This
- Episode aired Jan 10, 2018
- TV-14
- 43m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
3.5K
YOUR RATING
A chilling secret is revealed when an old friend reaches out to Mulder and Scully in a seemingly impossible way.A chilling secret is revealed when an old friend reaches out to Mulder and Scully in a seemingly impossible way.A chilling secret is revealed when an old friend reaches out to Mulder and Scully in a seemingly impossible way.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe two young boys sitting near Mulder and Scully on the bus are Oscar and Felix, Gillian Anderson's sons.
- GoofsOne of the tombstones at the cemetery has a typo, reading "Airforce" instead of "Air Force".
- Quotes
Fox Mulder: Frohike look 57 to you when he died?
Dana Scully: Frohike looked 57 the day he was born. His birthday is the same day that FDR died.
Fox Mulder: So, Langly... March 28, 1969. Any president die that day?
Dana Scully: Eisenhower.
Fox Mulder: Who needs Google when you got Scully?
- ConnectionsFeatured in Millennium After the Millennium (2019)
Featured review
Chris Carter and Glen Morgan try another Cyberpunk X-file
Kill Switch was probably one of the finest X-Files episodes. It was a great story, great premise, and the music was uncanny.
But later, when Carter and Gibson tried a redux, "First Person Shooter" didn't work out as well as Kill Switch. I still liked "FPS", but it did not have the elements that made Kill Switch just so good. For instance, Esther Nairn gets the drop on Skully, kidnaps her, then the next thing we see Esther driving this old car. Whose car was that? It was never explained in the episode or in a later episode. Just one of the many crazy things that made it so odd as an X-File. But the lack of any explanation as to why Invisigoth is driving a coolish early 60's car, adds to the weirdness of Kill Switch.
The Gaming environment shown in First Person Shooter, basically s**ked. The premise of "FPS" was similar to Kill Switch, but many things detracted from the plot, especially the "Gaming" thing. Of course, at the time gaming was popular and in it's basic infancy, but the episode did not give us a representation of how Gaming looked in that year. We still had people playing "Doom", and we had "Mech Warrior 2" which was popular to play on a service named "Kali", a precursor to Steam. A little later, we had Quake 3. And don't get me started with Unreal Tournament "Capture the Flag" which was my favorite of the day. Or Doom or Heretic or Descent! All Gaming environments that were complex. An AI was supposed to have hijacked the Gaming Environment in FPS but it didn't work, it was simply not very believable.
Enter "THIS", and we can suspend disbelief more readily. An Old Friend calls Mulder on his Cell, and then it is Shades of Kill Switch. We know from Kill Switch there was an AI, and that Esther Nairn somehow joined with it, and maybe tormented the Lone Gunmen online. We also know, that the "Hardware Node" in Kill Switch which accosted Mulder with "Nurse Nancy" and Fake Skully, which was later "Death From Aboved" by the AI, was not the only hardware node built into a Trailer. The implication is, that this AI had survived, and maybe even Invisigoth did as well, somehow.
These ideas about artificial environments are well represented in "This" episode, which reaches all the way back to Kill Switch and also reaches across to "My Struggle III" and Mr "Y". But there is more going on in this entry, just because we see a few familiar ideas does not mean that "this" episode is just a Kill Switch rehash.
William Gibson wrote Kill Switch, Carter wrote First Person Shooter with William Gibson. One episode became Magic, the other did not. But in "This", Glen Morgan is able to mine story elements from both Kill Switch and First Person Shooter and he made Magic happen a second time. And without Gibson. The X-Files enters it's possible final season with two very strong episodes.
And, any episode that starts and stops with "California Sun" by the Ramones...
But later, when Carter and Gibson tried a redux, "First Person Shooter" didn't work out as well as Kill Switch. I still liked "FPS", but it did not have the elements that made Kill Switch just so good. For instance, Esther Nairn gets the drop on Skully, kidnaps her, then the next thing we see Esther driving this old car. Whose car was that? It was never explained in the episode or in a later episode. Just one of the many crazy things that made it so odd as an X-File. But the lack of any explanation as to why Invisigoth is driving a coolish early 60's car, adds to the weirdness of Kill Switch.
The Gaming environment shown in First Person Shooter, basically s**ked. The premise of "FPS" was similar to Kill Switch, but many things detracted from the plot, especially the "Gaming" thing. Of course, at the time gaming was popular and in it's basic infancy, but the episode did not give us a representation of how Gaming looked in that year. We still had people playing "Doom", and we had "Mech Warrior 2" which was popular to play on a service named "Kali", a precursor to Steam. A little later, we had Quake 3. And don't get me started with Unreal Tournament "Capture the Flag" which was my favorite of the day. Or Doom or Heretic or Descent! All Gaming environments that were complex. An AI was supposed to have hijacked the Gaming Environment in FPS but it didn't work, it was simply not very believable.
Enter "THIS", and we can suspend disbelief more readily. An Old Friend calls Mulder on his Cell, and then it is Shades of Kill Switch. We know from Kill Switch there was an AI, and that Esther Nairn somehow joined with it, and maybe tormented the Lone Gunmen online. We also know, that the "Hardware Node" in Kill Switch which accosted Mulder with "Nurse Nancy" and Fake Skully, which was later "Death From Aboved" by the AI, was not the only hardware node built into a Trailer. The implication is, that this AI had survived, and maybe even Invisigoth did as well, somehow.
These ideas about artificial environments are well represented in "This" episode, which reaches all the way back to Kill Switch and also reaches across to "My Struggle III" and Mr "Y". But there is more going on in this entry, just because we see a few familiar ideas does not mean that "this" episode is just a Kill Switch rehash.
William Gibson wrote Kill Switch, Carter wrote First Person Shooter with William Gibson. One episode became Magic, the other did not. But in "This", Glen Morgan is able to mine story elements from both Kill Switch and First Person Shooter and he made Magic happen a second time. And without Gibson. The X-Files enters it's possible final season with two very strong episodes.
And, any episode that starts and stops with "California Sun" by the Ramones...
helpful•910
- XweAponX
- Jan 20, 2018
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