Premium Quality Entertainment: The Joys of Murderbot and Sanctuary Moon - Reactor

I’m about to get serious and annoying about Murderbot and its love of media again. I’ve talked about this before, right after I read Network Effect and had so many pesky emotions that I essayed about it. You can read that here, but warning that it covers the first four books in Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series, so it’s got more spoilers than Sanctuary Moon has unrealistic plot twists.

But, look. I love these books, and I love this show, and I want to dig into how the show has chosen to use Murderbot’s serial watching habits. And I’m going to be serious and annoying about it. So first I want to give myself, and you, person who’s reading this (thank you, by the way), space to yell about how freaking fun Sanctuary Moon is.

IT’S SO FUN.

From the books, I imagined Sanctuary Moon as kind of Star Trek-meets-Law & Order, with utilitarian lighting, over-the-top music cues, and questionable acting. I love how series creators Paul and Chris Weitz transformed it into a candy-colored fantasia—and the acting is questionable, but in the best way possible. I haven’t had a custom ringtone for a very long time (to give you an idea, the last one I had was this Mighty Boosh song) but if I could hear Jack McBrayer say “Stars, Captain!” every time my phone rings, I might leave the sound on.

I need to take a second to meditate upon the charisma of John Cho. There’s scene where his Captain Hossein and DeWanda Wise’s NavBot are stranded together, and he flirts with her, and by the end of their scene I wanted an entire romcom with these two. I love it when people commit to the bit, and goddamn did everyone commit here. (For more John Cho, watch Columbus. It’s one of the best movies of the decade, and I think it’s on Tubi right now.)

The Weitzes gave Sanctuary Moon a theme song that’s both a ridiculous standalone and an important plot point. They give us just enough of this show that we can enter into the silliness of it, and then use it as a counterpoint, a commentary, and at times, almost a sacred artifact. Likewise, the brief scenes of STRIFE IN THE GALAXY, which I can only write in CAPSLOCK, act as a hilarious window into Murderbot’s life. If this is the only exposure most humans get to SecUnits, no wonder their interactions are tense. I do also love the implication that humans are making melodramas about SecUnit autonomy and rights, where they’re literally monologuing while torn in half, but then still treating them like shit in real life.

The adaptation balances the humor perfectly. While The Rise & Fall of Sanctuary Moon seems kind of silly, and Murderbot’s obsessive love of the show is gently teased occasionally, the Murderbot series itself never mocks that love. The writers balance the fact that Murderbot is maybe a little too obsessed with a strong argument that the SecUnit is correct to love Sanctuary Moon—often in the same scene.

Sanctuary Moon itself is used as a litmus test—most characters who mention it think it’s garbage, but Ratthi, Pin-Lee, and one of the GrayCris team have all clearly watched a lot of it, whether they want to admit that or not. Meanwhile Mensah, the PreservationAux leader, and Gurathin (obviously), react to it like it’s radioactive. This makes for the fun running gag of Murderbot defending it as “premium quality entertainment”—it’s really not—but also for a few really touching moments that I’ll dig into below. As in the book, when the PresAux team finds out that Murderbot is a free agent, they’re freaked the hell out. Murderbot refers to this as an “oh shit” moment—a term its gotten from its media habit—but even as it’s processing this moment, the team’s sudden fear of their SecUnit is undercut with confusion because of its love of serials. Ratthi (obviously) is the one who steps up to test Murderbot’s knowledge; the Sanctuary Moon plot point he mentions is even more convoluted than the one in Wells’ book, and both Ratthi and Pin-Lee are excited that Murderbot recognizes such a deep cut from the show.

Murderbot uses Sanctuary Moon repeatedly in its job, in a way that landed harder for me in the show than it even did in the books. When it quotes lines from the show to calm Arada during the Tooth-Monster attack, we also get to see two absurdly costumed actors over-emote their way through a scene. (“What planet are you from???” “A little place… called… Sanctuary… Moon…”) The fact that Murderbot took this cheeseball dialogue and used it unironically to coax Arada through her shock is, honestly, moving. I find it all the more touching because sweet, pure, serious-minded Arada probably hasn’t watched the show. (I get clear “I don’t even own a TV” vibes from her.) For her, these were sincere questions coming from a kind person during a crisis. For Murderbot, it was a useful example of how humans talk to each other when one of them might be bleeding to death.

After the success with Arada, Murderbot goes back to the Sanctuary Moon well several times. It borrows two different plot points from a character named Lieutenant Kogi, first as it tries to deal with the tragedy at DeltFall, and later when it confronts GrayCris. Neither of these plot points work perfectly, but they’re better than nothing.

When a rogue SecUnit tries to implant an override in Murderbot’s governor module it sings the Sanctuary Moon theme song as a distraction, which actually buys it a few precious seconds of reboot time. (And how sweet is it that even when most of its systems are offline, it can still remember that theme song?)

And most directly, when Murderbot finds itself outmatched during a battle, it downloads its entire media library into another Unit’s mind, until its enemy’s head explodes. Which gives you some idea of how many seasons our perfect Murderbot is lugging around with it—but I mean you never know when you’ll need to marathon something.

But unsurprisingly, my favorite examples are far more emotional than utilitarian.

When Murderbot begins to actually like Dr. Mensah, it expresses this to itself by imagining her as the captain of the ship on Sanctuary Moon, casting itself as a loyal-but-bumbling crewmember. And when it saves Gurathin and the team by shooting Leebeebee, it’s shocked to find that the pacifists of PresAux are horrified—but it expresses this shock not by dismissing them as overemotional humans, but by being hurt and confused because characters on serials are always grateful when villains are dispatched.

In All Systems Red, Dr. Mensah is shown to be an extremely competent, thoughtful leader, constantly breaking off into backchannel strategy sessions with SecUnit. As the books go on and Murderbot gets to know her better, the character gains more layers, but it takes a while to get there. Here, the show dives in and gives us a Mensah who is blisteringly intelligent and competent, yes, but who is a real person dealing with terrible pressure. Back home, some members of Preservation Alliance are flirting with the idea of joining Corporation Rim, and the only way to ensure their autonomy, and make enough money to stay competitive, is to deal with the capitalistic nightmare that is Corporation Rim. So it isn’t even just the basic stress of Mensah having to put her Presidency on pause to stay up-to-date in her academic work (it’s a very cool rule)—she also has to prove herself as a world leader in a precarious moment.

(I’m assuming the pro-Corporation Rim factions will become more of a plot point if the show gets enough seasons.)

(Please get enough seasons, show. I need 2,797 episodes of this.)

Mensah occasionally messes up, and she has overwhelming panic attacks that she secretly fears are heart attacks. Initially, Murderbot notes these attacks and dismisses them as not its problem. But when the two are stranded together with a damaged hopper because of a GrayCris assassination attempt, Murderbot’s media obsession becomes the crux of an episode in a fascinating way.  

First, the bad: Murderbot deleted its copy of the hopper manual, thus stranding itself and Mensah with no way to repair the only transportation they have. This is made worse when they realize that GrayCris is trying to kill them all, and the team back at the habitat are also in mortal danger—and there’s no way to even warn them, let alone get back to them. And this is made even worse when Murderbot admits it deleted the manual from its data banks to make room for more seasons of Sanctuary Moon. But the good is soon revealed as well. Mensah has another panic attack.

Rather than ignoring her condition, Murderbot sits with her, and helps her in a way that would only occur to it: it hits play on Sanctuary Moon. At first, Mensah’s pissed and frustrated, but as Murderbot explains the episode, she’s distracted enough that her symptoms get a little better almost immediately. Again we get to hear Murderbot sing the theme song, but not in a tactical way. It sings the song—quietly, to itself—because the song makes it happy.

If I had to pick one favorite moment from the entire season—well, it would probably be one of Murderbot’s micro-expressions or Gurathin smiling, but way up in the Top Five is Mensah’s expression as she turns and watches Murderbot sing. The show has only existed for a few months and I don’t know how many times I’ve replayed that moment in my head. I know it’s a large number. We soon learn that this episode of Sanctuary Moon features a pivotal meditative breathing exercise, and we watch Murderbot “breathe” along with the characters on the screen, even though it doesn’t need to breathe at all. Mensah, also seeing this, joins in. After a moment, her heart rate has slowed and her panic has ebbed.

Even though Mensah thinks the show is terrible, she acknowledges that the premise of the episode (a character’s adoptive parents are from a species with a shorter life cycle than their own, and they’re dying now—which is admittedly a great premise) is sad, prompting Murderbot to agree. Even though she doesn’t value this thing as art, it still helps her to sit with her friend and breathe—and her friend is only able to do this through the format of the show. Murderbot wouldn’t know to use this technique for her without its favorite show. And Mensah most likely wouldn’t have listened to Murderbot if it had simply told her to breathe—she needed to witness the SecUnit empathizing with characters on its show. The balm of Sanctuary Moon gives Mensah enough mental space to help when Murderbot collapses from a loss of fluids, which in turn gives the SecUnit an idea to fix the hopper and get them back to the habitat in time to save the team.

In the very next episode, we come to an astonishing scene where Gurathin refuses painkillers during an operation. The others protest, but he knows that this might trigger a relapse into his old addictions, and he can’t risk that. Murderbot and Gurathin have the same thought at the same moment: if it links to Gurathin’s data port, it can block the pain from his central nervous system. But where Gura’s thinking of this because he’s good at problem-solving (and also maybe he sees a chance to root around in SecUnit’s mind) Murderbot gets the idea from a show. When Mensah asks if it saw this on Sanctuary Moon it huffily says no… only to reveal in its inner monologue that it got the idea from a different show, MedCenter Argala. (But they’re known for their accuracy!)

This scene is one of those precise, razor’s edge moments in art that makes my brain sing. First of all, Gurathin’s insistence on not using any drugs, even in this situation, is heartbreaking. (There’s a similar scene in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and just thinking about that makes me cry, so this, uhhhh, did stuff to me.) But the scene only starts there. It flashes to a surprising moment of communication between Murderbot and Gurathin, and rests there only a moment before veering into comedy with the MedCenter Argala reveal (Maybe the hardest I laughed all season? Why the hell isn’t Skarsgard up for an Emmy?) only to then crater into Murderbot inadvertently revealing Gurathin’s unrequited love for Mensah, and THEN Gurathin not only dredging up Murderbot’s rawest memory, but also telling everyone its private name for itself.

Was that Gurathin’s plan from the start, even through the haze of pain? Or did he understand what Murderbot just revealed to everyone, and lashed out in retaliation?  

This scene that starts as this achingly sweet moment of the whole team coming together to help Gurathin, and of Murderbot helping in a way only it can, becomes instead a scene where the two most vulnerable members of the team have their deepest secrets put on display, against their wills.

And it all hinges on MedCenter Argala—the only reason Murderbot has the idea for the neural block in the first place.

And finally, and maybe most important, Murderbot’s media is revealed to be the core of its selfhood in a scene that riffs on events from the fifth book in the series, Network Effect.

When Murderbot’s memories are wiped, it loses all of its experiences with PresAux, along with its media library. It’s returned to factory settings. Now, in a different kind of show, it would be a memory of Mensah, or Ratthi saying “Seccy!” or even of Gurathin being a dick that would bring its personality back. But Murderbot isn’t going to hold our hands like that.

When Gurathin blackmails his old dealer into giving him access to the Company’s data, he does a search for recently wiped SecUnits, and he searches for the words “Preservation Alliance”. Those searches yield nothing, and for a second he sits thinking while his dealer insists his attempts are futile anyway. He’s more aware than any of his friends of the hopelessness their situation. And then he realizes what he should try.  

Typing in “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon” gives him a whole screen of files, plus the image of their beloved Murderbot. And what does GuGu do? He downloads all of it, even the show he hates, to make sure they’re able to reconstruct their friend.

This is what makes the ending land so hard for me. Murderbot and Gurathin have been inside each others’ minds, multiple times, for multiple reasons. They both betrayed each other terribly. Murderbot saved Gura from Leebeebee, and, later, from horrific pain during surgery. Gurathin held all of Murderbot inside of his own mind, at great physical risk, in order to rescue it. The two of them now know each other better than anyone else knows them. And it’s Gurathin, the one who initially thought that Murderbot couldn’t possibly be watching all those shows, who understands that the way to rescue it from the Corporation is to search for what it loves.

In the end, he’s also the one who understands better than anyone why Murderbot needs to leave at the end, because despite what the PresAux team believes, sometimes you can’t always talk about your trauma. At least, not right away.

Sometimes you need to sit with premium quality entertainment for a while.

In the very last moments of the show, Murderbot plays a role it’s seen many times in its media, pretending to be a “happy servant bot” like one from a serial to hitch a ride with a transport. It uses its media files to barter for a ride, because with the right person/bot, that show you love can be currency. And assuming that season two follows the plot of Martha Wells’ books, we have a lot more media, and ART, to look forward to.