#murderbot 1x07

Man, they're REALLY driving home the parallels between secunits and leebeebee, and not even trying to be subtle about it.

The moment of reckoning, where they were getting ready to acknowledge and process what happened with leebeebee was interrupted by worm attack (oh Arada you big beautiful nerd I love you so much), and we never got that tension resolved. Mensah is trying but the team is so rattled and Gurathin you're NOT HELPING. (Sidenote I think it's so interesting how deadset he is on secunit being the biggest threat to them! Even after it saved his life. Even after all the evidence. He's still so paranoid and jealous that he cannot see or flatly refuses to see that Murderbot is everyone's best and maybe only chance of survival.)

Anyways, then we get another secunit attack, and very clearly they're outgunned. (Great intro to that scene btw. "That's when I learned that more advanced secunits can jam my threat assessment" - BOOM attack! Nicely done.) The only reason they win is because the secunit destroys the worm eggs and it comes back and RIPS ITS HEAD OFF - see what I mean? PARALLELS. NOT SUBTLE.

And of course, what do they do? They cheer! They're jubilant. And we get this lingering shot of the other secunit's broken faceplate, the rictus of pain and fear on its dead face. And murderbot stays and looks at it for a while.

It too was a person. And for all the PresAux team (minus Gurathin) claim to see Secunit as a person, they don't yet. Not really. Mensah is getting there. But the rest of them are still like "awwh we adopted this sweet kicked puppy from the dumpster WAIT SHIT THE DOG ATTACKED SOMEONE OH NO"

(BOOK SPOILERS FOR TV ONLY PEOPLE UNDER THE CUT!!!)

- Okay, Gurathin officially has the coolest backstory I can imagine for his character. Being a former corporate spy has so many implications for who he is and what he's capable of. It explains why he's been suspicious this whole time (apparently from the moment they acquired a SecUnit) that Murderbot could be working with the Company to hurt the Preservation team. It also explains why he was suspicious of LeeBeeBee from the beginning and saw through all her attempts to get him and the others to reveal information.

- Interestingly, the rest of PresAux knows this about him, but Murderbot doesn't, which would seem to fit with the books, as I'm fairly certain Murderbot would've mentioned it somewhere if it knew Gurathin was a former corporate spy. (We could also discuss in-world reasons why Murderbot might not mention it, but I'll leave that for fanfic writers to explore.)

- Gurathin's relationship to Mensah also makes a lot more sense from his backstory. He was desperate, broken, and essentially enslaved, with no one to turn to, and she forgave him and helped him get asylum in Preservation Alliance, which had to be an involved and risky process. She was his only friend for a while, and knowing Mensah, she would've stuck with him and done whatever she could to support him through all the ups and downs (including withdrawal from his corporation's proprietary drugs).

It makes sense that Gurathin would see Mensah as a rare stabilizing force in his life. She's someone he's terrified of losing, to the point that he'd go on a survey with her in the Corporation Rim rather than let her out of sight into the dangers he narrowly escaped. Even if it means putting himself in a situation likely to trigger reminders of his past trauma and addiction and tempt him to relapse. He's fallen in love with Mensah, but his feelings are largely because of who she was to him at the lowest point in his life, and because he's become emotionally dependent on her during his addiction and trauma recovery and his integration into a foreign culture in adulthood. His going into Mensah's room to cry over her pillow, an action Murderbot misinterpreted and classified as creepy and depressing, seems to indicate rather that Gurathin doesn't think he can continue to function if he loses her.

- Okay, now that we've discussed the big reveal, I want to note that this episode made me fall even more in love with all of PreservationAux and Murderbot. After several episodes of the team being separated into groups, we get to see them all working together during an emergency. And PresAux works together really well as a team—as long as they're not being shot at by hostile SecUnits. PresAux and Murderbot... still not quite working as a team yet, but they're making an attempt.

Adding a readmore because this is quickly becoming a long post:

A few preliminary thoughts:

The cold-open Gurathin backstory infodump was pretty clunky even by the standards of this show, but I do like the "we can talk about this" as refrain for incorporating emotional complexities & conflicts into the group's understanding of itself. In the books, SecUnit remarks on the team being without drama and conflict--at least, in terms of its frame of reference--but no group of humans is free of conflict and complex emotional dynamics. I like that they're showing that the PresAux team, and by extension Preservation society, have specific cultural practices for managing these things, instead of just being magic Emotional Intelligence Elves. Subpoint, the call-forward to Mensah admitting to SecUnit that they can be naive helps to underscore that these cultural practices work. Mensah seems surprised to hear Gurathin say that she's naive, but by the time of the conversation with SecUnit, she's incorporated it into her understanding of the group's emotional dynamics.

Murderbot, I feel like the fact that you have actually detected an incoming hopper is a key detail that you could maybe share, in order to get across the urgency of the situation.

Mensah, "stay alive" is a goal, not a plan.

I do not get what the scene of the hostile fauna mating was for. It wasn't terrible, and in a 26-episode season it's the kind of thing I'd love to see for worldbuilding and characterization, but I'm not quite grasping why that was important enough to add to the story when they're dealing with a runtime of (minus previouslys and credits) not much over 3 hours. Anybody have insight into something I'm missing about it?

Sidebar, but I dig how modular the crew uniforms are. I noticed the zip-off shorts early on, but I only just realized that the vest, the jacket, and the coat are all actually the same garment.

The first-aid kit that they use to cut out a chunk of SecUnit's spine doesn't include anything for treating infection and reducing fever? Really?

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Here Be Spoilers, scroll at thine own peril!

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The cold open, wow. Bharadwaj's Bitter reveal of unreciprocated feelings for Pin-Lee created a suspense that Gurathin would do the same after his heart-wrenching Sweet for Mensah. You could see him thinking it. 

Bharadwaj spending all her evacuation time trying to save their data, not willing to step away from the terminal until she hears Gurathin cry out in pain & immediately goes to help him. Love.

MB blaming its dodgy risk assessment module for not alerting it that LeeBeeBee was a hostile, paired with the later reveal that top of the line sec units could jam its threat assessment module. Did LeeBeeBee jam its risk assessment? MB, it wasn't your fault!

When MB suggests electrifying the hull to get bugbug off, Pin-Lee initially says OK, but when they see that Arada is saying nonono, they switch to "or no, no" (always wanting their wife to see they're backing her judgement).

We need a new Live Slug Reaction to bugbug & its mate on top of the hopper.

I'm not so sure Pres Aux were celebrating the death of Evil Sec Unit, I think Arada was just geeking out at bugbug coming to rescue its eggs. 

Can't find an actor credit for Evil Sec Unit on imdb, maybe they're not spoiling the episode yet

Murderbot & Gurathin – part 23 / 38

+ live murderbot reaction:

and of course sanctuary moon: