While it has nothing on the more interesting monster-of-the-week cases and, along with Buffy's I Robot, You Jane and numerous other 1990's computer-themed sci-fi hours, it now looks ridiculously dated due to all the whirring modems and such, Ghost in the Machine has a certain charm to it, and it's far better than the god-awful mess some fans would lead you to believe it is.I'm a sucker for killer technology and A.I. going crazy, so I thought the Central Operating System here, straight out of 2001, was creepily effective. I liked the repeated shots of the security camera fixing its "eye" on our protagonists, while the monotonous voice of the machine was suitably eerie too. Rob LaBelle painfully overacted as the wacky inventor, but it was oddly fitting for such a melodramatic episode.
Despite the storyline itself staying relatively low-key, there are a couple of neat action set-pieces sprinkled throughout the episode, from Agent Lamana plummeting to his death in an out-of-control elevator to the technology turning on Mulder and Scully, and that great moment with Scully getting sucked toward the ventilation fan. And, man, Gillian Anderson looks great even when completely dishevelled...
The relationship between Mulder and Lamana was intriguing, but discarded pretty quickly. I guess it just reflected how perfect Mulder and Scully are as a team, compared to Mulder's careless and bitter ex-partner. But that subplot didn't really go anywhere.
An amusingly campy episode which is in no way great, but in places surprisingly tense and entertaining, Ghost in the Machine actually works in an unusual, this-is-so-early-1990's-and-formulaic kind of way. Rating C
Credits Guest stars Jerry Hardin (Deep Throat); Rob LaBelle (Brad Wilczek); Wayne Duvall (Agent Jerry Lamana); Blu Mankuma (Claude Peterson)
Writers Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon Director Jerrold Freedman
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