 Digital Spy 's Ben Rawson @-@ Jones described " Ice " ' s stand @-@ off between Mulder and Scully as " an extremely tense moment of paranoia . " A New York Daily News review called the episode " potent and creepy " , and said that its plot " was worthy of honorary passage into The Twilight Zone " . Matt Haigh called it " an extremely absorbing and thrilling episode " on the Den of Geek website , noting its debt to The Thing , and Juliette Harrisson called " Ice " the " finest " stand @-@ alone episode of the first season . On the TV Squad blog , Anna Johns called it " a spectacular episode " with an " excellent " opening . UGO Networks called the episode 's worms among the series ' best " Monsters @-@ of @-@ the @-@ Week " and the cause of " much pointed @-@ guns aggression " . In Tor.com , Meghan Deans compared the scene where Mulder and Scully inspect each other for infection to a similar scene in " Pilot " ; in " Ice " , both characters were equally vulnerable and ( unlike the pilot scene ) Scully was not portrayed as " an idiot " . Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson , in their book Wanting to Believe : A Critical Guide to The X @-@ Files , Millennium & The Lone Gunmen , gave the episode five out of five stars . They called it " the most influential episode ever made " , noting that the series reprised its formula several times during its run . Shearman felt that although their script was derivative , Morgan and Wong created " a pivotal story " by combining crucial themes from The Thing with a " well rounded " cast of characters . 
