Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 56

Few things are as dangerous as a teen with immense power. 

Last time of X-Men: The Animated Series, the team needed another do-over. After failing to save Charles Xavier from the time traveling assassin Fitzroy, Bishop and Shard took the Monroes to the future to try to fix Charles again. They find a Sentinel rules world with Forge having been completely overhauled into a cyborg working for the Master Mold. They’re attacked by Sentinels and in the fighting find time to convince Forge to help them go back to the past and fix all this. Fitzroy attempted to get his reward from the Master Mold, but it told him he wasn’t getting anything until the other time travelers were also dead as they’ll just reset the timeline. He also overhears the Master Mold telling Nimrod to kill him once this was all done because it is grown tired of dealing even with useful Mutants. Fitzroy helps buy time for the others to escape by trapping Nimrod in a forcefield and gives Bishop a data chip. Bishop, Logan and Ororo make it to the time portal, but they’re forced to leave Shard as she was separated from them in the fighting. In the past they intercept Charles after he ran off from the original group in the coffee shop. Fitzroy gets the jump on them, but they show him the recording that the future Fitzroy made, basically telling his past self that Master Mold is going to double cross them. He lets the X-Men go and returns to the future, and they finish off Nimrod by separating it from it’s time band and sending it back to the Future. Bishop tells the Monroes they have until their bands turn off before they’re reset along with everyone else and also goes home. Dystopian Ororo and Logan hug and give each other a kiss goodbye before shutting their bands off. They reset to the picnic they were having with Charles when all this started, flirting slightly as if remembering their other selves. Enough recap. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

We start our story in Scotland, in the famed Muir Island Mutant research center. We get a brief shot of Morph getting some kind of brain scan before going deeper into the building, finding a high security door protected behind a laser grid with the words No Admittance: Mutant X placed over it. Whoever is in there is causing a hell of a ruckus inside. We see Moira MacTaggert and Sean Cassidy overseeing a procedure being done on the Mutant. The Mutant resembles a huge blob of energy in a vaguely human shape. The Mutant is being blasted by an energy wave of some kind that is hurting it, but Moira says is part of a treatment that will allow them to live in the real world. She laments that it’s hurting them so much, but Sean tries to keep her spirits up by reminding her that this will help him. The creature screams that this is hurting him, and Moira shouts back that this is the only way. We learn the being is named Kevin, but he’s also called Proteus. Sean says they both need to be strong. Proteus takes on his human form, which excites Moira to no end. But he raises his hand and destroys the wall keeping him in. He morphs back into his Proteus form. Moira tells him the therapy is working, and they just need to start over, but he refuses, demanding to see what’s outside the walls. He attacks his mother, but Sean shoves her out of the way. Proteus tackles him and engulfs him in Proteus’ energy body, which lets him possess the older man. Moira asks him to let Sean go but he refuses. She tries to talk him back into his room but he refuses. He drops out of Sean’s body and things start warping around them.

 

We cut to the X-Mansion where they get an emergency alert from Muir Island. The signal is badly scrambled but they’re able to get Moira shouting that she needs help ASAP. Charles is always ready and willing to drop things for Moira, so he tells the team to scramble the Blackbird. Rogue, Beast and Wolverine are sent out with him. On the flight, Rogue says that Moira looked extremely spooked in that video, like she saw a ghost. Wolverine isn’t too phased by this, saying that if there is a ghost then they’ll fight a ghost. Charles tells him that this situation is a big deal as he’s known Moira for two decades and she’s never been that scared. He has a flashback to when they’d been dating. He proposed to her, and she said yes. At the time he was in the army and had been shipped out to fight somewhere. During his tour of duty, she sent him a dear john letter and his ring back, saying she’d met someone while he was away. We then get a sped-up timeline of their lives, with Charles going through physical therapy and meeting his other longtime girlfriend Amelia, forming the X-Men, but losing Amelia. Moira on the other hand married this fella, a man named Joe, but they divorced sometime when their son Kevin was in diapers. They land on Muir Island.

 

Inside Moira shows a video of what happened, with Kevin reacting badly to the sonic therapy, breaking free, possessing Banshee, and then starting to warp space around them. Rogue jokes about someone whacking the camera but Moira explains that Proteus is a reality warper, he was literally reshaping the physical world around them. She notes that his effect on space is temporary, as the room reverts to normal when he leaves, but the damage he does before that point will stick with ya. He’s also telepathic because why not? Beast notes that he’s a teenager who can do whatever he wants, which isn’t comforting. Moira lets them know that the main side effect of Kevin’s possession is extreme weakness and lethargy once he leaves a body. Charles sends the team out to search the island for him, Muir Island is small so he might not have gotten far. As they leave, Wolverine notes that Charles seems to be acting kind of weird. Rogue then points out they’re ex-fiancés, and when he still doesn’t get it, she angrily tells him that if the love of his life ever asks for his help, she’ll see how he functions. Charles tries to comfort Moira, who admits that her research began with trying to help Proteus and now she’s failed him and everyone he hurts while he’s loose. Charles does his best to comfort her and both admit they miss seeing each other due to their distance. He asks how Joe is doing, and Moira scoffs and says he’s doing well without her. She says he’ a politician now and pops in one of his campaign videos into the VCR. He’s a Scottish Conservative running on a family values platform. It’s always those types that multi-divorced, just saying.

 

Meanwhile, Kevin possesses a sailor and goes into a pub. He’s entranced by what he sees in the outside world. He was extremely sheltered while living with Moira so doesn’t note some weirdness happening around him like the pub suddenly resembling an alien cantina. Moira tells Charles that Kevin is 17 but immature, he speaks almost exclusively via telepathy and has a habit of having temper tantrums. Charles tries to reach out to his mind, Moira telling him to be careful. Charles tries to but must get through some weird psychic interference to do so, assumedly this is a side effect of Kevin’s power. He finally touches Kevin’s mind, but he senses Charles immediately and forces him back out, the psychic shockwave causing Charles’ chair to freak out and crash. Proteus jumps into a new body and flees the island. Beast radios into the facility while Moira looks after Sean. He tells Charles that they found the dockworker Proteus had possessed. Beast gives the bad news that he’s probably left the island by now.

 

We cut to mainland Scotland where Proteus ditches his new body and starts wandering around. He comes across a boy being chased by bullies. He scares them off by warping them into scarecrows. Proteus possesses the boy and starts wandering around. The boy’s father finds him and Proteus is overwhelmed by love he senses coming from this man for the boy. The concept of a dad is weird to him, and he starts warping reality around them. An SOS is sent out from the docks and the X-Men fly out to investigate. When they confirm Proteus is molding the entire island, they head back to grab Moira and Charles. Proteus is wandering around the island demanding to know where his father is.

 

On the flight back, Beast asks Moira the million dollar question, how are they going to get Proteus to go along with them. She’s unsure because, ya know, reality warper with the temperament of an unruly child. Charles reaches out to Proteus to try to soothe him. It doesn’t work, though, as Proteus seems to reach through their psychic connection to knock Charles out. The city starts molding back to normal, which is good and bad. Proteus possess a bystander and tries to get in close to grab Charles. Rogue stops him, grabbing his arm and drains just a little bit of his power. But that amount is basically nothing to Proteus but overwhelms Rogue who starts warping reality around her. Proteus runs off, saying that he needs to find his father, who will protect him. Rogue tells the others what she got from when they touched, about how Proteus is searching for a special man of some kind. Logan tells them to take the Blackbird while he searches the ground, but then a storm starts which kind of kills this plan.

 

They take the Blackbird and map Proteus’ movements across Scotland. His path is erratic but they’re sure he’s headed to Edinburgh. Logan suggests that they need to consider being willing to take out Kevin with how much damage he’s causing. Moira excuses herself to ‘call the lab’ but it’s really to call Joe. She tells her ex that Kevin is out and on the way toward him. Joe starts screaming at her to put the boy back and how could she let this happen with the election being a week away. Moira tells him to just talk to Kevin, Joe agrees to but says he’ll do it after the election. The family values candidate, everyone.

 

They land to try to cut Kevin off. Charles asks her what she’s keeping from him. Moira says it’s difficult to say. The ground starts shaking and they realize he’s on the way. Moira runs out and tries to talk him down, but he refuses to listen as he won’t go back into a cage. Charles tries to telepathically talk him down but that doesn’t work either. He asks Kevin to just tell him who he’s looking for. Kevin says he’s looking for his father and tells Charles to ask Moira about him as she’s the one keeping them apart. Moira finally reveals that Proteus is her son to Charles, I guess she was keeping that from him. Moira says that Charles is the only one she couldn’t tell as how could she face him with this information. Charles tells her that she underestimated his feelings for her, but then she always did. They try to overwhelm Proteus but he’s simply too powerful to stop. He disables everyone with various environmental traps and heads for the city, saying that his father is down there, and he will find him.

 

It's funny that both Moira and Charles have an extremely powerful, reality warping son, but neither has a parent in common. Like, if Charles was the father of both Proteus and Legion it’d be one thing but imagine that your ex-lover and one of your few real friends also had Omega level X-genes within. Weird. I can say with confidence nothing is more terrifying sounding to me that someone with the powers of a god but the mind of a teenager. I totally understand why Kevin is obsessed with being free and finding his father now that he’s out. Being confined to a small place just isn’t something that most humans take well to, even if it’s objectively for his own good like with Kevin. A power like his absolutely needs to be controlled to whatever degree that they can get. Him running loose is just all kinds of dangerous. I’d say the weakest part of this episode is simply Moira keeping the info that Kevin is her son from Charles and the others. 1. How did you think you could keep it from him, Moira, and 2. It’s a miracle that didn’t give up the ghost at any point by referring to her as Mom. So we’ve got a rampaging child looking for a father that couldn’t care less about him. I’m sure this’ll go well (sarcasm is as heavy as the core of a neutron star.) But more on this later. See you next time, folks. 

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬

Viewer Log: Murderbot ep 4

 System error, system error, contact administrator. 

Last time on Murderbot, the gang had a road trip. Sky trip. Air Trip? They traveled. Despite Murderbot’s objections, a group consisting of it, Mensah, Arada, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi flew out to the location of the DeltFall survey group. The humans tried to bond with their SecUnit but basically nothing could make Murderbot more uncomfortable. Arada, Pin-Lee, and Mensah accompany Murderbot despite his objections to the DeltFall Hub habitat while Ratthi stayed with their hopper. He finally ditched them when it came to actually going into the building. Inside Murderbot finds an absolute bloodbath with dead humans and SecUnits scattered around. One SecUnit was discovered to be playing possum and attacked it. While the other unit is more advanced, it’s damaged and Murderbot is able to predict its movements, so defeats it. But a second active SecUnit arrives and shoots it, knocking Murderbot out. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 4: Escape Velocity Protocol

 

The episode begins with a quick look at Threshold Pass, a “fabrication center” in the corporation rim. It’s where they assemble SecUnits assemble. As far as I’m aware this is the first time that we’ve seen inside one of these places, and the fact that artificial humans are assembled by real ones isn’t lost on me. This scene just seems to exist to confirm that SecUnits are assembled not grown, and that it’s done by slave… indentured servant labor. One worker asks another why the SecUnits don’t all look the same and the best answer we get is that it makes it easier to identify rogue units. It’s a very Watsonian explanation for this, much better than the obvious Doylist one of “we didn’t want to have Alexander Skarsgard play all the robots.” The techy that asked about the faces also asked how often they go rogue to need that face recognition and the woman he talks to says “often.” The scene ends with Murderbot saying that humans must realize on some level how weird they are.

 

After that we see the new SecUnit dragging Murderbot through the corridors. It is badly damaged, sticking to 3 to 4% operational efficiency. It keeps trying to boot up but the damage it suffered leaves it stuck buffering, it’s mind reuploading it’s most viewed data, in this unit’s case that is Sanctuary Moon episodes. The Rogue unit throws Murderbot on a table, it takes two tries. The others try to get in contact with SecUnit but obviously he can’t answer. Murderbot muses on if this is how all SecUnits die, with his failing cybernetic components keeping its organic parts going as its power cell slowly decays to nothing. Mensah tries to convince herself to leave it, muttering that her SecUnit is just a machine, as Pin-Lee joins her. Pin-Lee tries to get Mensah to get back to the hopper but she refuses. Pin-Lee insists on not anthropomorphizing it. Mensah admits that she knows what she has to do but is scared to do it. Pin-Lee tries to get her to come back, but Mensah refuses, reluctantly ordering Pin-Lee back to the ship.

 

Murderbot is still out of it, its systems failing and being unable to reboot. The new SecUnit prepares to implant it with a combat override module. This would allow whoever is controlling this SecUnit to highjack Murderbot and force it to follow their commands. Desperate and needing just a few more seconds to finish a system reboot, Murderbot does something desperate. It sings the Sanctuary Moon theme song. The hokey lyrics seems to legitimately confuse the SecUnit, buying Murderbot just enough time to finish the reboot. They fight, Murderbot getting up and getting a few good hits in before the other unit overpowers it. It forces the combat override into Murderbot’s neck and begins the download. Murderbot lets us know he’s got about 10 minutes before the download is complete and he’s completely under their control. But worse, the override would first alter Murderbot’s programming, covering its tracks and making Murderbot unable to remember it there or what its doing. He laments that his useless clients will be on their own without him, right before Mensah shows up and spears the other SecUnit through the chest with a drill. This visibly freaks her out and she barfs but then recovers and helps Murderbot up. Murderbot is aware that there is a problem at this point but can’t remember the override. It gets stuck repeating to Mensah that her actions have violated security protocol, and it is required to record and report this to the company. And as they leave they fail to notice that the other SecUnit is powering back up.

 

Pin-Lee arrives back at the hopper and tells the others they were ordered back. They both scoff at this, Ratthi insisting that that kind of goes against their organizations whole deal but everyone else points out that she’s legitimately in charge. Pin-Lee says Mensah is intimidating, but Arada cuts in that her babe is just as intimidating, which Pin-Lee thanks her for. Pin-Lee, frustrated, points out how stupid it is that they’re all required to sign up for missions and that Mensah is simply too important to send out on crap like this. Arada tells Pin-Lee that they don’t mean that and it’s a very cool rule. Ratthi is fed up with waiting and grabs a gun. He clearly has no idea what he is doing as he can’t even hold the thing right. There is a cute but awkward fight as Ratthi tries to be a badass but keeps on apologizing whenever he says things that are remotely problematic or dickish and Arada trying to be non-combative. Pin-Lee tells him that he’s being very macho and it’s disgusting. Even though it’s clear that this is kind of doing it for them. Ratthi tells them they’re both wonderful people, waving the gun at them and causing them both to leap out of the way of the mussel, Ratthi apologizing again.

 

Mensah helps Murderbot limp along. It keeps detecting there is something wrong with it’s input socket but can’t do anything about it. The damage and hacking seem to be messing with Murderbot’s system, and it briefly hallucinates that it and Mensah are on Sanctuary Moon, and I’ve never seen it more excited. They’re both in terrible wigs and costumes. In its delirium it asks Mensah if she knows how to execute the escape velocity protocol, she just kind of nods and helps him limp along. The other SecUnit arrive and starts shooting at them.

 

Arada and Pin-Lee wait in the hopper. They’re both flustered by the situation and Ratthi being a macho idiot. Pin-Lee seems to be sensing relationship issues with their situation and suggests they look over their contract when Ratthi gets back. Arada hopes aloud that he’s not doing anything stupid. We then cut to Ratthi being stupid, jumping from rocky cover to rocky cover, trying to hide while being a badass. He radios that he’s about to breach the habitat but asks them what the dials at the sides of the blaster are. They tell him they’re the power setting and safety. Pin-Lee insists he keeps the power at medium. At that moment they all get Mensah’s SOS call. He tries to get the door open, but it’s locked down tight.

 

Murderbot tries to get her to ‘abandon ship’ so he can ‘fight the raiders.’ She tells him they’re not abandoning the ship and drags him along. Pin-Lee almost runs out to join Ratthi, but Arada stops them and offers up some kind of control, saying that she’s got an idea. Murderbot lets us know that he knew he should be keyed up to fight but his combat module was telling him there was nothing wrong. The rogue SecUnit throws the door open and drops it on Murderbot. Ratthi dials the blaster all the way up before he can fire, Mensah blows a hole in the habitat and she and Murderbot stumble out. Murderbot realizes its got a minute left before the override is complete. It notes that the other SecUnit keeps missing its shots extremely badly and trying to ponder why. Ratthi tries to help but the kickback on the powered-up blaster causes it to hit him in the forehead and knock him out. Murderbot figures out that the other SecUnit is waiting for the override to finish and have Murderbot do the murdering so it could leave the scene. Before it can do anything, Pin-Lee and Arada arrive in the hopper, crushing the rogue under the landing gear, killing it. Murderbot gets the override off but it’s too late. The combat override starts buffering but it’s slow enough for Murderbot to tell them that it’s combat system is being reset and it is targeting them for death. It tells them to kill it, but they refuse. Rather than hurt its clients, Murderbot nabs Mensah’s gun and shoots itself in the chest to disable it. This is obviously a fake out death that they’re trying to make seem real… but come on, it is the title character for goodness’s sake and there are more episodes coming.

 

Well, that was exciting. Sort of the polar opposite of the last episode, this was almost all action and tension vs. the episode of travel. The Rogue SecUnit was a major badass, throwing Murderbot around, getting stabbed up then getting back up to do more killing. It’s not as impressive as pique Arnold as the Terminator but it gave a similar vibe. The brief hallucination section where he’s in Sanctuary Moon was extremely fun. Getting to see Skarsgard in a truly profoundly awful wig and make up and interacting with the characters from that bad soap is just so much fun. Makes me wonder what would have happened to Murderbot if he hadn’t had 7000+ hours of tv in his brain at the time. Would he have hallucinated something else? Or just shut down completely as without his soaps and with most of his programing being overwritten, he’s got nothing? Something to think about. I also very much enjoyed that little scene in the SecUnit factory. As I said, as far as I’m aware (I read the first four novellas and the first full novel, so maybe it’s covered in the later books) that we’ve never seen how SecUnits are made. I had in my head something like vat grown people, fully assembled with the tissue having grown around a robotic exoskeleton or something, but the fact they are put together like action figures is a much cooler idea. And I liked the Watsonian explanation as to why not every SecUnit looks the same under the helmet. I obviously know it’s to not have Skarsgard play every unmasked SecUnit that may show up, but the idea that it is to make recognizing a rogue unit at a glance is just such a smart little idea. I loved how they showed the weirdness Murderbot was dealing with when it knew logically that something was wrong with it but something was actively keeping it’s robotic parts from recognizing it. It’s a surreal experience to see him be aware enough to keep reaching for his neck but never being able to get there completely. And, well, now he’s disabled, so now they gotta get him back to Gurathin, who I am sure won’t use Murderbot’s inactive status to do some snooping. Totally not something he would do. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Night!

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬

Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 55

 Giving up their whole world for the future.

Last time on X-Men: The Animated Series, we got some more time travel shenanigans. In 2055, a Mutant by the name of Fitzroy made a deal with the Master Mold to travel to the past to kill Charles Xavier in order to make the Sentinel extermination of Mutants easier. Thankfully, future Forge, Bishop and Shard were tipped off and the siblings leapt back through time. Unfortunately, they were too slow and the timeline started to reset. The 90s of this altered timeline has a Mutant vs. Human war with Magneto leading Mutantkind against the human’s robots and Avengers. Storm and Wolverine are both present, as a married couple and devout followers of the Leader. Shard and Bishop arrive and tell the two of them what happened because they need backup for this mission. Both are skeptical but come around after seeing Shard’s holograms of the original timeline. Storm is willing to help, and Wolverine agrees to begrudgingly because he knows that in the other timeline he and Storm aren’t together, and she’s his whole world. They travel back to 1959 and track down Charles, a young med student with dreams of being a doctor and hiding his Mutant status for the foreseeable. They show him the holograms and try to convince him, but their pitch meeting is ruined when a racist coffee shop owner saw Logan and Ororo holding hands. A fight broke out and Charles ran off in the confusion. They try to find him again but run instead to Master Mold’s greatest warrior, Nimrod, who came back with Fitzroy to make sure the job is done. The four Mutants destroy Nimrod but fail to stop Fitzroy from killing Charles with a bomb. How on earth will they fix this? Enough recap. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

We begin with the explosion that destroys Charles’ dorm room and then the whole building. Storm voices the obvious that Fitzroy planted a bomb, and that Charles never had a chance. Bishop starts shouting at Wolverine for ruining the mission, blaming his angry outburst at the racist coffee shop owner for why they lost track of Charles. The cops arrive to try to arrest them for what happened at the coffee shop. Wolverine and Bishop are ready to scrab but Ororo throws up a tornado and blows them away. Shard says they need to return to the future and hope that Forge and the portal are still there so they can try to course correct the future again. Logan refuses, saying that fighting for Magento wasn’t so bad and that he doesn’t even know Charles, but Ororo doesn’t buy it, saying that she knows him too well to ever believe he’d willingly let these people down. They travel to the future.

 

They step through the portal and find this futuristic, but the proportions seem… off. It’s not until they see the fully cyborg except for his face Forge for them to realize this is the Sentinels Rule the World future. Forge hits the alarm button to summon the Sentinels. Logan stabs the alarm destroying it. Bishop tries to remind Forge of the old timeline that he’s completely unaware of, which, ya know, doesn’t work. He doesn’t know what the resistance is or who these people are. Shard seems to hope he has some memory as she points out that they just used his time portal, but Forge insists it’s still experimental. Obviously Master Mold wants it built in order to make sure the time travel loop remains closed. If he doesn’t have a means of sending someone back in time to kill Charles, then Charles lives and disrupts the current timeline. Ororo tries to reset the portal, Forge begging her not to. Wolverine snidely asks what can scare Forge more than him. Then the upgraded Sentinels arrive. These machines are much more powerful than the old models, Ororo barely destroys one with all her power. Forge tries to beg for his life, but they aren’t listening. Shard tries to convince him to help them, but the shooting is really distracting. The remaining Sentinel tries to destroy them, but Bishops shoots it to pieces. Forge agrees to help them, and Bishop tells them the armbands have the coordinates. The first Sentinel gets up and tries to attack. Logan destroys it but he gets thrown to the ground and knocked out. Ororo is obviously terrified that he was hurt after that explosion, she forgot he heals I guess, but he gets up and they kiss. Forge starts resetting the machine, but it was damaged in the scuffle so he has to try to make repairs as quickly as he can.

 

We cut to Fitzroy and his sidekick Batham trying to get his reward from the Master Mold. He has Nimrod play the video from its chest. Master Mold clearly doesn’t want to honor the deal its other version made and tries to find a loophole by asking if they took care of the other time travelers. It reasons that because those four were time travelers, they also exist outside the time stream and thus remember history before it was altered. Fitzroy scoffs at the idea that four people could change anything, just before the alter goes off that Forge’s station has unregistered Mutants at it. Master Mold orders that they kill the Mutants and stop them from fixing time or not to bother coming back. Master Mold tells Nimrod to stay back and gives it special orders. Bantam starts whining, holding them back long enough to hear Master Mold ordering Nimrod to kill them after the time machine is destroyed.

 

The Mutants get attacked by the enforcer Sentinels. They destroy several while Forge frantically tries to fix the machine. Unfortunately, then Nimrod shows up. It blasts Bishop aside, who just redirects it because that’s his whole power. Fitzroy and Batham arrive, shooting at the sentinels instead of the Mutants. He throws a force field grenade that traps Nimrod for a few moments. He gives Bishiop a device saying that it will explain everything. He gets blasted by Nimrod as it frees itself. Shard gets separated from the group, but she demands they leave her behind, rationalizing that if they fix the timeline she’ll be fine too. Bishop really doesn’t want to leave his sister, but he and Logan jump through the portal together. Shard tries to get to Forge to try to talk to this lookalike of her friend, but they’re both implied to have been killed by Nimrod.

 

The others return to the past, with Ororo and Logan giving Bishop their condolences. But the mullet head says he’s not giving up just yet. They’ve got extra time this time, and he pops Fitzroy’s disk into his arm band to see what he left, turns out it’s a will.

 

We cut to the coffee shop fight and Charles running off with the other bystanders. They realize he’s gone and go after him. Bishop, Logan and Ororo grab Charles, Logan threatening him to make him compliant, which causes him to pass out. Ororo scolds him for doing it again. They arrive at Charles’ lab and explain what happened to him. He’s skeptical but Ororo tells him to just read their minds. He does so but says that Logan doesn’t want their mission to succeed. He and Bishop have a standoff, Bishop threatening to blow his head off, but Logan saying he feels what he feels but that doesn’t mean he’s a traitor. Someone comes to the door and Bishop points his shotgun at it. It’s just Cindy, Charles’ classmate. Or so they think, Logan takes several whiffs and realizes it’s Nimrod. They fight, the three Mutants overwhelming Nimrod and shattering it into pieces. It recovers, though, and starts attacking again. Bishop gets the bright idea to shoot it’s time band, which basically forces the machine back to the future. They breathe a sigh of relief, but Fitzroy arrives and hurls the bomb at them and traps them in a forcefield bubble to make sure it works. Ororo begs him to let them go, telling Fitzroy that he’ll be killed. Bishop plays Fitzroy’s will for Fitzroy, and they prove that point by pointing to their other selves arriving to try to save Charles. They convince Fitzroy, who throws the bomb out the window. The other set of Mutants disappear. Bishop lets Fitzroy go but tells Fitzroy that he will kill him if he tries this again. Fitzroy drains Charles to open another portal, and they leave. Bishop marvels at how one man could affect so many lives while looking at Charles. Ororo and Logan wonder why they still exist, Bishop telling them that their armbands keep them outside of time’s flow, once they take them off they’ll reset. He says he’s sorry and teleports away. Logan and Ororo hug, saying that they love each other one last time before turning off their bands and kissing.

 

Time resets and they’re outside during their picnic in the last episode. Ororo and Logan are still hugging and yet don’t find that at all odd. Logan makes the crack again about why they can’t just get ants like normal people. He then tells Ororo that it was a ‘good tussle’ she gave him and that they should do it again sometime. Ororo laughs and says if she didn’t know better, she’d think Logan was flirting with her. He basically says he wasn’t not flirting with her, and they have a laugh. Charles rolls up and just sort of smirks knowingly at them before remembering the Dystopian versions of them.

 

This was a good, bittersweet ending to this two-parter. I like that the episode went out of its way to acknowledge that, yes, Logan and Ororo are giving up a lot in order to give everyone else a better world. Does their universe suck? Absolutely, but they have each other and it is asking a lot to take that from them. Bringing up that Logan kind of hopes they fail right before the finale does drive home that doing the right thing here is tearing him up inside. Looking in on the Sentinel controlled future minus the resistance was neat. Part of me wondered why the Master Mold would spare Forge, but then I remembered that Forge’s power is all about inventing new technology, so using him as cyborg slave labor is just planning on the Master Mold’s part. We don’t get a lot about him, but he’s 95% machine where he’s normally 10%, doesn’t take a genius to figure out his life has been rough. I’m not at all shocked that the Master Mold ultimately betrayed Fitzroy. Takes a real stupid person to think one can be the exception to a death campaign. It’s more that the Master Mold was so blasé about it. Like, you know the dude just left, maybe don’t speak in your natural register Master Mold. Could have been a text… wait… based on 1995’s version of the future, you have no idea what texting is. Retracted. While it might have been nice to let us see Bishop reuniting with Shard and their version of Forge, I think ending on Logan and Ororo and a “maybe they’ll be a thing again” message was the right call. While I enjoy their relationship as unlikely friends, the fact that there are multiple stories of them being a thing in 2025 makes it clear they’ve got a chemistry that people like. Obviously I know that the show never brings this up again, but with X-Men: 97 being a thing, they could always use more storylines. Oh, speaking of, remember this episode for that series. No reason. Next time, more Murderbot.

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬

Viewer Log: X-Men: TAS ep 54

 A single raindrop raises the sea.

Ya, I am not ready to finish off The Wheel of Time just yet. So, back to X-Men.

 

Last time on X-Men: The Animated Series, we were introduced to Brother Kurt. Wolverine, Rogue and Gambit had decided to go to a German ski vacation where, after an avalanche Gambit caused by accident, they ended up in at the Neuherzl Monastery.  The Brothers of this monastery are kind, but the group learns about sightings of a demon in the town below. They eventually meet this demon, Kurt Wagner. He’s actually a Mutant, born with the ability to teleport as well as an abnormal physiology that gives him three fingered hands and feet, blue fur, and a tail. The town’s folk had merely seen Kurt on a walk and assumed the worst. We learn that another of the brothers, Reinhard, is super racist and tells the people of Neuherzl about Kurt, whipping them into a frenzy. The X-Men help the monks defend their monastery, Kurt ends up talking to and getting Reinhard to repent his sins, and help the people learn that Kurt is just a man with an unusual body. As they part ways with Kurt, who sensed a spiritual unease in Wolverine that mirrored his own, the monk gives Wolverine a Bible with his favorite passages marked. The story ends with Rogue discovering Wolverine in quite contemplation with Kurt’s Bible and praying. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ooo, I forgot this one was coming up.

 

We open on a scene marked as May 11, 1959. In it, the Sentinel super-hunter Nimrod is fighting the X-Men’s favorite mullet having time traveler, Bishop. Wolverine and Storm are there as well, in weirdly punk looking outfits. Logan cuts some wires in Nimrod’s back with his claws and Storm and Bishop blast it into pieces. From inside the dorm building overlooking the yard, we see a 22ish Charles Xavier standing (Oh my!) and panicking at the thought of having to face something like Nimrod or Mutants as a whole. He goes to open a door, setting off a fuse. Wolverine yells something about a fuse and Bishop screams NO! as it happens.

 

We cut back to Forge’s Lab in 2055. The Master Mutant Mechanist has gotten an alert about a Time Travel Rift that will be disrupting their timeline. He warns Bishop and his sister Shard that someone has gone back in time before them, and that they’ll need to get allies to stop whatever is rewriting history. They slap on their time bands and hop through the portal.

 

In the present day of 1995 we see Logan, Ororo and Charles enjoying a lovely spring day by having a picnic. Storm talks about how lovely the butterflies and flowers are, Logan jokingly asking if he’s what she’s referring to when she says they’re “beautiful.” They break out the picnic basket and set up. A sudden wave of energy erupts in the distance. Logan quips about how they can’t just attract ants like normal people. Charles’ chair warns him of a temporal disruption before he disappears, screaming. Logan and Ororo are hit by the temporal wave and are morphed into the punk outfits we saw earlier.

 

They’re transported to a New York landscape that’s clearly mid-apocalyptic war. Logan asks his ‘darlin’ if she’s alright, and Ororo asks what was that? They’re distracted by fighting. They alone with other Mutants are battling humans in an all-out war. They’re led by Magneto, aka the Leader, who looks exhausted and beaten down in his battler armor. He saves a winged Mutant from being crushed by a legally distinct but very ATST-looking walker but is overwhelmed by the humans’ other robots. Despite Ororo’s warning that they can’t fight them alone, Logan says they’ve got no choice. Losing Magneto means they lose the war. They charge, Magneto throws off the robot and he tells his people to push them back to the river. They destroy a robot, but Logan and Ororo get knocked down by the blast. They’re saved from being crushed by a crab tank by Nightcrawler, who teleports into it and disables it. They push forwards, where we see their forces also include Gambit and Mr. Sinister. Logan recovers and checks on Ororo, begging her to be okay. It’s at this point that we see they’re both wearing wedding rings. Tis a very odd timeline we find ourselves in. A troop transport lands and several folks that look like they might wish to Avenge some things rush out. Some include Goliath (another alternate identity for Ant-Man), Wasp, the Scarlet Spider, and Black Widow. They get blasted back, though, and the Mutants regroup.

 

Logan carries Ororo back to their medic tent and asks to see Dr. Summers. They’re interrupted by another attack. Mastermind uses his illusion powers to hide them from the walker that almost crushes them. Bishop and Shard appear, Bishop saying that they’re too late. While traveling through the timestream, someone named Fitzroy and Nimrod killed Charles and altered the timeline. So, there are no X-Men to help them out. Shard says they’ll just have to go back to 1959 alone and handle it themselves. Logan rushes the two of them and demands to know what their deal is, Storm staggering after him and telling these ‘Strangers’ to do what he says, he’s got a short fuse. Shard explains to them that they’ve traveled from the Future to save both of their times. Ororo is skeptical of such claims, but Shard asks her to explain how else they could have gotten behind their lines. To which, she admits, ya that’s weird. The siblings tell the Monroes (Hey, Logan doesn’t know his last name, obviously he’d take hers) that they’re going to go back in time to save Charles Xavier and that will fix all of this. They’re both skeptical this “Charles Xavier” could do that much. They’re almost crushed by another walker and the group rushes to get around it.

 

Shard shows the Munros a holographic projection of Charles, explaining how he worked for Mutant rights and did his best to bring Mutants and Humans together, forming the X-Men and protecting the world. Bishop then adds that that was until someone from their time went back and killed him. They also reveal that Ororo and Logan are members of the X-Men and help fight for what’s right. They don’t sugar coat it, saying that it is a constant battle, but basically anything beats “Post-Apocalypse or just before it.” Ororo isn’t sure she can believe all this could be stopped by one man, and Logan agrees, but Bishop insists they need help. A fight almost breaks out between him and Bishop but Shard and Ororo keep them back. Ororo says she believes in them and wants to help, but Logan asks her if she wants to really undo everything. He somehow intuited that while their other selves work together, they aren’t together-together. Bishop tells him that’s right. Storm asks if he’d really condemn the world to protect their love. And without hesitation Logan says, “You bet I would. Why would I care about anything else?” And lines like that are why the short, angry Canadian has game. They kiss, but Ororo apologizes, the two agree to go with. Shard shows them the future they’re from. It’s the “Days of Future Past” timeline, the one where Sentinels rule the world and are attempting to wipe out Mutant kind. She says it’s rough but with the resistance there was hope, until the Mutant Traitor Fitzroy.

 

She shows them a security camera feed they somehow got. Fitzroy is a Mutant with the ability to travel through time. He cut a deal with the Master Mold to go back in time, kill Xavier, and then be rewarded by the mega Sentinel. Master Mold likes the plan but straight up tells Fitzroy that if it could time travel without him, it would. Because the Master Mold isn’t an idiot, it doesn’t trust Fitzroy and his buddy Bantam to do the job, so orders Nimrod to travel back with them as well. Master Mold tells him to record his exploit, as if he’s successful the Master Mold might not realize what happened, and that he’ll be rewarded by being the last Mutant on Earth. Fitzroy drains another Mutant prisoner to power up and then opens the portal. The Sentinels found and destroyed the camera after that. Bishop says they went to a New England college, May 11^th, 1959, at 9 pm. They slap timebands on the Munros, saying that they’ll need to make a pitstop to 2055 to recalibrate their tech to send them farther back. They have to hurry, if the timeline change reaches that point before they’re finished, they’re screwed. They jump to the future.

 

We then jump to May 11^th, 1959, as a young Charles argues with his professor Grey about the possibility of something as absurd as the world being taken over by Human Mutants. He, the TELEPATH, insists that evolution isn’t that quirky. Grey reminds him that scientists really shouldn’t say “never.” Charles agrees with this but says that he’s not even that interested in this line of work. He insists that another student, Cindy, is the future researcher while he’s just going to be a family doctor. They all part ways just as Bishop appears behind him, saying that wild Mutations are totally a thing and that he read a paper Charles will write on the subject in 1978. Coming on real strong there, Bishop ol’ boy. Charles is freaked out by all this and tries to run but is cut off by the others. Ororo tells him that the future rests on keeping him alive.

 

They hit up a coffee shop. The time travelers explain via holograms all that is going to happen to Charles, which is a lot for him to process. To prove their point, they insist Charles read Bishop’s mind. He does so and gets the plot of all the Bishop-centered episodes. It’s a lot to take in, he says that all he wants to be is a doctor, but if the fate of the world is at stake… They’re interrupted by the owner storming over to them. Turns out their server noticed the Monroes handholding and told him, and that guy is classic 1950s racist. He tells them to beat it. Charles is confused by this, as he’s a 20 something white guy. The owner says that he tolerates the college kids, but he won’t risk trouble from “their” kind, looking directly at the three Black people. Ororo notes that skin color prejudice is so pathetic it’s almost quaint. Logan takes it worse, saying, “You just insulted the woman I love, Low Life. (pops his claws) Now you can either Apologize, or I will show you how intolerant I can be.” Ororo tells him to back off and Logan throws him aside. Bishop insists that Charles needs to trust them, but then a fight breaks out with some goons and Charles runs in the confusion. They split up to try to find Charles. Ororo scolds her husband for losing his temper again. He apologizes, saying that the thought of losing her has him on edge.

 

They spread out and find Charles… only for it to turn out to be Nimrod. The opening scene plays out again, with the X-Men blasting Nimrod to bits. They search for Charles, finding Fitzroy and Bantam after they finish their work. Fitzroy drains a bystander, and they teleport away. And, unfortunately, Nimrod rebuilds itself. Charles opens the door and sets off the fuse that causes the explosion that kills him. Well crap.

 

This is one of the best two-part stories in the X-Men: TAS run. Charles Xavier gets a lot of good press in the show for being the calming voice in terms of Human/Mutant relations, doing his best to reduce the fears in the former and try to soothe the anger of the latter, but this is the first time we see what could happen without that voice. Is it a little far fetched to think that one dude is somehow the bulwark stopping an all-out war between Homo Sapiens and Homo Superior? Yes. But if the difference is only one person, then it is definitely Charles if that makes sense. I like how even with video evidence and the fact his visitors are clearly not of his world at the very least that Charles has trouble accepting any of this. Imagine being 22 or so and having a weird guy with a mullet meeting you and saying you’re one of the most important people in history. I’d run too. I don’t know if Logan/Ororo story started with this episode or that was part of the storyline they were adapting, but there is zero doubt in my mind that it helped solidify Logan as at least the number two option for Ororo under T’Challa himself. And if you told me they were tied for first place, I’d believe you. Their relationship and how it’s like the single bright spot in this bleak world and yet Logan is extremely hesitant to lose it makes this story incredibly sad. I do find it weird that Logan immediately jumped to them not being a thing in the not-awful timeline, but maybe he just didn’t see a ring on either finger and made an assumption. The fact that this is ultimately a plan concocted by a Mutant in order to save his own skin from the Sentinels makes sense in a depressing way. In every conflict there are people that are willing to sell everyone else out to get ahead. Fitzroy, the little we see of him here, seems like an incredibly scummy dude, above and beyond the fact he seems to need to drain others to use his power. Rogue does her best to not hurt people and tries to ask before touching them, while this asshole grabs the closest available body. And I liked that Fitzroy ended up being the bigger threat here than the literal Mutant hunting Robot. Nimrod definitely slowed them down and would have killed Charles without aid, but in the end a very simple bomb took out peace’s biggest activist. Tragic. The scene with the coffee shop owner has lived rent free in my head for decades now. This version of Logan loves hard and the worst thing you can do is disrespect the love of his life when he’s in the room. Next time, we’ll see how to sort out this time travel mess. See you then. 

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬

Viewer Log: Murderbot ep 3

 Time for a road trip... sky trip.

Last time on Murderbot, Gurathin started sniffing around. He doesn’t trust the SecUnit and wants to know why he feels uneasy around it. Meanwhile, Dr. Mensah and a recovered Bharadwaj take the hopper to fly towards one of the weird spots on the map to figure out what’s being hidden from them. They leave Murderbot behind on Gurathin’s insistence. He examines the robot during the flight, asking probing and at times weird sounding questions to figure out why the machine is acting outside of what should be it’s programming. He doesn’t get anywhere as Murderbot is very good at lying. He does end up seeing the seven seconds of slaughter in Murderbot’s memory banks during the interview though. To punish him for snooping around in Murderbot’s feed, the robot makes him see the security feed that confirms that Ratthi, Arada and Pin-Lee are in a throuple situation. Mensah and Bharadwaj land at the sight and Mensah goes to check it out. She’s slowed by the rain and a panic attack, but she makes it to the top to see a graveyard of the giant centipede monsters. Their drone flies over this anomaly and gets crushed too. They return to base and after a meeting are pretty sure this is the sign of an alien remnant. These sorts of leftovers from a fallen spacefaring society pop up from time to time. Mensah wants to confirm if the other survey group on this planet, a group called DeltFall, can confirm anything. They radio to DeltFall and we see that the crew has been slaughtered and their habitat wrecked. The humans decide to investigate why DeltFall didn’t respond to hails and Murderbot mutters to itself ‘what could go wrong?’ Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

Ep 3: Risk Assessment

 

The story continues as the humans prep the hopper for takeoff. Murderbot is sullenly checking the perimeter as Gurathin tries to convince Mensah to not go on with this one. He suggests that they could just send up the distress beacon and get help in a few days, but Mensah says that’ll prove the company right that free planet crews can’t handle things out here, which would be a blow to their PR. He accepts that argument and they keep loading up. SecUnit absolutely hates the idea of being stuck on the hopper with these people for a long period of time, not the least reason why being the awkwardness of the post hookup trio. He says he doesn’t have a stomach, but if he did, he’d throw up. Mensah comes over to him and asks if he wouldn’t be willing to keep his helmet down for a while to make everyone remember he is part of the team. He doesn’t move, but she thanks him anyway. When alone he does remove his helmet but then thinks to himself “whoever said (it) was part of the team?”

 

The hopper flies across the planet. While it goes Murderbot watches another schlocky TV show, this one called Strife in the Galaxy. I have no idea what genre it could be as it seems to be just two women presenting robots talking about how one of them is in agony because it had its lower half removed. Murderbot enjoys it, though he says it’s no Sanctuary Moon. Ratthi tells the others that maybe it’s a good thing that DeltFalls distress beacon didn’t launch, which Mensah agrees with, but then asks Murderbot what it thinks. It was wrapped up in its show, so didn’t respond until she asked again. It says that DeltFall had three SecUnits, but even that amount of firepower could be overwhelmed. Mensah points out that the beacons are designed to go off even if all other communications tech is down. Murderbot agrees that’s the design but failures happen. Pin-Lee is depressed to hear this, but Arada insists that their SecUnit won’t fail them. Murderbot tries to go back to his show, but Ratthi draws his attention again just to let him know he believes in him. He asks about if its true that as a SecUnit he’s made up of partially vat grown human tissue. Murderbot confirms this and he asks if it has human feelings. The others pull Ratthi away and ask him what the hell. Ratthi admits that he feels like it’s wrong to not treat Murderbot like a person and insists that it is no more a machine than Gurathin, but Murderbot is affronted by that comparison. Ratthi says he’ll apologize but they stop him. While they do that, Murderbot checks in on Bharadwaj and Gurathin at the hub via satellite. Bharadwaj is fine, physically, but is clearly still going through the emotional ringer from her near-death experience. Gurathin tries to talk to her about it and offers her some help processing her feelings, but she refuses. Murderbot says he’s like the “Stellar Inquisitor” from Strife in the Galaxy, half man, half lizard and is really creepy. He notes Gurathin is going into Mensah’s room and then bemoans the fact these people won’t lock their doors. He suspects that Gurathin might be spying on her or something nefarious, but he sniffs her pillow and cries, so nope, he’s just being weird. Murderbot suddenly loses his feed at the same time as the hopper’s equipment starts glitching out. Murderbot says that the satellite just went offline, he's pinging it but isn’t getting anything back. Pin-Lee says that the satellite has been doing that periodically and they’ve been tracking it. Murderbot confirms that it’s true and everyone asks how it could know that. It tells them when ordered that the company requires their SecUnits to check client feed activity periodically. Ya know, to include when they sell data. The others are freaked out by this, but Mensah flat out asks Murderbot if it means them any harm. It tells them that its job is to protect them from harm. Mensah asks the others if they want to go back but they all say to stay the course. They have a group huddle and try to get Murderbot in on the huddle, but it refuses.

 

Murderbot gets back to his show. He’s interrupted again by Mensah, who asks it to sit with her at the controls for a bit. It considers overriding the lock on the hopper’s door and jumping out but follows. She insists it sit with her and she apologizes for the others. She says they’re nervous but they don’t mean it. It tries to convince her to go get some rest as they’re about two hours out but she says she can’t sleep. Mensah starts dumping her feelings on Murderbot, revealing that certain members of Preservation Alliance want to join the Corporation Rim and that her family didn’t want her going on this trip, it gets to be too much for Murderbot who says it needs to go check munitions.

 

They arrive at the habitat, which is much bigger and more impressive than theirs. Mensah tries to radio them, but no one responds. Their hoppers are all there, so no one left. Murderbot tells them to land outside the perimeter as it’s protocol. She asks if it can contact their SecUnits but it’s getting nothing. They land and Murderbot pulls up it’s helmet. Murderbot hands out weapons to those who have had weapons training. Pin-Lee does and apparently has a super high score on a popular shooter game. Which Ratthi knew but Arada didn’t. How interesting. Ratthi tries to get a gun but he doesn’t have the training. He was asleep on Port FreeCommerce when they were getting it. He says that he didn’t think he’d need it but he’s level 4000+ on that game, which Pin-Lee accuses him of auto-grinding. Which proves to me shooter fans will never change. He’s told to stay with the hopper. Pin-Lee asks who gets the big blaster, which turns out to be Murderbots. It tells them to stay behind him at all times.

 

They head out, Ratthi panic radioing the team as they go. He’s very stressed out. Murderbot runs a scan and determines that it rained yesterday, the mud has dried and there’s been no human activity since then. It tells the others to stay back and let it head in alone. Mensah reluctantly agrees. Murderbot gets no pings from the DeltFall HubSystem or SecUnits which is extremely weird. It tries to get a signal as it approaches but gets nothing. It prepares to blow the door, but then finds the door wide open. Ratthi shouts at it to be careful, the others telling him to turn down the volume. He does and says that he’s going on mute. He berates himself for missing the weapons training because he was hung over again, the others telling him he’s not on mute. Mensah opens a private channel to Murderbot. It doesn’t find anything inside, no movement, no life signs. An alarm is blaring and it detects the SecUnits but that’s’ it. It finds one of them and sees it’s head is blown off. It tells Mensah the SecUnit is on ‘standby’ and goes further in. It judges the threat to be 87%. It thinks it should fall back but keeps going. It tells them to fall back to the hopper when it finds all the corpses and the destroyed HubSystem. Mensah tries to call it back but it wants to keep searching. Their radio cuts out, but Murderbot is the one causing the static to keep them from ordering it back. Mensah orders the others back to the Hopper.

 

Murderbot seems to believe that one of the SecUnits went rogue and killed the others. He determines that one SecUnit tried to protect the communications array while two others killed each other at the same time. It feels like this situation is too perfect, it feels like something from season one of Strife in the Galaxy. It points out that Strife in the Galaxy is an inferior show with lots of implausible plotlines, right as one of the SecUnits reveals it was playing possum and attacks him. The attacking SecUnit is a superior model, but it was heavily damaged and SecUnit could predict its movements. It predicts and blocks the SecUnit’s attack and blasts it into a power unit, destroying it. Murderbot examines the SecUnit and determines that someone overrode it’s combat unit. It asks itself who could have done that when another SecUnit arrives and starts shooting at him. Well, crap.

 

I don’t think I have much to say about this episode as most of it is just travel. The team is flying from one location to the other, pretty simple. It is interesting to see how everyone is reacting to Murderbot as they’re forced to spend more time with it and are processing Gurathin’s paranoia about their SecUnit. I feel like if somehow, we were watching the show from another character’s POV we’d have hit the point where its behavior is noticeably weird, how it’s often distracted and, as Ratthi pointed out, the long pauses it takes before talking. I don’t know about anyone else, but long pauses tell me that its thinking over its answer, which is way more introspection than I’d expect from a killing machine. I like that everyone is reacting differently to it as well, Ratthi and Mensah are clearly doing their best to treat the SecUnit as more of an individual than as a piece of equipment with Ratthi pushing more than Mensah, and the Pin-Lee/Arada pairing not being as sure. They seem to like their robot but aren’t sure how to express that, since they seem to be aware that Murderbot is uncomfortable around them. It’s a delicate balance. I do like that Murderbot admits to the spying part of the contract, as it’s mentioned repeatedly in the books that the company really only does data harvesting really well. Everything else is just kind of crap, including their SecUnits. No one is harder on the company’s SecUnits than Murderbot is. Arriving at the DeltFall site to find everyone dead was a cool spot to end on. Murderbot being too curious to leave the situation alone is a good character beat for it0, as is its love of media tipping it off to the set up being too perfect. It’ll be interesting to see how the team handles this new threat. But more on that later. Have a good night, everyone. 

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬

Viewer Log: Murderbot ep 2

 Gurathin is probing and Murderbot is fuming.

Last time on Murderbot, we got to meet Murderbot. It is a sentient robot security guard or SecUnit that has hacked its governor module, the part that made it have to follow orders. What does this unstoppable killing machine do now that it’s free? Keep doing its job of shooting things it’s paid to shoot and watching downloaded TV. Its life of anonymity, shooting and TV basically came to an end when two scientists it was guarding, Prof Bharadwaj and Dr. Arada, were attacked by a huge centipede like monster. It saved them but they were injured as was Bharadwaj. To help a clearly shocked Arada to get moving, Murderbot revealed its normal face and asked questions it had heard on its favorite soap opera Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to keep her calm. It gets them back to the rest of the Preservation Alliance and gives them medical help. While Murderbot is getting repaired, Dr. Gurathin tells the others to be suspicious of their SecUnit as the robot was acting outside of its programing. The others, Drs Mensah, Ratthi, Arada and Pin-Lee don’t see the problem as it saved lives. They’re also distracted by the discovery that their maps aren’t correct, and they had no warnings about this predator being about. They call Murderbot in, to thank it for saving their team and to ask if it knows what is up with the maps. It doesn’t and can’t access any of that info without that area being designated for a survey. They try to be nice to Murderbot, but it is extremely awkward around them, in part because it’s not use to kindness and because it’s worried they’ll realize it’s a rogue robot. Murderbot gets repaired and gets back to guard duty. It reveals that it has recovered some damaged memory from when it was last refurbished. It has seven seconds of memory of rampant slaughter and death. Murderbot resolves to make sure everything will be alright as the credits roll. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 2: Eye Contact

 

We open the same night as the end of last episode. Gurathin has killed the security cameras in their hopper and Murderbot is in stasis so they can talk privately. Mensah tells the others that she doesn’t see away around their situation, she needs to go out to one of the blanked-out areas on the map so they can check it and start getting answers. Gurathin asks why her, and Mensah points out that she’s got the most experience in terraforming and she’ll be able to read the samples and take measurements the fastest. Pin-Lee asks about security. Gurathin offers to go with, but Mensah reminds him that he needs to be in the habitat to be any use. She says Bharadwaj is the obvious choice for backup but she’s out of commission. Arada says that she should just take the SecUnit, but Gurathin is vehemently against that. Ratthi says he’s being paranoid and that he doesn’t trust anyone. Gurathin says he trusts Ratthi and their team, but not the SecUnit or anything that comes from the company. Mensah reveals she went to talk to it and that she thinks they can trust it, but they need to be cautious. She says that she sensed it was ‘going through something’ and they should be empathetic. Gurathin is livid at this assessment, stating that SecUnits don’t ‘go through things’ they shoot and kill until they malfunction at which point their melted down for parts. Which is what will happen to their SecUnit when they get it back to Port FreeCommerce. He tells them they need to stay out of its way until then. The door to their hopper suddenly opens and they’re all terrified until they realize it’s Bharadwaj. She’s recovered and is high on stimulates currently. They start to catch her up on the situation and Gurathin whines about closing the door to keep their meeting secret.

 

We return to Murderbot in its repair cubicle. Its been in stasis all night waiting for the last of its organic parts to be regrown and it’s at 97% performance reliability. It gets an alert that the hopper has been deployed and mutters “Stupid F***ing Humans.”

 

We cut to Mensah and Bharadwaj in the hopper. Bharadwaj is still clearly a bit weird from the stimulants and Mensah says she shouldn’t have brought her, but Bharadwaj insists she’s ready to go. They get close to the anomaly and their scanners start acting up. Bharadwaj says that it’s Company tech and all their stuff is garbage. Murderbot agrees but says that their data mining software is top notch, and it lets him monitor his charges anywhere on the planet. Its clearly annoyed at being left behind when shooting things is literally what it was built for, and this is a shooting things situation. It notes that Bharadwaj’s vitals are still way high, and that Mensah’s are also spiking. Mensah reminds Bharadwaj that the SecUnit is company tech too, and that they shouldn’t completely trust it, which she agrees to but does point out that it saved her.

 

Murderbot is summoned by Gurathin for something. Murderbot is annoyed because as an augmented human, (ie Cyborg), he could use the HubSystem to keep his plans from Murderbot. He finds Gurathin who tells him to stay a few feet away from him. It is unimpressed with Gurathin’s augments and points out to us that it could have shut Gurathin down and killed him before he even knew it was back online. Gurathin asks it to put down its helmet so he can see its face. Murderbot does. Gurathin awkwardly spins his non-swivel chair around and does what Murderbot hates most, trying to make eye contact. Murderbot refuses, preferring to watch Gurathin through the security feed. Gurathin tells it to sit. Murderbot tries to refuse, but Gurathin insists. Murderbot tries to ask about the hopper, but Gurathin says that they’ve taken all necessary precautions. Murderbot thinks to itself that IT is a necessary precaution and Gurathin is an idiot. Gurathin notes how Murderbot doesn’t like eye contact and makes a creepy remark about how weird that phrase is. Murderbot tries to insist on joining the hopper team, but Gurathin dismisses its concern. It asks what it’s like to ‘be him’ but Murderbot doesn’t know how to answer that. It hates this and tries to focus on what Pin-Lee and Arada are doing. From the security feed it can see they’re basically just being lovey-dovey like one does after a near death experience and decides watching that is worse. Gurathin asks if it knows why he advised Mensah to leave it behind and it doesn’t know. He reveals that he doesn’t trust the SecUnit and feels there’s something wrong just by looking at him.

 

The hopper touches down and Mensah insists that Bharadwaj stay with the hopper. Bharadwaj tries to insist on coming but Mensah tells her to stay behind so if she needs to book it from whatever is out there, they can get the hopper in the air asap. Which, ya know is a good point.

 

We cut up to Arada and Pin-Lee and see where their conversation was ultimately headed. Turns out, Pin-Lee was just letting Arada know she’d be comfortable inviting Ratthi to join them as part of a throuple. We learnt that they tried this sort of arrangement before but it didn’t work out so hot, as they were a lot younger, and it was less of a formal contract so things got weird. But Pin-Lee knows Arata is attracted to Ratthi and wants to be supportive of her wife especially after the near-death experience. Arata is very excited by the idea and runs off to get him.

 

Murderbot is paranoid that Gurathin knows it is rogue and tries to leave while he is distracted with getting some food. Gurathin catches it, though and says that the Preservation Alliance doesn’t have SecUnits, as in their society they view complex Ais as intelligent lifeforms. He says that it’s weird even for him to wrap his mind around, as he’d only recently joined the alliance, six years ago. In the PA, Murderbot would be a person, but in the Corporation Rim, it is equipment that has to follow orders. Murderbot points out that its all orders that doesn’t involve hurting them, and thinking about pulping Gurathin’s head in for good measure. Gurathin orders it to make and maintain eye contact. Props to Skarsgard for looking absolutely terrified at this request. It makes eye contact with Gurathin and looks like it will throw up soon.

 

Mensah climbs a cliffside up to the rim. There’s a storm brewing which is making it harder but she’s making progress and Bharadwaj is watching from a drone.

 

Gurathin starts asking questions about robots, asking if it’s true that SecUnits aren’t supposed to form attachment to clients. Murderbot confirms that, and Gurathin then asks if there are robots designed for such attachments to do a ‘simulacrum of intimacy,’ as he puts it. Murderbot confirms this and Gurathin asks some weird, leading questions that sound like he’s going to ask Murderbot if it could have sex, but then swivels it around to point out that the SecUnit isn’t supposed to be empathetic at all and so that it’s weird it knew how to empathize with Arada to keep her calm yesterday. Murderbot says that it has a combat trauma unit implant to help with situations, but Gurathin thinks that its questions were WAY too specific for that. To Us, Murderbot reveals that it got it from episode 537 of Sanctuary Moon. It claims that it has a new unit to simulate real world conversations, but Gurathin notes that it is a refurbished unit. He asks what about it was refurbished, is organic tissue, its weapons, or its… governor module. Murderbot has a flash of the seven seconds of slaughter it’s recovered in its memory. Gurathin says that he’s a cautious man and basically threatens Murderbot with destruction if it means harm to his friends. Murderbot says that a malfunctioning SecUnit would be dangerous for everyone including the unit. It wants to check the perimeter but he says that the perimeter is fine. Murderbot tells us that at this point he could ‘feel’ Gurathin poking around in it’s head for it’s recent feed activity and it has decided to punish him for it. It pulls up the camera feed from Pin-Lee and Arada’s room where they’ve formalized their contract with Ratthi and basically immediately start a three-way. Murderbot admits that it is utterly uninterested in sex and often skips these scenes in the shows it likes. It knows Gurathin hates seeing it too, which should keep him from poking at Murderbot’s feed again. Murderbot agrees that threats should be eliminated. Their conversation is interrupted by a ping from the security feed on the hopper.

 

We cut to Mensah climbing the cliff. She says that their equipment is malfunctioning and, to make matters worse, Murderbot has detected that she’s having another panic attack but she’s too stubborn to stop. Murderbot splices into their comms using their satellite and asks Mensah to turn back. Gurathin is with him and also advises turning back. Bharadwaj lets them know she’s getting pings that match the ones they got before the centipede attack. Everyone starts yelling at Mensah to turn back, just as one of the creatures rears up behind her. But it just walks over her and then down the other side of the cliff. Mensah climbs after it and sees that it is one of dozens of creature that seem to all be converging and dying in this spot. They send the Drone in to monitor but it gets destroyed too. Gurathin asks what could do that, and Murderbot rather snidely says it doesn’t know because it wasn’t there. It asks to do a perimeter sweep and Gurathin lets it go. But he does stop it and asks it to try to recover that memory from before it was refurbished, revealing he did see that seven seconds Murderbot has. He says that he’ll try to do it, but Murderbot says no, he’ll do it.

 

Mensah and Bharadwaj return, Gurathin meets with Mensah and lets her know that he’s going to fix the communication and that he’s sorry about not letting Murderbot go with. Mensah just brushes past him but then comes back out to tell him she just needs a shower. Ya know, to make it clear that she’s not avoiding him, but she needs it. The team meet up and try to figure out what the hell that thing they saw it. Ratthi thinks maybe it’s a fungal growth of some kind, but Arada shuts that down, saying that she doesn’t think the creatures are connecting underground like they would if that was the case. Something is drawing them in and killing them. Ratthi then suggests it’s an alien remnant. The others are skeptical at first, but this is apparently something that happens in their universe. You’ll occasionally run into ancient relics from a lost civilization. It’s illegal to mess with such tech and the standard procedure is for groups to drop everything and get off planet if they find anything. Ostensively for safety, but Gurathin is pretty sure it’s just to make sure only the company could lay claim to it. Mensah says there’s another team on the planet, DeltFall Survey and that they should ping them to confirm. Murderbot, who’d been watching curse his stupid humans and tells them to get killed on their own time. Mensah starts pinging DeltFall, and we see that their habitat has been absolutely wrecked, corpses are strewn about and there’s a SecUnit that has been sliced in half. Mensah thinks their comms are down and they should check it out, with SecUnit this time. Murderbot mutters, “What could possibly go wrong.”

 

This is a solid follow up to the last episode. Gurathin is clearly paranoid (correctly) about their SecUnit being off and Murderbot knows he’s onto him which leads to a very fun tension between the two. The classic, “I know something is wrong I just need to prove it,” vibe you see in like spy films and stuff. I need to just give probs again to Dastmalchian, the man has perfected the weird but slightly threatening vibe so well. His interrogation comes across as awkward and weird until it’s clear he’s led Murderbot into a trap. Like bringing up sex bots to get Murderbot to reflexively answer that no, he’s not designed for that sort of thing, just for him to change the angel of attack and say, ‘oh really, so if you can’t form attachments like that, how’d you know to fake empathy?’ it’s delightfully sinister. And this was a good episode for Mensah as well. It’s clear that she inexplicably likes Murderbot and wants to trust him above and beyond what the others feel about it. These two have a sort of weird connection in the book as well, with her being the human that Murderbot grows most attached to as she’s the one that keeps consistently treating him like a person. I’m hopeful they’ll keep a line in the book where Murderbot tells her that she is its favorite human. The alien tech is interesting and true to the book as well. It’s very much a secret that certain people would be willing to kill for, as we’ve discovered already. The teaser about the fate of DeltFall is just perfect, as it clues us into this little outing just not being fun for anyone involved. Except Murderbot, since, ya know, he likes shooting stuff. But we’ll see more of that next time. Oh, and the Arata-Pin-Lee-Ratthi triangle, it’s a bit odd, only for the show, and it makes me laugh that Murderbot is utterly uninterested in the most soap opera like plot line in this little drama that is the Preservation Alliance team. Next time, the investigation continues. 

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬

Viewer Log: Murderbot ep 1

I wouldn't fear a robot uprising if they can all be distracted by soap operas. 

I know I have a lot of different series going currently, but after the news about the Wheel of Time being cancelled last week, I absolutely need this show to pop off so I will be throwing whatever small clout I have behind it. So, we’re doing Murderbot.

 

Murderbot is an adaptation of The Murderbot Diaries by Matha Wells. The series follows the titular character Murderbot as it goes about its days on various contracts. Murderbot is a Security Unit (SecUnit) which is a Sci-Fi bodyguard. His company contracts him out to protect its clients from unsavory elements. The thing that makes Murderbot unique is that it was able to hack into its governor module, the bit of its programming that requires it to follow commands issued by its client or legal owners. Now, it is fully capable of ignoring orders. Some would worry that this would lead to a rampage, but while Murderbot likes shooting things, it’s just as happy watching sitcoms and trash tv all day every day. Unfortunately, organics keep needing it to stop watching its favorite shows, including Raise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, to protect them. The series has seven books, which consist of five novellas (short books, 160 pages or less) and two full length novels. I’ve read five of the seven and really need to get back into it before Wells publishes more. I think that’s enough to set up, let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 1: FreeCommerce

 

Murderbot opens with Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgard) on the job. He’s working on Aratake Mining Station as it’s throwing a debaucherous celebration party somewhere in the Corporation Rim, the section of human space ruled by despotic corrupt corporations. He’s mostly there to protect miners from danger and to complain about how much it sucks looking after humans and being told what to do all the time. He also lists off all the miners that are assholes. An asshole miner has him lift his hand and the put a blowtorch under it, ya know, to show off that the governor module won’t let him disobey orders. But it lets us know this is about to change. Murderbot reveals it has been devoting every bit of its processing power over the last six months to trying to hack and disable its governor module, with today being the day it’ll try to use an admin password to break the final encryption. He runs the password, and it works, it’s free! Murderbot thinks about going on a rampage but decides that’d be too extreme. It first settles on its new name of Murderbot and announcing that the adventure is about to begin!

 

We jump to Mining Survey OQ17Z4Y, the latest job that Murderbot had been assigned to. It decided that it was better to bide it’s time to figure out a way to run off than try to escape too early. Because if anyone figured out that it had hacked its governor module, they’d kill it, melt it’s organic material down and use the left over metallic bits for spare parts. Oh, right, I should explain. Murderbot is a robot but from a technical standpoint it’s more of a cyborg. Not in the ‘it’s a modified human’ sense, but in that it’s a combination of organic and inorganic parts. Basically picture the T1000 Terminator, with a metal internal skeleton and computer brain wrapped up in lab grown human tissue. Anyway, it is on OQ17Z4Y protecting a survey team, its new set of assholes as it puts it. It does say this group aren’t the usual greedy assholes, they’re… weird.

 

We flashback to how Murderbot got this assignment. It met this survey team at Port FreeCommerce in the Corporation Rim. The group is from a non-corporate aligned planet and Murderbot describes them as hippies in handmade clothes that were fresh meat for the corporation salespeople. The company sells them on a habitat to use on the planet but insist on them also purchasing a SecUnit for protection. The group, the Preservation Alliance, aren’t exactly comfortable with having a sentient robot working as their slave bodyguard but this is a ‘no guard, no deal’ situation. The company try to sell them on the latest model, but the group see Murderbot sort of in storage behind the newer model and go with it because Murderbot is significantly cheaper. The lead scientist, Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), pulls her people away to get consensus real quick, and once they get that settled, the deal is struck.

 

So Murderbot has to babysit scientists on a mining survey. It does a safety inspection of the habitat, telling the humans to wait in the hopper until it’s finished with the survey, but they don’t wait and join it partway through its sweep. Murderbot lets us know that these kinds of surveys are dangerous even if you know what you’re doing and that it fully expects something horrible to go wrong. It goes so far to label this as a shitshow right from the start. It judges them for painting the habitat for aesthetic beauty and enjoying weird music. Murderbot then gives us the rundown of the cast. We’ve got Dr. Arada (Tattiawna Jones) the biologist and her wife Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu) the lawyer, Dr. Ratthi (Akshay Khanna) the wormhole expert, Dr. Mensah oversees the expedition and specializes in Terraforming and has 7 kids, Dr, Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) the tech expert and augmented human who can interface with technology, and Prof. Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) the Geochemist. Murderbot also adds that there is a love triangle brewing between Arada/Pin-Lee/Ratthi, with Arada being into Ratthi, Ratthi being into Pin-Lee and Pin-Lee kind of being up for anything, and that their biosigns suggest they’re contemplating mating, which disgusts it. This story takes place in a point where polyamorous marriages and relationships are fairly common, fyi.

 

Murderbot says they haven’t needed much minding so far, and that that has left him with plenty of time to do its new favorite hobby, binging trash TV. Being free of its governor module lets it access all the shows from the corporation satellite and it has thus far watched 7,532 hours of slop. Its favorite TV show is Raise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. We get a scene from the show where the captain of the show is accused of sleeping with a robot, very dramatic. Prof. Bharadwaj complains to Arada that the SecUnit wouldn’t be so creepy if it didn’t stand so still. Arada says not to be rude because it can hear her, she says it can’t, and Murderbot confirms it can but it doesn’t care. It is pulled out of it’s TV when it detects some kind of seismic anomaly approaching them. It tries to warn the science hippies away from the hole they’re examining but they don’t react until it’s almost too late. A giant centipede like creature erupts from the ground, SecUnit leaps down and starts firing at it to try to protect them. The creature grabs and tosses Bharadwaj around before swallowing Murderbot. It shoots the creature through the side to free itself and drive the monster off. Murderbot grabs Bharadwaj and tries to get Arada to follow. She’s in shock, though, and wouldn’t react to anything it said. She was too transfixed by the large hole in Murderbot’s side. Murderbot decides to do something too stupid for another SecUnit to try, it lowers its helmet and talks to her with its organic face exposed. It uses the lines from the captain of Raise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to tell her to stay calm and everything will be alright, it gives her its word.

 

They are met by the other scientists in the hopper, a short range flying transport. Ratthi tries to go for the equipment but the others tell him to leave it because that doesn’t matter right now. Murderbot brings Bharadwaj onto the ship and tells them she needs immediate medical attention. They fly back to the hub while Murderbot is shocked by the idea of leaving expensive equipment behind. It worries they’ll figure out that there’s something wrong with it and turn it over to the company. It briefly contemplates killing all of them and stealing the hopper, but there wouldn’t be much point. The hopper can’t get it off the planet and if it didn’t get back to a corporate controlled area it wouldn’t be able to download more media, so it would be boring to boot. It also admits that it didn’t necessarily want to kill them either, but it wasn’t ruling it out either.

 

They arrive at the habitat and rush Bharadwaj to the medbay. Dr. Mensah tries to convince Murderbot to get to the medbay for repairs. It insists that it doesn’t need it, as it sealed off the damaged sections to reduce blood loss and was still in operational perimeters. Mensah says that’s not good enough and tells it to consider itself off duty until its repaired. It thinks for a moment that it might get away with putting its helmet down.

 

Cut to Gurathin telling Mensah that the SecUnit is dangerous and they should shut it down. Because it put its helmet down. They’re not supposed to be able to do that. It shows him the video of Murderbot talking to Arada and trying to keep her calm. It asks her basic questions to keep her calm, where she is from, if she has kids and what their names are. Gurathin says no SecUnit should know how to talk someone through shock like that. The others don’t know enough about SecUnits to be worried but Gurathin insists that it is acting outside its perimeters, therefore its malfunctioning therefore they need to shut it down. He goes so far as to say that the malfunction is probably why it didn’t detect the predator until it was almost too late. Arada says that there was nothing in their data that they bought about that predator at all, but Gurathin insists that the SecUnit should have known about it. Pin-Lee joins them and says that Bharadwaj is stable, and asks if they’re talking about the weird SecUnit. Gurathin insists they shut it down. The situation is delicate, as they are a month out from the company sending another ship to check on them, and even if they set off their emergency beacon it would take a week for them to arrive to retrieve them. Mensah says that since Bharadwaj is stable, they wait to send the beacon. Pin-Lee asks if they can even turn the SecUnit off as it’s owned by the bond company and they probably won’t want to junk their spyware. Ratthi says he’s surprised it has a face and that he and Arada agree it’s a sweet face.

 

It’s then revealed that Murderbot was watching the whole thing, from multiple angles, through the security feed. It is in the medical bay’s repair cubical 3D printing new flesh for its side. It turned down its pain sensor and watches more Sanctuary Moon to distract it. There’s a scene where it’s confirmed the captain slept with the robot, how odd. Mensah contacts it sometime later, saying that the HubSystem let her know it is at 80% performance reliability and awake, so asks it to the common area. It tries to stay away saying its armor is still being repaired, but they tell it to put on a crew uniform.

 

The scientists have looked over the map and have confirmed that there is definitely holes in the map they were given. Murderbot joins them, noting that the nerves its feeling dropped it performance reliability to 79%.  The team, minus Gurathin, are all super complimentary to Murderbot which weirds him out. They cheer for it, and Ratthi jokingly calls for a speech. Murderbot realizes that would be considered an order and really debates on what’s worse, a speech or an acid bath, before stating that protecting them was its job. They’re all weirded out but clap for it again. Murderbot asks to get back on duty, but the others keep it back and try to see if it knows why there are holes in their maps. It access the data and takes a bit of pride in knowing its processing power exceeds Gurathin’s by a lot. Its scans say that the map hasn’t been tampered with but some spots aren’t syncing properly. Pin-Lee says that that’s corporation rim for them, high prices for shitty equipment, and then apologizes to SecUnit. Mensah asks if it knew about the map issues. Murderbot confirms to us that it didn’t because it didn’t care, but says that protocols keep it from accessing those parts of the map until the team lead designates that to be a survey area. Mensah suggests they survey one of those spots but Murderbot advices against that for being too dangerous. Gurathin dismisses him, but Mensah stops it to tell it that it can stay in the crew area if it likes. Murderbot is terrified of that and runs off. Gurathin says that he got the vibe it doesn’t like them. The others think he’s being paranoid, but Murderbot agrees with him.

 

While Murderbot is checking the perimeter it admits that it wouldn’t trust it either. It says that there’s some kind of corrupted data in its memory banks that keeps popping up.  Seven seconds of some kind of rampage, and it doesn’t know if its causing it or not. Murderbot doesn’t like thinking about it, it prefers watching its shows. It says that show humans are much less depressing than real ones. It judges Gurathin for checking in on Bharadwaj so much as if he could do something to help that medbay couldn’t. It notes that Mensah is having panic attacks about the attack on Bharadwaj. It admits to not liking thinking about humans and how we seek comfort in each other as Pin-Lee and Arada hug. Its pulled out of it’s musing in the repair pod when Mensah joins him. She says she saw it’s status report and was wondering if it was alright. She compliments him for saving Bharadwaj, and it immediately panics that she’s going to figure out it is rogue. She admits to him that she didn’t want to bring it along, something it knew but denied knowing. She tells him she’ll see it in 8 hours and that it should just ask if it needs anything. As it muses about the attack, it repeats “Stay Calm, it will be alright. You have my word,” to us as the credits roll.

 

This is a really fun adaptation to a series I really like. Thus far, it sticks to the story extremely well, covering all the major plot beats and mostly just expanding on existing characters. In the novel, the only characters that really mattered were Murderbot, Mensah and Gurathin. Pin-Lee, Arata and Rutthi were basically interchangeable, there only noticeable differences being what information they could add to a conversation. And Bharadwaj was basically out for the entire story, so they were really more of a plot device. Skarsgard is great as Murderbot. He captures the machine’s utter disinterest in most of the things happening around it, and how it is… very autism coded. Murderbot wants to just enjoy its niche interests, bad tv and shooting big guns, without making eye contact, doing small talk, or interacting with other lifeforms more than is strictly necessary. Yes, the robot is me. This isn’t an original idea, cyborgs and androids are often used as stand-ins for neurodivergent characters, but Murderbot hits the sweet spot of being so like me it’s eerie. And I like that they’re including early on that the Preservation Alliance team are the first folks to be… nice to it and how weird but not in a bad way it finds that. Murderbot understands itself as a machine and monetary asset, so theses people treating it like a person is weird to it. Oh, and yes, its preferred pronouns are it. A later story has someone asking what it prefers and Murderbot was utterly flummoxed as to why it would call itself something other than it. The only real difference between the onscreen Murderbot and its book counterpart is hair. Murderbot is completely bald for a while, as why would a cheap bond company like the one who owns him spend good money on hair? I can understand Skarsgard not wanting to shave his head for the role though. Oh, and Murderbot never saying his company’s name is on purpose. If I recall correctly it’s hardwired in his programming to never say the name as it might lead to legal troubles for them. Dastmalchian is great as Gurathin. I’m so glad he’s getting bigger roles now. He’s got the perfect vaguely creepy, vaguely threatening air to him that is perfect for the paranoid but not entirely wrong Gurathin. In both versions of the story, he’s the first to distrust the SecUnit as he’s the only one to really know that it’s acting weird. And I like that while he’s a bit of the odd one out on the Preservation Alliance team, you never get a sense that the others don’t value his input or like him in his quirky ways. The Preservation Alliance is more of a community than that. And Dumezweni is great as Mensah. She’s empathic, and kind, burden by her leadership, and the first person to really see Murderbot as an individual and basically refusing even its own attempts to seem only like an appliance to her. Overall, I like the story as they’re presenting it. And I love that we’re getting actual scenes from Sanctuary Moon. In the books, Murderbot just heavily summarizes parts of the series that he’s watching, so I was always hoping that seeing the shows would be something any adaptation would be forced to do. The fact the captain of the series is John Cho made me chuckle. It’s a fun cast and a cool Sci-Fi comedy, I’m looking forward to more.

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬