‘Murderbot’ Episode 9 Recap: “All Systems Red”

Well, I think we all learned a valuable lesson about teamwork this week. Murderbot shows that when you put aside your both your differences and your inhibitions and truly work together to solve a problem, you can do anything you put your mind to — even if you’re putting your mind to completely wiping out a group of enemy mercenaries and their advanced killer robots, I mean we’re talking a total massacre here. Inspiring, no?

I’m not trying to litigate the morality of what Murderbot and the Preservation Alliance team pull off in this episode. God knows they do, and will continue to do, a lot of that themselves; when Pin-Lee bashes an enemy guard over the head with a monkeywrench in order to save Ratthi, they immediately rush to the guy’s side to make sure he’s okay. (He’s not.) But given that they had little choice — it was a kill or be killed situation — and that this is bloody sci-fi action comedy, I don’t think we really need to dwell on the ethics of their conduct here.

The mechanics of it, on the other hand, are quite interesting. Murderbot travels alone to the rendezvous with the team sent by GrayCris, a shady mining company in the market for the planet’s lost alien artifacts. He reveals to them that he’s gone rogue by switching off his own governor module, making it impossible for them to hack him in that way. He additionally warns them not to use their advanced SecUnits against him, noting — okay, lying — that he’s already killed two of them “single-handedly.” He even bluffs successfully, holding aloft the monster-severed head of one of the GrayCris SecUnits and claiming it’s the head of Gurathin, the only member of the team who dared to cross him.

After this, the GrayCris crew backs down and seems willing to hear the rogue SecUnit out. Pretending to rat out his own crew, Murderbot tells the GrayCris group that they’re hiding out at their distress beacon’s launchpad trying to sabotage it. His goal is to lure all the GrayCris grunts to the pad so that Gurathin and Pin-Lee can hack their system and launch the beacon’s rocket, killing everyone in the blast. Unfortunately, they insist Murderbot come along for the ride, marking him for death.

So Murderbot uses his, uh, developing skills as a conversationalist to stall. He asks the group where they’re from, how they feel about the planet, quotes a bunch of Sanctuary Moon at them. When the beacon’s ready to launch, he leaps for safety, shouting a catchphrase from his beloved show: “Boldness is all!” 

Unfortunately, boldness is not all. “Having a working drone with which you can communicate with your rogue SecUnit and remote-launch the enemy’s beacon” is also a requirement, and it’s one the team loses when a feathery pterodactyl snaps up their drone in mid-flight. Gurathin is forced to risk his life by sneaking down to the enemy base with Pin-Lee and hacking into their system manually.

The matter becomes all the more urgent after Mensah shows up in the hopper, to execute her own plan: saving Murderbot. She offers to divulge the location of the alien artifacts in exchange for the robot; the GrayCris gang counteroffer by saying they’ll just torture her and keep both the artifact and the robot instead. Keep in mind they think Murderbot has betrayed his team.

At least, that’s what they think until one of them realizes that half his conversation with them has been Sanctuary Moon quote. A violent, chaotic battle ensues, in classic Murderbot fashion. Though it takes the combined efforts of Mensah’s unexpected courage under fire, Murderbot’s skill and ability to think around corners (he overloads one evil SecUnit’s databanks by uploading thousands of hours of TV shows to its computer brain), and in-fighting among the GrayCris team, M&M (that’s what I’m calling this ship jsyk) escape — though it takes Murderbot leaping off a literal cliff with Mensah in his arms to dodge the blast that incinerates what’s left of the GrayCris squad and their bots.

A happy reunion follows, when Gurathin and Pin-Lee, who had know way of knowing if Mensah or Murderbot made it clear of the blast when they were finally able to trigger it, come across our heroic scientist — she turns out to be the Planetary Admin for their society, which I think is equivalent to president or prime minister — and her badly wounded savior. David Dastmalchian once again proves himself the cast’s MVP; watching him take notice of Murderbot’s condition before Pin-Lee does, you realize he now cares much more than he’s let on. 

So we end on a more or less literal cliffhanger, with Murderbot’s system experiencing catastrophic failure following his fall. Am I concerned? Lol no, not in the slightest. Am I still gonna watch the finale? Absolutely. Even if there isn’t much tension involved in the question of whether the title character, played by the show’s only marketable star, dies in the season one finale, there’s still just, y’know, the pleasures of watching Murderbot. Solid jokes, solid action, impressive gore, a clever spin on robotics and actual artificial intelligence, some cutaways to Murderbot’s stories, a monster or two maybe, and off-kilter romantic/sexual tension between just about everyone in the crew — that’s the Murderbot promise, and I see no reason why the finale won’t deliver.

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.