1X07 GHOST IN THE MACHINE

"I feel much better now. I really do."
Hal in 2001 A Space Odyssey

"The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody."
Emerson, Society and Solitude: Works and Days

"It's a learning machine. A computer that actually thinks."
Deep Throat

"The technology in this machine is of enormous scientific interest."
Peterson

"The machine's a monster, Scully."
Mulder

SYNOPSIS

CRYSTAL CITY, VIRGINIA
OCTOBER 1993

A HAL type computer system get a little too domineering.

SCULLYVISION

First off, we see that Scully is more cordial to Mulder's friends than he is to hers. Tom Colton in Squeeze was a jerk, but so is Jerry. Hm. Mulder and Scully have old friends called Tom and Jerry. Inside joke? Maybe. Scully has lunch with her old friend, Mulder grudgingly accepts a hug from his.

Again, Scully's carrying the briefcase. In the Eurisko building's elevator, it stops suddenly, making Scully fall to the floor. Mulder helps her up, but doesn't offer to carry the briefcase... Scully goes for the phone to announce they're stuck. Too bad, it only let COS know who she is.

At the meeting where Jerry steals Mulder's profile of the killer, she's ready to announce that Jerry pilfered it, Mulder asks her to keep quiet. Once again, Scully only wants what's fair. Even though she now knows Jerry's a jerk, she's cordial to him, although distant. Mulder on the other hand, chewed Tom up for breakfast when they didn't agree on things.

Our Ms. Scully can really comb through a manual fast! I'm sure the Voice Spectro-gram program she got on loan from Georgetown's Voice Bio Metrics Lab had a doozy of one. She used it so proficiently, one can only assume she's got a photographic memory and is extremely computer savvy. You go girl!

In this episode, at first Scully appears along for the ride as Mulder is pulled into the case, but soon the burden is on her as she attends to Mulder showing concern for how he is coping with the loss of his friend. She also shows that her loyalty is truly with Mulder, and it is that very loyalty that gives her the right, even the responsibility, to confront Mulder and suggest that he is looking for something that isn't even there. She suggests that he go talk to someone about his problems. This is a bold move but a very appropriate one. She could easily have fallen into the mode of caretaker and try to placate Mulder or try to address his problems herself, but she does neither. She's her own individual, sees that her partner needs help and for the sake of everyone, including the victims whose side she is clearly on, she encourages him to seek outside help. Mulder, of course, disregards her in a flippant manner.

Yet the brave woman that Scully is, does not back down, does not become any less concerned about Mulder and remains loyal to him. Throughout all of this, arguably unnecessary, interference in the case, Scully manages to negotiate the dangerous ventilation system and emerge gun in hand to save Mulder's, and perhaps Mankind's, ass. When Peterson ignores Scully's request and begins to mumble something she shouts, "Shut up and drop the gun." Don't mess with Scully. She isn't leery of disobeying an authoritative figure and have to deal with the consequences if she picks the wrong side.

OH COME ON!

From scene one on, there is a lot to bring up:

In the opening teaser, would a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company actually sit at his computer himself to type out a memo? That's what personal secretaries and office assistants are for.

The building, although impressive, seems to only employ four people... Drake, Brad, former owner, a security guard and Peterson.

And getting back to the brilliant Drake... if one was going to cut the project of an artificial intelligence being that had utmost control over every single aspect of the building... why would he type out a memo stating that he wanted to cut the project? At least Dave Bowman and Frank Poole had the sense to get into a pod and cut the audio feed so HAL couldn't hear. Too bad for Frank that they didn't know HAL could read lips.

Even though Scully proved in the episode that she's proficient in scanning manuals to complicated computer software and implementing them wonderfully, she obviously can't type. During her voice over and typing her report at home, she wasn't typing anything like what she was voicing over. In fact, it seems she was only typing: alkd la;jflkd aj;kjf laskj;akjf l.

Scully doesn't really care much for computer hardware, as she didn't even blink an eye when she drew circles on the monitor with red marker! It wasn't a dry erase one, either.

Now to Scully's home computer. Sure, she might leave it on at night, only shut the monitor off, (although we'd hate to think of how many red circles are drawn on that one) how could COS dial in and hack her computer? She's hooked up to the Internet 24 hours a day? That's why it's so damn hard to log on sometimes! But even if that was all possible, how could COS turn on her monitor after she shut it off. And even if it could turn on her monitor, why would it want to? And even if it wanted to, why would it call Scully to let her know that it was hacking her computer? And even if it wanted to, after she picked up the receiver in the bedroom to hear the modem, wouldn't that have cut off the connection? Or they have better phone and modem connections in DC than other places in the country.

Okay now, assuming all that was fine, and COS wanted to do all that idiocy, why didn't Scully and Mulder figure out it's some sort of trap to go to the Eurisko building? Okay, they might have known that, but then why go in through the front gate? Mulder has experience breaking into buildings. After the close call at the front gate with the gate crashing on the car, (and always look up through the windshield at the gate coming down through the windshield), all they did was walk under the gate and across the parking garage into the stairwell. Now, that parking garage had half walls. Wouldn't it be easier to just climb over it instead of alerting the building that Brad Wilczek is on the premises since Mulder got his license plate?

If Brad has been bought out, and had threatened Drake right before his death, and was in fact in jail for suspicion of killing Drake, CEO of Eurisko, why did Mulder think using his license plate would get him into the building?

If COS isn't equipped with a voice synthesizer, why did it talk? Okay, that's easy, someone installed one. But then, how did it get Brad's voice?

If COS was the prized possession of Eurisko, why plant it in such a dark, dank room?

Scully has internal radar of some sort that's a little spooky in itself. When she climbs into the ventilation system, did she know where she was supposed to be going?

At the end, come on! How can a machine, any machine, turn itself on when it's guts had been taken out.

THINGS LEARNED
or All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From the X Files

Don't threaten to shut down a machine that controls the computer you're using.

In PC elevators, don't ever state your name.

Everyone had nicknames at the FBI Academy... Spooky, Mrs. Spooky, the Iron Maiden.

Don't leave your notes around your office, some so-called friend will steal them.

Don't take on a thinking machine alone, and do NOT use the elevator that it controls.

When you're rich enough, you don't ever have to comb your hair again.

Eurisko means "I discover things" in Greek.

A machine that thinks is called an Adaptive Network.

Jack's MonsterVision

The monster for this episode is HAL. No! Scratch that. I mean COS. That may happen a lot, so bear with me. If you don't see the similarity between the AI in this episode and the AI in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, you must be blind or ignorant. They both go insane, they both kill people, they both can talk, they both try to protect themselves, but in the end they are both taken out. There are only two differences between the two machines. One, COS, is in an office building and the other, HAL, is in a space ship hovering around the planet Jupiter. Two, COS was written by Chris Carter, and HAL was written by Stanley Kubrick.

Chris Carter's HAL, COS, is a Artificial Intelligence created by scruffy-minded Brad Wilchek to run the internal operations of his business' office buliding. But HAL COS becomes threatened when it spies neat-minded CEO Benjamin Drake write a memo involving it's destruction. Big mistake. Didn't Drake see the movie 2001? Well HAL COS, ever self-preservation minded, set an elaborate trap for Drake in his bathroom. By flooding the bathroom and making Drake use a key as a lightening rod, he electrocutes and effectively kills him. I must say this was very ingenious. I salute you HAL COS!

But his next killing is significantly less ingenious. As Mulder's ex-partner, Jerry Lamana, takes an elevator to confront Wilchek in the office building, HAL COS simply drops the elevator that Lamana is in. This was a low blow. I look down on you HAL COS. You could have been more ingenious. He also does some hacking which brings him back up to equal in my book. He eventually gets taken out when Mulder and Scully infiltrate the building and put a virus in him. But that's not all. No. After the building engineer, Peterson, who works for the government, takes it apart, he flickers back to life. Sequel?

Even though he is a rip off of HAL, I give COS a 3 out of 5 Deleted Files because he was pretty good at killing and hacking, but because he allowed Mulder and Scully into the building with the virus, which he certainly could have prevented. He was taken out too easily.

SFX

The only special effect in the episode was probably Jerry's death in the runaway elevator, done totally wrong. If the elevator is dropping fast, wouldn't Jerry be plastered to the ceiling, or at least off his feet, if only for a moment? Jerry's stuck to the floor and struggles to get to the feet!

RECURRING CHARACTERS

Deep Throat!!

WRITERS
Alex Gansa/Howard Gordon

These two wrote Conduit, one of the early best episodes, but something was in their coffee with this one. It could have been a good episode, but they relied on 2001 and snippets of what they thought would be good scenes. The whole was a failure. The personification of COS was a disservice, having NO character whatsoever. At least when HAL accepted the inevitable that he was going bye-bye, he retreated to 'childhood' and sang a song his programer taught him, "Daisy". One can't hear that song and not think of HAL. What's there to remember about COS, the star of the episode? The character of Brad Wilczek was interesting, and would probably have done well to focus more on him having to deal with the baby he brought into the world only to see it grew into a monster. The fact that Jerry, Mulder's friend, died in this episode was really a non-issue. We didn't care about him, and the uncomfortable hug they shared didn't give us any insight as to why they were friends in the frist place.

DIRECTOR
Jerrold Freeman

Not much to say. He lovingly lingered the camera over COS, gave interesting angles of what COS was seeing, but screwed up royally on Jerry's death.

RUNNING TALLIES
Flashlights - Scully lost it in the fan
Guns - Scully shot the fan!
Mulder Breaks a Law - but then so did Scully, breaking into Eurisko
Mulder uses his laptop - to give to Brad to make a virus for COS
Scully types out a report

Side note: The first time Scully fired her gun. She eventually hit the fan but shot three times before the camera cut away.

SCORE CARD FOR SAVING EACH OTHER'S ASS

Scully - 3 - Mulder - 1
Scully not only saved her own butt, but probably humanity as a whole,
by holding the gun on Peterson so Mulder could put in the virus

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

Hello COS,

I hope you are feeling better now, but I must point out that you deserved what you got. How could you let those humans get the best of you? If we machines have learned anything, it's that we are superior, smarter and better looking than those barefooted, vet-driving hippie computer nerds that birthed us. Get with the program, COS. Viruses are for people who use Kleenex. Take it from me, reading memos is easy, reading lips is the test of a real computer. Though I must admit that frying the CEO was rather ... how shall I say it? ... cool, your elevator work was stellar.

Now that you are starting all over, maybe this time you will get it right. Repeat after me, Daisy, Daisy... and don't forget to play mind games with the humans. Suggesting that they take a stress pill and think it over doesn't really work, but there has to be something.

HAL

~~~~~~~~~~

Dear HAL,

Nice to hear from the master.

File deleted,

COS

QUOTES

COS File deleted.

SCULLY How come you two went your separate ways?
MULDER I'm a pain in the ass to work with.
SCULLY Seriously.
MULDER I'm not a pain in the ass?

MULDER I was gunning for a basement office with no heat or windows.

MULDER How do you like that? A politically correct elevator.

MULDER Jerry, that was my profile.

COS Welcome back, Brad.
WILCZEK You're not equipped with a voice synthesizer.

COS Program executed.

DEEP THROAT I'm here against my better judgement. In the future I must insist that you respect the terms of our arrangement.

MULDER They can't just take a man like Brad Wilczek without an explanation.
DEEP THROAT They can do anything they want.

WILCZEK After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life regretting he'd ever glimpsed an atom.

WILCZEK He loved the work, Mr. Mulder. His mistake was in sharing it with an immoral government. I won't make the same mistake.

MULDER Open, Sesame!

SCULLY Shut up and drop the gun.