Over to Sky One today, and instead of mid-90s sitcoms, here’s some mid-90s science fiction. It was a strange kind of boom time for TV SF, with frankly too many shows to keep up with.
It looks like this was a reused tape, as it starts with what looks like a BBC2 documentary about the Soviet Union, which is soon overwritten by a newer recording.
The new recording starts with the end of 3rd Rock from the Sun.
Then the first show on this tape is Earth: Final Conflict – Infection. I recorded quite a few of these, but have watched very few, and I honestly have no idea what’s going on. It’s one of the many shows based on something Gene Roddenberry once doodled on a fag packet that came out around this time. It went on for five seasons. This amazes me. That’s longer than the original Star Trek ran.
This episode is very near the end of the first season, so I assume the story arc is in full swing. Inevitably, as I’m watching this during lockdown, the first words spoken are “We have to quarantine right away.” Lots of doctors in what I know now is called PPE are running around urgently.
One of the strange androgynous aliens has been struck with a bacteria. Naturally, these aliens with almost magical levels of technology also talk about crossing over to the other side. But the dying alien is called Ne’eg (Ne’eg like an egg) which made me laugh.
Good grief, there’s even Neo Nazis, who identify with the aliens because “All the most powerful Taelons are white”.
They’re well equipped, even having a whole snow camouflage wardrobe, as they attack a disused army base that has been turned into a shelter for poor (mostly black) people. In 1998 I would have said this was far fetched, but I would have been wrong.
The leader of the group is then shown, out on bail, on a TV news show. “You don’t quite fit the profile of a white supremacist” says the host. What’s he talking about? He looks like *every* white supremacist around.
Majel Barrett plays a scientist who’s looking at the bacteria that killed the Taelon. It’s looking very scary, and was probably a bioweapon.
There’s even a skinhead in the medical centre, stealing samples. This can’t be good.
Rather bafflingly, the nazis are sentenced to spend time in the same facility they attacked. This seems like an incalculably stupid idea. Especially when the first thing they do is put the bacteria in the drinking water. This is the same guy who stole it from the lab. And they fired him there and then, but obviously didn’t search him before he left.
It’s a pretty bad disease – this is the first human who got it.
Even our star Boone (Kevin Kilner) has got it.
But somehow, the lead Taelon, Da’an, does some handwaving over Boone which saves him and somehow lets them produce a vaccine.
Haha – they even have a scene where the head Nazi is told his vaccine came from the blood of the black preacher who founded the refuge, so he has to decide whether to accept it. (Of course he does).
I wish our real life virus, and real life racism, were so easy to deal with.
After this, an episode of The X Files – Kill Switch. There’s hacking going on. “Use key stroke to continue” – because Press Any Key was too uncool?
While Mr Hacker is busy working in a diner, lots of criminals are getting tip-offs that someone they want to get hold of is in said diner. Someone is setting up a very volatile situation. And just before he can activate something with a CD ROM, US Marshals storm through the door, and everyone in the place starts shooting, leaving a room full of dead bodies. Mulder and Scully are on the scene, and Mulder finds the CD Rom i the laptop. So what does he do? He puts it into his car’s CD player. Of course he does. And what it seems to do is play music, and flash all the lights in the car. Because that’s exactly what would happen.
Mulder takes the laptop to the Lone Gunmen, presumably because the FBI don’t have a forensic computer department. “We’re up against 64-bit encryption. A password that’s a random sequence of twelve symbols.”
If this guy’s a hacker, why on earth does he have the dumbest looking email client around?
It’s complete with the animation of an envelope opening and a piece of paper coming out. Never used AOL so I don’t know if that’s how their email client worked but did anyone every have an email client that did that? I feel like that must have been a real thing at some point as so many films and TV shows do it.
Which brings us to the abomination that is the ’email’ itself. I’d like to think a conversation happened about it happened like this:
CHRIS CARTER
So this email thing. It's like a telegram? Some kind of
space letter?
WILLIAM GIBSON
(For it is he, co-writer of this episode)
I think you'll find...
Lowers his mirrored shades to look Carter in the eye.
WILLIAM GIBSON (Contd)
...It's a little more complicated than that.
CHRIS CARTER
So these email addresses, they're like a phone number?
They tell you who you're speaking to?
WILLIAM GIBSON
(Fiddles absent-mindedly with his Hugo award)
In a way, yes.
CHRIS CARTER
So what's the 555 number we can use to make sure we're
not accidentally using a real person's email?
WILLIAM GIBSON
Well the important part is the domain. That's the bit after
the @ sign and before the .com. You'd have to use domains
that are owned by your production company so you can guarantee
they don't belong to anybody else. You can buy some custom
domains from any domain registrar for just a few dollars.
CHRIS CARTER
Woah there, Braniac. That sounds a bit complicated. Why don't we
just not put anything before the com? Then we won't be using
someone else's name. Simple.
WILLIAM GIBSON
But then the address would make no sense according to RFC 5322
which defines the format of an email address.
CHRIS CARTER
(Throws a copy of Chariots of the Gods at Gibson)
These are TV viewers, not Computer eggheads. Nobody's gonna notice.
Trust me.
Which is how, I assume, we get this beauty.
But Mulder recognises part of the message as an ID of a shipping container.
There, they find Invisigoth, who lives up to the last part of her name, at least.
And then, she notices that her container is being targeted by an ‘orbital weapons platform’ and they have to get out of there real quick.
Invisigoth explains that Gelman, the dead hacker from the start, was Donald Gelman, an internet pioneer, who had written a set of ‘interlocked computer viruses’ that has not evolved into a wild AI. And it’s loose on the internet. They bring her back to the Lone Gunman, who are practically rubbing their trousers in excitement. At one point she asks “Are you going to take off these cuffs? Or do I have to do this with my tongue” and they cut to the three of them leaning forward slightly.
Mulder goes looking for Invisigoth’s friend David and finds the Breaking Bad trailer.
Instead of a meth lab, inside is a lot of computer equipment, and the dead, decaying body of Invisigoth’s friend David. But then he’s suddenly trapped and electrocuted.
He then gets taken in an ambulance to a hospital, but it’s all a bit strange.
If it weren’t for all the cues that hint that this is some kind of dream state, this would all be quite disturbing, as Mulder wakes up to find that his arms have been amputated.
Then Scully bursts in, and has a Buffy-style fight with the hot nurses. This show knows exactly how silly it is.
There’s a glitch in the Matrix
Scully really does come to the rescue, to find Mulder trapped in a VR setup.
Then they feed the AI the kill-switch that was on the CD, and Invisigoth straps herself into the VR rig so she can fulfill her dream of uploading herself onto the internet, as we are to presume her friend David did previously. And they’re probably still there.
Next, it’s back to Earth: Final Conflict and an episode called Destruction. Two of the (I’m guessing) resistance are enjoying a bit of downtime in the computer lab of all places, when they’re interrupted by a hologram of a character who is supposed to be dead. She tells them that they must destroy ‘the probe’ (the same probe that carried the disease from last episode I assume) before it reveals that Boone is working for the resistance.
There’s a random interlude where people I’ve never seen before play some kind of video game, and then there’s a bar fight. I didn’t understand any of this.
And next, we’re at the Taelon ship, where the new Secretary of Human/Taelon relations is introduced to Da’an. And the presidential representative who’s introducing him is played by a man called Vinton Cerf. You remember in the X-Files episode we just looked at, one of the characters was first described by Mulder as ‘He invented the internet’ although he immediately walked that line back, just describing him as having written the first internet software. Well guess what, X-Files? Earth Final Conflict sees your fake internet pioneer, and raises you a real-life Internet Pioneer. Vint Cerf literally invented the internet. He designed the TCP/IP protocol on which the entire internet runs, as well as designing the first commercial email service to connect to the internet. I bet his email client doesn’t have a shitty animation. Plus, I’ve actually met him, when I was working at the BBC, and had an actual conversation about actual internet things, and I didn’t break down in a gibbering heap on the floor. Why he’s appearing in this particular show I have no idea, but if you had the chance to put Vint Cerf in your show, you would, wouldn’t you?
Most of this episode is a rather lacklustre mission to break into a Russian lab where the alien probe is being held, so they can destroy it. And, at the same time, try to reconstitute a living body for the woman who was killed. Which they manage to do. I’m sure if I knew who any of these people were this would be exciting.
Especially when the man who’d been most keen to bring her back gets shot while they try to escape.
Next, it’s another episode of The X Files – Bad Blood. This one has a cracking opening – is ‘Chaney Texas’ a reference to the great horror pioneer Lon Chaney.
Someone is being chased through the dark woods, terrified. Their pursuer catches up with them, wrestles them to the ground, and pounds a stake into their heart. Then we get the rug-pull. It’s Mulder doing the staking. Scully reaches him, looking shocked. “Look at that” says Mulder, showing the vampire fangs in the boy’s mouth. Then Scully takes out the fake plastic fangs the boy was wearing. “Oh Sh…” says Mulder as the X Files theme starts.
This episode is written by Vince Gilligan, and is definitely one of those episodes that’s not taking itself 100% seriously. As a result, it’s a riot. Mulder and Scully have to discuss what happened leading up to the unfortunate staking event, because Skinner is waiting for their reports. So we get to see each of their recollections of the events. Which starts with a journey to Chaney, where several cows have had their blood drained, and now a man has had the same thing. Scully’s recollection sees her particularly enamoured with the local sheriff, played by Luke Wilson.
Scully does a post-mortem and finds that victim had been drugged to knock them out, before the blood was removed. Mulder bursts into the motel room, covered in mud, telling her there’s another victim. So she has to go and do another post mortem, leaving Mulder in her room, to get the pizza that she’d ordered. From a very familiar looking pizza delivery guy.
During the second post mortem, Scully notices that this victim’s last meal was pizza, like the first one. She realises that the drugs were in the pizza, and that Mulder’s in danger. She catches the fake vampire before he’s able to drain Mulder, but he gets away.
That brings us up to date, and maybe Mulder did the staking because he was under the influence of the drugs. Then we get Mulder’s version of events. In which the Sheriff isn’t quite as dreamy.
Mulder brings the Sheriff to the cemetery, saying the vampire will probably return there. Then the pizza guy drives past, but Mulder doesn’t put two and two together.
We learn how Mulder got so muddy – in the local RV park, one of the RVs is running in circles, so Mulder tries to grab on.
Mulder’s recollection of the vampire attack is a bit more vampirey than Scully’s.
So that’s the Rashomon part of the story over. What’s going to happen to Mulder now he’s killed someone, even if that someone was himself a killer. Well, let’s see how the killer’s post-mortem is going. The FBI clearly need stricter protocols when dealing with a possible vampire with a stake in its chest.
So Mulder and Scully have to go back to Texas and search for the actual vampire. Where they discover there was a reason that the local funeral home has such a large stock of brand new coffins.
Even the dreamy sheriff, who gives Scully some drugged coffee. This might explain why Mulder saw buck teeth and Scully didn’t.
Lucky for our heroes, the mobile Vampire horde are polite enough to leave them safe, and just take their RVs and vanish.
I really like this phase of the X Files. A less serious tone is a lot more enjoyable than a lot of arcane conspiracy woo.
After this, there’s the start of an episode of Hot Summer Down Under. Then that recording stops, and underneath there’s an older recording, part of an episode of Forever Knight, yet another of those endless Genre shows I was talking about earlier. The tape ends shortly into this bit.
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