" monster. One of the best and creepiest things about this series is that they rarely give you a good long look at whatever is running around eating people, and when you finally do see it, you're so afraid of it already that it almost doesn't matter what it really looks like. But in the first 2 minutes of this episode, we got a long look at the truly horrible (even for the 90s) CGI of the Mars Face, and thus we no longer feared the unknown. I really hate that kind of audience hand-holding, too - most of the time we're supposed to puzzle it out alongside Moose and Squirrel, but in this episode we already knew who the monster was and were just waiting for them to figure it out... which they never actually do.

Second, there is just so much shitty stock footage and NASA jargon that we the audience can't understand and thus don't care about, all of which could have been cut to make more room for story.  TV episodes have a finite running time, usually between 42-48 minutes for an hour-long program, and this episode wasted far too much time showing stock footage that already looked outdated when it aired. I can forgive stock footage in location establishing shots, because those are usually very brief, but this was just too much.

Third, the pacing. We had a bunch of scenes that didn't go anywhere (looking at the data bank blackout here) and even the scenes where stuff does happen seem incredibly long (it took like 5 minutes to get Michelle out of her overturned car). See above re: finite running time.

Fourth, characterization seems off in this episode. I totally buy that Mulder was a space nerd as a kid, but Scully says early in the episode that she didn't really care and seems to not know one damn thing about NASA or how any of this shit works. Mulder explains to her several times what the control room staff are talking about, which is mostly for the audience's benefit but also makes Scully kind of look like an idiot. Here's a little writing tip: when half the dialogue of your show is so jargon-specific that you need one character to act as an interpreter for the audience to follow along, you're doing it wrong.

M&S also can't seem find their asses with both hands; they spend 90% of the episode convinced it's a human saboteur when Mulder at least should have been suspected a space monster or something from the very beginning.

Finally, the fate of the shuttle crew seems to be the central element around which the whole plot revolves: will they survive, who sabotaged their shuttle, etc. The problem is, we never actually see the shuttle crew and thus feel no emotional connection to them.

BLARG. It's over. Next week we'll be watching the far-more-bearable Fallen Angel and then we get to watch Eve, which is just awesome, so things are looking up.

Firsts: Mulder fangirls out, I'm happy an episode is over

1x08: Ice

Hello Starbuck. It's Ahab. People would say to me that life is short; shows, they run by so fast and before you know it, it's over. I never noticed. For me, The X-Files went at a proper pace, there were many awesome episodes, until the moment that I knew, I understood, that I would never see them again - my Mulder and Scully. I never knew how much I loved that show until there were no new episodes. At that moment I would have traded every Doggett, every Reyes, every Princess Bride Guy for one more quality season.  But we're together again, here, on this blog.

As we go forward with these reviews, I'm going to keep the following themes in mind:

1. The show is as much about Scully's journey toward becoming a believer as it is about the paranormal events she and Mulder encounter.
2. Scully is only a skeptic when viewing things from a clinical distance; when the shit hits the fan, she acts on Mulder's crazy beliefs because she knows it will keep her alive.
3. Mulder isn't right nearly as often as he thinks.
4. The evolution of the Mulder/Scully relationship - not just the romantic involvement that eventually occurs, but their dynamics of trust and distrust, the changing ways they view each other, and the friendship that grows over time.
5. Assault on a federal officer never seems to lead to jail time.
6. Mulder is kind of a dick.
7. Hotels, car rental places, and apartment landlords must be crazy to rent to FBI agents.
8. The enormous top-secret government conspiracy actually really sucks at keeping things quiet.
9.  There are some serious homoerotic undertones in this show.
10. The X-files department is super toxic to anyone who comes close to it.
11. Mulder and Scully are both terrible at their jobs.
12. Local law enforcement is protrayed in an extremely negative light.
13. This show is white-washed as fuck. And almost all the non-whites are villains or stereotypes.
14. Bathtubs are scary, terrible places that should be avoided at all costs.

I reserve the right to add more items to this list as the series progresses and you can't stop me!

Warning: If you're watching the show for the first time while following along with these recaps, that's awesome, but I've seen this whole series a bunch of times and will probably mention things that happen in the later seasons.  Please keep that in mind if you're the kind of person who hates spoilers.

This week we'll be looking at 1x08 Ice, one of my favorite episodes this season. It's tense and scary and almost completely plausible, which makes it even scarier.  Something about the idea of true isolation has always made me very uneasy, along with elevators and other enclosed spaces, but throw me in a bunker miles from civilization with a group of strangers of whom at least one is a parasite-infest murderer? Nope nope nope nope nope.  Even sexy storage-room-examinations with Mulder and Scully wouldn't make that trip worthwhile.

Okay, maybe it would.

Arctic Ice Core Project
Icy Cape, Alaska
250 Miles North of the Arctic Circle

It looks balls cold up there, you guys.

It's maybe 50'F where I am, and I'm wrapped in a blanket with a space heater on. I could not handle this.

A cute widdle puppy skulks through a trash research lab, stepping around at least 2 dead bodies. A rugged looking guy sporting several nasty-looking wounds lurches into view carrying a gun; he heads over to a console and flips the camera on, and starts saying rather cryptically:

RICHTER: We're not... who... we are. We're not... who we are. It goes no further than this. It stops right here... right now.

Yeah, that's definitely one of the creepier lines in this show.

Suddenly another man rushes up behind him and the two start fighting, slamming each other around the room and throwing serious punches. Guy 1 grabs his gun and aims it at Guy 2, who also has a gun drawn and pointed at Guy 1. They approach each other until each gun barrel is only an inch or so from the other's face.  There's a long pause, and finally Guy 1 takes his sites off Guy 2 and aims his gun at his own head; guy 2 does the same.  The shot moves outside the bunker and we hear 2 gunshots ring out.

Roll opening credits.

At FBI HQ, Mulder and Scully are watching a video from the Arctic Ice Project; Guy 1, alive and happy, is all excited because his team has just surpassed the previous record for drilling into an ice sheet. Which I guess is really cool if you're an ice scientist or whatever. The team all high five each other and make with general, flannel-clad merriment.

"Good work, everyone! Let's never murder one another!"

Mulder explains to Scully that these guys were up in Alaska extracting ice samples that could reveal the structure of the earth's climate back to the dawn of man; there were no reports of any trouble until a week after that first video, when the next transmission was sent... and it was Guy 1, doing his "We're not who we are" bit.  After he delivers that line and gets bumrushed by Guy 2, the transmission cuts off.

Wait. If they killed each other, who sent the transmission? Did Guy 1 have his hand on the "trasmit live feed" button or something up until the fight started? It would have made more sense (and created more tension) to hear their scuffle off camera followed by the two gunshots.  Then Mulder could have explained that it kept broadcasting the empty room until the power went out.

Anyway. Mulder says the Bureau thinks they must be either brilliant or expendable, because they've pulled the assignment to go figure out WTF is going on up north - leaving today, with a 3-day window to get in and out before the next arctic storm makes travel impossible.  Filing this under #6, because it is a total dick move not to tell Scully about a huge sojourn to the middle of frozen nowhere and give her zero time to pack or prepare. You think she has ANY clothing suited to arctic weather? Who's going to pay for her new sub-zero-winter wardrobe?

He even quips, "Bring your mittens" as he walks away. Sometimes I kind of want to punch him in the face...



Doolittle Airfield
Nome, Alaska

This guy (who in my memory always gets replaced with Tom Arnold)



sits around listening to old football highlights tapes on his Walkman (which is intensely weird) while other people do the actual work of loading up his plane. He's Danny Murphy, and he'll be heading up to Frozen Nowhere with Moose and Squirrel. Two more scientists, Lynette from Desperate Housewives and some guy who looks like Lucius Malfoy, show up and everyone flashes ID and shakes hands.

From Left to Right: Not-Tom-Arnold, Moose, Squirrel, Lynette from Desperate Housewives, and Lucius Malfoy.

Their pilot, with the amazing name of Bear, pulls up in his jeep and oh holy crap it's this guy:



That's Jeff Kober, who will always be creepy to me. He played a criminally insane vampire of BtVS (Helpless) and later a guy who dealt the magic equivalent of heroin. He also played bad guys on Charmed, Star Trek Voyager, and Supernatural. He is not to be trusted. Something about the wide mouth and the prominent cheekbones.

Creepy Bear throws a bit of attitude at them and they all get on the plane.

Our unlikely team make it up to the project bunkers and kick down the door to find a whole lot of dead people. They document the scene, and Mulder finds the ice cores melting away in the freezer as all the generators have gone out.

Mulder and Lynette go poking around and are suddenly attacked by the dog from the teaser. Bear manages to wrestle the dog off them and Lucius injects it with a tranquilizer - but not before it gives Bear a nice bite on the hand. Scully examines the dog and finds black nodules on its lymph nodes... and something crawling under its skin.

That sound you just heard was me vomiting in my mouth.

Ew. Ew. Ew ew ew. I hate when things do that. Under-skin crawlies show up a few times in this series and it always creeps me right the fuck out.

In the bathroom, Bear is taping up his dog bite. He looks in the mirror and sees that under his arm he has the same black spots as the dog had.

After a quick commercial break, we come back to find that Scully has finished her autopsies on the pile of corpses and determined that two of them killed themselves and the other three were strangled to death. They also had fever-damage to their livers, but no black spots... which would be good news for Bear except that the black spots on the dog have gone away, which could indicate those spots are just an early symptom.

Mulder finds a pile of satellite photos, which Not-Tom says show the ice to be 3,000 meters thick... but the original team found data showing twice that depth - they were digging inside a meteor crater.

Scully and Lucius are examining blood samples from the dead guys and find ammonium hydroxide, which Not-Tom has also found in the ice samples in levels higher than the earth's atmosphere ever contained. He also found this in the ice:



Scully has found the same organism in guy 1's blood and theorizes it's the larval stage of a larger animal - like the thing crawling around inside that dog. Everyone but Mulder goes into immediate denial, and Bear seizes on the "those guys killed each other" autopsy result to pitch his bid for getting the hell out of dodge. Mulder insists that none of them can leave without proper quarantine procedure, but everyone else sides with Bear on the GTFO train.

Tensions have been mounting this whole scene, and when Lynette reminds them that the dog bit Bear, he's quick to get all up in Mulder's face to remind him that he was attacked too. Scully steps in to calm shit down, and says they should examine each other to make sure no one's infected. Blood and stool samples for everybody!

Bear flips his shit and storms out, intent on getting in his plane and flying off; Mulder puts it to a vote, which is 3-2 (Moose, Squirrel, Not-Tom against Lynette and Lucius) to catch and confine Bear until he checks out clean for creepy worm parasites. He agrees at gunpoint, then smashes the sample jar over Mulder's head and bolts... only to be TACKLED by Scully.

Not pictured: her little cape fluttering in the air as she freaking DOVE at him.

So much spunk in such a small package.

They try to restrain him and spot something moving under the skin at the back of his neck. He starts seizing and Lucius cuts the fucking thing out of his neck oh god it's so gross ew oh why?!?

WHY IS NO ONE WEARING GLOVES FOR THIS!?!?!

They to yank out the hideous squiggly thing and it immediately starts spewing BLACK BLOOD all up in Bear's neck wound. Mulder drops the worm in a specimen jar and gets his ass on the radio to call for quarantine and evacuation. The weather has gone to shit, though, so no one can get to them for another day.

Oh, and Bear's dead now, so they can't fly out themselves.

A bit later, we come back to the hideous worm thing all cozy in its ammonia tank

as the team discusses its anatomy and how it's super weird. Scully says she found the creatures in the hypothalamus glands of each dead guy (and she's found another one still alive), which could explain their violent, murderous behavior. It also only appears to kill when it's extracted, releasing a toxin into the host's blood. Mulder suggests the two guys from the teaser killed themselves to protect everyone else.

Moose & Squirrel find a quiet moment together in the room holding all the dead people (don't worry, they're in body bags... the corpses, not Our Heroes), and Mulder says he doesn't know if they should kill the hideous evil worm thing because it's probably an alien, brought to earth by the meteor that formed the crater in which the first time was drilling. Scully is firmly on team kill-it-w-with-fire, not only to keep it from infecting the general population but to keep their own team from killing each other.



Lucius and Lynette are listening in and growing increasingly paranoid that M&S knew this whole time that they were flying into a disaster situation. Lucius points out that Bear's infected blood got all over Scully, but Lynette counters that it got all over Lucius, too. It's getting all Salem Witch Trials up in here, you guys.

Lucius, Lynette, and Not-Tom all barge in on Moose and Squirrel, still arguing, and Lucius subtly insinuates that Scully's got angry-worm fever. She does not take this insinuation well.

"My little feet could totally reach up to kick your frozen nuts."

Mulder steps in and says everyone should get some rest, but Lucius reminds him that they still haven't examined everyone for spots and neck worms yet. Scully insists they do them out in the open, no secrets; she and Lynette strip down to play doctor in one room, and Mulder and the boys do the same in another room.

MULDER: Before anyone passes judgement, may I remind you we are in the Arctic.

Content that no one's infected, they all retire to spend the night in various states of sleepless paranoia in the same rooms where dead men once slept.

Don't worry, Scully, nothing bad can happen with the Bosom Buddies watching over you.

Later, Mulder startles himself awake and hears a noise. He finds Not-Tom's door open, but Not-Tom nowhere to be found. He heads into the lab and finds Not-Tom's bloody corpse stuffed in the freeze... which is of course the moment everyone else choose to walk in and find him like this:

Totally not what it looks like, guys.

Scully is, of course, the only one who believes he's innocent, and says he should have a blood test. Of course, she should know that Mulder is already cripplingly paranoid at the best of times, so now he's convinced that Lucius is going to change the results to make him look infected. She wants to look at his neck, but Mulder waves his gun around and says he's not turning his back on anyone ... so, yeah, way to make yourself look innocent and not-infected, what with the violence the yelling and antisocial behavior.

Scully draws her gun on Mulder, and you can tell by the look in her eyes that she hates having to do it.

MULDER: Scully, get that gun off me!
SCULLY: Mulder, you have to understand!
MULDER: (takes his aim off Malfoy and aims at Scully instead) Put it down!
SCULLY: You put it down first!
MULDER: (angry) Scully, for God sakes it's me!
SCULLY: (pleading) Mulder... you may not be who you are.

There's a long pause where Mulder slowly comes to his senses and lowers his gun. Filing this under #4, because Mulder is learning to trust Scully when he cannot trust himself.

Scully shuts him in a small storage room, and as she shuts the door he tells her, "In here, I'll be safer than you."  Which is reassuring, thanks. She locks the door and stares at it for a long moment, wondering if she's done the right thing.

She heads back to the lab and sees Lynette asleep, but before she can check for a worm lump, Lucius comes in and gets all paranoid that Scully is the only person with a gun and could be infected. She gives him some MAJOR stinkeye, pops the clips from her gun and Mulder's, and hurls them out the door into the arctic wasteland. Lucius, in complete contradiction of his actions like 5 seconds ago, says now isn't the time for "the three of us" to start turning on each other and Scully's all, "Hold up, asshole, Mulder's still one of us and needs our help." You go, Scully. #4

She tries the radio again, but there's nothing but static.

Later, Lucius and Lynette are doing some experiments with infected vs uninfected blood, and Lucius gets super pissed with Lynette makes an honest mistake and puts two drops of infected blood from different hosts on the same slide. They each storm off in a rage, but Scully keeps her head and looks in the microscope to see the two larvae fighting and killing each other.



She gets an idea, and puts the jars containing the giant two worms next to each other - the worms immediately start trying to kill each other.

They drop a bit of science on us: Lucius says it doesn't make sense for a species to kill its own because they need to procreate, but Lynette points out that the worms could be hermaphroditic and reproduce asexually.

There's a joke about Mulder and Scully's lack of sexual relationships in there somewhere, I just know it.

Anyway, they decide to test this two-worms-in-one-host-is-a-cure theory by sticking one of the live worms inside the poor dog.

Look at this image without squirming. I dare you.

After a minute or so, the dog has a mild seizure but then is totally fine, wagging its tail and nomming some kibble and totally not trying to eat anyone's face off. It pooped out both worms, dead.

Scully heads back to Mulder's makeshift cell, wanting to make sure he's infected before they go dropping worms in his ears. She tells him about her discovery, but he knows that if they put a worm in him, he'll become infected instead of cured.

SCULLY: If that's true, then why didn't you let us inspect you?
MULDER: I would have, but you pulled a gun on me. Now I don't trust them. I want to trust you. (#4)
SCULLY: Okay, but now they're not here.

Mulder turns, and Scully pulls down the back of his shirt and runs her hands all over his neck and back. No worm. Scully turns to leave but Mulder grabs her (in a totally not sexual way) and she gasps (in also totally not a sexual way). She tries to turn but he gently pushes her back to facing forward (in a totally not sexual way) and leans in close to touch her neck (in a totally sexual way).

There's no sexual tension in this scene at all, I guess, is what I'm saying. But if you take out those first two sentences and all the parentheses, that paragraph reads like a mild BDSM fanfic scene.

I'm sure there's a fanfic out there where, immediately following this moment, he pushes her up against a wall and they have passionate, paranoid, Arctic sex. (If you know of one, please share.)

Just as Lucius and Lynette are convincing each other that M&S will totally come out and lie and say they're uninfected, M&S come out and say they're uninfected. And maybe it's just me, but they both look a little flush and tousled and sheepish...



Lucius suggests they head back into the main building for a public examination of everyone, and the second Mulder turns his back, Lucius tackles him and Lynette shoves Scully into the storage room / cell. Lynette grabs the worm and tries to drop it in Mulder's ear, but Lucius gets a look at the back of her neck... and there's totally a gigantic evil angry worm in there! He releases Mulder and goes after her, but she flips her shit and runs away, screaming and knocking things over.

Mulder lets Scully out of the cell (thank you for thinking of her, just this one time) and he and Scully corner and subdue Lynette, and Lucius approaches with the worm. Scully takes a moment to remind Mulder that if they put the worm in Lynette, there won't be any left for study, but he knows it's the only way. Lucius drops the worm in Lynette's ear; she spazzes for a bit and then calms.

Doolittle Airfield
Nome, Alaska

Lynette gets loaded into an ambulance in a hazmat suit. Lucius explains (more for viewer benefit than for M&S) that she's going to quarantine along with the dog, but that the three of them have been cleared for release. Mulder wants to go back to the site to find more fun worms to play with, but Hudge tells him that the place has already been torched by "the military, Centers for Disease Control... you oughta know, they're your people." So basically, shadowy conspiracy somebodies.

He walks away, and Mulder tells Scully in a dreamy and cryptic voice that the worms are still down there, 200,000 years down in the ice. She says, "Leave it there."  She walks away, and after a quiet moment to collect himself, Mulder follows.

"Why can't I ever have nice things?"

End credits.

I do love this episode, guys. It's one of the shining gems of season 1. There's so much great acting in it, lots of nonverbal cues to clue the viewer in on the mounting tension and paranoia within each character. Mulder and Scully also have some great moments together, testing and reaffirming the bond that's growing between them. And the creep factor with those worm things is just incredible. Every time they got one near somebody's ear, or showed them crawling under their skin, I got both heebies and jeebies.

Firsts: black alien goo, M&S draw weapons on each other, Mulder actually takes Scully's feelings into account

1x07: Ghost in the Machine

Hello Starbuck. It's Ahab. People would say to me that life is short; shows, they run by so fast and before you know it, it's over. I never noticed. For me, The X-Files went at a proper pace, there were many awesome episodes, until the moment that I knew, I understood, that I would never see them again - my Mulder and Scully. I never knew how much I loved that show until there were no new episodes. At that moment I would have traded every Doggett, every Reyes, every Princess Bride Guy for one more quality season.  But we're together again, here, on this blog.

As we go forward with these reviews, I'm going to keep the following themes in mind:

1. The show is as much about Scully's journey toward becoming a believer as it is about the paranormal events she and Mulder encounter.

2. Scully is only a skeptic when viewing things from a clinical distance; when the shit hits the fan, she acts on Mulder's crazy beliefs because she knows it will keep her alive.

3. Mulder isn't right nearly as often as he thinks.

4. The evolution of the Mulder/Scully relationship - not just the romantic involvement that eventually occurs, but their dynamics of trust and distrust, the changing ways they view each other, and the friendship that grows over time.

5. Assault on a federal officer never seems to lead to jail time.

6. Mulder is kind of a dick.

7. Hotels, car rental places, and apartment landlords must be crazy to rent to FBI agents.

8. The enormous top-secret government conspiracy actually really sucks at keeping things quiet.

9.  There are some serious homoerotic undertones in this show.

10. The X-files department is super toxic to anyone who comes close to it.

11. Mulder and Scully are both terrible at their jobs.

12. Local law enforcement is protrayed in an extremely negative light.

13. This show is white-washed as fuck. And almost all the non-whites are villains or stereotypes.

14. Bathtubs are scary, terrible places that should be avoided at all costs.

I reserve the right to add more items to this list as the series progresses and you can't stop me!

Warning: If you're watching the show for the first time while following along with these recaps, that's awesome, but I've seen this whole series a bunch of times and will probably mention things that happen in the later seasons.  Please keep that in mind if you're the kind of person who hates spoilers.

Welcome to 1x07 Ghost in the Machine, where Moose and Squirrel battle an evil building. This episode spawned one of my favorite moments in the Season 1 Gag Reel (which I'll post at the end of S1, though you're free to look it up at any time) but other than that I hardly remember anything about it except that it made me scared of elevators and has a lot of terrible ideas about the capabilities of technology. Let's see what happens, shall we?

Eurisko World Headquarters

Crystal City, Virginia

In some swanky office, two guys - one a suited straight-laced CEO type and the other a scruffy computer nerd type - are arguing. Scruffy's all, "You're killing my company! and Suit's all "It's not your company anymore!" Scruffy storms out yelling, "You're going to regret this!" So clearly, Suit is going to die horribly very soon.

Cut to night, and Suit is transcribing a letter he's recorded on a tape recorder, telling the Board of Directors that Brad Wilczek (Scruff) has left and he plans to "reposition Eurisko as an industry leader," by first shutting down something called the COS project.  There's a camera motoring him the whole time - a COS camera, in point of fact, which is clearly unhappy about being shut down. Suit hears water running in the bathroom and walks in to find the sink overflowing, and is unable to turn off the motion-sensor faucet. The bathroom phone rings*, but there's no one on the other end, just a voice giving the time... and suddenly the lights go out and all the doors shut. He tries to get out, putting a key in the manual override lock... and suddenly gets zapped with enough electricity to fling him across the room.

That's seven years bad luck, buddy.

The camera focuses on his dead body, and a computerized voice says, "File deleted."

* Seriously, this guy has a phone in the bathroom? I don't care how successful and important you are, nobody wants to talk to you while you're pooping. It can wait.

Opening credits roll.

FBI Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

Some guy who looks remarkably like Mr. Potato Head walks through a busy office (which is way too beige and well-lit compared to the offices we'll see in later seasons) and finds Mulder snagging a sandwich from the lunch cart. They hug like old buddies, and Mulder introduces him to Scully as Jerry Lamana, someone he worked with in the Violent Crimes Unit - his old partner. Potato Jerry buys them lunch because he wants to pick their brains about Suit's electrocution. He wants M&S to help him out, as he's afraid of "dropping the ball" - Suit was a friend of the Attorney General, and solving this case would be great for his career.  

So... Potato Jerry is the Mulder equivalent of Scully's Donal Logue.  This is totally going to go well for everyone involved.

This is one potato who is desperate for approval.

Eurisko World Headquarters

As they walk to the building, Scully asks Mulder why he and Potato Jerry split up, and we get his backstory: he wanted to rise to the top, but fucked up a case by misplacing evidence, resulting in a federal judge losing his hands and an eye. Ouch.

They get in an elevator, security camera watching the whole way, and it goes up a few floors because slamming to a stop, knocking Scully off her feet. Mulder helps her up (so adorable) and then starts pushing buttons while she tries the emergency phone.  Just as she gets an answer on the other end, the elevator starts up again... but the computer got her name.

Why is it actually displaying this stuff on a monitor? Wouldn't anyone walking by wonder why the hell it was looking up her number?

Up in the bathroom where Suit died, M&S are looking at the door control panel with Potato Jerry. Someone rigged the switch so that, when Suit stuck his key in the lock, it created a complete circuit and zapped him. The building's system engineer, Peterson, (OMG, another black guy with lines!) comes in and says he doubts this was done manually, as whoever did it would have to override the COS, which regulates everything "from energy output to the volume of water in each toilet flush" and, of course, phone calls. There's only a short list of people who could do that. When he leaves, Mulder points out that the phone was off the hook and wonders who Suit was talking to before he got fried.

FBI Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

I'm gonna give the show some leeway on the whole repeatedly-traveling-from-HQ-to-crime-scene thing this episode, because according to Google, Crystal City is only about 20 minutes outside of DC. So even though Moose and Squirrel will go back and forth roughly a million times in this episode, it's nowhere near as glaring a time waste as it was in the last episode.

In the XF office, Mulder is looking around his messy desk. Scully comes by to get him, and he says he can't find his profile notes. They're late for a meeting, though, so he leaves without them.

Is it just me or is this totally not the same office he has in season 2 onward? There's way too much light in there.

Up in the conference room, Potato Jerry is delivering a very well-written and precise profile on the potential killer, and everyone seems impressed... except Mulder, who's pissed because that's his profile Potato Jerry is taking credit for. Henceforth we will refer to Jerry as the Rotten Potato, because that shit ain't right.

Mulder confronts the Rotten Potato at the water cooler after the meeting, but Rotten Potato doesn't see what the big deal is. He walks away, and Scully comes over to tell Mulder that Peterson's given them the short list - one name in fact: Brad Wilczek, Scruffy.

They head over to Wilczek's house, where he's got this sweet piece of machinery in the driveway:

Oh sweet baby, come to mama!

And a totally stereotypical weirdo computer guy enviro-space vibe going on in the house - including no shoes allowed. 

Anyone else totally distracted by their feet? You must have to scrub footprints off that shiny floor every day, Scruffy.

 After they flash some badge, Wilczek invites them inside and proceeds to tell them how he started Eurisko with the goal of discovery - which is was Eurisko means in Greek. Suit, he explains, was more interested in power than discovery.  He tells them about this bitchin' prototype called Smart Home (which he has installed in his own house and is similar to COS) and how it could have been awesome for their company until Suit killed it. Mulder asks if someone could have hacked into the COS, and Wilczek says any of the following are possible suspects:

Data travelers

Electrowizards

Technoanarchists

... Are those, like, real things? Real hacker-type things? Because it sort of sounds like the writers watched Hackers a bunch of times and just picked words that sounded right.

I should mention this conversation takes place in his home office - because heck out that SWEET pinball machine in the back!

Anyway, Wilczek doesn't seem to worried about being a suspect, because his scruffy mind prefers puzzles over murder.

Back at Scully's apartment, she's once again typing up her field notes, in which she mentions that Brad Wilczek is a suspect, scruffy mind or no. She turns off the monitor and heads to bed... and when she's out of the room, the monitor turns back on and the modem connects on its own... which is totally impossible. I don't care how good your remote-hacking software is, it cannot turn on a monitor or modem, because a modem that's OFF by definition isn't connected to anything and a monitor turning on is a physical action. Further, it doesn't NEED to turn on a monitor, as it's just getting information straight from the hard drive.  It would actually be way better for it to NOT turn on the monitor, as Scully could have easily noticed the light and come out to see what was wrong. But this is TV, and we the audience need the visual confirmation that something spooky is afoot, so we get this:

Along with the creepy COS voice saying "File opened."

FBI Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

The Sculder are listening to a bunch of tapes of Wilczek's lectures, isolating the word "Eastern" to compare it to the call in Suit's bathroom. The Rotten Potato shows up to grovel, and it's moderately effective, especially because he says he's just doing it to live up to Mulder's shining example.

Uh, hey there, Jer, have you seen Mulder lately? Sure, he was once the favored child of VCU, but now no one wants to touch him with a ten-foot pole.  You stealing his profile - the one thing that other parts of the Bureau still find him useful for - is pretty much the shittiest thing you could do to him.

Anyway, they have their bro moment while Scully does all the work (#6), using a "computer spectrogram" voice analyzer to compare the phone call in Suit's bathroom to the words they've lifted from Wilczek's lecture series: they're a match.

Really hope that's a dry erase marker, Scully.

Scully wants to go get a warrant, while Rotten Potato offers to go make sure Wilczek doesn't bolt... alone.

At Wilczek's house, Scruffy is trying to log in to COS remotely but it's not letting him in.  He jumps into his cherry ride and heads for the Eurisko building (with Rotten Potato following unseen behind)

Wilzcek heads to the COS control room, where he engages in conversation with the computer - which, he says, isn't even supposed to have a voice synthesizer. Downstairs, Rotten Potato flashes his badge and gets in the elevator to follow Wilczek, but it jams between the 29th and 30th floor. Wilczek, horrified, watches through the security cameras as the elevator goes into free fall and Rotten Potato plummets to his death.

This is actually incorrect. In a falling elevator, you wouldn't actually be slammed to the floor; instead, you would float up to the center of the elevator car as you and it are falling at the same speed - like astronauts in space. You only get slammed to the floor at the very painful end.

At the XF office, Mulder engages in the perfectly ration and healthy behavior of watching his old friend die in an elevator. Scully comes in and says she heard what happened, but Mulder is in no mood for consolation and instead jumps right back into investigator mode, saying he doesn't think Wilczek did it.  She turns off the tape and kneels beside him, trying to be gentle on him (#4) as she nudges him to take it easy, but he just turns the tape right back on (#6). She tells him Wilczek's already signed a confession.

After failling to gain access to Wilczek's house due to lack of clearance, Mulder goes to sulk on a park bench and wait for Deep Throat.

DT is all, "We can't keep meeting like this" and other things you might say to your mistress (#9), but nevertheless tells Mulder that the Department of Defense has been itching to get its hands on Wilczek to design them some sweet AI weaponry. After all, Wilczek has already designed the first computer that actually thinks, "a learning machine."

You writers missed a serious chance to quote the Terminator there, I hope you know that.

Federal Detention Center

Washington, D.C.

Mulder is interviewing Wilczek, who is actually bitching about the fact that they make him wear shoes all the time.  Yeah, Zen Buddy, I'm sure the whole footwear thing is the worst part about being in federal custody. Mulder knows he's innocent, but Wilczek is unwilling to admit it for fear that his technology be taken from him and be used to turn him into the next Oppenheimer. ...Because once you go to jail, and your stuff all becomes government property, they're not going to do that anyway?  Mulder says that if he won't share the machine with the government, and he won't shut it down himself, then the only option is to show Mulder how destroy it.

Outside, Mulder tells Scully that Wilczek is willing to create a virus to destroy the system, but Scully suspects that Wilczek is trying to shift the blame onto the computer when he's the one who's really guilty. ...Because confessing to the murder and going down for it, while having the COS destroyed in secret, is a great way to show everyone you're innocent?

She thinks maybe he's looking for spooky answers because of Rotten Potato, and maybe he should talk to someone. He says, "You're probably right" and he's going "to talk to someone"... and promptly heads back inside to give Wilczek a stunningly awkward 90s laptop to build the virus. 

See, here's Scully trying to be all nice and sympathetic and maybe help Mulder sift through his huge fucking mountain of personal issues because she cares about him and doesn't want him to self destruct (#4), and he just blows her off (#6).

Anyway, back at her apartment, Scully is snoozing peacefully when her phone rings; she picks it up to hear that hideous modem sound we all remember from the dial-up days, and runs into her living room to see that her computer is on and sending her files.  She calls out on another line and has a trace run on her own number to see who's accessing her computer.

Wait, what? Why didn't the phone ring the last time COS accessed her files? Also, Scully already has two phone lines (she dials for the trace on a second landline) but one of them isn't dedicated to the computer?  I am so confused by the way the computers are acting in this episode, you guys. It's almost like they're behaving not in logical ways but instead in ways that fit will with the plot and make for good storytelling...

Outside the Eurisko building, Mulder is preparing for some good old-fashioned breaking and entering when Scully pulls up behind him - the traced line was somewhere inside the building.  Mulder puts the Eurisko plates from Wilzcek's sweet ride on his own car (which he stole when and how???); the computer scans them and lets Mulder's car through.  But just when Mulder is gloating about his success, the gate comes crashing back down on their car.

How smart could this computer possibly be if it thinks that dinky little thing will kill the mighty Moose and Squirrel?

Luckily it's just a shitty aluminum scrolling gate thing, because they're both fine, except that the car horn is going off for no good reason. Mulder pops the hood to disable the damn thing, and for once these two show some sense of self-preservation and decide to just take the stairs.

Well, okay, that wasn't such a good idea either, because as they huff and puff up to the 29th floor, the lights all go out. Mulder whips out his flashlight (insert joke about Skinner's big flashlight here) and the forge ahead. Scully reaches out for the doorknob to the 29th floor, but Mulder actually slaps her hand away before she can touch it and get electrocuted.  Uh, couldn't you have maybe warned her about something like that at, oh I don't know, ANY OTHER POINT on your super long stair hike? "Hey, when we get to the 29th floor, don't go grabbing any doorknobs or other metal surfaces just in case the building wants us done up Cajun style."  (#6)

He pulls a screwdriver out of his adorable little backpack and jams it into the lock, spewing sparks everywhere. I guess that turned off the charge or something, because when he touches the doorknob he doesn't get shocked... the but door's still locked.  Mulder throws a glove over the security camera that's been watching this whole circus, and they decide to go all Die Hard and use the air vents to get inside. He boosts Scully up and tells her to find a way to drop in and open the door.

OMG look at her tiny feet! I have tiny feet, too, Scully! FOOT SISTERS!

She goes crawling around for a bit, and then Mulder hears the door rattle and then open... only it's Peterson, the building engineer, not Scully, who has somehow found herself in a windy deathtrap, about to be sucked in to a giant fan.

Completely oblivious to the impending death of his partner, and not even seeming to care that she hasn't shown up yet (#6), Mulder heads to the COS control room with Peterson, where they start trying to access the ... whatever thing will let him put the virus in. Hard drive? Operating system? Motherboard? They never say. They just crack the console open, plug stuff in, and the screen says "Access Denied."

Meanwhile, Scully is fighting for her life up in the ceiling, using her gun to try and shoot out the fan controls, which are on the wrong side of the spinning blade. This is the first time she actually fires her weapon, in case you were wondering.

Mulder continues his far less dramatic confrontation with the computer, gains access to the CPU, and is about to upload the virus, when suddenly DRAMA ALL UP IN THIS BITCH when Peterson whips out a gun. Turns out he's from some seedy government agency (not the Department of Defense; he says "our paychecks are signed from the same person). See what I mean about minorities never getting to be the good guy? #13. Mulder meekly hands over his gun clip and the diskette containing the virus.

Don't worry though, because Scully shows up to save the day!

Despite being totally windblown and disheveled, and having just made an incredible shot to take out a fan blade with what looks like a .22, does she call it quits and let Mulder handle the rest of the night? No. She's basically a one-woman show of awesome, gettin' shit done. Kickin' ass and takin' names. Who's the ginger FBI chick who's a sex machine with all the... absolutely no one? SCULLAY! Can you dig it?

And here we have the sort of crisis-of-loyalty moment that Scully gets so often in the first few seasons. On the one hand, we have Peterson, who tells her the machine is of enormous scientific interest and she is compromising her sworn duty if she doesn't side with him. On the other hand, we have Mulder, who urges her to do the right thing and let him destroy a machine that's already killed two people. 

And Scully forsakes not only her duty to the US government BUT TO SCIENCE ITSELF and tells Mulder to put in the virus disc.

He doesn't even have to push any buttons or anything; the computer just goes full on Hal at the end of 2001. "What are you doing, Brad? The lights flicker and all the cameras and elevators start twitching, as the computer voice descends into gibberish in its death throes. As the voice slows and fades, it asks, "Brad, why?" and everything shuts down.

Out in some park somewhere, Mulder tells Deep Throat that Wilczek has disappeared, and Deep Throat tells him that They can do anything they want - loss of freedom does funny things to a man, and there's no more physical evidence to exonerate him of the two murders he confessed to. Mulder asks if the Department of Defense has found anything, but DT tells him that Wilczek's virus completely destroyed the artificial intelligence.

At the DoD lab, Peterson and a bunch of techies are sifting through bits and pieces of the COS, using words like "pulscode modulations" and "parsing subroutine" that I don't know enough about computers to call bullshit on. He says they have 6 hours before they're supposed to chuck this thin in the metal shredder... which seems like a dumb idea, considering that the DoD has been salivating over this machine for years. Now that it's in their hands, they're not willing to wait a few more days or assign more people to it to figure the thing out? Really?

Unseen, a light comes on and a camera turns to look at Peterson. We watch from its point of view as Peterson says, "I'm going to figure this thing out if it kills me."

End credits.

This is another of those episodes I'm not too sure about. The whole "fear of advancing technology" trope has been done a thousand times, starting from the minute one cave man told all the little cave kids to be careful around the fire.  The fear of AI is a bit newer, but it's still so worn as to no longer really be scary.  I also greatly dislike the trend in the early episodes wherein every good Monster of the Week episode has to have some shady government conspiracy surrounding it; it's like they were afraid to just let the monsters be monsters and instead felt they had to shoehorn in the "trust no one" theme at every opportunity. Like, Shadows couldn't be just a ghost story, they had to make it about some weapons tech investigation; GitM couldn't just be about a killer computer, it had to be about the DoD wanting a superweapon. They'll do it again in Young at Heart, Roland, and a few others I can't recall because it's getting very late and this post has to be done by morning. 

Anyway, when it comes to "evil computer" episodes, this one pales in comparison to Kill Switch (5x11) and the "demon possesses the internet when its book prison gets scanned" episode of Buffy ("I, Robot... You, Jane," 1x08).  All these episodes imbue computers with abilities they couldn't possibly have, but at least those two do it in a more believable, less glaring way.

Next week, though, we get to watch Ice, which is one of my favorite episodes in S1. For some reason I just love it when Moose and Squirrel find themselves cut off from civilization and relying on one another for their survival against impossible odds. Plus it's got one of those scenes that's weirdly sexually tense. So yay.

Firsts: someone from Mulder's past we've never heard of before and will never see again, Scully fires her gun