Murderbot: Eye Contact

"What's it like to be you?"

Much of this episode was Murderbot versus Gurathin in an extended conversation, a confrontation between two beings at different levels of the human scale. The stakes of that conversation, as in Murderbot possibly getting put down, were not small.

Gurathin told Murderbot that Preservation Alliance doesn't have SecUnits. They think constructs, AIs, are people. But even so, it was so difficult throughout to figure out where Gurathin was coming from. Yes, checking out a possibly defective security unit would be valid and important, but Gurathin seemed to be sincerely interested in what was going on with Murderbot as a person, so to speak. Like Mensah, Gurathin was picking up on the truth, that something major was going on with their SecUnit.

We already knew that Murderbot hated eye contact and watched everything through the security feed in its brain. Murderbot called it "much less creepy that way" when actually, it was the opposite. I particularly liked Alexander Skarsgård’s performance when ordered to maintain eye contact, doing exactly as it was ordered but with its body in an awkward position, as if it was literally painful to look directly at Gurathin.

While Gurathin was talking pointedly about comfort units, I thought at first he was going to make a pass. Although it wouldn’t be a pass, actually, since if Murderbot was a normal SecUnit, it would have to follow any orders given to it by its owners. Again, I liked Skarsgård's performance, since it was all about the microexpressions.

So, did Murderbot win this confrontation or did it just get postponed by Mensah in danger? Or was it letting Gurathin see the unfolding threesome of Pin-Lee, Arada and Ratthi in the security feed, thinking that sex would make Gurathin uncomfortable because it also made Murderbot uncomfortable? Murderbot was right. "He wouldn't be probing around my feed again anytime soon."

I particularly liked the start of their conversation. Gurathin turned his cheap plastic chair to face Murderbot, possibly as a dramatic gesture, and it didn't swivel; it scraped awkwardly and noisily across the floor. Objects not working properly. Got it.

Meanwhile, Mensah decided that the team would investigate what was going on with the maps, and had another panic attack out alone on the sand before another sandworm arrived. As Murderbot and Gurathin were both advising her strongly to go back to the hopper, their drone blew up and there was a big circle of something. Dead somethings? Fossils? Honestly, I still haven’t picked up on what the team of scientists are actually doing on this planet in the first place.

There was some intriguing discussion about aliens. It sounds like there aren't any in this 'verse except for dead ones. Pin-Lee, their lawyer, said that if there were alien artifacts, they would have to stop the survey. Is that why the Company altered the maps?

Bharadwaj pointed out that while the Company is untrustworthy, Murderbot did save her life. It's obvious that if Murderbot wanted these people dead, it would be easy for it to do. And we again got flashbacks to that seven second memory of Murderbot killing people.

Mensah then decided to contact DeltFall Survey on the other side of the planet to see what was going on with them. And surprise, over there they have a bunch of dead scientists and a destroyed SecUnit, no one to answer their call. I guess that's where we're going in episode three.

Just one more thing. The threesome signed a written contract before having sex. Arada was totally thrilled with it, while Ratthi seemed to be a lot more interested in Pin-Lee, and Pin-Lee was only doing it to make Arada happy. This is a possible personal conflict involving half the team just waiting to happen. Not good.

Bits:

— The first scene with the team in the hopper talking secretly about Murderbot felt like a deliberate homage to 2001, A Space Odyssey. I kept expecting a reveal that Murderbot was hearing everything they were saying, like HAL did. But no.

— Bharadwaj and Mensah had a bit of an argument about their degrees in, respectively, geochemistry and terraforming.

— There was a lot of Alexander Skarsgård naked in the diagnostic unit or whatever, full frontal without the full. Again, I couldn’t stop thinking Ken doll.

— The bots in the entertainment feeds have faces. Why didn't Gurathin think Murderbot had a face?

— The written language they're using looks a bit like Hebrew.

Quotes:

Mensah: "It seems like it's going through something."
Gurathin: "SecUnits don’t go through things. They kill and they maim things. And then when they malfunction, they get melted down for material, which is the first thing that’s gonna happen to SecUnit when we get back to Port FreeCommerce."

(And how often does this happen? Is it that common?)

Bharadwaj: (obviously stoned) "Are you having a secret meeting? I love a secret meeting!"
Arada: "You look so much better!"
Bharadwaj: "I'm feeling so much better. Our med bay is amazing. And the stimulants are quite effective, too!"

Murderbot: "Hey, just leave your SecUnit behind and go check out some mapping anomalies. Even though one of you just got chewed on by a giant tooth monster."

Gurathin: "I noticed you have an issue with eye contact. What a strange expression. 'Eye contact.' Like our eyes are stalks coming out of our heads and touching other people's eyestalks."
Murderbot: (to itself) "Okay, weirdo."
Yeah, really. This makes Gurathin seem more of an artificial construct than Murderbot.

Love this photo.

I'm still not quite connecting to this show. Two out of four eyestalks?

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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