The penultimate episode of Murderbot is here, and boy is it a doozy. I thought this show was supposed to be funny — why is it making me so damn emotional? The answer, of course, is because despite being a show about an autonomous security android, Murderbot is exceptionally good at telling a compelling human story. In "All Systems Red," the chips are down and Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) and the PresAux team have to show their mettle in a dangerous situation where one misstep could see them all dead.
The result is one of the strongest episodes of the entire season. FULL SPOILERS beyond this point.
Murderbot Episode 9 review: "All Systems Red"
At 29 minutes, "All Systems Red" is longer than many episodes of Murderbot, and it makes ample use of the extra time. The entire episode revolves around the parley with GrayCris, the nefarious corporate survey team who murdered the DeltFall crew and has been trying to do the same to PresAux, and the plans within plans that Murderbot hatches to try and outfox them. While it's still got plenty of humor (including one of my favorite punchlines of the entire season), it's a much tenser episode than usual.
Everything has been leading to this showdown. It's one of the key scenes of Martha Wells' novella All Systems Red, which is where the episode takes its name from. As such, this is a crucial episode that Murderbot had to pull off well, if it wanted the season as a whole to land. I'm glad to say that it did. There were some slight differences from the source material throughout, such as Murderbot revealing to GrayCris that it had hacked its governor module, but on the whole it very faithfully adapts the thrust of the action, right up to Murderbot's heroic sacrifice to shield Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) from the emergency beacon's liftoff blast with its own body.
The Preservation Alliance team is split into three groups for the showdown. Murderbot and Mensah are the ones in the most danger since they directly confront GrayCris, who are led with enigmatic menace by a woman named Rita (Amanda Brugel). This group has by far the best material of the episode, especially Murderbot itself. This is the SecUnit's chance to play the hero, and it is a lot of fun to watch it do that, quoting Sanctuary Moon at the members of GrayCris and keeping everyone on their toes because it never divulges its full plans. At the same time, it is in a lot of peril; more than once its plans go awry, which keeps things very interesting as it has to improvise its way through.
This is what leads to that favorite line I mentioned. After one of the GrayCris crew realizes Murderbot has been quoting Sanctuary Moon at them, Rita snaps about it being a "crappy" show. Murderbot immediately takes issue, saying "How about you try to make 2,797 episodes of premium quality entertainment," before realizing those may well be its last words (and it stands by them). This line is not from Wells' book, and I imagine it wouldn't have landed quite as effectively in a novella even if it was. It's the sort of line that works especially well as a meta commentary in a television series, and I love that the show committed to the bit.
Unfortunately for Murderbot and Mensah, things devolve into a firefight. Shocking moments mix with the occasional comedic shot, right up until the beacon goes up and torches Rita and all the GrayCris SecUnits. Only by diving off the cliff with Mensah does Murderbot manage to save her life, seemingly at the cost of its own. When the episode ends, it's powering down due to a catastrophic failure, thinking the words, "My clients are the best." Way to come for the heartstrings, show.
Meanwhile, Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) and Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu) head to the GrayCris habitat, where they trigger the emergency beacon remotely. As with Murderbot's secret plans, monkey wrenches get thrown here too; namely, a big alien bird eats the drone that was remote-launching the beacon, which means Gurathin and Pin-Lee have to physically go down into the GrayCris habitat and wire in directly. This leads to Pin-Lee knocking someone out and accidentally killing them, which is much funnier than it sounds thanks to Wu's acting.
By the end of the episode, Pin-Lee and Gurathin are reunited with Mensah and Murderbot, just in time to see the SecUnit power down. Throughout the season, Gurathin and Murderbot have gradually grown closer despite their firm insistences that they dislike each other. I really liked how Gurathin's face fell when he saw the SecUnit was about to shut down, and that out of the three humans, his attention went to the ailing Murderbot first. This dynamic has been very enjoyable, and this episode finally gave them a chance to work together a little more, albeit from a distance.
The final PresAux group consists of Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), and Arada (Tattiawna Jones), who remain behind in the PresAux habitat to support the two groups that are in the field. They have the least material, but still manage to have a few memorable scenes. There's a lot going on in this episode, and the focus wisely stays on Murderbot the lion's share of the time. I'm sure we'll see much more of them in the finale.
Overall, "All Systems Red" is the climactic episode that this season needed to pull everything together before the big finale. It doesn't tie off every loose end, but it solidly wraps up the conflict on the survey planet and leaves off on a massive cliffhanger. Since Murderbot can be repaired, obviously we can expect it'll survive its deadly fall. But where will it be when it awakes? Will it be safe, or even more peril? These are questions I like having as we head into the finale, and I think the show picked the perfect way to cap off this penultimate episode.
The strength of this episode also highlighted something that I've been enjoying all season. Current events in the real world have been pretty dire in recent months, to say the least. For me (and I suspect many others), Murderbot has been a refuge from so much of those heavy dilemmas, a chance to set it all aside for a half hour and get swept away in the joy of Apple's comedic sci-fi show.
The SecUnit itself often claims it can't relate to humans, and just wants to be left alone; that's part of the charm of the show, but it's also given Murderbot the chance to have a deep, subtle arc. Here at last, the show gives it a chance to rise to its potential, and fully deliver on the endearing contradiction of its existence. It's sick of humans, but for it's clear that it does care about the PresAux team — the first humans to actually treat it like an equal. Regardless of how it views itself, Murderbot proved beyond a doubt in "All Systems Red" that it is a hero worth rooting for. It's nice to have a show that is complex in some of its ideas, but gives us such a clear, unlikely hero to get behind.
Murderbot Bullet Points
- Murderbot uses the decapitated head of the GrayCris SecUnit that got chewed up by the alien worm in Episode 7 to fool the bad guys into thinking it had killed Gurathin. I cackled, because of course Murderbot would choose Gurathin's name as the person from the crew it had killed. It was fun to watch Gurathin's reaction to that in real-time.
- The little signs of Murderbot's increased humanity in this episode were nice touches, such as when it apologized to the other SecUnit it bumped into in the cargo hold. Its time with PresAux has changed it (or infted it with an "empathy virus," as it says).
- This episode finally made a bit more of a point of the fact that Mensah is the planetary administrator for Preservation Alliance, which means killing her would have been a massive scandal if it came out. The show still fell a little short on explaining the full implications of that and Rita didn't seem particularly concerned, but at least we got a mention. Perhaps the finale can run with it a little more.
Verdict
"All Systems Red" is a great episode of Murderbot that plays on all the show's strengths. It has humor, tense action, beautiful scenery, some great performances, and unexpected turns in the plot that kept me guessing even though I've read the book. There were a few aspects I wish got slightly more focus, such as the implications of Mensah being a planetary administrator, but that's a small nitpick compared to how much this episode did right. An excellent penultimate episode to a very good season of TV.
Episode grade: A
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