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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/129966833/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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