BUT IT'S GOT A CEMENT POND: Wilczek's million dollar house has a variation of the COS yet it has blurry black and white security cameras and apparently no door buzzer...
VARIATIONS ON A THEME: someone at FOX must
have a foot fetish -- after two episodes this season with close-ups
of GA's feet, we get a repeat in which she removes her shoes a few
times... And maybe I was fixating but it seemed like her legs were
displayed to GREAT advantage in this ep
ONLY BOB VILLA SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO USE 'NAIL' AS A VERB: Scully's field journal appears to be one LONG paragraph, a paragraph which doesn't match her voice-over... And a few sentences after using 'Oedipal rage', she talks of 'nailing' Wilczek -- well, she wasn't an English major...
IT HAS 'PONG' AS A BUILT-IN GAME: this amazing COS can somehow turn on a computer over a phone line but has to resort to a text capture of a file instead of downloading it... And why does it ring the phone the second time it calls Scully? It didn't the first time it read her field journal...
JUST BECAUSE IT CAN QUACK DOESN'T MEAN IT HAS A DUCK BILL: I don't care how smart the COS became, if it doesn't have a voice synthesizer it can't talk... If it could grow or build one, why not grow legs and run away?... DOES HER VCR STILL FLASH 12:00?: why does Scully put the phone down when the COS hacks into her computer the second time? She could keep the modem from connecting by keeping the phone off the cradle and still run a trace... And according to her field journal it is the last week of October, 1993, yet her Wilczek document has a date of Sept. 16, 1993... THIS AIN'T BEDROCK, THINGS BURN HERE: there is absolutely no way the fire code would allow electronic locks on fire escape doors... What are you supposed to do if the locks are frozen, take the elevators?...'OPEN THE POD BAY DOORS, HAL' - DAVE BOWMAN, '2001': if the COS is so damn smart, why doesn't it just refuse to give anyone level 7 access or refuse to read the virus disk no matter what Mulder does...
'COPY FROM ONE, IT'S PLAGIARISM; COPY FROM TWO, IT'S RESEARCH' - WILSON MIZNER: the out-of-control AI idea has been done much better in '2001,' 'Demon Seed,' 'War Games,' 'Star Trek' and even 'The New Avengers'... And 'The Prisoner' asked the one question no computer can answer, no matter how smart or powerful, 'Why?'...
'I KNOW I'VE MADE SOME VERY POOR DECISIONS RECENTLY, BUT I CAN GIVE YOU MY COMPLETE ASSURANCE THAT MY WORK WILL BE BACK TO NORMAL' - HAL, '2001' or the FOX employee who selects the repeats...
I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was 'Ghost in the Machine' - Bill Hirst
'Ghost in the Machine' has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour - Gioacchino Rossini
The credits of the episode are too far apart - Ambrose Bierce
This episode fills a much-needed gap - Moses Hadas
Anyone who doesn't hate it really doesn't understand the situation - Edward R. Murrow
This episode is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force - Dorothy Parker
Thank you for re-airing 'Ghost in the Machine' -- I'll waste no time watching it - Moses Hadas
What repeat hell is this? - Dorothy Parker
'LOOK DAVE, I CAN SEE YOU'RE REALLY UPSET ABOUT THIS' - HAL, '2001': Boy, what a piece of cr.. - Wayne Chow
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a...fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
It's called "Daisy". Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.
TSOMOV on "Fallen Angel":
IF IT'S DAY 4, THIS MUST BE WASHINGTON, DC: a
bit of advice for those of you trying to follow the timeline of this
episode -- ignore the graphics concerning the time and day, they are
usually wrong... If Deputy Wright is killed shortly after 12:57 a.m.
on Day 1, Mulder cannot be watching news coverage of the evacuation
at the exact same time... Nor can Mulder and Scully be interviewing
Mrs. Wright at the evacuation center at 6:27 p.m. on Day 2 if Max
Fenig taped the radio traffic 'two nights ago'...
PROBABLY USES A MATCH TO CHECK THE GAS TANK, TOO:
since the laser barrier is quite obvious, why don't Mulder, Max, and
the alien just climb a tree and drop down on the other side? Or try
to slip between the beams? Instead, Mulder does his Max Cady (Cape Fear)
impersonation and hangs from the bottom of a truck... Then again, Mulder
is apparently indestructible -- he gets a rifle butt in the face and it
hardly bruises or swells...
YOU SHOULD SEE HIS X-RAY SPECS: that's a pretty
amazing camera Mulder is using -- it can take shots looking down AND
up at the same subject all from one location...
AND THE CHECK'S IN THE MAIL: while it isn't
inconceivable that Libya has somehow obtained a nuclear weapon, I
can't believe Scully believes the 'official story' that a FIGHTER
carried it all the way from Libya to
Wisconsin and nobody noticed...
DEAD MEN WALKING: it's bad enough the tactical
team shows up 1/2 hour before sunset on Day 2 for an operation that
originated at 0100 on Day 1, they wear those stupid little clip-on
lights on their caps -- guess having bull's-eyes tattooed on their
foreheads would have taken too long... Reminds me of the Bookworm
on the old Batman TV show...
SO THEY CAN'T 'DO THE HOKEY POKEY': no one in
this episode seems to know the difference between left and right --
Max's scar is behind his right ear, not his left like the 2 woman
abductees; the Beta team leader carries his weapon in his left hand
for no apparent reason before switching to his right; and Deputy
Wright's flashlight keeps flashing between his left and right hands...
NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING: since this is an
early season 1 episode, there is a dearth of Scully feet/shoe shots,
however, there is a nice shot of Scully's knees and calves just
after Mulder goes into the OPR hearing... It seems Scully's knees
and calves were the featured body parts back then -- I would say,
'see Ghost in the Machine too', but that isn't a laughing matter......