User Reviews

This episode creeped the hell outta me. It made me want to toss out my cell phone and any other computerized items.

"Technology with no philosophy behind it is a curse." - Katsuhiro Otomo

In 1967, Jacques Tati released "Playtime". A largely silent film, it watched as a man bumbled his way through a high-tech, modern city, filled with slick, glossy but sterile sets. Like Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times", the film poked fun at alienation and dehumanization under techno-capitalism.

"Followers" plays like "Modern Times" and "Playtime" for the 21st century. Essentially a comedic silent film, we simply watch as two FBI agents (Fox Mulder and Dana Scully) deal with various techno annoyances. The tale's big joke is that all this technology exists only to get your money. Every act and action is geared toward commodifying all human behavior, thoughts and intentions, monetizing every aspect of life, and turning all interactions into a means of profit. The machines are quite literally "followers", obeying a corporate logic which mandates they harass you till you pay up. And we follow them as they follow us. An ideology of consumption becomes a consumption of ideology, machine and man learning from each other, programming each other, until - as Herbert Marcuse predicted in the 1960s with "One Dimensional Man" - both have the soul of the salesman, the opium addict.

We need to be better teachers, is the episode's final line.

8.9/10 - Worth multiple viewings.

In some sort of alternate reality, Mulder and Scully go to a virtual resturant to eat. Everything they order is handled by computers. The food isn't the best, but still makes for a fun date. After Mulder upsets some robots however, both of them are in danger.

This is easily my favorite episode of the two revival seasons. The visual style, with gorgeous hues of blue and a strange world where everything is ruled by technology and robots is both frightening and fascinating. The drones that hunt Mulder and Scully look very creepy, with their intimidating bright eyes. Even the smiley bus driver that traps Scully and drives at maximum speed is unsettling. I like that all the drones banded together look like a swarm of fireflies.

The "monster" this week is not a mutated being or government official of any sort, it's the devices that humans themselves have created. This is not the first time that a robot has been a villain, but previously it's always been just one. The cat-and-mouse game Mulder and Scully play with their unfriendly robots makes it very suspenseful.

I love the intensity of the scene where the electrically charged objects inside Scully's home start retaliating against her. I find it interesting by the way how vast and fancy her house looks in this episode. Mulder even pokes fun at this by asking "How come your house is so much nicer than mine?"

Yes, despite how tension-filled Rm9 is, it's also highly comedic. Mulder getting a blobfish for dinner, the fact that he and Scully are in trouble just because he didn't want to leave a tip, Scully's angry reaction to the uncomfortable taxi ride, even the resturant menu going "Yum" every time someone makes a selection is amusing.

Both season 10 and 11 have their gems, but the latter showed a little more spark in the old X-Files engine. And this is as great as the show gets.

Wow, robots really seem to love "Teach Your Children"... or do they like CSNY in general? I wonder how they feel about just CSN?

This episode seems to be sort of a modern take on the old Twilight Zone episode, "A Thing About Machines", although these machines gave Mulder plenty of time to think better of his rudeness. But why are they picking on poor Scully?

I'll keep it short because there isn't much to talk about.

This is not an X file. As far as I know, X files are dealing with unsolved cases or phenomena. This episode on its own does not deal with any case in particular, nor does it even remotely resemble an X file.

I guess the writers felt an urge to be among millions of others who like to point out that technology is ruining us and made an episode about it. Like there isn't enough people talking about it already.

Yes, I understand they want to take a different approach to an episode every once in a while, but I feel like they went completely off the tracks with this one.

It was barely entertaining. Some little humor in the episode gave me a small dose of entertainment, but that's about it as for this episode.

I'll give the episode 5/10 only because of writer's efforts to portray the current society we live in that is addicted to technology. Other than that, episode is pretty bad.

I am never surprised when THE X-FILES tries something different, but the seventh episode of the 11th season, titled "Rm9sbG93ZXJz", threw me for a loop. That's a good thing. After opening with a self-aware A.I. narrating how learning from people may lead to our own doom, we then find Mulder & Scully sitting silently at an empty ultra-modern sushi restaurant. After ordering their food from a computerized menu, Mulder is dissatisfied with his choice (in one of the episode's most laugh-out-loud moments, he is served a blobfish), so he takes his meal to the kitchen, only to discover that all the cooking is done by computer and robots (All the robots stop and look at him in a funny/frightening scene). When it comes time to pay the bill, Mulder pulls out his "Bigly" credit card and inserts it into a slot at the counter. When he refuses to tip the "sushi bots" is when the nightmare begins for our intrepid duo. Be aware that this entire sequence was filmed dialogue free! Scully gets into a "Whipz" driverless car (that she didn't order) to take her home, while Mulder has to rely on his car's GPS system to take him home. The Whipz driverless car turns out to be a nightmare for Scully as it drives too fast and refuses to stop or slow down on Scully's orders. The GPS system in Mulder's car keeps returning him to the sushi restaurant, while his phone keeps reminding him that he has a certain amount of time left to tip the sushi bots (His Bigly credit card became "stuck" in the slot). Scully finally makes it home (And the Whipz app asks her on her phone if she was satisfied with her ride!), where we find out that she has a totally computerized home. Her alarm system refuses to accept her password ("Quequeg", which longtime viewers of the show will know was the name of her dog) and her nightmare begins. Her home turns against her while Mulder goes "oldschool" and uses a map to get home. Mulder's life is invaded by drones with cameras. Soon, his entire house is filled with miniature drones (they look like fireflies in the long shots!) as he escapes and drives to Scully's house. She also gets visited by a drone (just like Amazon began doing), who drops her off a Roomba-like vacuum called the "Zuemez 9000", which causes more damage than it does good (it has a mind of its own). Just before her gas fireplace explodes, she is saved by Mulder (who says in one of the episode's few spoken moments, "Why is your house so much nicer than mine?"). They decide to ditch their phones because Mulder thinks that is how they are tracking them, but they are chased to a computerized warehouse, where a 3-D printer is making assault rifle bullets which fire at Mulder and Scully. They are then visited by a mean-looking robot, which hands Mulder his phone and he finally tips the sushi bots 10%, which ends their nightmare. the screen on his phone then reads "We learn from you" and Mulder ends the episode by saying, "We have to be better teachers!" This excellent episode was probably not seen by s lot of people because FOX did not advertise the show (they spend their money pushing 9-1-1 instead) because this season has been getting low numbers in the ratings. I laud Chris Carter and director Glen Morgan for trying to be different (a TV show without dialogue is rare today). Having the computers play the Crosby, Stills & Nash song "Teach Your Children Well' is one of the little highlights of this episode and instead of the opening stinger saying "The Truth Is Out There", it says "VGhlFRydXRoIGlzIE91dCBUaGVyZQ=" which is computer code for something which I have been not able to decipher. This episode is a entertaining reminder on how we rely on our phones and tablets, maybe a little too much. It hits the nail on the head. C'mon, people and support this show! It doesn't get much better than this episode.

When this episode opened, I felt the premise was pretty good, but then I thought, how can they keep this going for an entire hour? And they did it! Unbelievably, Scully and Mulder become trapped in a technological Brave New World that's obsessed with parting them from their money and expecting rave reviews for it. Who hasn't been there by this point in time, dealing with unacceptable passwords, plastic cards that don't work, and riding the circular merry-go-round when trying to voice a complaint by phone. I was pretty sure Mulder would cave on the insistence for a tip at the Forowa Sushi House; with all that had gone before, there was no way to imagine what to expect if he didn't punch in a gratuity. It's so maddening when something like this happens to you, and you find yourself helpless without a human voice to relate to. A personal best is when you try to log onto IMDb from a non-regular desktop, and you have to decipher the correct letters from the set of hieroglyphics you're presented with that come up on screen. The only real disconnect this episode had with reality was that there was no one else around in all of Washington, DC to share in Scully and Mulder's plight. It's not like they were in the sticks, they had left Mud Lick, Kentucky just about a week earlier.