It's Murderbot Friday, and that means a new episode of Apple's comedic sci-fi series is out! We're into the tail end of Murderbot's first season, and it continues to deliver week after week. "Complementary Species" is all about the dynamics between the members of the Preservation Alliance team and Murderbot, all of whom are reckoning with the sudden act of violence at the end of last week's episode.
This episode is the full package, with some really great character drama, a lot of humor, dysfunction, action, and even some unexpected alien worm coitus. Yup, things got pretty weird this week on Murderbot. Beware FULL SPOILERS ahead for "Complementary Species."
Murderbot Episode 7 review: "Complementary Species"
Murderbot's seventh episode kicks off in an unexpected way: with a flashback that takes us to the eve of Preservation Alliance's mission launch, back when they had just purchased Murderbot and gotten survey rights from the Corporation Rim in Port Freecommerce. This scene has a lot of interesting culture-building and backstory for characters like Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) and Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), the latter of whom is apparently a magnet for the affections of her fellow teammates.
But the highlight is Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), who reveals his past as a corporate spy who the Corporation Rim got addicted to substances in order to keep him compliant. Gurathin was contracted to spy on none other than Mensah (Noma Dumezweni). But the order came at a time where he was at his absolute lowest, and rather than go through with it, once he met Mensah and saw how goodhearted she was, he confessed it all to her. She forgave him, he joined PresAux, and the rest is history. It's a powerful scene with some amazing acting from Dastmalchian, Dumezweni, and Podemski. And it also reframes the group's relationship with Gurathin, because we now know that none of them knew about his dark past until right before they set out for the survey planet.
From there we zip back to the present, where Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) is doing its best to tamp down its frustration and herd the shell-shocked PresAux team onto the hopper to get to safety. We still don't find out who Leebeebee's secret employer is in this episode, but Murderbot is certain they're on their way to kill the entire PresAux survey group.
The group dynamics have gotten very interesting by this point in the series. Everyone knows Murderbot has hacked its governor module and has autonomy, which means they have a harder time reckoning with the fact that it blew off Leebeebee's head without a second thought. The Preservation Alliance group is inherently pacifist and struggle with the corpse in their midst, even if Murderbot does throw a colorful rug over it. They all have conflicting opinions about whether they can keep trusting Murderbot, since they would be utterly defenseless if it turned on them and they have no safeguard to make sure it doesn't. At the same time, Mensah pushes back on this logic, because they have no chance at all of surviving without Murderbot's help. Murderbot's own opinion is that it feels highly undervalued by the ungrateful humans who don't even recognize that it just saved their lives.
The characters have been at the heart of the series this entire time, but at this point things have reached such a tense point. There's enough truth in the air that the discussions are franker, the emotions are rawer, and the stakes are higher. It makes for really good television.
Murderbot does eventually manage to get the Preservation Alliance group into hiding in the wilderness, where it hopes they can lie low long enough to avoid dying. Which, admittedly, isn't much of a plan; they have no idea how long they'll stay there, who's after them, or what to do next. There's a key piece of information from the book that's missing here; in All Systems Red, Murderbot leaves drones at the habitat to observe their mysterious pursuers. I'm curious to see how this resolves in the show, bit I'm not too worried about it at the moment. All of the group drama going on in this episode is added for the TV show, since Leebeebee doesn't exist in the book, and it's working really well. I'm inclined to trust in the journey and see how the show navigates what's ahead, because so far it's included pretty much everything from the book at some point or other.
Things go wildly off the rails when Murderbot finally decides to take off its helmet after a heartfelt entreaty from Mensah, only for one of the giant alien worms inhabiting the planet to burst out of the ground and force everyone back to the safety of the hopper. But then another alien kaiju arrives, similar but with a different body shape and colors. It seems they're going to fight it out on top of the hopper...but everyone soon realizes they aren't fighting, they're "making love," as Ratthi absurdly puts it. All the PresAux team can do is watch from inside the ship, with emotions ranging from scientific fascination to disgust. I enjoyed Murderbot's internal monologue about how the alien sex isn't any worse than what humans do in their down time.
When the dust settles, the aliens head back into the forest and leave a bunch of eggs on the hopper's engines. The egg design is appropriately alien and interesting, looking almost like giant frog eggs with little babies swimming around in them. The design on the show remains great and a bit more fun to look at than many other modern sci-fi shows with more dour color palettes.
Just as they're all discussing what to do next, another SecUnit attacks; it turns out the more advanced models can jam Murderbot's sensors, allowing the enemy to get in close before they know it's there. The ensuing fight is more comedic than nerve-racking, as the PresAux scientists try to help with hilarious ineffectiveness, from Ratthi throwing a spear that the SecUnit nearly tosses back to Arada (Tattiawna Jones) trying to tackle the enemy SecUnit only to smack her head against its armor without budging it an inch. But when the enemy SecUnit blasts a bunch of the alien eggs, one of the big worms comes back and chomps its head off, saving the day before taking the remaining eggs to safety.
There isn't any time to celebrate their victory, though. Gurathin collapses due to his gunshot wound from Leebeebee that he took at the end of last week's episode, and Mensah declares that the group is going back to the habitat to get him into a medbay despite Murderbot's protests. The PresAux team looks out for each other, which Murderbot thinks is pretty stupid, since it will put them back in danger. But we'll have to wait till next week to see how that plays out. These short episodes really fly by, always leaving me eager for more.
Murderbot Bullet Points
- The show is doing a great job paralleling Gurathin and Murderbot. Both are worried about the structural integrity during the alien mating scene; Murderbot saw it on its HUD display while Gurathin said it out loud. They're also both the least interested in talking things out. Murderbot and Gurathin dislike each other so much, but are the most similar out of anyone in the group.
- The backstory for Gurathin adds a lot more context for why he's especially distrusting of the Corporation Rim, and seems to be more aware of their underhandedness than the rest of the group.
- This is one of the few episodes of the season so far without any in-world TV episodes of shows like Sanctuary Moon. Guess Murderbot was right that it "should have downloaded more media."
- Massive shoutout to this line from Murderbot's narration, which perfectly encapsulates the delicious contradictions of the character: "It's wrong to think of constructs like me as half bot/half organic, like the bot half should just want to obey orders and do its job, and the organic part should want to protect itself and get the hell out of there. As opposed to the reality, which is that I was one whole, confused entity."
Verdict
"Complementary Species" is an all-around solid episode of Murderbot that hit on all the notes that are making the series such a joy to watch. The tension among the group presents a good opportunity for the show to go deeper into the characters, and it took advantage of that. But things couldn't stay too serious; I doubt any of us will forget that alien mating ritual anytime soon. Murderbot's hot streak continues.
Episode grade: A
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