Reasons to Love: Murderbot Season One

It's no surprise that I love this show. You saw me being completely rational about the series being made earlier. But now that I've allegedly settled down and viewed it a couple of times [my current embuggerance and technical difficulties are inhibiting my viewing pleasure at the moment] I have some more rational reasons to love the show.

First up - I do not have the technical knowhow to do the fancy vowel in Alexander Skarsgard's name. Just imagine that it's spelled properly with the little halo thing over that second A in his surname. Thankyou.

Secondly - here there be spoilers. Go watch it before you read any further. You're welcome.

This show hits a lot of my love buttons. Decently-done SciFi, realistic characters, unreliable narrator, S-tier sass, anticapitalist sentiment, autism-coding OFF THE CHARTS, decent fucking queer representation, diverse colouring and body types (YES!), and a whole lot of setup subversion that had me outright cackling.

Alexander Skarsgard is our titular character and narrator. Just like Murderbot is the prime point of view in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries. He does a bloody brilliant job at portraying an understandably jaded and embittered SecUnit who has seen far too much of the ugly side of Humanity. Murderbot's been through some shit and is going through a lot of things when it's rented out to the PresAux crew. There has to be a lot of effort behind keeping the face relatively lax and only letting the eyes show what's going on emotionally. You can feel the pain when Gurathin orders Murderbot to establish and maintain eye contact and it is BEAUTIFUL.

And by 'beautiful', I mean 'beautiful' in the twisted Writer-Life sense where I was yelling at the screen about it during the first watch and I still want to kick Gurathin about it even at the third viewing of that scene. Mr Skarsgard, you made me feel things about images on a screen and that makes you a brilliant actor.

What's fun about that whole scene, too, is that Gurathin is also having issues with eye contact, so his brilliant plan to torment the SecUnit is backfiring by tormenting himself in the process. Autism-coding well done in my opinion.

I also can't help feeling that the Sanctuary Moon Hallucination Scene had to be hilariously confusing from Mensah's point of view. The SecUnit's damaged and babbling, then it stands up with this beatific expression on its face [the first time she's seen it smile], calls her 'Captain', talks to "Officer Sklanch" and is using terms that she's never heard of. It's emoting, so there has to be something wrong with it.

[I personally love the fancomic where MB recalls everything it said and did under the influence of the override chip and has every reason to shoot itself in the core processor. The AO3 works page in a speech bubble gets me every time]

Now. I did say that this was decently-done SciFi. The planetary surface is not just a quarry somewhere within five miles of the studio. They've evidently filmed at a few parks and perhaps someone's zeerusted mansion estate. [Say what you like about the 50's and 60's, but their imagined futures had some aesthetic going on] If I have one critique, it's that the larger critters seem to only exist for plot reasons. We don't see any evidence of the bird life until it's plot relevant to have something fuck up the drone. We don't see gender dimorphism in the burrowing critters until it's plot relevant to have a Checkov's Gun to save Murderbot from a Battlebot.

Personally, I'd like to see Trey The Explainer take on the biology of that planet. I have some thoughts, but I won't get into it unless someone asks me.

We have characters who feel 'real', they have unspoken motivations and reasons for doing what they do. They act according to their interpretation of things. They don't just go and do stuff because it's plot relevant. They can be incompetent in areas they're unfamiliar with. They're allowed to be awkward or messy.

A clear example is Ratthi. A man who has coasted through most of his life on charm alone. Sure, he's competent in his science field, but -damnit- he's also as dumb as a sack of bricks. I've seen him infodump about fungi, but also almost run into the jaws of death for field equipment. This is also the man that ignored the very brief instructions on how to handle the weapons because he wanted to impress someone. If I may cross the streams a little bit, he is the embodiment of Ivan Vorpatril from the Vorkosiverse. Just clever enough to get himself into some very dumb trouble.

This is a series that has fucking destroyed the idea that people have to be white and skinny to be in science fiction, and I applaud it. And the queer rep is ideal. Pin Lee is one of them Theys, and they form a throuple with their wife, Arada, and Ratthi during the arc of the show. It even has something that could pass as an amicable breakup [though Ratthi introduces some marital friction between Pin Lee and Arada that may be resolved next season].

There's complicated and messy relationship stuff running through the entire season, and it's real. And it gives Murderbot a chance to narrate how it hates all that messy Human stuff.

It's about being Human. It's about not wanting to be Human. It's about self-discovery. It's about how people treat other beings they may or may not view as people. It's about choosing kindness. It's about greed. It's about mercy. It's about being clumsy and making mistakes, and the inevitability of Murphy's Law. And it's in space.

And it's worth your time.