Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Murderbot S1E8, “Foreign Object” (written by Chris Weitz & Paul Weitz and directed by Aurora Guerrero)
Murderbot S1E8 begins with a scene from Sanctuary Moon that Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) is watching. Apparently, the NavBot (DeWanda Wise) murdered the Captain (John Cho), but the Lieutenant (Clark Gregg) reprogrammed her so that she doesn’t remember. Or, he thought he did… The scene culminates with the NavBot steering the ship into the event horizon of a wormhole and beginning to kill the entire crew.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to see what happens next because Murderbot’s viewing experience is interrupted, but the Sanctuary Moon scene certainly resonates with some of the worries the Preservation Alliance team has about their SecUnit, with some legitimacy. Towards the end of the episode, Murderbot is once again pondering the possibility of killing these hippies.
First, though, the team discovers that a group called GrayCris is behind the attacks on DeltFall and themselves, and receives a message from a woman who appears to be their leader (Amanda Brugel). She says that there has been a misunderstanding and provides coordinates for a rendezvous, where they can all clear things up and figure out how to get off the planet.
No one trusts this, of course. GrayCris probably just wants the information that PresAux has and will kill them after they get it, but in the meantime, it does seem that they were telling the truth about the habitat being safe, so Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) can get treatment in the medical bay.
He refuses painkillers, presumably because of the Corporation-induced drug addiction he mentioned in last week’s cold open, but since Gurathin is an augmented human, Murderbot lands on the idea of connecting to him in order to disable his nervous system. And no, Murderbot did not see that on Sanctuary Moon (it was on another, worse show).
This works, and Murderbot takes the opportunity to poke around in Gurathin’s mind a bit, but gets lost in the mushy goo of human memory and sentiment. After the procedure is over, though, Gurathin briefly turns the tables to discover that Murderbot calls itself Murderbot, and that it killed 57 miners at one point.
That’s not why it calls itself Murderbot, but it doesn’t have an explanation for the event, which is the same one it was having flashbacks to earlier in the season. Presumably, this occurred before Murderbot was refurbished, and this explains its trouble in remembering what happened. Mostly, I wonder how significant the details will be moving forward, or to what extent the narrative purpose is simply to renew distrust of Murderbot from the PresAux folks.
I do appreciate how quickly Ratthi (Akshay Khanna) embraces the name Murderbot because he wants to be respectful.
In the wake of this confrontation, Murderbot leaves the group to wander around a bit, trying to watch some of its favorite episodes of TV to calm itself. But, it doesn’t work. The story that it’s implicated in with PresAux has taken over its mind to too great an extent.
It could abandon the group, but it would be stuck on this planet at that point. Moreover, Murderbot seems to feel somewhat beholden to these people, even if it doesn’t like that. Though at the same time, it seems to be considering the possibility of sacrificing them to GrayCris in order to get itself off the planet.
Murderbot returns to the habitat and startles everyone by immediately announcing that it has a plan. What is that plan? We’ll have to wait until next week to find out.
See you then.
