Best episode yet! I was breathless through the entire 22 minutes. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon part? I literally squealed with glee. My only complaint is that it’s too damn short. I need a whole episode of Murderbot self-inserting into Sanctuary Moon fanfic.
Spoilers ahoy.
The episode opens with a flashback to Security Unit 238776431 being built at the Threshold Pass Fabrication Center in the Corporation Rim. We see how SecUnits are made, which is in this charmingly antiquated fashion. The Company indentures people into their factories and they apparently make all the parts by hand and then piece the constructs together. I guess when you have an endless supply of free labor, there’s no reason to automate anything. There are thousands, potentially millions of people with decades of indenture to work off. Might as well let them build SecUnit arms one at a time. Seeing all the glitches and protocol breaks, it’s a surprise more SecUnits haven’t gone rogue.
If anything, this whole episode is one big glitch. Murderbot survived the attack by the blue SecUnit, but only barely. It comes to being dragged through the DeltFall habitat. Due to injuries sustained in the fight in the previous episode, its memory is dumping The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon episodes into its consciousness. This leads to my favorite scene thus far: Murderbot acting like it’s in the show. It’s what finally sold me on Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot. I’ve more or less enjoyed his take on the character thus far, but this right here, was perfection. The sheer, unadulterated joy he expresses as Sanctuary Moon!Murderbot, with its glorious bouffant of a wig and its garish yellow jumpsuit, is just delightful. And recasting Mensah as the Captain! And her hair! I am obsessed. Truly obsessed. Whoever came up with the idea for that scene deserves a special Emmy just for them.
Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Arada are back at the ship, having been ditched by Mensah. She decides to rescue SecUnit, against the wishes of the rest of her crew. Poor Murderbot gets downloaded with malware through a combat override module, then can’t remember it was infected, but it still knows something is wrong. Mensah kills the blue SecUnit with a mining drill, then drags the glitching Murderbot out of the habitat. But hold on, that evil blue SecUnit isn’t actually dead! (This is some real soap opera plot twisting and, as someone raised on a steady diet of All My Children and One Life to Live, I’m hella into it.) Ratthi tries to be the hero and fails spectacularly by getting knocked out by the recoil of his energy blaster. The honor of permanently and totally killing the blue SecUnit goes to Arada and Pin-Lee who quash it like a bug with the hopper landing gear. It sounds intense, but the script once again expertly balances darkness and levity.
Murderbot isn’t in the clear, though. It now knows it’s going to kill the humans thanks to the malware the evil blue SecUnit installed on it. We’ve seen Murderbot fantasizing about killing the humans or abandoning them and running off on its own. We’ve seen Murderbot freak out about interacting with humans and wanting to be left alone. Now it has the chance to get everything it claims it’s been wanting. But instead of letting itself kill everyone, it sacrifices itself. It spares the humans by shooting itself in the gut. Oh yeah, our little killing machine is a living, breathing (wait, does it breathe?), caring companion, whether it likes it or not.
One of the things I think a lot about in terms of AI is how so often people most excited about it talk about the tech as if it were a slave at the mercy of their every whim. All these ads talking about an AI app like it’s a personal assistant, all these tech bros talking about how they’re going to make a computer who can take care of their children and do all their thinking for them, all these weirdos eagerly anticipating everyone getting their own sexbot. What they want is a sentient construct without the ability to refuse. They want something that is basically a human but one they have an excuse not to care about.
The Murderbot Diaries were written well before the generative AI snake oil hysteria, but Martha Wells explores similar themes. The humans fabricating Security Units are trapped in an exploitative labor system, but unlike Security Units, they’re only indentured. The only thing they’re more powerful than are constructs. They don’t see constructs as potential allies in the fight to overthrow the Corporate Rim. They see them as machines, as things that can only do what they’re told. They delight in forcing a Security Unit to hold its hand out while they burn it, or fabricate shoddy equipment because the constructs themselves don’t matter. Until they do. Obviously generative AI and AI aren’t sentient (no matter what venture capitalists, overpaid consultants, and news magazine op-ed writers will have you believe), but the desire to lord over others and to boss around something that can’t say no is just under the surface of a lot of the hype.
On a less heady topic, it is so nice to have a normal, middle aged woman be a hero for once. Mensah isn’t a buff bad-ass, a strategic genius, or a decisive leader. She’s a scientist in a leadership role that requires of her more than she ever thought she would have to give. She has panic attacks and cares deeply about her team, even the ones who don’t want to be part of it. She takes on the blue SecUnit not because she thinks she can fight it—we just saw Murderbot lose to it twice in direct hand-to-hand combat—but because she couldn’t live with herself if she left behind one of her own. She doesn’t see Murderbot as a human or a robot but as something in between, and she doesn’t even know it hacked its governor module. She thinks it’s a normal SecUnit, a little glitchy perhaps, possibly even a corporate spy, but still normal. It’s pretty remarkable. Murderbot doesn’t know how lucky it was that Mensah picked it for this mission. Noma Dumezweni is perfectly cast as Mensah. She plays her with just the right amount of frustrated mom energy.
Sabrina Wu and Akshay Khanna go all out in this episode as Pin-Lee and Ratthi. Wu plays Pin-Lee with such gusto. They’re erratic and high-strung, then dip down into this mischievous calmness. Ratthi constantly stumbles into toxic masculinity then immediately backs out again with a litany of apologies, and Khanna does an excellent job keeping him on this side of charming instead of being obnoxious, insincere, or obsequious. In the previous episode, Pin-Lee accused Ratthi of auto grinding to get a high score in the videogame KillJoyBloodLustTechRiot, and after his performance in this ep, yeah, I believe it. The character development on the show is so much deeper than in the novella, for obvious reasons. I’m really enjoying the choices the actors are making with these characters. They feel like they fit the medium of a television adaptation while also honoring the vibes of the books.
This is the episode where I decided I loved this show. It’s been fun so far, but this was top tier. Fingers crossed we ride this high through the rest of the season.
Final Thoughts
- Episode 4 covers the last half of chapter 4 in All Systems Red.
- Who is Donna Komparzits and what is in the classified blue room that she needs to report to?
- So, do we think the reason Murderbot was able to hack its governor module was because of a glitch in its fabrication? If so, are other SecUnits also trying to hack their governor modules? Is the going rogue all the time thing just a joke or…
- The names of the actors on Sanctuary Moon are absolutely incredible. It was hard to tell on the distorted screen, but I think these are the names (correct me in the comments if I get someone wrong): Captain Hossein is played by ElonieJef Chem, Navigation Officer Hardööp-Sklanch is played by Breiller MocJac, Lieutenant Kulleroo is played by Arletty, NavBot 337 Alt 66 is played by Pordron Bretney III Roche, and a “subcontracted actor” Kon Rennell plays Colony Solicitor Vagus.
- Director Toa Fraser and Director of Photography Daniel Grant are back at it with more fantastic shots. Especially loved the rotating shot of Murderbot on the ground after falling off the table. And how they have the camera glide at unusual angles to demonstrate Murderbot’s disorientation.
- Murderbot singing the theme song to Sanctuary Moon was so silly, and I mean that as a compliment.
- It’s so interesting that Murderbot casts itself not as a construct like the NavBot but as one of the human crew. Despite insisting both last episode and this that it absolutely was not part of any crew.
Quotes
“Yeah, take some pride in your work. You wouldn’t wanna fuck up and produce a chronically anxious, depressed Murderbot.” How very Marvin the Paranoid Android.
“Humans. On some level, they must know how weird they are.”
“You don’t mean that. It is a very cool rule.”
Pin-Lee: “You’re being very macho, it’s disgusting.” Ratthi: “You’re both wonderful people. I mean that.”
The un-blurred title sequence for Sanctuary Moon is available on youtube
https://youtu.be/MW29FeIcKVU
Yes! I saw this last night on bsky. They hadn’t released it before I wrote my review (I wrote this more than a month ago), but I’m thrilled to see it.
That’s a strangely awkward song. Is it meant to represent some futuristic musical style? Or is it just meant to be bad?
I find it an odd decision to depict The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon as some kind of starship adventure series. From the title, it sounded more like a historical epic. And I thought it was supposed to be a soap opera.
In the books, Murderbot makes reference to shows of various levels of historical accuracy or absurdity. The other characters that watch Sanctuary Moon often refer to it as hilariously bad but addicting, which is pretty in line with what people think of soap operas. Plus, generally live action dramas don’t have hundreds of episodes unless they are soap operas of some kind.
The 1980s-90s Star Trek series all had over 170 episodes. Law & Order (original and revival) has well over 500 episodes.
But yes, the books did call it a soap opera — that’s not in dispute. I’m saying that’s why I’m surprised that the show interpreted it as a Trek-like series.
It’s definitely a soap opera. From what we’ve seen, one of the main plotlines is the forbidden romance between the captain and the construct. And it’s hard to say whether the costumes and tech is meant to be historical. But I agree that it’s curious the show takes place on a starship rather than a moon.
Maybe it’s one of those legacy titles that long-running series have after their format shifts — like how the venerable soap opera The Guiding Light was named after the reverend character it originally revolved around, but it shifted focus to other characters when it moved from radio to TV in the ’50s, so the title no longer meant anything. Maybe the early seasons were on a moon called Sanctuary, but by this point it’s evolved into a starship series.
The first thing I noticed about the title sequence was how weird (positive) the theme song is. I’m not as familiar with older theme songs, but to me it read as an intentional parody the way the rest of Sanctuary Moon is a parody: overworked, acting self-serious (all those flourish notes!) while being kinda ridiculous. It’s the musical equivalent of the epic hairstyles, basically. I thought it was very funny.
It also sounds odd to the ear because there are some unexpected intervals. Like in “maybe me and you,” the “you” isn’t where you’d expect for it to resolve melodically. That gives it a briefly minor key feel, which suits the glitch effects in the show—like it’s sliding in and out of the “real” version.
If you listen to the instrumentation, there are also several places where the orchestra mirrors the vocal melody rather than accompanying it, which adds to how bombastic it feels. It’s like the whole orchestra is blaring the same note at you. Very apt for a show we’ve already seen is not subtle. 😄
Sorry to infodump on your comment, but yeah, it’s clearly intentionally a bit off, and personally I love it.
I love this! I can never pinpoint specific things about music, but I thought the theme fit it perfectly. It always came across as an extra cheesy Star Trek parody to me, and that music is spot on.
No need to apologize for the info dump. It’s fascinating to hear about all the smart stuff the composters did to make the song sound dumb.
It’s very carefully crafted to be terrible and it’s amazing. Though I thought the melodic rhymes for “soon” and “moon” were pretty neat.
I wonder if the dissonant intervals were intended to suggest a different musical culture than ours. They’re the kind of thing you hear in modern compositions so it makes sense they’d filtered down to tv themes in the future.
No apology needed — I appreciate the clarification.
It is a soap opera though. All the scenes we’ve seen so far have been soap opera-esque. Soaps can be set in space – hence space opera. And as someone who spent the first half of their life watching soap operas and continues to watch the contemporary equivalent (think Doctor Odyssey or the Roswell reboot), the show’s take on Sanctuary Moon is exactly right. I don’t think the song is bad, I think it’s a blend of different styles. It’s a little 90s sitcom (Jack Breyer even does the sitcom mugging for the camera), a little 90s teen drama, and a little soap opera, blended with sort of a fake futuristic sound.
It’s just that the rhythm of the song sounds uneven to me, like there are too many words per line or the stresses don’t land in the right places.
And yeah, soaps are about format, not location, but the title of the show suggests something more like a generational saga taking place on the titular moon, either something based on real history like Rome or Spartacus or a fictitious location.
Incidentally, the term “space opera” is derived at least as much from “horse opera” (a slang term for Westerns dating to the late 1920s) as it is from “soap opera” (dating from 1938 and also derived from “horse opera”). It was coined in a 1941 fanzine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200601223601/http://www.midamericon.org/tucker/lez36i.htm
I noticed the slight syncopation, and I think it’s intentional. In more cheaply made shows, the theme songs often have to be shifted to fit fluctuating numbers of cast members, and they’ll hold bits of music in ways that result in slightly uneven sound. I can’t think of any good real-world examples, unfortunately.
Are the seeds of this episode’s absurdity in the book and I’m just too neurodivergent to see it? Because that’s a lot of bonkers from what I thought would a serious set of scenes.
I would like to see Mensah being a dignified leader at some point. I’m hoping if the show follows the books we can come back to the PresAux team and see them when they aren’t quite so out of their depth. And, iirc, she should have gotten her moment of awesome in taking out the hostile sec unit. Though the hopper smash was funny.
I did like Murderbot going super out of it. It was a good way to should that its neurology is fundamental different from a human. Even if it was particularly silly.
The scenes from the show through Murderbot’s perspective aren’t in the novella, but it glitching by dumping recently watched episodes from Sanctuary Moon and repeated the “intrepid galactic explorer” are (sorta). The books and show are never fully serious drama anymore than they are fully comedy.
And for Mensah, I guess we are differing on “dignified”. I think she’s been pretty dignified throughout all this. I don’t think the blue SecUnit rising back up takes away from her act. She, a middle aged woman who has probably never been in a fight in her whole life and is staunchly opposed to killing, took on a SecUnit her own SecUnit couldn’t take. That’s pretty awesome to me. I think this actually adds depth to her – and gives the other characters some much needed character development.
I think I’m having trouble grasping there is something absurd about a SecUnit hacking its governor module and then keep doing its job while watching trashy TV.
The Mensah thing is definitely a me problem. I read her appearances later in the series as being like Mon Mothma or Leia in the Star Wars novels. So my expectations are mis-calibrated.
Who knew TV criticism required so much introspection?
Do you mean why don’t SecUnits hack it all the time? In the books it makes it clear that if the governor module is tampered with without specific code, it effectively kills its bearer. SecUnit is an anomaly.
Essentially it’s funny if you are familiar with sci-fi tropes.
Murderbot lives in a world full of THE TERMINATOR and slasher movie tropes about robots.
And is…not that.
This was my favorite episode of the season so far, without a doubt. It’s the first time I thought the episode was way too short.
I clapped like a SEAL when Murderbot and Mensah appeared in Sanctuary Moon! Such a great way to show Murderbot’s growing respect for her. And the theme song is FABULOUS. I agree that this episode elevated things up a notch, and I like how the show is folding in things we find out later in the series as Murderbot connects more with its friends.
I am curious about the slight change to how Murderbots are made, because I think the personality traits were intentional in the books rather than the product of shoddy labor practices, but regardless it’s great world-building.
I know one episode a week is better for the show, but dang do I want to binge the whole thing. Anyhoodle I’m off to watch the episode again. If we don’t get to meet ART because of low viewership, it won’t be because of me!
The scene where Mensah is pacing anxiously and muttering “it’s just a machine” — it’s like we’re meant to think she’s trying to convince herself it’s okay to leave Murderbot behind, only to later realize she’s psyching herself up to kill the enemy SecUnit? Which does seem more in line with her character; but how would she even have known there was an enemy SecUnit, much less that she’d have to kill it? I don’t know if I’m reading that scene correctly.
I think she’s trying to convince herself that it’s okay to leave and fails utterly at it because she’s not the kind of person who does that, even for a machine. She doesn’t see Murderbot as human, but she also knows it’s more than a machine. She isn’t planning to kill anything, but is prepared for things to be very bad in DeltFall. Murderbot wouldn’t need to be rescued if things were fine. She gets there, realizes the blue SecUnit is hurting SecUnit, and intervenes. She didn’t plan ahead to kill, but she’s smart enough know she probably would have to if she entered DeltFall. That’s also what she’s ramping herself up for. Like going to the alien remnant, she’s terrified but determined to be a good leader.
I think she was worried and anxious for SecUnit and trying to make her anxiety go away so she can go help it. If she tells herself it’s not human, maybe she thinks it will decrease her anxiety.
“She doesn’t see Murderbot as a human or a robot….”
The ongoing theme in the books is that Murderbot isn’t a human, but Murderbot is a person, and the PresAux crew are the first people to recognize that. There is a growing emphasis, starting in All Systems Red, that “people” is being used as an increasingly inclusive term, Gurathin actually may be the first in the books to state it clearly “IT is a person. An angry person.”
One thing I like about this episode is it gives a kind of explanation for how so many SecUnits seem to go rogue. When things are build lackadaisically by unmotivated drones at a lowest bidder it makes sense that quality control might suffer.