Viewer Log: Murderbot ep 10

 Rewards and sacrifices.

Last time on Murderbot, they finally faced off against GrayCris. Murderbot formed a plan to trick the evil survey team into thinking it betrayed its clients to get a ride off the planet. It lied to GrayCris, saying that PresAux had gone to launch their distress beacon manually. This is a plot to get everyone from GrayCris at ground Zero, then to hold them there long enough for Gurathin and Pin-Lee to launch the beacon remotely. The plan goes well at first until a space bird eats the drone they’d used as a relay. Mensah comes in and distracts GrayCris long enough for Gurathin and Pin-Lee to reach the beacon and set it to go off. Murderbot grabs Mensah as the rocket launches, intentionally throwing themselves off a cliff to avoid the blast. It also intentionally falls to make sure Mensah sustains minimal injury. Gurathin and Pin-Lee find Mensah and the three celebrate for just a moment before realizing that Murderbot is powering down. Its last thought before losing power was that its clients were the best clients. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 10: The Perimeter

 

The episode begins with Murderbot’s system rebooting. It is confused at first, not knowing where it is. The techs that are looking it over don’t care at all why it seems stressed out or who its clients are. They prepare to give it a full memory wipe, despite Murderbot’s distress. We see each of its memories playing out as they’re deleted, listening as Murderbot goes from distressed at forgetting its friends to wondering if it knows them.

 

We cut to the PresAux team meeting with the company reps they worked with to get set up on their survey. Both Mensah and Bharadwaj’s first question is where is SecUnit, but the company types pretend like that is a weird question. They tell PresAux that its location is none of their business. Mensah decides to play hardball, saying that they’ve kept quiet about what happened on their survey, but that is liable to change unless they get their SecUnit back. They trade back and forth jibes “You signed an NDA,” Pin-Lee the lawyer insisting that won’t hold up in court due to extraordinary circumstances. One of the company people, henceforth known as the Lawyer, reads off the legalize that can be summed up as “We didn’t know anyone else was on the planet.” Pin-Lee realizes he’s the scumbag they actually need to deal with, to which the scumbag agrees. They use a harsher word… but my mama sometimes reads these, I try not to drop too many F bombs.

 

Murderbot powers back up after the wipe is complete. The techies are pretty nonplussed about the whole thing, the lead guy saying that they need to install a new Governor Module. The second techie freaks out upon learning Murderbot doesn’t have an active GM, but the first guy says it doesn’t matter now. To prove that Murderbot is helpless, he even spits on the SecUnit’s head. They install a new GM, effectively resetting Murderbot to just a standard issue SecUnit. It is order to stand, it does so, to rub its stomach and pat its head, and then to stop. The second tech orders it to act like a baby. A client comes in and is weirder out by what they’re doing. She asks if this is her SecUnit. They say it is and she orders them to helmet it up. They ask what it will be doing, and she cryptically says “Security.”

 

We cut back to the PresAux meeting. Mensah, to play hardball, makes it clear that the Company Lawyer needs to use her proper title of Madam President. She insists that even if legally it isn’t their SecUnit, then it’s at least a key witness to the events on the planet. Lawyer plays semantics, calling SecUnit a ‘recording device’ at best. Pin-Lee says that’s fine, they need access to it’s evidence regardless. Gurathin shocks everyone by coming to the table and saying that they’ll buy it. Arata is angered at him for treating SecUnit like it’s a possession, but Gurathin reminds her that here it IS one. The company folks are intrigued by the idea of them dropping the lawsuit in exchange for a SecUnit. PresAux make it clear that getting SecUnit, THEIR unit, is only part of the deal. The company people say they can’t get their original unit back, they’ll offer a new unit, a better one. One of the company people says their unit was defective anyway, but the Lawyer corrects his language, saying it was “suboptimal,” and that they discovered it didn’t have Governor Module. Obviously no one at the table is surprised by this but they act aren’t. They reveal it has been completely reset, so there’s no need for them to worry.

 

We cut to SecUnit marching with other guards at its new job. Ratthi is milling around and sees him, running over and tries to talk it. SecUnit doesn’t react or recognize him. The new guard in charge orders SecUnit to ‘take care’ of Ratthi, and it pulls a gun on him. He tells him to forget it and they march off. Ratthi tells the others about seeing their unit, and Pin-Lee says they’ll go forward with the injunction and it’s good they know its on the station. Bharadwaj asks what the point is, as their SecUnit, Murderbot is dead for all intents and purposes. Mensah refuses to believe that you can’t just reduce memory and experience to 1s and 0s, but Gurathin insists that you can. Everyone takes the news badly, but Arata seems to be at wits end. Mensah says that there’s no way they just deleted Murderbot’s mind. Removed it? Yes, but not destroyed. Gurathin agrees, saying that all of Murderbot’s programming is filled with proprietary technology. They’ll examine every frame of Murderbot’s memory for useful data and sell what they can find. This gives them some hope, Ratthi saying they can just find it’s mind and download it back into SecUnit, but Gurathin says it’s not that simple. Theres nothing to gain from Murderbot’s ‘personality,’ so they won’t save that info. He warns them that even if they get it back, they can’t be sure it’ll make SecUnit the same ‘person.’ Big of him to use that word. Ratthi and Mensah insist they have to try. Pin-Lee is told to go ahead with the injunction, and Mensah asks Gurathin for his Corporation Rim expertise. He say that here on the Corporation Rim, they don’t play fair.

 

We cut to a protest turning violent as some Corporation Rim workers are protesting for their rights. SecUnit is brought in with others of its kind and are used to disperse the protestors. Its mere presence clearly terrifies them all. The workers refuse to leave and the SecUnits are ordered to do damage. The machines quickly go through the most eager protestors, but the fighting pulls up the several seconds of slaughter it remembered from it’s previous wipe. It freezes up remembering this, and the protestors take the opportunity to beat it into the ground.

 

We find Gurathin meeting with a contact, his former dealer. He pressures his former dealer to get his help. His ex-dealer tries to apologize, saying that he thought Gurathin could handle it, but Gurathin sees that for the lie it is. They head to the ex-dealers workstation and Gurathin plugs in. He tries a few searches but doesn’t get any hits, his ex-dealer saying that it’s all encrypted so he won’t get anything. Gurathin has the lightbulb idea to search “Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon,” and gets all Murderbot’s memories. He starts downloading Murderbot’s mind but is almost immediately overwhelmed by all that raw data, specifically the memories of the death.

 

We cut to Mensah and Bharadwaj holding a press conference with several reporters, revealing their experience on the planet. The reports try to spin the story as SecUnits gone rogue, but Mensah explains about the combat overrides and how DeltFall’s team was slaughtered by GrayCris. And how their SecUnit valiantly protected them. The reporters try to twist the story again but Mensah keeps them on message. Arata comes in and says they found it.

 

We cut to SecUnit being lead into the Acid bath platform for its destruction and recycling. Its just being lowered into the bath when Pin-Lee and Ratthi rush in to stop them. Ratthi tries to run to save it but is stopped. Pin-Lee gives them the injunction, and they get SecUnit out. Nice. They bring it back to the PresAux apartments and try to talk to it like their old Murderbot but it’s not reacting like it used to. Ratthi says it’s looking him in the eye and that’s weird. Gurathin comes in, rushes to the sink and pukes. Mensah worries that he relapsed but he insists he didn’t, he’s sick because he got it. He plugs into SecUnit and uploads all of its memories back to it. We see a montage of scenes from the show as somber music plays. They ask it if it remembers them now. It pauses… and then reveals its missing episodes 420-568 of Sanctuary Moon from it’s data banks. ITS BACK! They all celebrate. Murderbot is flummoxed by all this, and says that it doesn’t understand what’s happening. Mensah says they’re buying its contract. The company wants to avoid bad press, so they’ll be taking it back to the Preservation Alliance. Murderbot is confused, wondering what it will do there. Mensah says that they’ll figure out what it’ll do once they get there. It asks if it can keep its armor, but they say it won’t need it. They get it a change of clothes and its weird to see it in normal stuff. The others leave it alone for a bit while they handle dealing with the various groups tied to their incident. After, they celebrate for real, truly stunning Murderbot. They keep impressing on it that its free to do whatever it wants.

 

Murderbot seems truly unable to process all the freedom they’ve given it. Later, while the others sleep, it stays up and watches them and the perimeter. It starts to walk off, but Gurathin wakes up and asks where its going. It says its going to check the perimeter. Gurathin realizes this means its uncomfortable and going to walk away. He insists that the Preservation Alliance is weird, but he’ll get used to it. He even goes so far as to say he’ll help it assimilate as he kind of understands it now. Murderbot just says it needs to check the perimeter, and Gurathin agrees it should. Murderbot leaves and Gurathin tells it ‘thank you.’

 

Murderbot leaves. It walks off into Port FreeCommerce and marvels in how strange life is now. In its clothes, it looks like just an augmented human, not a SecUnit. It uses it’s connection to the station’s system to find a transport off Port FreeCommerce, and pings the automated transport ship. In exchange for sharing its hours of media, the cargo ship agrees to take it to its next stop, a mining colony out in space.

 

Mensah wakes up and is disappointed to see Murderbot is gone.

 

In narration, Murderbot admits it doesn’t know what it wants, but it does know that it doesn’t want to be told what that is. Even if the one telling it is his favorite human. The transport takes off and Murderbot then ends his message.

 

In case you are wondering, Murderbot’s last lines are lifted almost verbatim from the book. That it doesn’t know what it wants but it doesn’t want to be told what to want. It needs to go on a walkabout and see the universe for a bit. And the book also ends with the ‘end of message’ line, revealing to us that what we heard/saw was essentially Murderbot’s eyewitness account for PresAux to use in their case and his goodbye to his favorite human, Doctor Mensah. I should note that the book version of events picks up right as a repaired Murderbot is reactivated by the PresAux team. All the legal stuff had been handled; they’d bought it and were prepping to go back to the Preservation Alliance. It getting temporarily reset and the team looking for it, having to get it’s memory back and reload it was all show stuff. Overall, I liked this adaptation. They covered all the important moments, embellished just enough to get ten episodes of content out of a novella, and did their best to stick to the general tone of the book. Which is basically, “I hate these humans! Leave me alone!” Murderbot shouted, right before running after its humans because they’re ITS humans! My one complaint being that the Ratthi-Arata-Pin-Lee subplot really wasn’t resolved. Maybe they’ll include that in season 2, but if season 2 is directly lifted from the books, we won’t be seeing much of the PresAux team while Murderbot is on its travels. I just want to applaud the whole cast, as all of these guys gave 110% for these roles, especially Alexander Skarsgard, David Dastmalchian, and Noma Dumezweni. I liked the expansion of Gurathin especially. His borderline obsession with Mensah was a bit weird, but adding bits like his history with the company and being a drug addicted wage slave really helped add depth to a character that was mostly paranoid for paranoia’s sake in the book. Their goodbye was great, as it did drive home that these two gained an awareness of each other in this story. Accepting “I need to check the perimeter” as explanation enough was great, but that little ‘thank you’ after he was alone got me misty eyed. I have no idea how they’ll adapt the second book, if they’ll try to work subplots in to use Mensah and her crew while Murderbot heads to the mining colony, or if this is the last we’ll see of this ensemble cast, but I’m looking forward to season 2 whenever it airs. Probably 2027 with how effects heavy this is. But maybe I’ll be surprised. Have a good night!

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Bluesky: ‪@basicssuperhero.bsky.social‬