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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/129884491/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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