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.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/130056928/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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