Prepping for emergency surgery!
Last time on Murderbot,
everyone was processing. PreservationAux and Murderbot fled their habitat to
evade whatever third party is trying to kill the groups on the planet. The
humans are all uncomfortable around Murderbot after it… ya know… murdered a
lady in front of them. Murderbot is deeply hurt that no one had even thanked it
for saving them and does a perimeter checks (aka be away from the people). When
it gets back, Mensah tries to get everyone to see work together and tries to
initiate a sharing ritual their group does. Before anything could happen,
though, a centipede monster attacked them. The group fell back to the hopper
and prepared to fight. A second monster arrived and for a second everyone
though they were fighting… until Arata realized that, despite their very
different morphology this was an example of sexual dimorphism. Ya, the monsters
weren’t fighting they were… monster mashing. The two eventually leave and the
group find a pair of egg sacs stuck to their hopper. Distracted by all the
biology around it, another SecUnit attacked and nearly killed Murderbot.
Murderbot with attempted help from Preservation Alliance almost die, but the
SecUnit punched one of the egg sacs. This draws the centipede monster who
brutally killed it before grabbing their egg sac and fleeing. Gurathin then
collapsed. He’d been ill since Leebeebee shot him last episode and he needs a
medbay badly. Murderbot is against going back to the habitat for safety reasons
but is told the humans are going back so it can either stay alone or go with
the group. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Ep 8: Foreign Object
We begin with a Sanctuary Moon
episode. The first officer has just announced that the memory wipe on the
navigator unit was 100% successful. They had to wipe its mind after it
decapitated its lover, the captain. The headless John Cho was a bit much for
me, personally. The helmsman asks if this is a good idea, and the first officer
asks the Nav Unit to decapitate him to prove its not dangerous. It says that it
cannot comply with an order that would endanger the crew. The helmsman is still
not certain, but the first officer insists that everything is fine. He orders
the Nav bot to fly them through the wormhole, and tells it to smile. The alarms
start blaring and it’s revealed that the Nav bot is piloting them through the
event horizon of the wormhole, which will basically trap them. Ya, the memory
wipe didn’t work and now it’s on a kill spree. The Nav bot murders the security
officer and then kills the first officer, crushing his head between its hands.
Murderbot is shocked by this turn of events and really wants to see what
happens next but instead has to deal with the shit its humans are putting it
through. They’re on a cliff overlooking their habitat. They don’t see any
vehicles or signs of life by the habitat, which doesn’t mean much. Ratthi
suggests that he get to go in first, maybe with a bigger gun, and scope things
out all stealthy. He tries to get a fist bump from Murderbot but its not
interested. Murderbot reveals it left some transponders before they left and
they’ve been recording everything that happened at the habitat. Ratthi and
Mensah both praise “Seccy.” Terrible nickname.
At the hopper, Gurathin is getting
worse. He’s got a high fever and is barely conscience. They watch the playback
and find out that three SecUnits were in their habitat. They get a look at the
logo on the SecUnits and learn the third party killing folks on the planet is
called GrayCris, a mining conglomerate from the Corporation Rim. The leader of
the GrayCris team find Murderbot’s camera and addresses the team. She
compliments them on realizing that they were coming. They say that they
disabled the beacons and have the only means of getting off the planet. She
insists this is a misunderstanding and as a sign of good faith promises to
leave their habitat alone. She gives them a rendezvous point and a time and
says she’s willing to deal. The team are all willing to go down to the habitat
immediately, but Murderbot is very certain they’ll all die if they go down
there. It tells them to not move until it secures the area. Especially Ratthi.
Murderbot approaches the habitat,
it’s combat module saying everything is clear. It enters and looks around. Its
scanner doesn’t pick up anything right away and searches the ground floor. It
finishes it’s sweep and finds nothing so calls everyone in. They do a medscan
of Gurathin and realize he’s got a form of gangrene from the gun shot wound.
Bharadwaj is running the examination, Murderbot reminding us she’s not a
medical doctor, but doesn’t remind her of that. They prepare to get started but
Gurathin flat out refuses the painkillers. Remember, he was an addict for years
and he’s terrified that even some meds for surgery will get him hooked again.
He asks Murderbot to restrain him, which Murderbot agrees to do… but then they
both realize that they can use Gurathin’s tech implants to potentially remove
his ability to feel pain. Murderbot just needs to plug into him. Mensah asks
the important question, if this was a real thing or if Murderbot got it from Sanctuary
Moon. Murderbot insists that it didn’t get it from there… not revealing he
got it from Medcenter Argala, episode 502, another show, but it insists the
cases are based on real life. They plug Murderbot into Gurathin’s brain.
Murderbot is weirded out initially
by this, as it is looking at itself through Gurathin’s eyes. It shuts off
Gurathin’s sense of sight, as it is sure that it’s better that Gurathin doesn’t
see the surgery part of this. Bharadwaj get to work slicing the necrotic flesh
from Gurathin’s leg. Murderbot decides to use this time linked to Gurathin’s
brain to do some snooping of its own, rationalizing that turnabout is fair
play. It gets lost searching through Gurathin’s brain. It gets stuck on a
memory, or maybe a feeling, of Gurathin processing how he feels towards the
group. He says that he loves the other members of the team like his own
children, but he loves Mensah as an equal. He mutters over and over again
asking why she can’t love him back. Murderbot ends up saying this out loud,
which shocks everyone. Gurathin wonders if he’d said something, but Murderbot
tells him nope. Bharadwaj gets the bit out and prepares to seal his knee.
Bharadwaj says they can unlink, but Gurathin asks for another moment. It’s then
that it realizes that Gurathin used the connection to and got past his
defenses. Gurathin announces to the group that their SecUnit calls itself
Murderbot and reveals it does so because it murdered 57 people on a mining
expedition. Murderbot says that isn’t true. It says that’s not true, that
that’s not the reason it calls itself Murderbot. It insists that it has only
ever killed to protect clients. It says that that might be an implanted memory
or it had had it’s combat module hacked. But Gurathin says the obvious idea
that maybe it is just defective. And it has to admit that’s true. Murderbot
leaves.
The group try to figure out what to
do. Half are cool with Murderbot leaving and half want to go after it. Mensah
closes the door and says they need to figure out what GrayCris is. Ratthi asks
if they’re just going to leave it out there and a frustrated Mensah yells that
“It is not your pet!” at him. They fall back and start discussing GrayCris.
They reason that they’re not part of the Company, but that the Company probably
took a bribe to not tell anyone a third survey team was on the planet. They’re
pretty sure GrayCris wants the alien remnant that they saw earlier, realizing
that GrayCris would totally be willing to break interstellar law to move it.
They think that DeltFall found out about GrayCris’ on the planet and were
killed for it. And rationalize that they’re only still alive because they know
where the remnant is and GrayCris wants to get it out of them. Murderbot,
marching away, knows that the PreservationAux team is dead without it. It asks
itself if that’s really its problem.
Back on the ship, while everyone is
freaking out slightly, Ratthi comes into Arata and Pin-Lee room. Despite the
insanity of the situation, they need to deal with the Throuple situation.
Ratthi admits to them that he wants to live life as honestly as possible with
what time they have left and says that he can’t date both of them if he’s only
falling for one of them. Pin-Lee and Arata are both a little shocked when
Ratthi admits it’s Pin-Lee he’s fallen for and not Arata. There’s a bit of a
fight over their situation again, which the trio agreeing to talk about it more
after the whole ‘we’ll probably die soon’ thing is taken care of.
Murderbot tries to sooth itself
with Sanctuary Moon episodes but it can’t focus. It thinks that the
‘show’ that is its interaction with its clients is drowning everything else
out. It realizes that even if the humans are doomed, it might not be. It
returns to the habitat and announces that it has a plan. To which Gurathin
shouts F***.
That was a great penultimate
episode. Gurathin’s injury is a reasonably high stakes situation, high enough
that I can believe Murderbot would be willing to risk plugging into Gurathin’s
brain. Murderbot got cocky and Gurathin capitalized, which I mean, props to him
for doing that. Gurathin has to feel pretty smug that his paranoia ended up
being correct. Gurathin having feelings for Mensah is only expressly stated in
the show. He might be attracted to his boss in the books, but I’m bad at
sensing subtext so I’m not willing to say that with certainty. The reveal of
Murderbot’s name and history was suitably dramatic. If I recall correctly, all
of this was revealed earlier in the book, but ya gotta spread reveals like that
out in a show. Murderbot not being sure if it was involved in a massacre is
true to the book as well. Just like in the show, it got a memory wipe before it
hacked its Governor Module. The uncertainty of if it killed a whole bunch of
people due to a malfunction or being hacked, or from just going berserk haunts
Murderbot until it gets a chance to investigate what had happened. GrayCris is
indeed after alien tech and is the criminal element in this story. They killed
a lot of people to cover up their survey. Granted, killing for alien tech makes
sense to a certain degree to me, but damn did these guys go overboard. And I’m
hoping we get a good resolution to the love triangle. Theres a lot of tension
in that throuple, and while the air has been cleared, it’s clear Arata and
Pin-Lee need to process some of their relationship troubles. It was incredibly
funny when Arata tried to move into Ratthi’s line of sight while he was
confessing his love to Pin-Lee and he just gently pushes her back. Murderbot
deciding to look after itself over its humans is an interesting idea. It does
want to get off planet and nothing is forcing it to obey the humans, so it
totally could if it wanted to. Hm… is Murderbot as heartless as that? Maybe.
We’ll have to see later. So, ya, a fun finale. Still figuring out what we’ll do
next time as we don’t finish Murderbot until next month. See you later.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/132544076/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment