First Person Shooter
- Episode aired Feb 27, 2000
- TV-14
- 45m
A murder inside the high-tech world of a virtual reality game leads Scully to battle a deadly digital character in order to save Mulder's life.A murder inside the high-tech world of a virtual reality game leads Scully to battle a deadly digital character in order to save Mulder's life.A murder inside the high-tech world of a virtual reality game leads Scully to battle a deadly digital character in order to save Mulder's life.
- Ivan Martinez
- (as a different name)
- Lo-Fat
- (as Michael Ray Bower)
- Coroner
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis was such a complicated production that it was still being completed on the Saturday afternoon, hours before it was due to air.
- GoofsAt 39 min. 55 sec. in when Scully is faced with a Tank in the games 2nd Level, the door to exit the game behind her is clearly open when moments before it's closed and Mulder is shown trying to pry it open with his sword.
- Quotes
Dana Scully: Dressing up like high-tech warriors to play a futuristic version of cowboys & indians? What kind of moron gets his ya-yas out like that?
Fox Mulder: [points to himself]
Dana Scully: Mulder, what purpose does this game serve except to add to a culture of violence in a country that's already out of control?
Fox Mulder: Who says it adds to it?
Dana Scully: You think that taking up weapons and creating gratuitous virtual mayhem has any redeeming value whatsoever? I mean, that the testosterone frenzy that it creates stops when the game does?
Fox Mulder: Well, that's rather sexist, isn't it? I mean, maybe the game provides an outlet for certain impulses that it fills a void in our genetic makeup that the more civilizing effects of society fail to provide for.
Dana Scully: Well, that must be why men feel the great need to blast the crap out of stuff.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The X-Files: Jump the Shark (2002)
Sadly, this episode was three sentences shy of being the standard x- files trope. Simply have the female developer, Phoebe, talk about how she programmed the character using a machine learning API, then have Mulder and the geek squad spew a line like, "Skully, what if by pouring all her anxiety into this digital character, Phoebe somehow caused the programming to become self aware?" Then remove the part where Mulder magically got sucked into the computer and then inexplicably wasn't. Even with these changes, the episode wouldn't be great, but it wouldn't be too far off the mark from previous episodes they've done (S05E11 - Kill Switch).
The only redeeming element of this episode, and the only reason why I give it two stars instead of one star, is that they address the idea that video games can be a healthy outlet for frustration and anxiety. Even here, however, they woefully missed the mark by pushing the idea that only men like video games, failing to point out how critical video games have proved to be in helping people cope with all levels of depression and that many, MANY studies have shown that there is ZERO correlation to violent video games leading to people acting out violence in real life (the caveat here being that people who are *already* violent will likely turn to violent games as an outlet -- violent games are a warning sign and symptom, not a cause).
I can only surmise that the authors had the 1yr anniversary of Columbine in their heads, wanted to write something on the topic, but never had enough time to hash out the plot properly.
- adrong
- Dec 31, 2015
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Filming locations
- Hall of Justice - 211 W. Temple Street, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA(exterior entrance of L.A. County Sheriff's Department)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro