"Mercy Point" also garnered negative reactions from television critics, with GamesRadar's Dave Golder including it on his list of the worst science fiction and fantasy television shows of all time for its "rite, obvious and cheesy" storylines. "The Los Angeles Times"' Howard Rosenberg criticized the show's reliance on its science-fiction context and technology to distract the viewers from "its mustiness and lack of originality". Even though Rosenberg felt the show's concept had potential and found Batung to an intriguing character, he advised the audience to "change this bedpan fast". Lee Sandlin of "The Chicago Reader" included "Mercy Point" in his assessment of the worst television shows in the 1998–1999 season, criticizing its lack of originality and poor writing. The series was heavily panned by Kevin Wagner of the science-fiction online magazine "The Sci-Fi Guys", who found the pilot's story arc to be uninteresting and the use of rubber gloves as a way for advanced containment to be unrealistic. "The Sun-Sentinel"s Hal Boedeker cited "Mercy Point" and "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" as "misbegotten fare" that alienated its audience and lowered viewership by forty percent.