In our third episode, Murderbot struggles with both annoying humans and violent SecUnits. The pesky human emotions bother Murderbot more than the violent SecUnits, because it’s easier to punch something than talk about feelings. So say we all.
Murderbot’s fixation on trashy sci-fi soap operas is one of my favorite in-jokes in the books. In the Murderbot books, the humans act more or less like normal people, which makes the contrast with the soap operas comical.
But in this TV adaptation, the humans are a bit soapier than they are in the books, easily distracted with human foibles (throuples, ritualized gift-giving, privacy concerns) despite the rather heavy stakes of what’s happening. They don’t really seem to realize that they’re on a hostile planet with Dune worms and shoddy equipment and a lot of political stuff at stake. Or, I guess they do worry, but they do so in an "I subsume my worry into my tantric meditative practice" way.
The Preservation Alliance (of which PresAux is a member), for instance, is struggling in the face of a potential corporate takeover. Not a hostile takeover, though, since Mensah explains that some of the non-corporate planets want to join the Corporation. In other words, the failure of Mensah’s team has stakes beyond just our characters and the rest of the PresAux planet.
That’s all important, obviously. But the method of exposition has me a bit confused. Mensah is the team leader. Why is she talking about her feelings with Murderbot? She’s already figured out that Murderbot doesn’t like feelings, so it’s not an attempt to create a sense of camaraderie. Instead, she’s forcing a subordinate to do something that makes them uncomfortable because she’s got things on her mind.
It’s an understandable mistake, and I'm not trying to demand perfection of a fictional character, but Mensah of the books used her power more wisely. Reading the books, I admired Mensah's compassionate leadership. Although I understand that the showrunners likely wanted her to demonstrate vulnerability, the result doesn't seem to communicate "She's a strong, complicated leader" but rather "She seems great until you realize she's an emotional vampire who can't stop talking about her feelings to people who are forced to listen."
Murderbot, on the other hand, could use with a bit more talking. Everyone noticed the long pause before it confirmed that it wouldn’t—or wasn’t programmed to—cause harm to its humans. But its internal monologue included an addendum: that it “can’t speak to the dark recesses of my programming.” Despite having hacked its own governor module, Murderbot is worried that it may have a dark past…which, maybe, will lead to an even darker future, causing something like the destruction at DeltFall?
Whatever happened to the SecUnits at the DeltFall habitat was worrying: the last shot showed that the rogue SecUnit, killer of bots and humans, had its governor module overridden. Did it go rogue or was it forced into violence? Was the DarkSecUnit a CrimeBossSerialKiller? We won’t find out for another week, since these short little episodes don’t leave room for much plot.
I don’t understand why the episodes are under 30 minutes. The show is not, in my opinion, funny enough to rate as a comedy: there’s too much at stake for a few glib one-liners to bump it into the sitcom category; there’s also too much plot for it to have a basic episode structure typical of a 23-30 minute comic TV show. This episode was, therefore, all setup, no payoff. Why not just make a more fulfilling 60-minute episode?
Harsh But Fair:
• Ratthi asking Murderbot about whether it was made out of vat-grown human tissues was sort of hilarious and sort of cruel. Some people seem to think that some bodies require explanation. Those folks are usually well intentioned. And misguided.
• Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Gurathin smelled and hugged Mensah’s pillow. That’s all I’ll say about that.
• I want to call Murderbot’s shows “sci-fi soap operas,” but are they sci-fi if the show takes place in a sci-fi world? Are they just hyperemotional realism, like Grey’s Anatomy?
• What, exactly, was the gift? Was one of those objects a…branch? Like, a tree branch?
Two out of four KillJoyBloodLustTechRiot video games, although I admit that if I were binging the season all at once, the short episode length wouldn’t bother me at all.
Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)
Yes, yes, yes. Honestly, the half-hour format is driving me nuts. It doesn't work with the show. Or what I assumed the show had to be from my knowledge of the source material. We're just getting into the story and oops, it's over. It doesn't feel quite like it has started yet.
ReplyDeleteI want to call those shows "space operas." It's interesting how they all seem to revolve around bot plots.