Just to clarify, this episode, "Kill Switch," is not a crossover between Kill Bill and The Matrix, but wouldn’t that be a fun one to watch? (Quick memory refresher: Switch was a member of Morpheus’ crew, the blonde lady who referred to Neo as “Copper-Top” and wore white leather when everyone else on the team wore basic black.) And yes, I realize both Kill Bill and The Matrix were released after this episode originally aired, but if I wasn't out here making pointless pop-culture references then I’m just not being true to myself, or you. Fun fact: This episode aired on Sestra Pro’s birthday in 1998.A bug-eyed man is hacking a computer program on the crappiest laptop while drinking coffee in an empty and dimly lit D.C. diner. But business is about to pick up. Every local criminal with a score to settle is heading to the Metro Diner, along with a couple of U.S. Marshals because they all received the right tips to head over there. Care to guess how many people are about to get shot? If you said everyone, then you are correct. Hopefully the waitress was smart enough to stay in the back.
Sculder are called to the scene, probably because of the hacker’s identity. Mulder enlightens Scully about David Gelman’s history as a Silicon Valley pioneer, practically the inventor of the Internet, who disappeared in 1979. Fox is convinced the whole bloodbath was a hit on Gelman. He removes Gelman’s laptop from the crime scene and finds a CD in the CD-ROM drive. We get to listen to the dulcet tones of "Twilight Time," a beautiful Platters tune. (Not one of my go-to favorites, though. I’ve always been partial to "The Great Pretender," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "My Prayer.") The Lone Gunmen analyze Gelman’s laptop and Mulder shows them the CD. When Byers asked what is it, I really wanted Fox to reply, ”It’s a small plastic disc on which digital information is stored … but that’s not important right now.” Byers figures out there’s background data embedded in the song. Dana suggests checking Gelman’s email, which leads them to a shipping yard.
Sculder find a young woman in one of the shipping containers. Her likes are computers, loud music and zapping FBI agents with a stun gun. She calls herself Invisigoth (she definitely enjoys dressing the part) and surrenders fairly quickly to Scully. Too bad someone (something?) has locked onto their location via satellite and blows up the hacker’s “home.” Luckily the agents (with very little assistance from Dana, I might add) and Goth Girl escape with only minor damage to the company car (your federal tax dollars at work). There are times when I’m glad they prove Scully wrong. Her hemming and hawing almost got them killed. Sculder and Invisigoth have been driving all night. Either that or it’s a bad segue between scenes. Mulder asks Goth Girl about Artificial Intelligence, which she claims Gelman let loose on the Internet so it could flourish in its natural environment. Dana seems jealous at having another intelligent female around because Goth Girl just pushes her buttons. Scully slams on the brakes and bails out of the car. Our heroes argue about A.I. and what the government is capable of. Jeez, Dana, have you regressed all the way back to Season 1 denial?
Invisigoth claims the A.I. would recognize her voice, so she doesn’t even use a phone but there’s a third member of their team named David Markham out there somewhere. And it turns out "Twilight Time" contains the kill switch to catch the A.I. "Twilight Time" would have been a better episode title than "Kill Switch," it gets said just as frequently.
It’s easy to think this girl is too paranoid for even the Lone Gunmen, but remember, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. The L.G. meet Invisigoth. whose real name is Esther Nairn. You’d think they just ran into Neil Armstrong or Amelia Earhart, they act like total fan boys. Esther is less impressed with Mulder’s brain trust, who almost got her incinerated and destroyed her home. Goth Girl points out how the A.I. arranged for Donald’s death by sending everyone to the diner. She realizes they can’t catch the A.I. over the Internet, so they need to locate its hard drive to directly install the kill switch. Fox finds the right place in Fairfax, Virginia. Napping Scully wakes to find Esther escaped from her handcuffs. And apparently, the Lone Gunmen sleep together … is that a paranoia thing or are they just that close? Invisigoth gets the drop on Dana and forces her at gunpoint to drive to David’s location. Unfortunately, it looks like Markham’s house also got torpedoed from above. Handcuffed Scully frees herself, but Esther breaks down and gives Dana the gun.
Mulder approaches a cheap-looking motor home which has some serious security precautions -- thermal cameras, a fingerprint scanner (which confirms his ID) and the world’s most annoying siren. But he still manages to enter the trailer from underneath with only a screwdriver. Once inside, Fox thinks he found David, or at least what’s left of him. The A.I. then takes Mulder hostage and bolts him to the hardware. Fox later wakes up in an ambulance with visible burns on his wrists. They arrive at a hospital, where things seem a little off: He’s wearing a hospital nightgown instead of his regular clothes, the nurses look more like strippers and a creepy doctor is coming at him with a bone saw. Scully and Esther (Sculther? Sculgoth?) are now working together to stop the A.I.. They need to cut off its T3 connection and locate Fox, who is being alternately comforted and tortured by a blonde nurse. She claims they cut off Mulder’s left arm (yep, it’s not there) and will cut off his right arm if he doesn’t tell the nurse what she needs to know. Fox gets a wee bit panicky, understandably so.
The A.I. targets Sculgoth, but luckily they get rid of the computer (and the kill switch) in time. Fox wakes up to three attractive nurses taking care of him. The scene is reminiscent of Dracula’s three brides tending to Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Blonde nurse again tries to get kill switch virus info out of Mulder, who realizes his right arm also has been amputated. Lucky for him she threatens to take the legs next, not a different appendage. Dana arrives and pummels the three nurses, then starts to question Fox about the kill switch virus. I guess Mulder finally realized this isn’t real because he kicks Scully and she is revealed to be part of a computer simulation. (Hey, my Matrix comment at the beginning was disturbingly accurate!) Fox is still in the trailer, trapped in a virtual reality nightmare and yelling out to Dana for help.Sculgoth find the trailer. Scully handles the siren differently than Mulder did, she just shoots it. Now they can hear Fox. Dana enters the trailer from underneath and shoots at the robot standing guard. Esther spots David’s dead body while Scully tries to get through to Mulder, who is trussed up with lid locks like Malcolm McDowell’s character in A Clockwork Orange. Turns out, Esther did not get rid of the kill switch when she dumped the laptop. The A.I. wants it and continues to torture Mulder until it gets it. "Twilight Time" starts playing as our dynamic duo escape the trailer.
Esther takes Fox's place and uploads the virus until it kills her too … or does it? This has turned into The Lawnmower Man, in which Jobe is trying to upload his consciousness to the Internet. Then the satellite blows up the trailer. The next morning, Scully looks at the motor home wreckage and is convinced Invisigoth died, but Mulder thinks Esther may have succeeded with her upload. A loving message to the Lone Gunmen’s computer -- "Bite Me" -- supports that theory. In a trailer park in Nebraska, a teenager retrieves his football from a fenced-in yard containing a motor home which has some serious security precautions, just like the one in Fairfax, Virginia…Sestra Professional:
I can say this much for "Kill Switch," it's got an arm up -- Mulder's specifically -- on last week's super-fan contribution, Stephen King's "Chinga." And it's head and shoulders above William Gibson's second offering, "First Person Shooter." But we'll get to tearing that one asunder in Season 7.
At the time this originally aired, computers weren't quite the ever-present notion that they've become in the ensuing decades. It made for an intriguing concept. Now a system locking on to your location is something we deal with on a daily basis, with Facebook showing us ads on something we've looked for on another site. But in the day, it was fodder for Gibson ... even if it wasn't a typical kind of X-File. The subject matter seems more Millennium-istic to me.What are we but impulses? Electrical and chemical, through a bag of meat and bones: It's sort of telling that King's X-Files episode gave Scully the spotlight, while Gibson stands firmly in Mulder's corner. As Sestra Am pointed out, Dana doesn't seem to be retaining any of the data she's collected over lo these many seasons. That's not to say the cyberpunk writer can't flesh out female characters, because Invisigoth proves to be right up his alley. Just that in this particular case, Scully seems to have reverted to her factory settings. Although he seems to try to make up for that in the dream fight sequence.
Ah, "Twilight Time." Well, it's certainly better than hearing "The Hokey-Pokey" over and over again last episode. Ever notice this show doesn't tend to use music recorded before the invention of compact discs? Thank goodness, Chris Carter shoehorned "Walking in Memphis" into the Cher-riffic episode, "The Post-Modern Prometheus" (S5E5), after setting the stage with "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" and "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves."The agents were able to locate Invisigoth pretty easily considering she's so paranoid about being found. If she couldn't elude dogged-but-computer-ignorant Mulder and leery Scully, Goth Girl should probably just count herself lucky they got to her first. Even if Dana did almost get them blown to bits like the motley crew in the teaser.
Whoops, there go your legs: The whole episode virtually exists to get Mulder into his convoluted extended dream/nightmare scenario. The computer's so astute it probably knew of Fox's predilection for porn. Hence the nurses. It really makes me wonder how much it knew about his biggest wishes and fears. I'm not sure whether I should be more concerned for Mulder's mind state ... or Gibson's.
Sestra Am painstakingly explained all the hows and whys of the episode, yet there's really nothing substantial in here that propels our characters or the story. Of course, we don't really look for that in a stand-alone episode. But we also don't want to take away from all they've done and all they've learned either, just to give Fox the ultimate wet dream and/or The Lone Gunmen someone to drool over. But we do get one of the hard and fast rules about technology in modern times. All the conspiracies in the world, all the aliens and hybrids and shape shifters can't do as much relentless damage as computers. We may think we have control of them, but ultimately, more often than not, they seem to be ruling us.
Metadata: Gibson kept bumping into executive producer Chris Carter on airplane flights prior to his involvement on the series. In the official show episode guide, Gibson said he initially just wanted to wrangle a set visit, but Carter came up with the idea of him submitting a script. The writer recruited friend and author Tom Maddox to help him do so. It took years before their idea became "Kill Switch." ... Editor Heather MacDougall took home the Emmy for Outstanding Single Camera Picture Editing for a Series for her work on this show. ... Episode director Rob Bowman said in The Complete X-Files that it took 22 days to film it, all while he was still piecing together Fight the Future for summer release. ... Gillian Anderson, who called the artificial intelligence trailer "the set from hell" in the episode guide, added in The Complete X-Files that she relished the fight scene. "When I read that scene, I was so happy," she said. "I happened to be in good shape at the time and was just raring to get in there and be taking these half-naked nurses out with some karate chops."
Guest star of the week: After opening eyes (and The Lone Gunmen's mouths) as Invisigoth, Kristin Lehman continued on in the science-fiction vein for years afterward with work on shows such as The Outer Limits and Strange World. Obviously it wasn't all in Esther Nairn's fondness for clothing and makeup, she displayed a great flair and presence needed for the genre.
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