1.07 - Ghost in the Machine

Another Monster of the Week, this time, technology!

The worst acting of the season — by far — opens this episode. The dialog is cloying, with an after-school-special feel, especially when the scruffy computer genius says “You’re killing me! You’re killing my company!”

Later on that scruffy boi waxes poetic about which kinds of minds are best for business and which kinds are best for computer development.

“…Neat, and Scruffy.”

It’s fucking ridiculous from the first syllable to the last.

This is far and away my least favorite episode of the first season, so I don’t have a ton here. The brilliant computer saying “File deleted” after killing the evil boss of Eurisko is unintentially hilarious. According to Wikipedia, the episode’s writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa “admitted they were ‘not computer literate’ and felt this was a detriment to their writing.”

Howard Gordon is said to have ranked it as the worst episode of the first season in the book X-Files Confidential: the Unauthorized X-Philes Compendium, by Ted Edwards.

Tough to disagree.