occultI have decided to begin re-watching the entire original (seasons 1-9) run of The X-Files.
It has been more than 10 years since I last did this, and I am looking forward to it.
In an alternate universe, deep in a datacenter, Scully takes control of the situation and orders Mulder to kill the AI.
“Ghost in the Machine” (S1E7).
Season 2 of The X-Files was brilliant. The Duane Barry story and introduction of the Scully abduction arc carry more weight now that I know where it goes. I remember making sure I was around every Friday at 9 p.m. to watch; there was no streaming, no binge-watching. I had to watch 22 episodes over as many weeks without missing any.
The show was honest and treated its audience with respect. It assumed a level of intelligence in its viewers without dumbing anything down.
I miss this.
Everyone’s favorite episode “Humbug” (S1E20) was a wild ride. It was peak 1995, featuring The Jim Rose Circus, and is an example of what a “monster of the week” episode should be. Everything looks so warm. The visual language of the X-Files seems lost; everything today feels so surgical and sterile.
I was only 13 when I saw this episode air and I remember it being my first time searching the internet for further X-Files discussion.
From “End Game” (S2E17), Mulder uses a handheld GPS. It looks to be a Magellan brand unit. Consumer GPS was still very rare in 1995, and selective availability was still in effect, so GPS accuracy was still ~100 meters.
The display shows real coordinates which actually plots to the Beaufort Sea which is exactly where the episode takes place.
Something I never would have picked up on before, the date displayed “03Feb95” seems to be the original air date.
A reference to the Clipper Chip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip) in “Memento Mori" (S4E14) from 1997.
The history of the Clipper Chip project is a fascinating story about the politics and history around strong #cryptography, #surveillance, and #privacy in the early 90s.
See the writing on this topic by @mattblaze (https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/escrow-acsac11.pdf) and @matthew_d_green (https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/07/20/a-history-of-backdoors/).
It is worth studying and for those who did not live through it.
“Killswitch” (S5E11) makes another cryptography reference with a mention of 64-bit encryption. Taking place in 1998, this would be referring to DES, and that same year, the EFF built Deep Crack that could break DES in 56 hours. #TheXFiles
This episode also features a hacker working on a clearly self-maintained and repaired laptop held together with duct tape.
This guy obviously adheres to #permacomputing principles and more than likely runs #Plan9.
Flaki