Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Cockroaches and Mass Hysteria

Some of the best episodes of The X-Files take a more nuanced approach to exploring the tension between science and the paranormal. Moreover, they show Scully’s medical background is often at odds with Mulder’s attitude toward putting truth into outlandish theories without proof. War of the Coprophages is one of those episodes because it uses humor and a bit of satire to get its point across. 

This is the third episode written by Darin Morgan who also wrote Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose. It begins as a creature feature and they employed the use of around 300 real cockroaches, several realistic looking props, and a whole lot of fake dung to make this episode.

Fun Fact: David Duchovny once appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy! during which he competed against Stephen King and Lynn Redgrave. During the Final Jeopardy! round entitled Business and Literature, he answered Rizolis! The correct answer was Tiffanys, as in Breakfast at Tiffanys, a novella by Truman Capote. During this episode of The X-Files, Scully can be seen reading Breakfast at Tiffanys when Mulder calls her. Its an inside joke between the two actors that is as irreverent and hilarious as the episode itself if you know the context.

In a town called Miller’s Grove, an exterminator is hired by Dr. Jeff Eckerle to eradicate a cockroach infestation, but he collapses from anaphylaxis just as he was trying to stomp a cockroach underfoot. He is found covered in roaches. Mulder happens, by pure coincidence, to be nearby investigating UFO sightings. The local sheriff approaches him whilst on the phone with Scully who is at home with Clyde Bruckman’s dog, Queequeg (same writer for both episodes, wink wink). She can be seen in a funny scene later in the episode giving the dog a bath in her kitchen sink but turns her back when Mulder calls. When she goes back to the sink, the dog has escaped. Anyhoo, the sheriff admits that he believes that the roaches are responsible for a series of deaths in town.

A teen standing near a pile of manure sees a cockroach crawl into an open wound on his arm and proceeds to cut up his own skin to get the cockroach out. On the phone with Scully again, she informs Mulder she believes it was a drug induced hallucination and the kid’s injuries were self inflicted.

Mulder finds out a government facility has been breeding killer roaches nearby, and right after a medical examiner is found dead in a bathroom stall cover in roaches that disappear when Mulder arrives at the scene. Scully says the death was likely a cerebral aneurysm caused by overstraining whilst pooping.

Mulder goes to this government facility, which includes a normal looking house that appears to be infested with cockroaches, Mulder meets Dr. Bambi Berenbaum who researches effective methods of pest control on roaches. She believes that some UFO sightings are swarms of flying insects. When Mulder talks to Scully again, Scully cracks a joke about the doctor’s name. Mulder can’t get off the phone fast enough so he can continue to speak to the beautiful Dr. Bambi.

When another person who sees a roach (the town is hysterical about it by now thanks to gossip and media attention) suddenly dies, Mulder now believes that he died of fright. Dr. Bambi discovers that one of the cockroaches found is actually mechanical. Mulder brings this to Dr. Ivanov who works with insect like robots and the two men discuss the possibility that extraterrestrials could have sent to robots to study Earth. Ivanov says the cockroach robots are vastly superior to normal robots.

Having spoken to Mulder several times on the phone from home, Scully arrives in town and finds residents succumbing to mass hysteria because of the roaches in a grocery store. Even after she attempts to calm the situation, two fighting patrons kick over a display of chocolate causing a mass stampede as everyone flees.

Hypotheses around methane gas are floated between Dr. Bambi and Mulder as they get back to Dr. Eckerle’s house. The man believes that Mulder is a cockroach and shoots up the place causing pipes to burst, releasing methane gas. They flee before the building explodes. Dr. Eckerle and Dr. Bambi hit it off over bugs and robots leaving Mulder to write his report. As he wonders how humanity would react if insect robots did visit Earth, he finds a cockroach by his foot and crushes it with an X-File.

This creature feature gets flipped on its head quickly, as do all of Mulder’s hypotheses about each death as Scully gives him scientific answers that turn out to be true in the end. An aneurysm. A drug induced hallucination. Fear related heart attack. Even as Mulder begins to believe he is going crazy, the deaths continue to pile up. He questions reality. Questions what the truth really – like if the robot cockroaches were sent by aliens or if a larger conspiracy is in play to throw him off the trail.

This episode explores how humans fear things they know very little about. Ignorance isn’t necessarily bliss when the absurd level of fear causes people to lash out. How the media amplifying this fear can cause paranoia and hysteria. And let’s face it. Herd mentality is far scarier than the thing the mob thinks it’s afraid of. This episode highlights the contradiction between rational thought and irrational fear. We are susceptible to false information because it aligns with what we want to hear. This is especially true with unexplainable phenomena within the context of the show.

Know what this episode really reminds me of? No, I don’t mean War of the Worlds which is what Chris Carter took inspiration from. I’m talking about the 1990 horror comedy Arachnophobia. In that film, a big city doctor relocates his family with the promise of taking over the town’s medical practice when that doctor retires. When the first two people that he examines die mysteriously, the town blames him based on rumors floated by the retired doctor. People abandon the new doctor and begin calling him Dr. Death. It isn’t until it’s too late that the town realizes it is infested with deadly spiders.

It has the same themes of mass hysteria based on false information and rumors have caused people to act irrationally. Even when two spider scientists are brought in when the doctor discovers the connection, the townspeople either don’t take it seriously or overreact. The humor in this film mimics the humor in today’s episode, while also exploring the same ideas.

In today’s society, it also holds true that humans need answers when something awful happens. A mass shooting happens, and we need to know why. A flash flood kills 120 people, and we need to know how this could have possibly happened. Answers give us someone or something to blame. Answers can give us closure if we have proper understanding of them. With misunderstanding, when conspiracy theories tell us the answer we want and not the truth, we become an angry mob. Fake news. Hoaxes. Torches. Pitchforks. Blinded by fear and unwilling to listen when Frankenstein’s Monster would like a word because the monster we created in our minds didn’t create the issue at hand.

Until next week, the truth is out there.