Mulder and Scully encounter an all-too-real virtual reality game run amok, the product of a startup company that employs the agents' friends, the Lone Gunmen, as consultants.
(Originally aired February 27, 2000)
| Quotable Moments |
| Scully: Dressing up like high-tech warriors to play a futuristic version of cowboys and indians. What kind of moron gets his ya-yas out like that? |
Mulder: We came, we saw, we conquered. And if the taste of victory is sweet, the taste of virtual victory is not sweet and low. Nor the bullets made of sugar. |
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Written by
William Gibson & Tom Maddox
Directed by Chris Carter
GUEST STARS
Tom Braidwood - Melvin Frohike
Dean Haglund - Langly
Bruce Harwood - John Byers
Ryan Todd - Moxie
Michael Ray Bower - Lo-Fat
Billy Ray Gallion - Retro
Constance Zimmer - Phoebe
Jamie Marsh - Ivan Martinez
John Marrott - Security Guard
James Geralden - Detective Lacouer
Christopher Ng - Darryl Mushashi
Krista Allen - Jade Blue Cockburn (Maitreya)
WHAT HAPPENED
Three men begin a virtual reality game. They are carrying fearsome-looking weapons and wearing armor. A man and a woman monitor them on computer screens. The players fire at and destroy an oncoming phalanx of virtual biker hoodlums. Then they run down a dark street while other cyber-thugs fire at them from a building. There is chaos, but the players seem to be doing well.
Then one of them is alone in a garage-like building. Someone is there. A leggy woman wearing black lingerie and a leather collar. The player seems dazed. "Who are you?" he asks, sinking to his knees.
"I am Maitreya," she says. "This is my game." She shoots him dead. (more
spoilers)
ANALYSIS
"First Person Shooter" achieves considerable mayhem but remarkably little drama. There seems little reason to care what happens to any of the characters, whether virtual or real, regulars or guests. Even as a man's hands are cut into bloody stumps, one never gets the sense that anything important is going on.
Maitreya begins as a promising -- or at least eye-catching -- villain, but progressively dissipates all interest as she stalks wordlessly through scene after scene. Even her outfits become less attractive. Ivan, although real, is as much a cipher as any cyber-character. Only Phoebe retains a certain somber charm.
Mulder's smirking enthusiasm for game-playing is surprisingly adolescent. Could this be the "new" Mulder, who's been
liberated from the search for his long-lost sister Samantha? Or is it just that David Duchovny finds it hard to take his role seriously as he awaits a deeper, truer form of liberation?
WHAT WE LEARN
The Lone Gunmen, transfixed by stock options, can be lured into professional activity of dubious morality.
DANGLING PLOT THREADS
Will Ivan attempt to market a new version of the game that's no less deadly? Will his financial backers be disturbed by all the bad publicity that swirls around the once-promising startup company?
REALITY CHECK
Mulder's seeming disappearance into the virtual-reality program is given no explanation whatsoever. Where is his body while all this is happening?
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK
... or in two weeks, actually, for "Theef", a tale of spiritual larceny and doctors in peril.
What do you think? Send comments to the
author or editor.
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