<i>Murderbot</i> Shows That It Cares in &#8220;Command Feed&#8221;

Mensah and Murderbot are stranded, PresAux are held hostage, and there is more blood than you can shake a stick at. Welcome to everything falling apart.

Spoilers ahoy.

We open with a scene from episode 356 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon where the Navigation Bot and Captain Hossein are trapped on a exotic pink and purple planet. Only John Cho could pull off dialogue this cheesy and make it sound swoon-worthy. Even I, someone who never gets hot and bothered, got a little flustered by his charm. After barely escaping the exploding emergency beacon, Murderbot and Mensah are also trapped on an alien world, albeit a far less environmentally and romantically titillating one. After helplessly flicking a switch a few times, Murderbot admits they’re stuck…and immediately goes back to watching its serials. Then it says something to Mensah that the show doesn’t linger on but is actually pretty important. Mensah frets about the people who just tried to kill them, and worries the mysterious third party will go after the rest of the PresAux team. Murderbot responds, “Yes, someone is probably on their way to try to kill them.” Mensah is aghast at its flat, emotionless tone. That’s the kind of tone we expect from a SecUnit that has no attachment to its crew, but Murderbot immediately undermines that assumption in its voiceover: “Because I didn’t wanna sound as freaked out as I actually was.” A SecUnit with its governor module wouldn’t be “freaked out” (nor would it use all those colloquialisms either), and if it was it would likely be more concerned by getting fried by its governor module and being turned into slag for failing to do its job. Our little Murderbot actually cares! 

This leads to another one of my favorite moments from the book. Mensah asks Murderbot to pull up a copy of the repair manual it’s supposed to have stored in its memory, and Murderbot confesses that it deleted them so it could have more room to download TV. The mom scolding she gives it is god tier. There’s this initial suspicion that it really is trying to sabotage them, but the reality is so ridiculous and childish that you can see her trying very hard not to yell at it and put it in a time out. To Murderbot’s credit, it looks thoroughly embarrassed for its mistake. Later, when the consequences of no repair manual get worse, Murderbot and Mensah sit together and share an emotional connection—like NavBot and the captain did! However, instead of flirting, Murderbot talks her out of another panic attack. 

This is the first time we’ve really seen Murderbot come into its own. It’s not mimicking human interactions (like it did with Arada in the first episode by repeating lines from Sanctuary Moon) or repeating stock phrases from its memory banks (like it did when Mensah rescued it from DeltFall). Here, it lowers its guard and shows a bit of its true self to Mensah for a brief moment of genuine connection. How does it do that? By showing her an episode of Sanctuary Moon of course. After all that, the lubricant that has been steadily leaking out of Murderbot after being stabbed by a piece of the hopper’s printer knocks it unconscious. 

Next to episode 4, this is some of Alexander Skarsgård’s best acting thus far. I think for a lot of actors, the temptation would be to get bigger with the acting as Murderbot no longer has to hide behind a fake governor module. Skarsgård is letting the line between Murderbot’s public persona and its private one blur a little more as time goes on. There’s still a division there, which makes sense as the trust isn’t fully there either, but especially with Mensah the division is weakening. Skarsgård’s little expressions when she’s dressing Murderbot down over the repair manual is great stuff.

I’ve been meaning to talk about the music by composer Amanda Jones, and now is the perfect time. I know Jones from her work on one of the best comedy shows in recent years, A Black Lady Sketch Show, but it was likely her work with Paul Weitz on his movie Moving On that gave her the in for Murderbot. However she got here, I’m so glad she did. The theme song for Murderbot is such a hook-y little jingle that I keep finding myself humming it randomly. However, it’s the music in the background that really sells her talent. The cold open for this episode is a great example of what I mean. The delicate tinkling and otherworldly strings of the Sanctuary Moon scenes crashing into the tense staccato base of the Murderbot and Mensah scenes somehow flows and is discordant at the same time. Then, when Mensah gets suspicious of SecUnit when it admits it erased its copy of the repair manual, Jones’ music pops up just enough to heighten the tension and sell her fear before cutting out completely to nail the joke. 

At PresAux, Leebeebee is underfoot as the rest of the crew pack to leave. Gurathin can’t get the hopper on the horn and is rightfully worried. We also get more backstory about how Preservation Alliance and the Corporate Rim work, as well as Gurathin’s place in both. Importantly, we FINALLY get someone from PresAux shutting down Leebeebee’s weird sexual obsession with Murderbot. They should’ve done an initial “no, don’t” last episode and then doubled down on it in this episode. That would’ve given some extra character development to both PresAux and Leebeebee by showing them come to its defense and her continued disregard of its personal autonomy. But better late than never, I guess.

If I wasn’t already suspicious of Leebeebee, the scene where she talks to Gurathin and Bharadwaj would’ve convinced me she was up to no good. The little side looks she gives, the questions she asks, the way she keeps redirecting questions off her and back onto their scientific endeavors, nah, this girl is up to something. Sure enough, she turns on them. 

At the hopper, Murderbot is revived by some quick thinking on Mensah’s part, which leads to it realizing they can use its body parts to repair the ship. Cue the body horror. Mensah has to cut and crack Murderbot’s spine open to obtain a piece of nerve fiber, which will then be grafted onto the hopper’s wiring. It’s very gross. With the hopper now functional, the two head back to PresAux. After shooting Gurathin, Leebeebee admits she’s working for the unknown third party who attacked DeltFall. Murderbot arrives just in time to blow her head off. It’s disappointed they don’t “cheer and clap hands and hug” like they do in the serials. What actually happens is Bharadwaj, Mensah, and Arada go into shock, Pin-Lee has a fit of nervous laughter, Ratthi vomits, and Gurathin shouts at SecUnit. 

Welp, the enemy is dead, Gugu is injured, and Murderbot just can’t understand why everyone is annoyed that it exploded Leebeebee’s head. Join us next week to see how these crazy kids get out of this pickle.

Final Thoughts

• Episode 6 has no equivalent in All Systems Red. None of this happens in the book, at least not in the way it’s laid out here. Some of the dialogue is taken from the book, but most is fresh.

• Murderbot’s little head tilt when it sings along to the Sanctuary Moon theme song is so adorable.

• When Murderbot passed out and fell face down, I cackled. Kudos to editors Paul Winestock and Kindra Marra for being on point every episode. The comedic timing in the cuts is stellar.

• This episode Leebeebee says her indenture was purchased by DeltFall from SysCommSols, but in the previous episode she said she was indentured to InterTrav Mining Systems.

• Murderbot mentions using cloned human tissues in transports… I desperately hope this is a hint that ART is coming next season. Please oh please oh please!

• Don’t think I didn’t notice that Murderbot holds true to its promise to Mensah to protect Gurathin, even if it doesn’t want to.

• Hollywood not casting John Cho in every romcom of the 21st century is a failure of epic proportions.

• Ratthi is such a cute little dork. He has no idea he’s worn out his stay in this throuple. Cannot take a hint to save his life.

• That final stare down Murderbot has with the viewer is such Eric Northman energy, I love it.

• I’m really digging the soundtrack!

Quotes

Return next week for another adventure.