While the show definitely had a relatively strong fanbase at the time (particularly in Canada), nowadays, ReBoot is somewhat a more obscure, cult show. However, back in the day, it was able to gain a couple of noteworthy fans. Actor Joe Mantegna's daughter was a fan at a young age (which surprised Bob's voice actor Michael Benyaer when he worked with the actor in 1996's Underworld, not to be confused with the 2003 vampire film) and former US President Bill Clinton was apparently a fan. However, the most interesting of these was X Files star Gillian Anderson.
At the time, Anderson was married to one of Mainframe Entertainment's production designers. Upon hearing that she was a fan of the show, Mainframe invited her for a tour of their production studio. Since The X Files was filmed in Vancouver anyway, it wasn't an issue for her to find time in her schedule to visit. A lot of the team working at Mainframe were fans of the show, so obviously there were several X Files posters dotted around the building. Upon passing one, Gillian would get out a pen and sign it. One animator asked her for a photo, and she proceeded to sit on his lap to get into position for the photo. While she was there, the showrunners asked her if she'd be interested in appearing in an episode, which she definitely was. As a result, Gavin, Ian, and Phil were tasked with finding a way to get Mulder and Scully into Mainframe, and the end result is the penultimate episode of the four part season finale arc.
Starting with a typical shot of the Principle Office, the camera then transports us all the way down to Mainframe's underbelly, stopping at the back alley of Al's. Al's Waiter is taking out the trash, but then we cut to the point of view of an unseen being, who is Al's Waiter from above. When he's least expecting it, whatever this being is makes it's way towards him and we cut to the title card for this episode, written in a green X Files esque font. We then see his unconscious body getting dragged away.
We then see Mouse enter Dot's Diner. Bob is already seated inside, and he invites Mouse to sit with him. Bob then orders two drinks from Cecil, but this just causes Cecil to rant about how he's in charge of the place while Dot is away. Bob asks Mouse what she's still doing in Mainframe, and she says she's got a couple of things to take care of before she leaves. A couple of CPU's then enter, telling their commander who is already seated inside that there's been another abduction, and that this time it's Al's Waiter. This then leads to a subtle joke where the commander says 'What?!' in a similar vein to Al himself. Bob isn't aware of these abductions, and the commander is about to fill him in when Enzo arrives to say that Dot's missing. This is confirmed by Ms Brody, Enzo's teacher, who says that since Dot failed to pick Enzo and AndrAIa from school, she felt the need to escort them home because of the abductions. The commander then tells Bob that there's been a string of disappearances down at Level 31, with Al's Waiter being the latest abductee. Cecil chips in to say that Dot was due to have a meeting with Al, so Bob heads off to find her, asking Mouse to escort Enzo and AndrAIa to the Principle Office. Soon after Bob leaves, she tasks Ms Brody and the CPU's to escort them instead since she has some unfinished business to attend to.
Bob enters the diner and starts to interrogate a waiter. The waiter tells him that Dot was due to meet Al but never showed up, but doesn't know any more than this. Bob's investigating gets the attention of two binomes, CGI agents Fax Modem and Data Nully. They say that Phong hired them to investigate the disappearances on Level 31. Meanwhile, outside, Mike the TV is investigating the area for the purposes of a news report on the abductions. We see that Mouse is observing Mike and his crew, and she contacts someone called Turbo on her communicator. As she's talking to him, Number 5 walks through the alleyway, and she signs off, telling this mysterious character that it appears she's found another victim.
Back inside Al's, Modem and Nully are telling Bob that they suspect Mouse is behind these abductions. Modem suspects this because he believes that Mouse is a web creature based on her fangs. He then tells Bob the story of his sister getting abducted by a web creature as a child. Bob, without trying to seem insensitive, tells him that he'll be claiming to have seen the user next. Modem, however, believes that The User is a lie fabricated by The Guardians to keep people in check, and they control the Games in order to promote the User myth.
This conversation is cut short by Mike the TV doing a brief news report on the abduction of Number 5. Once the report ends, Mike walks away, but unknown to him, his crew have all been abducted by the unseen being. Once he realises this, he flees from the creature, but this is in vein as the creature ends up attacking him, but we see the silhouette of whatever it is fly away without abducting him.
Everyone within the diner can hear the noise the creature is making. Bob, Modem and Nully all leave the diner. Modem and Nully discover Mouse kneeling over the unconscious Mike the TV. They immediately point their guns at her, and Bob soon catches up with them. Mouse assures Bob that it isn't what it looks like, but it doesn't look good for her. She's able to distract Modem and Nully long enough to slice their guns in half, and momentarily allows Bob to lower his guard by asking him to trust her and then kissing him before running off. Bob is able to pin a tracker from Glitch on the bottom of Mouse's boot, and then takes off in pursuit of her, leaving Modem and Nully to watch over Mike. Shortly after Bob leaves, Mike regains consciousness, saying that the creature bit him then left, ranting about how the light saved him.
Bob tracks Mouse to a long abandoned warehouse. He contacts Phong and tells him that he's found where the creature's hiding. He has identified it as a Web Creature, but it isn't Mouse based on the fact that it's shedding it's skin. He also suspects that the creature is abducting Sprites and Binomes for nourishment.
As Mouse also wanders through the warehouse, she contacts Turbo to inform him that she's found the creature's hideout, and she's going to rescue the Mainframers. Turbo tells her to forget the Mainframers, and just worry about getting proof of the creature. She presses on anyway, eventually reaching a large room filled with organic cocoons that have binomes encased inside of them. She eventually comes across one with Dot encased inside, and immediately frees her before freeing the others. This immediately wakes up the creature, who bursts through a wall and manages to grab Dot with it's tentacles.
Just before the creature can consume Dot, Bob arrives along with Modem and Nully, who shine their flashlights on the creature. This incapacitates it, causing it to drop Dot. Mouse then contacts Turbo with proof of the creature. We then cut to a dark room where this mysterious Turbo is sitting with several other figures shrouded in darkness. One of these tells Turbo that they need to act now since this creature is a Class M with portal forming abilities, meaning it is capable of invading the entire net.
One interesting thing to note about this sequence is that, asides from Turbo, the other Guardians are all reused models of other characters since there was little point creating new character models who were barely going to get any screen time. The fact that the Guardian office is shrouded in darkness mostly hides this (although you can see in the screenshot above that the Guardian sitting closest to Turbo is clearly Dot's model with added Guardian gauntlets and a keytool), but it also adds to the mood of the scene.
Bob isn't too happy about what Mouse has just done, since the Guardian protocol for dealing with Web Creatures is to destroy the system. Bob inspects the communicator that Mouse was provided with by the Guardians and discovers that there's a bomb inside of it. The Guardians activate the bomb, and Turbo asks to be alone since him and Bob go back a long way. Once he's alone, he's able to delay the detonation to allow Bob more time to dispose of it.
Bob quickly zips through the city in order to reach a safe distance where the detonation won't destroy Mainframe. When the bomb detonates, the sky goes black and several tears form together to make a giant one. However, Bob is nowhere to be seen, and Phong cannot reach him on the vid window.
The tear's appearance gives the Web Creature the strength requires to resist the bright lights and break free. Phong tries to contact Bob again, and eventually succeeds. It turns out that the explosion affected Bob's ability to communicate temporarily. When Phong informs him that the Web Creature has escaped, he's incredibly distressed by this since the creature could form a portal to the Web. However, there's no time to stop it as the creature flies straight at the tear, causing it to form into a giant sphere which is somewhere between pink and red and has a surreal ever changing pattern. Bob contacts Phong, telling him to prepare for war.
So far this season, we've had definite hints of darkness sprinkled throughout. This was more prevalent in the previous two episodes, but it was still relatively subtle hinting at something dark through the mysterious creature that has made it's way into Mainframe. This episode dives straight into the darkness, something that is going to retain in the show for the most part for the remainder of it's run. This episode, much like the two before it, has stakes that are bigger than a lot of what we've had so far in the show with bigger threats. Two weeks back, we had Nullzilla threatening to destroy all of Mainframe through it's chaotic nature. Last week, we had an amalgamation of Megabyte and Hexadecimal nearly gaining enough power to access the super computer. This week, the threat is the creature that caused all this havoc to begin with.
More importantly, we know exactly what it is; it's a creature from the Web, the mysterious realm that was first mentioned in High Code that by the time of Painted Windows supposedly went out of control and began invading systems. The way that the creature is built up in this episode is done incredibly well. Initially, we don't see it at all, we just see through it's eyes to build up tension of what's going to happen as well as seeing it's silhouette. When we finally see the creature near the end of the episode, it's pretty terrifying. The creature has clearly grown a lot since it's appearance in Nullzilla, and now has an incredibly large jaw. Following the events of last episode, it's been abducting Sprites and Binomes alike and draining their energy for nourishment, which I imagine is how it's managed to grow so much in a short space of time. What's worse is, while our heroes were able to save all the abductees, they didn't stop the creature, it managed to form a portal to the Web, allowing it to invade Mainframe. Something which they will need to put a stop to next time around.
We also get to learn what Mouse's purpose was in Mainframe last episode. Since the Guardians are based in the Super Computer which is where the creature was before it came out of Hexadecimal's looking glass, the Guardians were definitely aware of it's existence. Knowing the threat that it posed to the entire Net, they hired Mouse to track it down for them and prove it's existence before taking action. This puts the Guardian's morality within somewhat of a grey area. Sure, they 'mend and defend' The Net, but what ends will they go to achieve that goal? This episode, it turns out that it's nuking systems for the sake of the rest of the net. It's also interesting to briefly see the head of the Guardians, known as Turbo. He's barely seen, but he definitely makes a lasting impression based on what we do see of him. We know that, while he doesn't necessarily want to destroy Mainframe, he knows that there's no other choice but to do so. He also has some kind of history with Bob, this leads to him allowing Bob the time to get rid of the bomb.
This episode also puts Mouse in an interesting position. Last time, we were made aware that Mouse was up to something at the end of the episode, but we weren't sure what that purpose was. At first, we're lead to believe that she's responsible for the abductions, possibly even taking the form of the creature. While that isn't the case, it provides us with a red herring to make us believe that it is up until we find out that it isn't.
The credited 'writer' for this episode and the next one was Mark Leiren Young, someone who last year became quite a controversial figure within the ReBoot community. I won't go too deeply into it here since it ties into a post that I'm going to be writing at the end of this retrospective, but seeing as it somewhat relates to these two episodes, I'll give a brief run down before going into full details when we reach that point. As well as writing the worst episode of last year's 'sequel' series 'ReBoot: The Guardian Code' (which is saying something, given the overall quality of that show), Mark wrote a series of blog posts about his time writing that episode, then went back to write some posts on this episode and the next one. Said posts consisted of lots of backpatting where he took credit for things such as creating Turbo, coming up with the idea of the Guardians being morally ambiguous and something in the next episode that's going to come up. This is definitely not the case since the 'story by' credit has four other people in the credits alongside MLY, three of those being the show's showrunners. While he may have contributed some minor ideas to these episodes, he had little to nothing to do with the overall story of these episodes, and Gavin Blair disputes his claims heavily.
We also get the 'death' of Bob this episode. When the bomb detonates, we're initially lead to believe that Bob is dead. However, it's quickly revealed that this wasn't the case, relieving the audience as well as the characters who were lead to believe that the show's main character was dead, if only for a moment. This is great since it gives us the impression that no one is necessarily safe in this universe anymore.
Of course, one of the most memorable aspects of the episode is it's X Files references. This is achieved not just through the appearance of binome stand ins for Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, but through the episode's mirroring of a typical 'monster of the week' episode of The X Files. The starting sequence of the episode with Al's Waiter being abducted by the Web Creature is rather reminiscent of cold openings in your typical X Files episode which show one of the episode's guest characters being attacked or killed by that episode's monster before we meet our main characters after the credits. Since we've already had the opening credits, we then cut to our main characters after the title card. The theme of the characters investigating a web creature is also a fairly X Files esque element since that show's premise is about investigating supernatural creatures.
While Gillian Anderson was more than happy to come and play Data Nully, her X Files co-star David Duchovny was not interested and declined the creator's request to appear. Because of this, they got Scott McNeil (who has been voicing Hack since Nullzilla, replacing previous voice actor Phil Hayes) to do a cruel parody of Duchovny's performance in the show. McNeil had never seen The X Files prior to this, and upon watching the show for research, he said that the performance was 'nothing', so he performed the role accordingly. His performance as Fax Modem managed to win him the parts of multiple characters on Mainframe's follow up series, Beast Wars: Transformers.
This is one of the strongest episodes of the season with a great amount of mystery, intrigue and horror as well as some high stakes and a fun parody of what was one of the biggest shows on TV at the time. It also does a great job of setting up the following episode of the show. All we can be certain of is that there's going to be a war, and it's possible that not everyone will make it out alive...
Next week: Bob is forced to team up with Megabyte and Hexadecimal to combat The Web in 'Web World Wars'
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