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!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/130318981/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment