Murderbot Season 1 is one I had two episodes pending and last night binge both so I wanted to share how much I like it although at first like the first two episodes you dont know exactly what to expect, specially when you havent read the books, because most of the main character and humor side comes from inner monologue, all those sarcastic thoughts running through Murderbots head while dealing with humans and their bullshit, but honestly they pulled it off way better than I expected, even though it has some issues here and there that bug me, I mean no series is 110% perfect but this one I really enjoy. Alexander Skarsgard plays the this robot that is suppose to keep safe humans during a research expedition and he does a solid job bringing that dead man flat energy to life, you can see how much Murderbot just wants everyone to leave him alone, so he can binge tv shows in peace, which I personally so damn relatable sometimes that I understand the bot, like I get it sometimes you just want people to shut up and let you watch your series without all the small talk and leave you alone for 1 hour. The season starts hard with disaster after disaster where each situation gets wrapped up without destroying everything, there is conflict sure but you know the main crew is going to make it through and honestly that works for this kind of thing, because you are not here for some dark twisted ending where everyone dies, you are here to hang out with a robot who hacked their own programming just to watch soap operas and avoid conversations, which is the most human thing ever when you think about it realy. What I really dig about this adaptation is how they handle the bots personal angle almost like he is human and at the same time faking he is a bot although I never felt like they were going over the top with but it was very sarcastic most of the time. Murderbot just want to be treated LIKE a person although doesnt mean he wants to feel like a human, he just want to have some damn autonomy, which feels way more interesting than the usual AI wants to be human crap we see everywhere else, the friendship between Murderbot and the humans around grows naturally too and it is not forced by programming or some code bullshit, these people actually earn Murderbots trust over time and you can feel that weight as the season goes on, especially with Mensah who becomes Murderbots favorite human, lol favorite human like he was a dog or something but yeah he doesnt want to be human so its expected.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18177528/
- Platform: AppleTV+
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The thing builds up with Murderbot basically working as a bodyguard at this mining facility, where its been slowly hacking its governor module for months, this module is basically what keeps robots like him from harming humans and forces them to obey orders no matter what, so getting rid of it is a huge deal but also super dangerous for everyone around the bot, although very very dangerous for him as he will have to cover up for his strange human like reactions and behavior that he usually slip with. Once Murderbot finally breaks free from that control, it doesnt go on some rampage or try to escape the planet, it just keeps doing its job because running away would get it caught and melted down for parts, which makes total sense when you think about the corporate world this show builds up, everything is about money and contracts, and nobody gives a shit about the bots themselves unless they malfunction or kill someone. Murderbot gets asigned to the Preservation Alliance team, this group of researchers who are basically hippies from outside the Corporation Rim and they treat bots like actual people instead of property, which freaks Murderbot out at first, because its not used to that kind of respect from humans at all, well except for one of them called Gurathin, so its just obvious that the rest of humans just see bots as walking weapons that ocasionally need charging and updating. The team includes Mensah whos the leader and a terraforming expert, Arada the biologist, Pin Lee the lawyer, Ratthi whos into wormhole travel theory, Gurathin the augmented human who can interface with data streams directly, and Professor Bharadwaj the geochemist, at the start of the season Arada and Pin Lee are married and then Ratthi joins their relationship later when he signs a contract to become part of their trio, which Murderbot finds disturbing as hell but also uses it to mess with Gurathin later, when he tries to hack into Murderbots mind during a tense moment between them since he has this enhancements that are basically robot parts added to him. Things get intense real quick when this giant centipede creature attacks during one of the mining operations and Murderbot has to save Arada and Bharadwaj from getting eaten by this thing, the special effects on these creatures are actualy pretty dam good for a TV show and they dont look cheap at all so that was cool, no green screen like crap CGI. After the attack Murderbot does something weird, it takes off its face shield and shows Arada its face to calm her down, then it tries to do small talk using techniques it learned from watching Sanctuary Moon, which is this cheesy soap opera about a ship crew and a romance between a captain and a navigation bot, this moment is huge because it makes Gurathin suspicious as hell and he thinks Murderbot is malfunctioning, because bot units are not supposed to act like that at all or show emotions to humans. Its that moment that start to get things complicated for Murderbot and its when things get interesting although its because of all those inner conversations that Im sure most of use are not use to that at first the show feels weird but they make it work.
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The whole Sanctuary Moon thing is honestly one of the best parts of the show, Murderbot has downloaded thousands of hours of this space opera because yeah he pirates this shows too and uses it as a coping mechanism, whenever things get stressful or humans start talking to it too much, its so stupidly relatable that I found myself loving these moments, even when they felt a bit repetitive after a while, the show uses clips from Sanctuary Moon to show whats going on in Murderbots head, when its processing trauma or trying to figure out how to deal with human emotions, without actually having to talk about feelings with anyone on the team so you can image how hard and strange must be to keep your mouth shut specially when you are starting to learn and like the human emotions, its all so contradictory. The season really starts to heat up when they try to contact the Delta research team on the other side of the planet and get no response at all, so Mensah decides they need to go check it out, even though Murderbot thinks its a terrible idea and warns them multiple times that its dangerous to just fly over there, without knowing what happened to the entire team first. When they finaly get to the Delta habitat, they find everyone dead, with all the humans slaughtered, and the bot units destroyed in different ways too, turns out someone hacked them and made them kill their own teams, which is exactly what Murderbot was afraid of happening to itself this whole time, those flashbacks it keeps having of the Ganaka Pit massacre where malware caused all the SecUnits to go rogue and kill 57 people including ComfortUnits who tried to stop it start making more sense now and you realize Murderbot might have been used as a weapon before it hacked itself free from company control years ago. A rogue SEC unit ambushes Murderbot and beats the absolute shit out of it in this brutal fight, dumps it on a work table and installs a combat override module, that would force Murderbot to kill the Preservation team and make it look like it went rogue on its own, without any outside interference from GrayCris or anyone else, but Murderbot fights back just long enough for Mensah to save it and they escape together barely alive, and covered in synthetic blood and oil leaking everywhere. Surprisingly Murderbot realizes the override is already taking effect and in a few seconds it will lose control completely and murder everyone on the team without even knowing what its doing, so it tells Mensah to kill it right there, but she refuses because she actually cares about this damn robot, so Murderbot grabs her gun and shoots itself in the stomach to protect the humans, this temporary at least would shut him down, stop the attack override from taking over and let the humans diagnose him, which is one of the most emotional moments of the entire season and Alexander Skarsgard plays it perfectly, without going over the top with the drama or making it feel fake and forced.
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After Murderbot shoots itself, the team has to remove the combat override module before it fully takes control of its systems, Bharadwaj does the surgery while Gurathin digs through Murderbots code and discovers that it hacked its governor module months ago, which means its been free this whole time and could have killed them whenever it wanted to without any consequences. The Delta survivor Leebeebee turns out to be a spy working for GrayCris, the company that orchestrated the whole massacre on the other team, she pulls a gun on everyone and admits she blew up the emergency beacon that would have called for help from Preservation, and then gets killed which shows how dangerous the situation really was all along, the whole thing proving that yeah Murderbot can be a killer when it needs to be, but only to protect the people it cares about now and not because programming tells it to, but because it chose to and thats the whole difference between being property and being a person with proper character. The final episodes deal with the team trying to escape the planet, while GrayCris sends more SEC units to hunt them down and eliminate any witnesses to what happened at Delta, Murderbot comes up with a plan straight out of Sanctuary Moon, where it pretends to betray the team to get close to the enemy, then launches the emergency beacon from the GrayCris camp itself, and blows everything up in a massive explosion that takes out most of their forces, Mensah flies in to save Murderbot at the last second and they barely survive the blast together.
The series at some point look like it was going to end in a very frustrating way because after they get rescued and make it back to Corporation Rim territory, the company wipes Murderbots memory completely and installs a new governor module, turning it back into a mindless slave that follows orders without question or thought, but the Preservation team fights back hard and threatens the company with a massive lawsuit, until they agree to return Murderbot to them which shows how much they care. Gurathin does this insane hack where he transfers all of Murderbots memories back into its system, including every single episode of Sanctuary Moon that it had downloaded over the years for comfort, this detail was hilarious, so when Murderbot wakes up and recognizes the team again, its one of those moments that makes you feel joy and happy for all them even for Gurathin who was a dick most of the time. They just look at each other and you can tell everything has changed between them and they are actual friends now. Mensah offers Murderbot a home with them on Preservation but makes it very clear that its a choice not an order, she wants Murderbot to be free to decide its own future, which is all its ever wanted from the very beginning and in the final scene Murderbot leaves anyway, because it needs to figure out its past and deal with those memories of the Ganaka Pit massacre years ago, you can see it hurts Mensah to watch it go but she gets it. Overall this first season is way better than I thought it would be, it a type of series that Im not use to considering most of it is from Murderbot perspective and his internal problems, its like watching Inside Out but playing inside an androids mind. The main character feels real from the start even though its a robot considering how annoyed he gets from other people bullshit and see through them, stuck between worlds and identities, and the production quality is solid, even if some of the costumes looked a bit cheap, especially the SEC unit outfit which looked more like crappy jumpsuits than actual body protection that could stop bullets or alien claws from ripping through. Alexander Skarsgard carries the show and brings so much depth to Murderbot, without making it too human or too robotic, he gets that balance just right most of the time, my only real complaint is they show his face way too early, I would have preffer a bit more mistery but I guess that was to enforce how much he wanted to feel whats been human even though the whole point is that Murderbot hides behind the face shield to avoid human interaction and eye contact with everyone around them which is a huge part of the character, that was one of the first things Gurathin actually pick up, eye contact. The pacing drags in a few episodes especialy in the middle where they spend too much time on the drama stuff between Arada, Pin Lee and Ratthi having relationship problems, I did not really care about their feelings, when there iss a conspiracy happening and people are getting murdered by rogue SEC units all over the planet and nobody knows who is behind it all. 7.5 out of 10 for me sounds fair and solid, if you like sci fi that focuses on characters over non stop action or speed light traveling, and you enjoy that dark humor with a twist of emotions, then I think Murderbot is absolutely worth watching, just make sure you are not waiting for a ton of action or adventures discovering planets but more about a slow dragging series about a robot who just want to watch TV and be left alone.
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