Ice (The X-Files) - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"Ice" originally aired on the Fox network on November 5, 1993, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on November 10, 1994. Upon its initial American broadcast, the episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 6.6, with an 11 share, meaning that roughly 6.6 percent of all television-equipped households, and 11 percent of households watching TV, were tuned in to the episode. A total of 6.2 million households and 10.0 million viewers watched this episode during its original airing. "Ice" was released on VHS in 1996, alongside "Conduit"; as well being released on DVD as part of the complete first season.

This episode was highly praised as one of the best episodes of the first season by the production crew. Carter felt that Morgan and Wong "just outdid themselves on this show, as did director David Nutter, who really works so hard for us. I think they wrote a great script and he did a great job directing it, and we had a great supporting cast". Nutter stated that "the real great thing about 'Ice' is that we were able to convey a strong sense of paranoia. It was also a great ensemble piece. We're dealing with the most basic emotions of each character, ranging from their anger to their ignorance and fear. It established the emotional ties these two characters have with each other, which is very important. Scaring the hell of out of the audience was definitely the key to the episode". Anderson stated that "it was very intense. There was a lot of fear and paranoia going on. We had some great actors to work with".

In their book The Complete X-Files, authors Matt Hurwitz and Chris Knowles called the episode a milestone for the fledgling series. In a retrospective of the first season in Entertainment Weekly, "Ice" was rated an "A−", being described as "particularly taut and briskly paced". Keith Phipps, writing for The A.V. Club, praised the episode, rating it an "A". He felt that the cast "plays the paranoia beautifully", and that the episode was "as fine an hour as this first season would produce". The episode was also included in an A.V. Club list of the greatest television bottle episodes, where it was described as "us its close quarters as an advantage". A third article for the site, compiling ten "must-see" episodes of the series, described "Ice" as "the first sign that this show had a shot at really being something special", adding that it "makes great use of claustrophobia and the uneasy but growing alliance between the heroes".

Digital Spy's Ben Rawson-Jones has described the stand-off between Mulder and Scully in the episode as "an extremely tense moment of paranoia", while a review in New York's Daily News called it "potent and creepy", claiming that the plot "was worthy of honorary passage into The Twilight Zone". Matt Haigh, writing for Den of Geek, reviewed the episode positively, calling it "an extremely absorbing and thrilling episode", whilst acknowledging its debt of influence to The Thing. Anna Johns, writing for TV Squad, thought positively of "Ice", calling it "a spectacular episode" and praising its opening as "excellent". UGO Networks listed the worms featured in "Ice" among the best "Monster-of-the-Week" appearances on the series, describing them as the cause of "much pointed-guns aggression". Writing for Tor.com, Meghan Deans compared the scene in which Mulder and Scully inspect each other for infection to a similar scene in "Pilot", finding that it showed both characters to be as vulnerable as each other without portraying Scully as "an idiot", which Deans felt the pilot had done. Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode five stars out of five, finding it to be "the most influential episode ever made", noting that the series attempted to copy its formula several times throughout its run. Shearman felt that, although their script was derivative, Morgan and Wong had borrowed the most important themes from The Thing and, together with a "well rounded" cast of characters, and created "a pivotal story".