X-REPORT: Just read it II

[Kenneth Alexander Finlayson]

The 'REDELURKING OLDBIE AND RELEVANCY' AWARD [nominated by Danny] goes to
the Dread Pirate Bowen in his guise of the Dark Virgin who, in his missive
"Kill Switch and... the doll one...", wrote

Spoiler-space...

The final frontier... oops. Wrong show. :)

Well met,

I haven't been around in a while, and when I do it's with something like
this... oh well.

I'd just like to say (write? post? whatever) that I loved both the
Stephen King and William Gibson co-written episodes.

The Stephen King one was excellent, lots of creepy-kid stuff with a
pleasantly bumbling Maine Sheriff saying 'Ayuh' a lot and getting totally
out of his league, Mulder winning the Sad Git of the Year award and Scully
showing excellent choice in autombiles, if not clothing.
And the bit at the end where she threw the doll in the microwave!!! I
cheered. [O' course, I *was* doing Spanish homework at the time, so any
distraction would've been good. :)]

As for last night's William Gibson episode...
What else could you want? Guns, explosions, conspiracy, orbital weapons
platforms, guns, sentient AI and guns. I know I mentioned guns three
times, but what with Scully blowing hell out of any machines that annoyed
her and the whole opening sequence, I though it was worth it.
And some Kung-fu action Scully!!!!! I know many nerds who had *very* happy
dreams last night. :)

Well, that's my rant. Must away to lit. studies (joy).

The Dark Virgin, not all that thrilled to be going, actually...

The 'B1' AWARD for A1 humour [nominated by Danny] goes to Amber, who wrote
with such utter wit in "SUNBURN: Holly's back":

Poor Holly, tell her to put some Aloe Vera cream on her back to stop it
peeling.

;) Amber

The 'SPELUNKER' AWARD for plotholing goes to Hugh Fisher for his defence of
'plotholes' in "Kill Switch", which began:

Technical Accuracy vs Storytelling
or, when to reach for the two by four

Plotholing is a popular pastime among us X-Philes, but I'm always
amazed by how much criticism episodes with a heavy computer/technology
orientation attract. And "Kill Switch", written by William Gibson and
Tom Maddox, was no different. Seven days ago we had a silly story about
psychic tree roots that generated barely a murmur. This week every
computer nerd online is criticising the much more plausible "Kill
Switch".

Well, I watched it and liked it. And I'm a very technical boy, to quote
Gibson himself. Were there technical errors? Sure, lots. Did they spoil
the story? With one exception, no.

The "techo" episodes are especially vulnerable to nitpickers who want to
demonstrate that they're smarter than the scriptwriter. In the process,
they usually also show that they don't have a clue about effective story
telling. Occasionally the X-Files does make real technical blunders which
result in flawed plots. Pointing these out is worthwhile criticism. But
most of the nitpickers need to be soundly whacked with a two by four.

The onymous Khoos Family wins the 'SHORT AND TO THE POINT' AWARD for its
delurking announcement, "hi i'm new":

hi i'm new, like x-files yada yada yada. watch out.

Proving that a post by any other name would be as funny, the Khoos Family
posing as Lord Hogfish wrote about a "school conspiracy":

My school is conspiring against me. It all adds up! You know they keep
their own bees and nobody knows about it? (except me because I was
trying to take a short cut once and almost got stung. ) And they SAY
that SEP stands for Student Education Profile but I know what it really
is! And in grade 8 we were all given that TB needle! We're all tagged!

If you are reading this, send help! The fate of the world rests in your
hands.

Lord Hogfish

P.S. I am not insane. Other people just say that to make conversation.

For this, Lord Hogfish receives the 'EVEN FROHIKE DOESN'T LIKE ME' AWARD and
a complementary 18 months stay at Danvers Sanitorium.

Vanessa Meachen and Pamela Lee are jointly awarded the 'LIVING IN THE
SEVENTIES' AWARD for their contributions to "Patient X":

Vanessa Meachen wrote:
The idea of groups of people drawn irresistably to a certain spot by UFOs
kept reminding me of the 70s 'Quatermass' mini-series - I kept expecting
the abductees to start chanting 'Ley, ley, ley, ley, ley...' :)

Pamela Lee wrote:
At last! Someone else who thought that! So I'm not totally crazy ;). The
first thing I thought of when I saw 'Patient X' was the Planet People...
only I was thinking "Huffity, puffity, Ringstone Round..." <ggl>. No one
that I've mentioned this to so far has understood what I was on about.

Trevor Calder, Wicked Wit of the West, easily deserves his 'OF COURSE I'VE
HERD OF OPPIONS' AWARD for this reply "re:nudes":

A nice person called talitha spasso (who can be contacted at
s37...@student.uq.edu.au) told all the world the following....

>Untill she decides to do photos of herself taken like this then why
>should anybody be able to get their kicks out of the cheep imitations.

The pictures make noises too?

>We don't meen to be mean but we don't want to slander whoever built the
>site we just want our oppion herd (LOUDLY).

I don't think I'd like an oppion herd - I hear that even one oppion can
be expensive to keep.

The Introverted Tim Quinn wins some sort of RELEVANCY AWARD for his summing
up in "REL: Bad Blood"

Well I thought this is one of the funniest ever eps. These ones where we
look back at peoples memories of wat happened are always incredibly funny,
if only for the different ways in which te same events get remembered. And
the way that people try to avoid mentioning things that make them look bad.
Like trying to stop the camper van *smirk*.

I also loved the opening, were you see the kid running through the
forest with someone chasing him... it was because we never saw him in the
ads for the ep, so my first thought was, oh look, generic victim about to
be gotten by the horrible vampires. Then the suprise when you see it's
Mulder chasing him, and driving a stake through his heart. An the look on
his and Scully's faces when they find out the teeth are fake.

As for the two stories... I think Scully's is slightly more realistic
for the times they are together... well most of the time... :) And I liked
the way the camera would focus on the one telling the story at the time...
for instance, in the funeral house with the coffins, when Scully told her
story, she andd the sherif were the focus of the shot, and Mulder was
very much in the background, but when Mulder told the story, Scully and
the sherif disappear as the we follow Mulder around the room.

All in all a great ep. I would have to say that it is my favorite ep
ever. Certainly the funiest ever [or at least close to it]. I love the way
they both pointed out how they were drugged... they really laboured the
point. :) As others have said, it was the intereacting we love from the
dynamic duo. :)

In a parallel Usenetverse, Paulius Stepanas (winner of some other sort of
RELEVANCY AWARD) posted a different but equally worthy review in aus.tv,
as part of a thread entitled "X-Files - I laughed":

I loved last week's vampire episode. I think the "alien plot" episodes
have been consistently worse than the mean ever since the end of Season
One, with the classic example of this being Redux (God, how boring!).

This season's been interesting, but to achieve this it's had to depart
from the earlier formula, with nearly every non-aliens episode now being
"special" in some way (whereas only the Smoking Man and Jose Chung
episodes were in Season Three, for example). This has resulted in the
sort of abomination we saw a couple of weeks ago with the preposterous
William Gibson episode (although it's less annoying on a second viewing).

Oh well, the less good episodes, the less tapes I'll need to record
them...

But of course, who could the final award of the report go to but -- well,
see for yourself who won the 'NO EXIT' AWARD...

From: rah...@student.monash.edu.au (A boy, crying.)
Newsgroups: aus.tv.x-files
Subject: TAN: The boy who cried wolf
Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:24:33 GMT

Ok. I'm addicted. I realise that now. That's why, after this post, I'm
disconnecting my modem from my computer and locking it in the cupboard
for the next week or two. It is the only way.

AFAIK there is no IA yet.

Maybe I should just burn it and sacrifice it to Nettica, the goddess of
the Internet?

Don't expect one of these next week.

(oh creepy; this is the post you were talking about)

btw Wasn't Bad Blood cool?
--
adios Robin Harrison <*> Merlin Corey
"It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to kill you.
But it was April 30, and of course it would happen as it always did."
- Merlin Corey, 'Trumps of Doom'
< http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~merlinc > The Courts of Chaos

--
She is the flypaper my love is stuck on

"46 lines", Steven Herrick