7ABX13 - First Person Shooter [REVISITED]

Summary

Didn't like Kill Switch and in the end, I really didn't like this one any better. The final ten minutes made it worthy of a "Poor" rating. I'm giving it as high as "Average" because of the technical presentation — giving it high "repeat viewing value" — and because I had a weakness for the image of Mulder dressed in his VR finery. (Hell, is that any better or worse than the attitudes purported by the episode itself? I think not!) The writing was quite frankly bad in this ep, and I don't think I've ever accused TXF of that in even its worst episodes. In the end, this one failed for me because I just couldn't achieve that "willing suspension of disbelief". Every time I tried, something truly dumb in the script would snap me back to reality. Give me mothmen, werewolves, even aliens of the sort from Space, but God help me, I can't feel fear when the solution that would have prevented this whole episode from happening was as simple as pulling the plug out of the wall. If I were a total computer illiterate, maybe I could have bought it, but unfortunately I'm not. None of what happened made any sense. And about Ivan lamenting the fact that "it'll kill the whole program" — what? You don't keep backups? You, sir, are too stupid to be a computer geek.

Not only is this a bad ep, the game
that's featured here is just plain awful

In watching this again — particularly that very looong opening sequence which must be in the top three for all-time long teasers — I thought to myself, who wrote this crap? (Do geeks really call themselves geeks?) Oh, yeah, it was the Gibson/Maddox "reboot", and like most reboots, it was stunningly less impressive than the first.

Oh yeah, I hated this one. For being supposedly sci-fi gurus, this writing team bites. Dialogue was horrible (for everyone), characters were horrible, and everything — from premise to plot to resolution — was just plain DUMB. (Notice how I had to capitalize, bold and italicize that?)

Some random sample stupidity:

1) Ivan (when The Great Daryl Musashi goes running after completing Level One): "Look at him! He's not even waiting for the reset. He's going right for the kill." Y'know what, I think I silently cheered to myself when "the killer goddess" sliced this sphinx moments later.

2) Within seconds of seeing the Lone Gunmen stranded in the middle of the program that was running itself, Mulder managed to doff his suit and get all wired up in VR finery...

3) Ivan (to Scully, for the fact that she indicated "unknown" as the cause of death): "We are back in business. Baby, you are dope." Uh... I can see a geek named Retro as being small potatoes, but The Great Daryl Musashi ending up sans head isn't going to be problematic?

4) Scully (referring to the killer goddess): "She's input herself into the game. We have to download her." And what the hell would downloading her accomplish? So you can save a copy of her to your own computer??

5) Scully: "Hey, no fair picking on a girl." Really??

I actually started fast forwarding the DVD at this point. And thought seriously about giving the ep 0 stars...

Best or Worst Moment

There were so many candidates for worst moment that I won't even go there. But where to find a best moment?? I suppose the only semblance of intelligent conversation has to get the nod. The sequence where Mulder and Scully talk about the merits of indulging in "shooting the crap out of everything" after her autopsy was interesting and brought back some nice memories of past conversations between these two.

Original Rating: * *
Revised Rating: *