I love it when a plan comes together... eventually.
Last time on Murderbot,
Gurathin was in a bad way. The gunshot wound in his leg he took from Leebeebee
turned septic and they Preservation Alliance (PresAux) crew decided to risk
going to the habitat to try to help him, despite Murderbot’s protests. The
situation was complicated by Gurathin’s outright refusal to take any pain
killers and the extremely painful nature of the surgery. As he’s a recovering
opioid addict, I kind of get his reservation on taking even a mild pain killer.
Murderbot offers to link up with Gurathin’s implants and use that to
functionally turn off his nerves in his knee so they can work. This goes off
without a hitch in the surgery, but Gurathin uses their connection to slip into
Murderbot’s mind and get the lowdown on their odd SecUnit. He learned about everything,
Murderbot’s name, the hacked Governor Module, and his obsession with trash tv
aka Sanctuary Moon. The team both wrestle with how to act around
Murderbot now, and to deal with the reveal of their enemy. At the same time of
the surgery hot mess, they look over the security feed and see the third party
attacking everyone on this planet. They’re a group called GrayCris, a mining
conglomerate from the Corporation Rim. They reason that these guys aren’t
affiliated with the company but probably bribed someone there to keep their
presence hidden. And that they’re probably after the alien remnant the group
found early on their survey. Murderbot, who’d stormed off after being
confronted about what it is, comes back and tells them all it has a plan to handle
GrayCris. Enough recap. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Ep 9: All Systems Red
The episode begins with the crew
taking the hopper to the rendezvous point with GrayCris. Murderbot muses about
how people react to the stress of potential immanent death. It compliments
Mensah on keeping things under wraps while silently judging Gurathin for
talking about how he’s relatively fine with dying. Mensah interrupts its
thoughts and asks for its assessment of their situation. Murderbot claims there
are too many variables, but she presses, and he admits their chances are
medium-to-low. Gurathin says it’s lying, and when Pin-Lee asks in what way, he
clarifies that Murderbot is lying in that medium-to-low is too high. It amends
it to Low-to-extremely-low. Pin-Lee asks why it lied, and Gurathin says it did
it because it worried telling them the actual numbers would affect their
performance. I don’t know why he’s volunteering all this information when
Murderbot is completely correct in this assessment. Gurathin goes on to point
out that he was in Murderbot’s head, using its proper name instead of SecUnit
for emphasis, to imply he now completely understands how it thinks. They reach
their destination and Murderbot tells them to touch down.
After landing the hopper, Murderbot
asks the group if they remember what to do. They confirm, Gurathin snidely
asking if it’s repaired enough to do the job. Murderbot confirms, and throws
back a mean observation that Gurathin used on it in the second episode I
believe, pointing out that he has an issue with eye contact. Gurathin goes to
Mensah and reiterates he doesn’t trust Murderbot or its plan and doesn’t like
the idea of leaving Mensah as bait. Murderbot asks what Gurathin’s plan is, and
when he admits his plan is to make a better plan, he sarcastically says that’s
inspired. Pin-Lee offers that they have a plan, but whatever their idea is, it
was deemed too difficult to do. Murderbot grabs a pack and when Gurathin asks
what that is, it says to not worry about it. And in Murderbot’s narration it
tells us to start worrying if anyone tells you that.
We cut back to the habitat, Ratthi radioing to
it that the PresAux Habitat is clear and no sign of combatants. Murderbot tells
him to stop talking and to keep the channel clear. They switch over to Pin-Lee
and Gurathin, who confirm they’re on their way to complete their part of the
plan. Gurathin complains for what sounds like the 50th or 60th
time about how Mensah shouldn’t have come along at all. Pin-Lee agrees, says
that it’s impossible to change that woman’s mind when she digs in her heels,
and admits that that attitude is kind of hot. Gurathin is a bit shocked by the
word choice but agrees. Murderbot says in narration that the humans are being
hot messes, and it’s because of that that it kept the true plan from them. It
knows they’d freak out if they knew the whole plan. Murderbot tells us the
actual plan is to have Pin-Lee send up a drone that would allow Murderbot to
hack GrayCris’ system and let it activate their emergency beacon and summon
help. It got the idea from Sanctuary Moon ep 599 “Kogi Saves the Day.”
The hard part, it admits is going to be getting the access codes.
We cut to the meeting, where
Murderbot admits that GrayCris letting it get close was helpful. The GrayCris
team consists of four humans and three SecUnits. Murderbot tells us it tried to
ping the other units but got no response from them. Before they can even speak,
GrayCris sends a data packet to Murderbot designed to hack and freeze its
governor module. So it’s a good thing Murderbot’s Governor Module doesn’t work.
Murderbot tells them that that’s not going to work and that it advises against
that course of action, which impresses the monitoring Ratthi. GrayCris says
they want to talk to the team lead, Murderbot refuses but says that it has a
solution to all of their problems. In narration, Murderbot lets us know from
GrayCris’ perspective, talking to it is like talking to a piece of equipment.
It tells them it doesn’t have a working Governor Module, to get their
attention. It tells them a condensed version of its story, saying the PresAux
team was too absorbed in their self-righteousness to notice it for a while and
that only one person recognized it as a threat. It says that was
Gurathin, confusing Gurathin who is very clearly still an “is.”
Murderbot then pulls out the head from its bag. The head I from the SecUnit
that attacked them, it is hoping to pass it off as Gurathin to gain their
trust. They seem to buy it and the leader asks what it wants. Murderbot offers
to help them take care of its clients and in exchange, they’ll list it as
destroyed cargo and get it off this rock when they leave. The GrayCris team is
skeptical of working with a rogue SecUnit, but the leader agrees, telling
Murderbot they’ll kill it if it tries a double cross. It tells them to link
their systems together, and then It will lure the PresAux team into a trap. On
the other line, Murderbot tells Ratthi to open the link so they can access
GrayCris’ system as well. Ratthi doesn’t want to do it, but Baradwaj and Arata
make him push the button with them. Gurathin complains about this plan, but
Pin-Lee tells him to shut up because they didn’t get to do their plan. We then
learned their plan was to auto-pilot their hopper into the habitat. The big
flaw of that plan was of course them being unable to launch the beacon from a
destroyed habitat. They activate the drone. It flies up and towards the beacon.
Murderbot tells them to patch Gurathin in and launch the beacon. Gurathin gets
the code in a second and prepares to link with the system.
They get the link set up and
everyone prepares to leave… only for Murderbot to throw another curve ball. It
tells them that it’s team went for the GrayCris beacon and are attempting to
launch it manually. Everyone listening is weirder out by this lie, but when
asked Murderbot just says that it’s doing what needs to be done. Gurathin seems
to pick up on what it means and gets to work. GrayCris is doubtful that that’s
even possible, but Murderbot says PresAux has an advanced augmented human
named… Shagamin. It was going to say Gurathin before remembering it used that
name already. It’s a Sanctuary Moon name, obviously. GrayCris still seem
skeptical, but the idea is just plausible enough that they can’t risk it.
Gurathin works it out that Murderbot is trying to get GrayCris to be at the
launchpad when they send it off, in the hopes they’ll get immolated when the
beacon goes. No one is super happy with this plan, but Murderbot tells them
that this is the best it has. It knows if the GrayCris SecUnits survive, they
will hunt PresAux down and kill them all. It thinks a new model might have had
a better plan… but you get what you pay for. Mensah reluctantly agrees to go
along with this. She orders Gurathin to set it up. GrayCris tell
Murderbot that it is coming with them, which wasn’t part of its plan but it
can’t refuse them.
No one likes this idea that
Murderbot will get killed too. But they’ve got no choice, if Gurathin
deactivates the beacon now, he might not be able to get back into the system.
Murderbot almost gives them all a heartfelt speech over the radio but chickens
out, pissing off Ratthi especially.
As GrayCris fly to the
beacon, Murderbot admits it has missed flying in a cargo area. It’s homey.
Other than it being filled with SecUnit models that have consistently kicked
its ass and its flying towards death. As the GrayCris hopper lands, it
bumps into one of the other SecUnits and apologizes which weirds Murderbot out.
It thinks PresAux gave it an empathy virus. They land and disembark, GrayCris
searching the area for PresAux. Meanwhile, Gurathin is backseat drone operating
Pin-Lee, pissing them off. He needs it to stay in range, and they angrily tell
him that they know. Unfortunately, their drone gets attacked and eaten by a
space-bird. This is doubly bad because not only does that knock out
communication between the parties, but the upload didn’t finish so they can’t
trigger the beacon. Gurathin prepares to run in and set it off manually.
Pin-Lee offers to go instead but Gurathin reminds them that he’s the only one
with a plug-in in his head. They rush to help. Mensah notices that the
communication loss and realizes that there is a better way and takes off.
Murderbot tries to buy them all
time by keeping GrayCris at the launch site. It doesn’t work super well because
it has to pretend the PresAux team is both cunning and yet incompetent.
GrayCris get fed up and prepare to take off in the hopper to search for PresAux
from the air. Murderbot, thinking it just needs to hold them all there for
another minute, tries some desperate small talk. This machine is a hero! It
gets the GrayCris people to admit that they hate being on this planet. He tries
to go for a handshake, but they don’t go for it. Murderbot sees that the
countdown almost hit and shouts “boldness is all!” before diving for cover.
Imagine its embarrassment when the launch doesn’t happen.
Gurathin and Pin-Lee sneak around
the beacon to get Gurathin close enough to hack it. Mensah is flying in, she
sends a message to Gurathin and Pin-Lee, saying she needs to help SecUnit and
that she has confidence they’ll set off the beacon. She asks them to look after
her children if anything happens. GrayCris prepare to take Murderbot into their
hopper, Murderbot knowing they’ll extract it’s data and kill it. Mensah then
arrives with the Hopper. Oh crap. Gurathin hacks into the system, but gets
spotted by a guard. Pin-Lee is able to sneak behind the guard and brain him,
which scares the crap out of them. They apologize for potentially killing the
dude, Gurathin pointing out “better him than me.” They get the countdown up and
running again, they have a minute.
Mensah lands and introduces herself
like an action hero, Dr. Ayda Mensah and her full credentials. GrayCris is
weirded out that she’s a Planetary Admin on this shitty planet. Mensah reveals
that she knows about the alien remnants. Pin-Lee radios in and says the
countdown is set to one minute. Mensah tries to buy time, saying that she’ll
just give them the data in exchange for the SecUnit. Murderbot offers to do the
torturing, saying that it was built for betrayal. Unfortunately, it quoted Sanctuary
Moon one too many times and one of the GrayCris guys catches on. The
captain calls it a crappy show, and Murderbot is offended, asking her to try to
make 2797 episodes of PREMIUM content. Damn, that’s twice the length of One
Piece. It realizes that was probably dumb to say, but if those are its last
words, it stands by them. It starts fighting the GrayCris team, using one of
them as a shield to try to buy some time. SecUnits with working Governor
Modules can’t fire at their clients after all. It tries to buy its freedom,
telling the SecUnits it can teach them to hack their Governor Modules too.
Unfortunately, a human GrayCris member kills his shield so the SecUnits are
free to fire. Two more of GrayCris’ people get killed in the fire fight, one
trying to take off in the hopper and was executed by the captain. A SecUnit
pins Murderbot, but it uses their connected feeds to download all its Sanctuary
Moon episodes into the other unit, freezing it long enough to be killed. The
beacon goes off, Murderbot leaping at Mensah and pulling her off the side of
the cliff to escape the fire of the launch. As they fall, Murderbot hugs her to
it, doing it’s best to angle its body to give her the largest chance for
survival. Murderbot admits it’d be ironic if it went out this way, hugging a
human to it when all it wanted was time alone to watch its shows. It thinks
‘Whatever’ before cutting out. The beacon takes off, everyone taking a moment
to celebrate before panicking about Mensah.
We cut to Mensah with Murderbot,
asking if it can hear her. She’s a bit banged up but not much worse for wear
but Murderbot is badly damaged. She tells it that it did it. Murderbot admits
it was about to say “we did it,” but the others arrive and save it from the
cliché. Gurathin is the first to notice Murderbot is in a bad way, it leaking
fluid from its mouth. Murderbot thinks to itself that it’s clients are the best
clients before shutting down.
Well, that was an excellent actual
penultimate episode. I mistakenly thought episode 8 was the second-to-last
episode but have corrected that in the old post. In my defense, when the
episode is named after the book the whole story is based off of, that’s usually
a sign that it’s the last one. Anyway, I like how the plan is relatively simple
here but goes off the rails so spectacularly. Get access to the beacon, set it
off, trick GrayCris to be at ground zero so they all die in the fire. Simple,
easy even as people of this universe are primed to accept that Rogue SecUnits
are one impulse away from murder sprees. But These guys had to be just a little
too smart to just trust Murderbot’s offer, and just a little too heavily armed
for Murderbot to capitalize, and just a little too media savvy so they figured
out all his pop culture references. I enjoyed that Murderbot’s -3 charisma stat
was still good enough to buy him a few seconds by getting the tech member of
GrayCris to admit that he hates this awful planet. Sometimes even the worst
play works. Murderbot using his show as a disabling attack was brilliant, and I
loved having Murderbot admit it is okay with dying if it meant saving Mensah.
The bird eating the drone was the perfect x-factor to further delay Murderbot’s
plan and screw them all. Because who can plan for a bird snacking on a drone?
Brilliant. And I liked Murderbot’s final thoughts before shutting down. That it
is able to admit to itself that it likes its clients and that protecting them
was worth it. That’s a big moment for the dude who hates everyone, admitting
there are people it hates less. Given their animosity, it was a good call for
Gurathin to be the first to notice Murderbot shutting down. It let us see that
even Murderbot’s harshest critic is upset to see it possibly power down
forever. Obviously with another episode this season and multiple books to draw
from, this isn’t the last day for Murderbot, but we’ll need to wait until
tomorrow to see what happens next. See you then.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/134979324/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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