Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for the premiere episodes of Murderbot, S1E1, “FreeCommerce” (written by Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz and directed by Paul Weitz) and S1E2, “Eye Contact” (written by Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz and directed by Chris Weitz)
Murderbot is based on a series of books written by Martha Wells, which I should note at the top I have not read. I am aware, coming into the story, that Wells is adamant about the titular bot’s lack of gender. Murderbot’s pronouns are it/its, and that’s important.
Episode 1 of the Apple TV+ series begins with the SecUnit (Alexander Skarsgård) musing about how the human beings it is tasked with protecting are stupid assholes. Unfortunately, its Governor Module requires that it obey any commands it might get from a human being, no matter how inane. But, the SecUnit, whose name to this point has been a string of numbers, has been working to disable that Governor Module and succeeds in the cold open of the series. After rejecting a couple of other options, it decides to call itself Murderbot.
Of course, no one else knows this name, and Murderbot does not follow through on the idea of killing everyone in order to steal a ship because the Corporation would just set out to track it down and destroy it. Instead, Murderbot decides to hide the fact that it has gained free will and spends as much of its time as possible watching television.
Members of the Preservation Alliance rent Murderbot for their expedition, passing on a newer, more expensive SecUnit and noting that they believe the use of sentient bots is tantamount to slavery. It’s just that they have to bring one along in order to get funding. Murderbot does not care about any of that or want anything to do with human beings. It definitely does not want to make eye contact. It just wants to watch its stories.
This means that it is arguably distracted when Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) and Arada (Tattiawna Jones) are threatened by a sandworm-type creature that injures Bharadwaj before Murderbot is able to get rid of it (though we should note that the stupid humans refused to leave the area when Murderbot told them to).
Bharadwaj is ultimately OK, but Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) is suspicious of the SecUnit because it tried to display empathy to Arada, and because it comes from the Corporation, which Gurathin is generally suspicious of.
The group discovers that various parts of the map they’ve been provided with are glitchy. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) decides to go explore one of those areas, leaving Murderbot behind in stasis because the group doesn’t trust it. It seems like that decision is about to get her killed, but instead of attacking her, the creature she confronts proceeds into the crater she’s nearing, where it dies, surrounded by the carcasses of many of its peers.
So, this is one mystery that Murderbot presents in its premiere. Why are these locations glitchy on the digital map, and what’s going on in terms of them luring sandworms to their death?
The crew speculates that it might involve ancient alien technology, but notes that, if this were true, they’d have to call off their expedition and inform the Corporation. Is that due to danger, or possible profit? The Preservation Alliance exists outside of the bounds of the Corporation, but to what extent are they still governed by it?
Mensah notes that there is another survey group on the other side of the planet and tries to make contact with them. We see that they are all dead, for reasons unknown, but Mensah doesn’t know that and wants to go see what’s going on with them. Stupid humans.
The other central mystery presented in Murderbot’s premiere episodes pertains to Murderbot itself. It’s a refurbished model, but when Gurathin asks it why it was refurbished, it cannot answer because it does not know. It does, however, have flashes of a memory that might just involve it massacring a lot of people. That’s disturbing.
Despite the name it’s chosen for itself, Murderbot does not want to murder people. It doesn’t want to have anything to do with people at all, and a good amount of the humor of the series stems from the way in which it finds human emotions to be icky. Its fandom with regard to soapy television might seem to complicate this, but really it raises a question about the difference between our real-life interactions and our parasocial ones.
Murderbot is set to be an entertaining series, as it mines its premise for humor and poses questions about things like personhood. Its first two episodes also set up several mysteries that will surely define Season 1, and I’m curious to see where this story goes.
