The X-Files Recap: Episode 7 - Ghost In The Machine

Posted by Brian Cramer on 05.20.2008

This episode title was later stolen for a movie that came out the same year. The movie sucked. This episode - not so much.

Cast:
David Duchovny - Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson - Dana Scully
Jerry Hardin - Deep Throat
Rob LaBelle - Brad Wilczek
Wayne Duvall - Agent Jerry Lamana
Blu Mankuma - Claude Peterson
Tom Butler - Benjamin Drake
Gillian Barber - Agent Nancy Spiller
Marc Baur - Man in Suit
Bill Finck - Sandwich Man
Theodore Thomas - Clyde

And I’m back in business. With the illness wearing off, I should be a bit more able to write this week. I’m going to be moving either next week or the week after, so there’s a chance I may have to take a week off from the column. I will try my best to avoid that but if it comes down to it, I’ll certainly let you, the dozens (and dozens!) of my fans, know at least a column in advance. That being said, on with the show!

EURISKO WORLD HEADQUARTERS
CRYSTAL CITY, VIRGINIA

A stereotypical corporate executive has an argument with a stereotypical IT guy. The IT guy storms out of the office, which leaves the executive to type a corporate announcement of some sort. In it, he verifies the “unfortunate loss” of the IT guy (henceforth known as Brad Wilczek) and states that his first priority is the termination of the COS project. Conveniently, right around this time, we get a shot of a large computer stack – blinking lights and all – with Central Operating System (COS) printed on it. We also get a shot of a security camera watching the executive, done in a way to lead us to believe the computer is controlling it.

The big boss man gets up to leave when he hears water running in the bathroom. He goes in to find the sink overflowing and the floor covered. While he attempts to unplug the sink, the phone in the bathroom rings, playing a recording stating the time when it’s answered. At this point, the door behind him shuts itself. He tries to get it open using his little swipe card, to no avail. He then opts to use the METAL manual override key while standing in a pool of WATER. Anyone see where this is going? Anyone?

Yep – toasty!

We quickly cut back to the COS, lights still blinking, and we hear a (really ridiculous sounding, quite frankly) computer voice say, “File deleted.”

*cue The X-Files introduction credits and theme song*
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.

At the FBI, Mulder is approached by his old partner from violent crimes, Agent Jerry. After insisting on buying Mulder and Scully lunch, he tells them about our little electrocution incident. Bottom line – Agent Jerry wants Uncle Mulder’s help to solve the case so he doesn’t look like a total tool by failing to do so on his own.

EURISKO WORLD HEADQUARTERS

On their way in the building, Scully asks Mulder why he and Agent Jerry went their separate ways. Mulder responds by telling Scully, “I’m a pain in the ass to work with.” Ha. Inside, the dynamic duo enter an elevator (which we get a security camera shot of) to head to the 29th floor. Four floors up, it jerks and stops. Scully calls down to security, but doesn’t get much out, short of her name, before it starts up again. Back in the COS room, we see “District of Columbia; Phone Search; Scully, Dana, 202-555-6431” come up on one of the security monitors watching the elevator. Creepy.

Joining Agent Jerry upstairs, the agents learn from the building systems engineer, Claude Peterson, that the COS monitors and controls pretty much everything in the building – to name a few: energy output, the volume of water in each toilet flush, the amount of porn you can order on pay-per-view and the telephone system – which is pertinent because the telephone is still slightly off the hook from the call he took right before being shish kebobed. Agent Jerry comments on how he taught Mulder everything he knows as he walks away. Suuuurrrre.

FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mulder is in his office, looking for his profile notes when Scully shows up and tells him that they’re running late. He relents and they head off to what ends up being a case briefing. Turns out Agent Jerry swiped Mulder’s profile and used it to make himself look like a million bucks. After the briefing, we see Mulder walking through the building like there’s a big ol’ stack of VHS pornos on the other side of the room. He approaches Agent Jerry, who tells Mulder to take a chill pill. He brought him in on the case to help him out and he helped him out. Douchebag. After he walks away, Scully comes up with the list of people who can override the COS. The “list” has one name – resident disgruntled computer nerd Brad Wilczek.

At Wilczek’s house…nothing of note really happens. He seems to say a lot without really saying anything. Three things stuck in my mind after the scene – first, he made them take their shoes off before entering; second, you can blatantly see an entire filming crew in his computer monitor for the moment it’s black before he turns it on; and third, he says scruffy haired computer nerds, as a general rule, don’t kill people.

At Scully’s apartment, she finishes typing up her field report and heads off to bed. As she leaves, her computer turns itself back on and her report starts scrolling up the screen. We cut to the COS, which shows “COS SCANNING: Scully, Dana – Data Intercept” on its monitor. We then hear the (once again, lame) computer voice stating “File opened.” Well, that can’t be good.

FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mulder and Scully are listening to recordings of Wilczek’s lectures. Agent Jerry shows up and cries to Mulder about how his life sucks. Scully calls them back into the room and shows them that the analysis of the phone call the suit received and a splicing together of Wilczek saying the same thing match up on their voice-analyzer-spectro-comparer-audio thing. Apparently, the voices belonging to the same person is evidence enough that Wilczek committed the murder and Agent Jerry says he’s going to sit on him until Mulder and Scully get the warrant. Mulder offers to go with him but Agent Jerry says he needs to do it himself, you know, so he can stop being emo.

At Wilczek’s house, he’s at his terminal trying to brute force his way into Eurisko. When that fails, he jumps in the car and takes off. Agent Jerry, who was staking out the house, follows.

At Eurisko, Wilczek runs through the lobby and hops an elevator upstairs. He sits down at the local terminal in front of the COS system and logs in. At this point, shit gets weird. The computer starts talking to Wilczek – who points out that it’s not equipped with a voice synthesizer. When he asks it what user level he is, it tells him that that is currently up to the COS. Around this time, Agent Jerry has gotten on the elevator to follow Wilczek. The COS changes all its displays to the view of the elevator while Wilczek tries to figure out what the hell’s going on. Around the 30th floor, the elevator stops. Then it drops. Fast. Oh snap.

Back at the FBI, Mulder is watching his ex-partner fall to his untimely death…on repeat. Scully comes in and expresses her condolences. He tells her that he doesn’t think Wilczek did it. After a bit of banter, Scully gets to the point – Wilczek signed a confession. Mulder isn’t convinced. He attempts to return to Wilczek’s house but is ushered out by the agents on scene, who tell him that he’s not authorized to be there without a Code 5 clearance level. Conspiracy~!

Mulder sits on a bench outside. Enter…DEEP THROAT! Ha. In case you didn’t get the memo, Jerry Hardin is awesome. Mulder asks him why Wilczek is the subject of a Code 5 investigation, which apparently means the Defense Department is interested. Deep Throat tells him that Wilczek has created the first adaptive network – an artificial intelligence that actually learns. Intriguing.

FEDERAL DETENTION CENTER
WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mulder calls bullshit on Wilczek for taking the fall for the COS. Wilczek somehow likens the whole thing to the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. The analogy actually worked, but it was rather unnecessary. Bottom line is, Mulder gets him to agree to create a virus that Mulder can use to destroy the COS. He meets up with Scully, who plays her part of skeptic to a tee and tells Mulder that he’s looking for something that’s not there and she thinks it has to do with what happened to Agent Jerry. She suggests he talk to someone. He agrees – and heads back to the detention center with a laptop for Wilczek to start the virus. Ha.

Cut to Scully’s apartment, where she’s in bed and the bedside clock shows about 1:30 in the morning. Her telephone rings, which she answers only to hear a carrier on the other end. She jumps out of bed and heads to her computer to find it’s being accessed remotely and her files are being gone through. I’m not really sure how this works but she picks up the phone next to the computer and calls the FBI to trace her number to find out who’s tapping into her computer. That should have been totally impossible, since her phone line should have been tied up by the data connection. Unless she had a separate line for her modem, which still would make no sense because then it would just be hooked up to the computer and not the bedside phone. Ugh. Yes, I’m a geek. But I digress.

Mulder pulls up outside the Eurisko building, followed shortly by Scully. He asks what she’s doing there and she tells him about her computer and that the trace came back to the Eurisko building. He says it’s the machine and she asks how they can get in. He pulls out the Eurisko license plate from Wilczek’s car. Long scene short, he puts it on their car and drives into the parking structure, which scans the plate and lets them enter. For about eight seconds. An arm (of the rotating, wooden kind) stops them from going farther and the gate that had just raised for them drops straight down on their car. This whole scene seemed pointless to me, as when Wilczek and Agent Jerry came to the building earlier, they both just went through the FRONT DOOR. D’oh.

In the building, they wisely take a couple precautions. They start by taking the stairs (which had to be a bitch of a walk). Once at the 29th floor, Mulder tests the door with a screwdriver and oven mitt. Smart move, as it mildly explodes when the metal makes contact. Not getting in that way, he boosts Scully up to the air duct above them to crawl across and open it from the other side, but not before putting a sock over the camera watching them.

Scully crawls around the ventilation system as Mulder paces. Eventually, the door buzzes from the other side and Peterson walks through from the other side. He asks Mulder what he’s doing there as we cut back to Scully. The fan has kicked on in the ducts and is apparently powerful enough to drag a 130lb woman, as it pulls her right towards it. She manages to grab onto an edge at the last minute. She hangs on for dear life as we cut back to Mulder and Peterson in the COS room.

After several tries, Mulder gets access to the COS with a device that we can presume he got from Wilczek. On a side note, during this time we cut back to Scully, who has resorted to firing her gun at the fan in an attempt to disable it. In any case, Mulder is thrilled that he has the access to input the virus…until Peterson pulls a gun on him. OMG! SWERVE~! Mulder asks if he’s Defense Department and Peterson says that he’ll just say that their paychecks are signed by the same person.

As he’s training his gun at Mulder, Scully walks into the room, looking (hilariously) like a mess. She tells Peterson to put down his gun, which he does, but not without trying to explain to her the scientific importance of the COS and its technology. She looks to ponder this over for a minute before telling Mulder to put in the disk with the virus. He does and the system goes batshit. Elevators open and close, cameras move around crazily and a plethora of random characters fill the system monitors. All the while, the computer voice is calling out to Wilczek in as sad (yet still lame) of a computer voice as you can imagine. After a minute or two of this, the system shuts down as the last thing the computer says is, “Why?”

Mulder sits on a park bench with Deep Throat, who tells him that Wilczek is in the middle of “hard bargaining” with the government. Mulder says he won’t deal, to which Deep Throat points out that Wilczek did confess to two murders and Mulder effectively destroyed the only evidence to the contrary. Mulder asks him what else he could have done and he tells him, “Nothing.” Deep Throat ends the conversation by telling Mulder that the DoD haven’t found anything and that the artificial intelligence is dead.

We cut to the Eurisko building, where Peterson is overseeing a group going over the remains of the COS. He gets off of a phone call with his superior, who apparently tells him that he has six more hours and if they don’t come up with anything, it’s all going in the shredder. The camera pans over to a pile of electronics, which light up and blink a few times. We then see one of the security cameras power on and get the view through it, which falls right on Peterson, who comments that he’s going to figure it out if it kills him.

*cue credits*

The 411: A much better episode than last week. It had a lot more going on, which made it seem to have a faster pace. A good entry into the "Monster of the Week" book.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]