Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Murderbot S1E3, “Risk Assessment” (written by Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz and directed by Toa Fraser)
Murderbot S1E3 begins with the team preparing to go to DeltFall to see what happened to the survey team there, since they’ve been unable to make contact. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) asks Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) to please keep its helmet down so that the others know it is part of the team, and it obliges while wondering who the hell ever suggested it was a part of the team.
Murderbot just wants to watch TV, but the members of the Preservation Alliance continue to want to treat it like a person. At one point, Ratthi (Akshay Khanna) wants it to join a circle where the group clasps hands. Absolutely not.
In another moment, Mensah starts talking to Murderbot about her family, and it simply cannot deal with this for more than few seconds. In many ways, this group—which wants to know if Murderbot has feelings, what those feelings might be, and so on—is the worst group our SecUnit friend could have been stuck with.
It’s clear that Murderbot does have feelings, if annoyance counts, but, again, it does not want to relate to the others “on a human level.” Human beings are stupid. Their emotions are stupid, and Murderbot seems to find their romantic inclinations to be particularly icky. Disgust is an emotion, too.
Given all of this, it’s noteworthy that Murderbot enjoys watching TV shows that are themselves laden with emotion and romance. For one thing, I think this is because they are not real and do not threaten to implicate it. For another, the fictional narrative is less messy than real life, and it’s my impression that it is the messiness of human relationships that Murderbot has the greatest distaste for. Strife of the Galaxy may be an inferior show with implausible plots, but that doesn’t keep it from being entertaining. Murderbot might even view predictability as a plus.
The team proceeds to DeltFall, and their satellites go out on approach. They can’t make contact using local comms, either, so Murderbot and those with weapons training head out to see what’s going on. Thankfully, the humans obey when Murderbot tells them that it should go explore without them, because it turns out that one of the SecUnits at DeltFall has killed everyone, including the other SecUnits.
The scene is staged for Murderbot to think that the homicidal SecUnit has died as well, but it is just playing dead. The two fight, and Murderbot wins, but it turns out that someone has taken control of that SecUnit to make it do what it did. As Murderbot wonders who, an armored figure emerges to gives us our answer and the episode ends.
Is this figure another bot, or perhaps a human being in some kind of tech suit? Either way, why hijack a SecUnit instead of killing everyone yourself when you appear to be such a complete badass?
Will the Preservation Alliance folks do as Murderbot said and leave it behind if it hasn’t returned to their ship in 10 minutes, or will they foolishly try to come to Murderbot’s rescue?
We’ll have to wait until next week to get answers to those questions, though I have a pretty good guess on the last one.
