The X-Files: "Rm9sbG93ZXJz"

The X-Files: "Rm9sbG93ZXJz"." Season 11, episode 7, through-numbering #217. Fox-TV 28 February 2018. Glen Morgan, director. Written by Kristen Cloke and Shannon Hamblin, with Brad Follmer and Benjamin Van Allen (staff writers). Created by Chris Carter.

Described in a serviceable logline on IMDb and in the local TV listings for USPS Zip Code 93041 (presumably from the production company): "In a world of ever-increasing automation and artificial intelligence, Mulder and Scully find themselves targets in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse."

According to one on-line quick commentator, the title translates "Followers" out of Base64, which we cannot attest to, and that the basic theme of the episode is that of The X-Files, "Ghost in the Machine" from from the first season (1993), which, with some elaboration — see below — is correct.

This is a stand-alone episode, with Scully and Mulder the only two human characters with significant screen-time but very little dialog between them. "Mulder and Scully talk more to robots than to each other: Automated helplines, voice-activated smartphones, a runaway robo-car. You call it a 'silent' episode — Mulder gets in a good laughline about how Scully has a much better [«smart»] house than he does — but the format still recalls Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Chaplin’s mute Little Fellow got swallowed up by the machines of industry. Here, two noble FBI agents are reduced to postmodern Little Fellows by postmodern digitality, house-mapping roombas and automatic delivery drones. Call it Minimum Overdrive," with a pun on MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. Note images of threatening containment in a cybernetically-controlled and robot-managed restaurant, a self-driving car, and a factory — and in cybernetic systems of menus, automated responses, electronic billing, and credit-card devices that will not return your card. Note drones and a swarm of mini-drones, and industrial robots of increasing size, mobility, and similarity to animal predators. Note also the "inciting action" of Mulder's very reasonably refusing to tip the robot chefs at the initial Japanese-style restaurant. A concluding coda scene has Sculy and Mulder in a classic Nighthawks diner, but with many more customers and much greater cheer (and where Mulder will leave a tip).

RDE, Initial Compiler, 28Feb18