What’s lurking in the back of our heads, invisible, deadly, and just out of reach? What untreated time bombs are slowly counting down, right at the edge of perception, waiting to take from us everything we hold dear? It’s a question Murderbot takes quite literally this week, as the show offers up both its most fun and most disturbing installment to date—while also giving Alexander Skarsgård ample opportunities to demonstrate what a range of utterly shameless goofball energy he can bring to this starring role.
Before that, though, the cold open of “Escape Velocity Protocol” takes the form of an extended flashback, showing the unsurprisingly crappy conditions in which SecUnits get made: miserable and overworked employees, dickhead taskmasters, and shoddy workmanship all around. The sequence is mostly there to provide some bleak laughs; hand-wave a few questions (“Why do different SecUnits look different?” is a big one); and also, maybe, remind the audience that, as irritating as the Preservation Alliance folk can be, the Corporation Rim is still much, much worse. (It’s also a chance to see Skarsgård’s severed head floating in a jar, somehow not the wildest transformation he’s going to undergo this episode.)
After the credits, we get back to business, picking up right where “Risk Assessment” put us down: The mysterious SecUnit who killed everybody on DeltFall has gotten the drop on Murderbot, and our hero is in decidedly rough shape. With no ability to move, and barely any capacity to think, MB’s damaged brain is unable to do much more than recycle old TV-credits sequences while it’s steadily dragged toward its doom. (I can relate; there’s a decent chance, when my time comes, that the opening theme of Community will sing my expiring synapses to their final rest.) Things go from “I’m going to die” bad to “Oh fuck, I’m going to kill all my humans, then die” worse, though, when the attacker brings out a Combat Override Module (just like the one found in DeltFall’s SecUnit) and prepares to jam it into Murderbot’s neck.
Meanwhile, back outside the carnage, Noma Dumezweni gets busy reminding us that this show does have at least a few cast members who can keep pace with Skarsgård, as Mensah stands paralyzed by her desire to (prudently) flee the situation at DeltFall and her compulsion to go save a member of her team. A confrontation with Sabrina Wu’s Pin-Lee very nearly gives one of the show’s younger cast members a chance to come off as anything other than a different flavor of petulant child, but no such luck: The script gives Wu little room to work, and Dumezweni pretty easily blows them out of the water with her blend of panic and steel, relegating both the character and actor back to the kids’ table.
Back in DeltFall, Skarsgård gets to have some fun, briefly confusing Murderbot’s attacker by belting out the unsurprisingly cheesy theme song to The Rise And Fall Of Sanctuary Moon. The ensuing fight scene is fast-moving and kinetic and ends on a seemingly triumphant note, as Mensah appears at the last minute to ram a giant drill through the attacker’s heart. The only issue: The Override Module is not only already in place, but it’s successfully cloaked itself from Murderbot’s systems. Which means that neither Mensah nor MB know that a compulsion to kill all the PresAux humans is steadily being implanted in our (mostly) heroic SecUnit’s brain.
The sequence that follows is rich in subtext, horror, and, surprisingly, humor, as MB’s brain desperately tries to signal to itself that something is terribly wrong—most notably by dumping Skarsgård and Dumezweni’s characters into the Sanctuary Moon set, catching screamed orders from a deliberately over-the-top Jack McBrayer. It’s easily the most fun thing Murderbot has done since it started, and it shows a level of energy and inventiveness that I wasn’t sure this show had in it. Skarsgård is especially willing to come off as a goober here in the best way, half starstruck and half simply concussed, as Murderbot loses track of reality.
At the same time, the situation itself is so stomach-churning that the episode generates mounting horror with every step. (It is, in some ways, a tension-cutting relief when the attacker is revealed to still be alive and pursuing as an external threat, even as MB’s distracted brain notes that it isn’t actually trying to kill the PresAux crew—because it’s waiting for Murderbot to do it for it, once the override is complete.) Skarsgård ably conveys Murderbot’s misery at having a deadly thought it can’t look directly at kicking around in its head; and Mensah’s inability to recognize the danger her empathy has put her in creates loads of effective dramatic irony. Not even the goofy antics of the Baby Crew—Rathi goes running off with a gun he doesn’t know how to use, Pin-Lee and Arada end up killing the attacker by dropping the hopper on it…it’s all kind of interminable—can completely detract from the growing tension.
Which culminates in pretty much the only way it could have: Murderbot, its threat modules pinging the PresAux team as threats that need to be eliminated, wrests back just enough control of its system to shoot itself in the stomach. The fact that we’re four out of ten episodes into a TV show called Murderbot makes it clear that this won’t be a permanent sacrifice, of course. But in the moment, it lands: It’s the only logical choice Murderbot can see after being penned in by thoughts and impulses outside its control. And it’s a strong, affecting end to the show’s most confident episode to date.
Stray observations
- • The satellite jamming over DeltFall means no checking in back at the hab unit this episode (so no David Dastmalchian or Tamara Podemski).
- • There’s an implication that the various conversational topics and glitches happening at the SecUnit factory contributed to Murderbot’s myriad quirks and flaws. Or, as it puts it: “You wouldn’t want to fuck up and produce a chronically anxious, depressed Murderbot.”
- • I always want to know what happens to props like the Murderbot head in the jar when production is done. I hope Skarsgård gets to keep it.
- • Re-watching the scene where Pin-Lee confronts Mensah, I really can’t fault Wu: They’re clearly being asked to play this highly accomplished space lawyer as a feckless twentysomething for reasons that do not track for me. (Dumezweni is fantastic, though.)
- • Small but important detail: Mensah is apparently the leader, not just of the expedition but the whole Preservation Alliance, which does help explain part of why the other characters are so nervous around her.
- • Murderbot begins calling Mensah “Captain” as its fantasies and reality begin to blend. It’s creepy/sweet.
- • The scene where Arada, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee argue about whether the requirement that sent Mensah on the mission is a “cool rule” really underlines the flaws with how these characters are being written: They’re stock comedy types that the episode keeps asking us to take seriously.
- • That said, Ratthi knocking himself out with the recoil from the gun is a pretty funny beat.
- • I have complained about the Sanctuary Moon bits being over the top, but it works a lot better when you have Skarsgård (and that wig!) standing in the middle of them, goggling at everything.
- • “It would look like they were killed by a vicious, rogue SecUnit. And I had no choice in the matter. Well, fuck that.”
