First Person Shooter

"First Person Shooter"
The X-Files episode
"First Person Shooter" promotional poster
Episode no.	Season 7 Episode 13
Written by	William Gibson, Tom Maddox
Directed by	Chris Carter
Production no.	7x13
Original airdate	February 27, 2000.
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"First Person Shooter" is an episode of science fiction television series The X-Files.

Plot summary

Three men are dressed in futuristic combat gear. Preparing for a battle, they take automatic weapons. Their battlefield is a virtual reality game. In a control room, Ivan and Phoebe--the workers of First Person Shooter Company--are monitoring the players' vital signs. Suddenly, motorcycles appear in the game. The three men shoot at the motorcycles, causing them to explode. One of the players encounters a female warrior in a skimpy, fetishistic leather outfit. She says, "I am Maitreya. This is my game," and then kills him. Ironically, "Maitreya" means "loving one" in the Sanskrit language.

Mulder and Scully visit the First Person Shooter development company headquarters. They meet with The Lone Gunmen who work as consultants to the game. They look at the body of one of the players, Maitreya's first real-world fatality. The wound shows that he was shot, but Ivan says there is no way a real gun could have been brought into the highly-secured building. The agents are shown a video from the game. They see the female warrior killing the player and Mulder takes the printout of the female. He shows it to a detective as he believes she might be a killer. Daryl Musashi, a renowned computer hacker, comes to the building. He enters the game in order to kill the mysterious female; However, she cuts his hands and head off, killing him first . As Scully performs an autopsy on the first player, the remains of Daryl Musashi are brought in. Mulder receives a call from the Sheriff's Department that a woman similar to the one in the printout has been picked up.

The woman's name is Jade Blue Afterglow (played by Krista Allen) (see Jade-Blue Eclipse^{[citation needed]}) and she tells the agents that a medical imaging place in Culver City paid her to scan her body, answering the question of why her form appears in this game. Mulder and Scully go back to FPS headquarters where the Lone Gunmen are trapped inside the game with somebody shooting at them. Mulder enters the game in game combat gear to help them. He sees Maitreya and follows her. Phoebe tearfully admits that the female warrior (nicknamed "Goddess" by Phoebe) was created by her, a sort of personal estrogenic outlet and rebellion in a testosterone-riddled environment. Maitreya was to be contained within Phoebe's personal separate project, but the character found her way into the first person shooter program.

Eventually (and despite former mocking of the game, and of gamers who get their "ya-ya's" that way) Scully puts the suit on and enters the game herself. She finds Maitreya and fights with her. Every time Scully shoots and destroys one set of Maitreya's (she multiplies at level 2), more sets come back as the game gets progressively harder. Mulder, being out of ammo, takes to hiding. Scully continues fighting off Maitreya, who has now taken to sitting on top of a tank with a machine gun. Phoebe admits there is one way to stop the game, but doing so will erase the whole game. Ivan is less than keen on killing his game and nearly stops Phoebe from telling the kill command to Byers. After a back-and-forth between Ivan and Phoebe, Phoebe tells Byers the kill command (which is shift + alt + "bloodbath") and he types the command, effectively destroying the game, but saving Mulder and Scully. During Mulder's voice-over we see that in the control room one of the monitors is still active. Ivan sees a message reading "Data Acquisition." He sees the image of a digital character. She is wearing Maitreya's leather outfit but now her face is different: it is his friend, Phoebe's face.

Production

The episode is notable for being written by William Gibson^[1], together with fellow science fiction novelist and long-time friend Tom Maddox. "First Person Shooter" aired on FOX on February 27, 2000.^[2][3] This was the second episode written by the authors, after the success of "Kill Switch", which first aired on February 15, 1998 and subsequently made frequent appearances in reruns, encouraging Gibson to continue working in television. "Kill Switch" came about after the pair, having previously discussed possible collaborations, approached the production company with an offer to write an episode.^[4]

"First Person Shooter" deals with recurrent Gibsonian themes: alienation, paranoia, the will to survive, emergent technology, the evolution of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and transferring one's consciousness into cyberspace.^[5]

Reception

Although not as well-received as the first episode written by William Gibson and Tom Maddox (Kill Switch), this episode was nominated for three Emmys, of which it won two:

• Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series (won)
• Outstanding Visual Effects for a Series (won)
• Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series (nominated)

References

External links

• First Person Shooter at the Internet Movie Database
• First Person Shooter at TV.com

v • d • e William Gibson List of works · List of awards and nominations Sprawl trilogy Neuromancer · Count Zero · Mona Lisa Overdrive Bridge trilogy Virtual Light · Idoru · All Tomorrow's Parties Other novels The Difference Engine (with Bruce Sterling) · Pattern Recognition · Spook Country · Zero History Short stories "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" · "Johnny Mnemonic" · "The Gernsback Continuum" · "Hinterlands" · "New Rose Hotel" · "The Belonging Kind" · "Burning Chrome" · "Red Star, Winter Orbit" · "The Winter Market" · "Dogfight" · "Skinner's Room" Miscellanea Agrippa (a book of the dead) · Burning Chrome · "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" · Neuromancer video game · Johnny Mnemonic film · New Rose Hotel film · No Maps for These Territories · Node Magazine · "Kill Switch" · "First Person Shooter" Characters Tessier-Ashpool · Molly Millions · Bobby Newmark · Rei Toei · Konrad · Cayce Pollard · Hubertus Bigend Story elements Cyberspace · Megacorporation · Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics · The Sprawl · Raygun Gothic · Gender-bait