‘Murderbot’ Episode 7 recap: “Complementary Species”

“It’s no secret that a liar won’t believe in anyone else,” Bono sang on U2’s “The Fly.” It’s not the most famous line in the band’s catalog, but it is, if not my favorite, then the one I think about most often. (More often than “a mole, diggin’ in a hole” from “Elevation,” that’s for sure.) It certainly applies to Gurathin, the “augmented human” who’s been our guy Murderbot’s biggest hater. 

In the flashback that opens this week’s episode, Gurathin reveals during a team-building exercise that he was once a spy for the Corporate Rim, who dosed him with addictive drugs only they could provide to keep him compliant. Then he met Dr. Mensah while on a mission targeting her, and she took him in and changed his life. His admiration of her optimism about other people is what brought him along on this mission despite the risks.

Flash forward to the present, and Gurathin is not alone in his skepticism about Murderbot. Everyone is shocked by the way it instinctively blew enemy operative Leebeebee’s head off in front of them; Pin-Lee has fully joined Gurathin’s side and wants to ditch the robot entirely. Gurathin’s doubts about Murderbot aren’t entirely security-related, mind you. He has feelings for Mensah — and so, projecting, he’s come to believe she has feelings for Murderbot. (I think she cares about the robot, but not in that way. Guess we’ll find out!) 

Mensah, Arada, and Ratthi, however, are Team Murderbot, appreciative of its help and hoping it’ll stick around rather than ditch them. After all, as Mensah points out, a sentient construct that’s hacked its own software to free itself from years of human abuse would probably want to stay as far away from humans as possible. The fact that it’s stayed by the team’s side, defending them, is the biggest point in its favor. (Bharadwaj seems too shaken by recent events to weigh in much.)

The conversation hasn’t even concluded when it proves its usefulness one more time. One of those giant two-ended centipede creatures surfaces, and he gets the team back in the hopper just in time. But the creature is after more than a meal. It’s come to the warm surface of the hopper to mate with a member of its species from the opposite sex, whatever that means in the case of a giant centipede and some big tentacled monstrosity. Anyway, if you’ve ever wanted to watch kaiju fuck — and I know you sickos are out there — here’s your chance.

Once the hopper stops rockin’, the team steps outside to discover egg sacs hanging from the vehicle’s exterior. While they’re debating what to do about that, Murderbot finds out the hard way that advanced, black-armored SecUnits like the one he battled a few episodes ago can jam its threat assessment module and attack it without warning. Murderbot and the team prove unable to defeat the interloper — but the bad bot made the big mistake of blasting some of the creatures’ eggs during the course of the battle. The centipede returns and bites the bot’s head off before dashing away with the surviving eggs. 

No sooner does this crisis pass than another one ensues: Gurathin collapses, weakened by a fever caused by his infected wound. The team has to get him back to their habitat, but as Murderbot reminds them, they left the habitat because it’s likely swarming with enemies, including who knows how many of those advanced SecUnits. Now Murderbot has a genuine choice: It can go along and try to protect them, even though it knows this is likely futile, or it can stay behind and leave them to their fate. This wouldn’t be much of a show if it winds up going with Option B.

From start to finish, this episode’s entire “creature/other creature/monster sex/gross eggs/evil robot/monster’s revenge” sequence is a perfectly executed daisy chain of escalating sci-fi action and gross-out splatstick humor. Rampaging robots, Lovecraftian beasts, huge gooey 1980s horror movie style slime-dripping monster eggs — this thing has it all. It serves as a bombastic bookend to the subdued first scene, which relies not on special effects or spectacular gore but the performance of David Dastmalchian as Gurathin, whose combination of shame, gratitude, and awkwardness about his checkered past and the way Mensah rescued him from it is riveting to watch. 

This is a really fun show, man!

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.