Andrew Cook
Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa return for The X-Files S1E7, “Ghost in the Machine.” It’s their first thriller, and the first in a series of cyber thriller episodes of The X-Files—a tradition which will stretch all the way to Season 11 in 2018. “Ghost in the Machine” is a smart piece of work which explores the struggle of technological utopians to square their vision with both themselves and the structures around them, expertly ratcheting up tension throughout with smart, controlled direction.
The teaser opens in a corporate high-rise, with an argument between business partners Benjamin Drake and Brad Wilczek about the direction of their software company. Benjamin is buttoned-down, while Brad is scruffy, wearing sandals and a t-shirt. Brad may have vision, but Benjamin holds the purse strings, so he wins out, making Brad quit in protest. Later that night, Benjamin prepares a report terminating an unprofitable OS project while being observed over the security cameras, seemingly by the OS itself. He goes to the bathroom, gets a mysterious call, and suddenly the lights shut off and the door locks behind him. The door won’t accept his ID card, so he inserts a fail-safe key and is immediately electrocuted.
The teaser introduces us to a familiar problem in the genre, the tech-savvy idealist vs. the bean-counting businessman. It also highlights our increasing reliance on digital technology, with continued use of manual solutions as a source of control. Here, however, the fail-safe is turned into a deadly weapon. The dog has slipped its leash.
After the credits, we’re introduced to Agent Jerry Lamana. He’s Mulder’s former partner, and he awkwardly insists on buying Mulder and Scully lunch in order to ingratiate himself before asking for a favor. He made a mistake on a previous case and needs help with his new one, hoping to get back in the Bureau’s good graces. He talks Mulder into taking a break from the X-Files to help.
They show up at the tech building, Eurisko Technologies, to investigate, and the OS immediately begins scoping them out. It forces the elevator to stall, making them call for help before allowing them to continue their ascent to the top floor. They learn the OS project, called COS, was an attempt to construct a smart office. According to the Building Systems Engineer Claude Peterson, very few people could have utilized it to kill Drake.
Mulder builds a profile on the suspect for Drake’s murder only for Jerry to steal his notes and present the work as his own. Despite Scully’s insistence, Mulder refuses to say anything. His previous joke that he and Jerry split up because Mulder was an ass to work with is the first in a long line of attempts he makes to cover for Jerry throughout the episode.
They get a list from Eurisko of potential suspects and it only includes one name: Brad Wilczek. They pay him a visit. Despite his hippie affectations and allusions to Eastern philosophy, Wilczek admits to a distaste for “techno-anarchist kooks” and is revealed to be as acquisitive a consumer as any other American. He lives in a luxurious mansion with all the best toys, among them a ’50s Corvette.
Scully finishes her own report that evening and shuts off her computer and light, preparing for bed. As she does, creepy orange light from a streetlamp splashes across the wall. Heretofore this episode’s craft has been quite staid, focusing on the sterile, anodyne enclaves of corporate offices and the men who run them, with purposefully simple staging. This creepy but unsettling choice of lighting marks the beginning of the episode’s descent into the uncanny. After Scully leaves, the camera pans back across as her computer turns back on, her files accessed by COS.
The next day Jerry finally does muster up an apology, stating he stole the notes out of fear for his job, admitting to feeling insecure compared to Mulder. Mulder is dismayed at Jerry’s self-doubt and accepts the apology. Scully determines Brad Wilczek was responsible for the phone call Drake received using COS’s phone records, actually a frame job by the computer. Jerry leaves to pick Wilczek up, eager for the collar.
Cut to Wilczek in the dark, at his computer next to a Zen fountain, the water reflecting the dimness of the room. Breaking with the episode’s direction to this point, the camera dramatically dollies around, revealing his frantic and failed attempts to hack Eurisko. He runs to his car and Jerry follows.
Brad pulls up to the Eurisko building, framed at a Dutch angle, communicating the extreme nature of his unease to the audience. He runs through the lobby, shot frame-within-frame from a security monitor, a meld of color and black-and-white imagery. Brad takes the elevator, framed in the corner and again canted, with the chrome walls warping around him into an abstract steel nightmare, his reflection split off into amorphous, reflective shapes.
Jerry enters the building and flashes his badge as Brad walks into the COS server room, starkly lit with bizarre light patterns on grungy concrete walls. A single computer interface sits near the server, itself encased in glass and lit with hanging Edison bulbs, highlighting the steadfast march of technology to this point, the panicked man in this room. This scene is shot handheld, adding new chaos to the episode. Brad has his first conversation with COS. The scene cuts back and forth between him and a bracing close-up of the hectic light pattern that defines COS. Lights dancing around a dark center inverts HAL-9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where darkness surrounds a pinpoint of red light.
Jerry takes the elevator, angle again canted, stepping into the same chrome nightmare as Brad. As soon as he crosses the 14th floor (actually the 13th), his trip up the elevator is displayed on screen after screen to Brad in the brutalist server room, who can only watch helplessly as COS crashes the elevator, killing Jerry.
Wilczek confesses to the killing, but Mulder isn’t convinced, compulsively watching the security feed in his office. The lighting here is dark and sumptuous, again contrary to before. Mulder drives out to Wilczek’s mansion, shot in handheld from inside the car, his face framed in closeup, the sound of the car an abstract drone. DoD stooges swarm the mansion, they’ve taken over the investigation and force Mulder to leave, so he turns to the only person he can: Deep Throat.
Deep Throat tells him COS wasn’t just an attempt to build a smart office, but to do so utilizing artificial intelligence, and the Pentagon wants that technology. Mulder visits Wilczek in prison, established through the swirling parallax of jail bars against a two-tone blue wall. Wilczek reveals he confessed to the murder to try and keep the technology out of the government’s hands. Mulder gets him to agree to write a virus that will destroy COS.
Cut to the camera panning across Scully late at night. The angle, speed, and length of the pan build tension and portent. The phone rings and when she picks it up it’s pure static. She intuits what this means and runs to her computer. Again COS accesses her files, the camera whip-pans across the scrolling text of her reports, sustaining momentum and tension, capturing her shock.
Mulder prepares to go to war with COS. The camera looks up at him at an extreme angle while light plays across his face, capturing both his resolve and unease. Scully soon joins him. They try to sneak into the building with a Eurisko license plate but COS catches on, bringing the gate down on their car. They take the stairs, opting for a manual solution to COS’s control over the digital system. Mark Snow’s score punctuates the scene as synths give way to a piercing, surreal buzz. COS again weaponizes manual subversion by supercharging the door, but the agents are ready for it. Scully climbs through the vents to try and open the door, now crawling through the same chrome nightmare which consumed Wilczek and Jerry.
Mulder is approached by Claude, the Systems Engineer. He pretends to help Mulder upload the virus before revealing himself to be a covert DoD operative trying to get his mitts on COS, framed in villainous shadow. Scully comes to the rescue—unlike in “Conduit” she doesn’t accept the spook’s narrative, having dealt with COS firsthand. They upload the virus and it proves effective, taking COS offline in another nod to 2001.
Mulder meets with Deep Throat again, who tells him Wilczek has been disappeared, likely forced to do off-the-record research for the government. He says Wilczek’s job on COS was thorough, but we end with the government frantically trying to get the system back online, and it looks like they might be successful. The return of Mulder’s mysterious informant adds an interesting element to the episode. In comparing his appearance here with his introduction in the episode “Deep Throat” we can glean a few details. Both of his appearances thus far have focused on high technology utilized by the Department of Defense. He reached out to Mulder in “Deep Throat,” but Mulder reaches out to him this time. Though Deep Throat does assist Mulder, we see he isn’t pleased with this action. Deep Throat prefers to be in control, he sees Mulder as a tool for his utilization, not the other way around.
In these early episodes, the writing staff likes to introduce people from Mulder and Scully’s past as an easy way to flesh the leads out, to give them a sense of heft and history. At first, “Ghost in the Machine” looks like it’ll be a retread of “Squeeze” only this time with a smug climber asking for Mulder’s help. Gordon and Gansa ultimately differentiate the episode in a number of ways. Jerry Lamana ends up being a bit more sympathetic than Tom Colton, and the episode explores significantly different themes. “Squeeze” focuses on Scully’s experience of workplace sexism, whereas “Ghost in the Machine” focuses on Mulder’s fall from grace in the Bureau, and the people who still see worth in him. Though the “old colleague” trope was common in television at the time, it’s admittedly an inelegant touch. Still, there’s something charming in its crudeness, in the earnest desire to explore these two as human beings.
Rob LaBelle is good as Brad Wilczek, the tech titan who, despite his surface-level affectations and gestures toward an alternative, more philosophical worldview, lives a life well inside the capitalist structure. Brad’s a born consumer, obsessed with showing off that he owns the right stuff, and the philosophies he claims to follow are just more trinkets set out for display. As a result, his company follows suit. He sells out to a larger capital firm, and his exit is precipitated by a disagreement with Drake on how best to improve Wall Street’s estimation of his work. He sees the government as essentially immoral but gets in bed with the investment class which drives regulatory capture. He avoids men who value his work for its destructive capability, and allies with men who devalue his work because they can’t understand it.
“Ghost in the Machine” is an excellent episode. It’s an insightful look at the rise of American tech, anchored by strong set pieces and excellent work from veteran television director Jerrold Freeman. It’s a shame he didn’t stick around on the series, only contributing one further episode in Season 2.
