To paraphrase Ghostbusters: Yes, it’s true. This Murderbot has no dick.
I mean, so we’ve seen, in, uh, non-graphic detail. Whatever organic components went into the construction of our reluctantly, confusedly heroic SecUnit, a penis was not one of them. But that doesn’t stop Leebeebee (Anna Konkle), the delightfully stupidly named sole survivor of the DeltFall habitat massacre, from fantasizing about his imaginary potential penis at length. No pun intended.
“Wow,” she says, gazing upon the wounded Murderbot as our team of intrepid explorers heads back to base with their self-wounded guardian and this traumatized yet still very randy newcomer in tow. “I mean, to be honest, it’s not unattractive. Do you think it has a pee-pee? Guess it doesn’t really need one. Can you imagine if it did have one, though? And then could kind of go to any length you wanted it to. Press the balls to vibrate. And then kind of could turn or go in any sort of direction, like a big worm. As deep as you want. I don’t know. It’s just something I can picture, but you probably haven’t thought about that. But maybe you have. I don’t know.”
I transcribe this monologue for no other reason than that it rules. Still covered in the blood of her fellow corporate employees, the only person able to give an account of what befell them, the only member of her team left alive, and she’s fantasizing about having some sort of hentai hookup with Murderbot for all to hear. You just don’t see a lot of characters get introduced this way, you know? And what a delight!
Honestly, I think it’s realistic that someone would immediately begin mentally exploring the erotic possibilities of an automaton that looks like Alexander Skarsgård. When Leebeebee (“Beautiful name,” Arada offers lamely; she also compliments Leebeebee’s hometown of “Industrial Junction 151523” by saying “That sounds nice…”) gives Murderbot a kiss for luck, you realize how surprising it is that no one’s tried this before.
But the six-person team who brought us to the dance have bigger fish to fry than Murderbot’s imaginary shapeshifting Mister Fantastic penis. In the course of repairing the robot, augmented human Gurathin — who very clearly has a troubled history with SecUnits — discovers that Murderbot has jailbroken its operating system, hacking into and shutting down its governor module so that it no longer has to respond to or obey human commands.
But rather than greet this information with terror, Gurathin is dismayed to see his teammates leap to the robot’s defense. After all, it’s been with them this whole time, following orders, delivering honest and up-to-date information to the best of its ability, and saving their lives on more than one occasion. Most importantly, and most tellingly, it tried to kill itself rather than be forced to murder all of them, as the evil SecUnit who hacked it had reprogrammed it to do. “Seccy,” as Ratthi affectionately calls it, may technically have gone rogue, but it’s clearly not a threat to them in and of itself.
Nor does it appear to be an assassin sent by the Company. Murderbot has had countless chances to off them and hasn’t, for one thing. For another, as Murderbot itself explains to the group, the Company would simply poison their food if it really wanted them dead — but it doesn’t, since dead clients are terrible for business. (Along with the spyware potential, protecting their income stream seems to be the whole point of mandatory SecUnit accompaniment for such missions in the first place.)
Even hacking the habitat’s core “HubSystem” serves a dual purpose. Sure, it eliminates any evidence that Murderbot’s gone rogue or that the team knows about it, much to Gurathin’s chagrin. But it also shuts down a potential threat from whoever really is responsible for the rogue SecUnit’s attack on the DeltFall group, the gaps on the team’s map, the inaccurate threat assessment regarding giant centipedes, and so on.
What really makes the episode, though, isn’t Murderbot’s rogue status coming out in the open, or even Leebeebee’s vivid imagineering of its dick. It’s a conversation it has with Dr. Mensah en route to the team’s malfunctioning distress beacon, the explosion of which leads to this episode’s Batman-style cliffhanger ending. It listens to Mensah talk about her children (parents of nonbinary kids represent!). It walks her through its thought process regarding the DeltFall attack and how the killers pulled it off by pretending to be humble stranded scientists — specifically, Mensah and her team. That’s when Murderbot realizes something. It’s not just “receiving orders or reciting facts,” it’s having an actual conversation, a back-and-forth with a peer who’s interested in its ideas, and whose own ideas it can accept or reject as it sees fit.
It’s a lovely little moment, and the give and take is represented visually by a dramatic shift in focus between Murderbot and Mensah and back again. It makes you feel like you’re there in the hopper with them, listening to two members of a crew plot their next move. So what if one of them is (hat tip to Jack Kirby and Stan lee here) a Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing? MODOKs deserve a hearing, too.
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.