10 Worst Episodes Of Otherwise Excellent Sci-Fi TV Shows
9. The X-Files - “First Person Shooter”
The X-Files' seventh season bore some decent episodes in the long-running series, but the 13th episode, "First Person Shooter," is widely considered the worst episode of the whole franchise. The episode was written, in part, by William Gibson, the pioneer of cyberpunk, but even his words couldn't make this work.
"First Person Shooter" takes Mulder and Scully into the world of virtual reality, but this was shot and released in 2000, so it's a victim of its era. Other than that, it doesn't have a grasp of the technical jargon most people would have known at the time, making the whole thing feel as if it was out of place and out of time.
The episode revolves around a game called First Person Shooter, which places people inside a virtual world. Inside, there is a female character named Maitreya, who manages to kill players IRL. Through their investigation, Mulder and Scully choose to jump inside the game to take out the character.
They don't do a very good job at it, and by the end, they are about to be killed. The only way they could be saved was to destroy the game, so that's what happens. The game is erased, Scully and Mulder survive, and life goes on.