PAX Offers an Interminable ‘Error’

A disgruntled cyber-hacker with a serious appetite for destruction sets his sights on ultimate revenge tonight in the almost comically dramatic TV movie “Terminal Error” (8 p.m., PAX).

Timothy Busfield (“thirtysomething”) plays bad guy Elliott Nesher by, essentially, channeling Microsoft’s Bill Gates, complete with a sweaty mop of hair, dweebish eyeglasses and omnipresent smirk.

Nesher, bounced from his partnership in a software powerhouse called AutoCom, privately declares war not only on the company’s chief executive, Brad Weston (“Finding Forrester’s” Michael Nouri) but also on the fictional California city where AutoCom is based and on technology in general.

Nesher’s diabolical idea is to slip a virus into the computer system at AutoCom headquarters, which will enable him to spread his lethally disruptive plan throughout the company’s global network, from the hometown’s traffic-signal system to a nuclear plant in the Ukraine.

That’s a lot to chew on for a 93-minute movie and, this being the PAX channel (“the family entertainment broadcast network”), Weston’s wife (Marina Sirtis) and son (Matthew Ewald) have bull’s-eyes on their foreheads as well. Before long, all three Westons are running for their lives--but as a family.

As the movie wears on, its rather interesting nugget of a concept begins unraveling with the precision of a computer program, with each scene in the last half hour more ludicrous than the previous one.

By the end, when the family’s fractious internal chemistry has been healed by shared experience against the forces of evil, any viewers who are still tuned in may breathe a sigh of relief--for themselves more than for the Westons.