Murderbot's day just keeps getting longer.
Last time on Murderbot,
Murderbot had a real bad trip, man. It was badly damaged by the second Rogue
SecUnit that attacked it and basically stuck in a loop uploading Sanctuary
Moon episodes into it’s brain over and over again. The Rogue unit sticks it
with a Combat Override Module that will rewrite its programming to make it
target its humans a hostile. Murderbot distracts the other unit by singing the Sanctuary
Moon theme song and they fight but it can’t escape. Thankfully Mensah shows
up and spears the rogue unit with a drill to disable it and free Murderbot.
They try to escape but are slowed down by Murderbot’s injuries. And by the fact
Murderbot keeps almost remembering the override device on its neck. The device
is designed to erase its memory of it, so Murderbot is aware something is wrong
but not what. The damage to its memory and other parts cause it to vividly
hallucinate being in an episode of Sanctuary Moon while they run. Ratti
takes a gun and tries to help but he’s woefully out of his depth as he doesn’t
1. Know how to hold the gun and 2. Doesn’t know what the setting dial on it is
for. Mensah and Murderbot escape the habitat, but the Rogue unit follows. It
shoots at the humans but is clearly trying not to hit them, Murderbot realizing
the Rogue is just buying time for the Override to finish so Murderbot can kill
everyone. The Rogue is ultimately stopped by Pin-Lee and Arata flying the
hopper over and crushing it under the ship’s landing gear. Once they stomp it
into oblivion, Murderbot fully remembers about the override, apologizes to its
humans and attempts to self-terminate to keep it from hurting them. Enough
recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 5: Rogue War Tracker Infinite
The story picks up with Murderbot
coming back online, musing that it is not dead despite its best efforts. Its
running at 36% performance reliability and we hear the humans muttering about
what they’re doing trying to keep it functional. It quickly reconstructs what
happened using the Hoppers cameras to fill in the blanks in it’s memory that
began from the moment it shot itself. Mensah immediately says they need to get
it back to the habitat and fix it, which confuses the hell out of Murderbot as
it tried so hard to kill itself. The humans all grab it’s limbs and try to
carry it into the hopper. But Arata starts to panic at having to move what
looks a whole hell of a lot like a dead body, but Mensah gets her to focus by
diverting her into grabbing the gun and using it to protect them from whatever
else is around. They start to move Murderbot when something comes at them from
the forest. Arata shoots at it, but it turns out to be a woman in a DeltFall
uniform, who begs not to be shot at. Mensah and Arata go to check on her, the
DeltFall woman saying that their SecUnit went rogue, killed the other two units
they had and then everyone else. The woman seems panicked at the idea of
Murderbot and asks if its alive. Murderbot narrates that he’s not unless
everyone is stupid enough to take him to his repair cubical and bring him back
online. When Mensah says they’re doing just that he calls them all idiots.
They get back to their habitat and
put Murderbot into the cubical. The cubical quickly repairs it but Murderbot’s
system won’t let it reboot due to the tendrils that the COM left inside him.
Dr. Bharadwaj thinks she can remove the COM, but even in its half active state
Murderbot is doubtful. As this is going on we get a flashback to their ride
back to their habitat. The DeltFall woman is named Leebeebee and she’s
obviously shaken up by the last few hours. Arata tries to talk to her, but
Leebeebee is incredibly short with her and doesn’t elaborate on anything she’s
asked. Mensah asks if she knows about the SecUnit that attacked them but
Leebeebee has no idea where it came from or why it attacked. She’s incredulous
that their SecUnit would kill itself to keep it from attacking them, as her
SecUnit just mowed them down. She pantomimes it attacking using its wrist
mounted guns, adding machinegun noises, before saying it was just like the
second episode of Rogue War: Infinite Tracker. Murderbot calls that trash TV,
and from Ratthi’s face he agrees, but she says it’s great. Mensah thinks the
DeltFall unit didn’t go rogue, it was hacked and forced to do it, and they want
to find out why. Leebeebee then goes on a very awkward rant about whether or
not Murderbot is a… anatomically correct and what that might mean. Murderbot
admits it was happy it was unconscious for this part.
As they prepare to repair
Murderbot, it notes that it’s humans were busy being messy like humans are want
to do. We see Ratthi pitching to Pin-Lee that if their throuple has a child
they should name it SecUnit as a tribute. Pin-Lee is clearly question their
decision about having sex with him early and insists that SecUnit will be fine
and maybe now is not the time to be talking about their throuple’s family
plans. Baradwaj starts the removal procedure, a kind of repair surgery, and
Murderbot is impressed that this hippy lady seems to know what she’s doing.
Leebeebee asks the obvious question of what are they going to do if they power
it up and it just starts attacking again. Ratthi says that they have to risk
it, as that SecUnit is their friend. Murderbot thinks that’s debatable.
Gurathin asks if this is a good idea too, in which Murderbot says it is, if you
want to risk being slaughtered. It pulls up that video of the attack it may
have been in before it’s last wipe. Leebeebee asks who they are and why they’re
here. Pin-Lee explains they’re the Preservation Alliance and Mensah adds
they’ve got some kind of mineral options for the continent they’re on.
Leebeebee says that her bosses referred to them as the Amateurs. Baradwaj gets
the last of the COM out and they have Gurathin to plug in to help reboot it and
look for bad code. Murderbot isn’t happy with Gurathin plugging into it but
there’s not much it can do. Gurathin starts looking into Murderbot’s code as
they reboot it.
Murderbot wakes up to find it’s out
of the medbay and that everyone is still alive. Hooray, it totally wasn’t
expecting that. Everyone looks nervous though. Murderbot admits that seeing
their hopeful faces make it happy that it didn’t murder them all. They wonder
why its not moving and Gurathin comes in to say that he told HubSystem to
immobilize Murderbot from the neck down. While he was sifting through
Murderbot’s code, he learned that it hacked its Governor Module and is thus
uncontrollable. Murderbot adds that in the entertainment feeds this is called
an Oh Shit moment. Leebeebee freaks out and storms out rather than risk dealing
with an even disabled SecUnit. We learn that Gurathin and Baradwaj have a
difference of opinion on what to do here. Gurathin points out that it doesn’t
have to follow their commands and is thus dangerous, but Baradwaj counters that
it’s been protecting them without the Governor Module the whole time so they
really should trust it is looking out for the best interest. Gurathin thinks
Murderbot is the reason they’ve had so many problems. Basically, everyone is
against him on this, reasoning that Murderbot would have killed them rather
than try to kill itself. Gurathin thinks the company might be the ones trying
to kill them, but Murderbot finally chimes in and says that the company isn’t.
Why? Because if it was the company they’d have just poisoned their food and be
done with it. The company, it reasons, has a financial interest in keeping them
alive. As paying out the insurance if they all die would be prohibitively
expensive, they aren’t the ones behind it. Baradwaj tells Gurathin to tell the
group what Murderbot has been doing, since it’s ‘free time’ activities are what
worried him, and Gurathin admits it’s been watching 1000s of hours of tv.
Gurathin still thinks it’s using the show to somehow encode messages to the
company, as how could it watch that much TV without them noticing. Ratthi
quizzes Murderbot about one of the shows plots, one character killing another,
but Murderbot quickly snaps back that the character was being framed. And
Ratthi is just super jazzed that it is actually watching the show. The
reference was a super obscure plot, apparently.
Gurathin insists they keep it
immobilized. Murderbot says that won’t work. When Gurathin asks why, Murderbot
rushes over to him faster than anyone can react and chokeslams him up against a
wall. It says that it hacked HubSystem already so they really can’t stop it. It
admits it doesn’t like Gurathin and tries to storm off. Mensah stops it and
says that she wants for it to keep working with them at least until they get
off planet. At that point they can figure out what they’ll do after that, and
swears that she won’t tell the company about the hacked model. Murderbot agrees
to that. She asks Murderbot to promise to protect Gurathin as hard as it
protects everyone else. Gurathin insists he doesn’t need Murderbot’s protection
because of the HubSystem, but Murderbot then informs him that HubSystem hasn’t
recorded anything that has happened here. It hacked the system and fed it an
hours’ worth of random busy work to fill the space. It says that HubSystem
might be compromised from the outside and it suggests that they activate the
emergency beacon. Mensah agrees.
They begin to powerup the beacon.
Murderbot notices that Leebeebee keeps staring at it and tells her to stop. The
others ask if she knows if DeltFall activated their beacon. She isn’t sure, as
they didn’t tell her much. She’s vague about what her job was, saying that she
mostly did cleaning and laundry, saying that she’s on an indentured service
tour so she didn’t have many options. Gurathin and Murderbot can’t reach the
beacon, which is troubling. Leebeebee asks how long it’ll take for them to get
help. They explain that the beacon sends a pulse through the wormhole to the
company rescue ship. It’ll take about five days after getting the signal for a
ship to reach them. Leebeebee asks what if they’re attacked in that time. The
group decides, reluctantly, that Murderbot and Mensah will fly the hopper
towards the Wormhole and set off the beacon manually if they have to. The
others will gather supplies for about a week and be ready to be picked up when
they get back so they can move to another location. Gurathin tries to stop her
on more time but they really don’t have a choice. Leebeebee tries to talk to
Murderbot and apologize for suggesting they might kill them. It is weirded out
by her getting into its comfort zone, but then she awkwardly kisses its cheek ‘for
luck’ and we see that drops it’s performance reliability by about 5 percent.
Mensah tells Gurathin that if she doesn’t come back, Pin-Lee is ‘first among
equals’ aka the one in charge. Gurathin and Mensah almost have a moment but
Murderbot storms over and says they should leave. Now. They take off.
Leebeebee ask Gurathin if there’s
anything she could help with, but he basically tells her to buzz off. Dude is
not a people person.
We cut to towards the end of the
flight to the beacon. Mensah is unintentionally monologuing to Murderbot about
her children, Murderbot noting that humans love to talk about their offspring
even if you don’t ask. It cuts her off by saying they’re two and a half minutes
from the beacon. Mensah asks, if the Company didn’t kill DeltFall, that must
mean there’s a third party, right? Murderbot confirms that’s the most likely
situation, but insists that the Company wouldn’t intentionally have them killed
as that is bad for branding. It does admit that someone from the Company may
have hidden the presence of a third party on the planet for money. Because most
humans are greedy bastards. Which, ya, fair. Murderbot admits that just
chatting with Mensah is weird, as it only has experience giving information or
taking orders, not talking. Mensah wonders if maybe DeltFall knew whoever kill
them, why else would they let them into the habitat. Murderbot says points out
that Mensah would let a stranger in if they arrived asking for help. Then
Mensah has the heartbreaking epiphany that the murderers must have pretended to
be the Preservation Alliance to get DeltFalls trust, and Murderbot agrees
that’s the most likely situation. They arrive at the beacon and Murderbot tries
to launch it remotely. It doesn’t work, so they have to reboot it by hand.
Mensah takes them in and Murderbot says they’ll have four minutes to launch
after getting it repaired. Mensah tries to talk to Murderbot about what
happened with Gurathin, but Murderbot’s threat assessment system starts going
off. It yells at her to turn the hopper around, now, but she reacts to slow as
the beacon explodes. Damn.
Looks like we’re getting into some
wholly original content now. Interesting. Leebeebee is totally original to the
show, the book never introduced more characters beyond the Preservation
Alliance members, Murderbot and the Rogue SecUnits. It’s only 160 pages;
there’s not much time for additional characters or subplots in a title that
slim. This of course makes her suspicious as hell but given that her acting
weird also lines up with PTSD from either being attacked and nearly killed or
from extended time as a slave, I can’t make heads or tails of her at this exact
moment. The kissing Murderbot on the cheek and wondering about if he’s
anatomically correct was weird as hell, though. The stuff with the beacon is
new too, if I recall correctly. I do remember them not being able to set off
their emergency beacon, but things were happening too fast for them to risk
sending any out to try to launch it manually. The reveal of Murderbot’s status
as a rogue SecUnit was well handled. Baradwaj was in a coma for the entirety of
the book, so anything with her is new, and I definitely like the decision of
her being pro-Murderbot. Having her reach a different conclusion about the
SecUnit based entirely on him binging trash TV made me chuckle. But not as much
as how jazzed Ratthi was to hear Murderbot get the reference he was making.
From what I remember of the book they did use a show reference as a test to see
if Murderbot actually watched it, but it was a ‘it gave the right answer,
moving on,” thing and not a “holy shit it DOES watch it” moment that we got
here. I think that’s the general vibe of the show, fleshing out moments just a
little bit more than in the source material and I enjoy it. With most of its
secrets out in the open, I will be curious to see how everyone reacts when
Murderbot and Mensah get back from their mission. I assume Gurathin will be
even more suspicious, but we’ll just wait and see. See you then.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/132231218/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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