The X-Files, "Kill Switch"

The X-Files: "Kill Switch." Fox-TV. Season 5, episode 11, #108 in series (15 Feb. 1998). Rob Bowman, dir., prod. (one of several). William Gibson and Tom Maddox, script.

Premised on the evolution of AI in "ur-slime and silicon," i.e., our own primitive cyberspace, yielding "articifial life." The AI is not a characterized character (unlike Wintermute-Neuromancer in Gibson's Neuromancer [q.v. under Fiction]), but it is the antagonist as Mulder and Skully, and Esther, an unclawed razorgirl (so to speak) and computer expert try to upload the kill switch to destroy the AI. Features small threatening machine, Mulder trapped in a VR device (and in a VR nightmare with dismemberment visions as torture), and a cyberpunk love story of lovers' memories and consciousnesses uploaded into cyberspace, apparently via the AI (cf. and contrast romantic-comic ending of Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive, listed under Fiction). Note superimposition of the threatening cybernetic upon Mulder, compared and contrasted with the apotheosis of Esther and her lover through the same devices. Also note creation of mini postmodern wastelands through SpFx of particle-beams controlled by the AI. Final lines: "Electrons chasing each other through a circuit—that isn't life, Mulder," Skully says; Mulder thinks we may be electrical impulses moving through "a bag of meat and bones"; Esther's message back to the meat humans: "BITE ME."

RDE, Title, 26Aug19