Murderbot s1 (2025) [+]
Jul 16 2025
Murderbot tv series is based on a series of novellas/novels by Martha Wells and season 1 covers the first book in the series.
In the far future an nondescript security unit (Alexander Skarsgård) — a vat-grown and assembled human/robot — manages to hack his governor module and achieve freedom but he has to keep acting like a SecUnit or he'll be dissolved by the Corporation that runs this sector of space. Oh and a fit of originality he names himself Murderbot since he dreams of going on a killing spree on all these annoying humans he has to protect.
Murderbot is assigned as SecUnit to a bunch of anarchic scientists from Preservation Alliance who are going to an unexplored world to look for discoveries:
The series is mostly Murderbot internal dialogs as he tries to deal with these people who seem to have few survival skills nor survival instincts. Meanwhile he also spends his free time watching B-level drama shows like The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon — which we get a lot of clips from and has actors John Cho, Clark Gregg, Jack McBrayer and DeWanda Wise. And of course Murderbot is proven right as there are giant worms that will eat you and secret bad guys that wiped out a third-party research team on another part of the planet.
As the series goes on Murderbot starts to care, in his non-human way, about his clients. All along they've treated him as a person not a thing, except for Gurathin who starts to suspect Murderbot might be defective because he's acting weird…
This is a very funny series of 10 half-hour episodes in season 1 (and has renewed for season 2). The characters are good and Murderbot is great — 80% of the show is Murderbot's internal monologues especially as his clients do stuff around him as he's standing still "waiting" for commands. Each episode kind of ends in a cliffhanger so if you're not careful you'll watch all five hours in one go but worth it. The season does end at a good stopping point so not an annoying season-ending cliffhanger.
In the far future an nondescript security unit (Alexander Skarsgård) — a vat-grown and assembled human/robot — manages to hack his governor module and achieve freedom but he has to keep acting like a SecUnit or he'll be dissolved by the Corporation that runs this sector of space. Oh and a fit of originality he names himself Murderbot since he dreams of going on a killing spree on all these annoying humans he has to protect.
Murderbot is assigned as SecUnit to a bunch of anarchic scientists from Preservation Alliance who are going to an unexplored world to look for discoveries:
- Ayda Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) - expedition leader who suffers panic attacks whenever someone is in danger and decisions need to be made
- Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) - augmented human tech guy, formerly from Corporation Rim so he knows how ruthless they can be which also leads him to treat SecUnit as a potential enemy/spy.
- Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), Arada (Tattiawna Jones), and Ratthi (Akshay Khanna) - team scientists, Pin-Lee and Arada are in a relationship and invite Ratthi to join though Pin-Lee didn't really want to do it.
- Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) - an older scientist who is almost killed early on and suffers a bit of PTSD afterwards
The series is mostly Murderbot internal dialogs as he tries to deal with these people who seem to have few survival skills nor survival instincts. Meanwhile he also spends his free time watching B-level drama shows like The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon — which we get a lot of clips from and has actors John Cho, Clark Gregg, Jack McBrayer and DeWanda Wise. And of course Murderbot is proven right as there are giant worms that will eat you and secret bad guys that wiped out a third-party research team on another part of the planet.
As the series goes on Murderbot starts to care, in his non-human way, about his clients. All along they've treated him as a person not a thing, except for Gurathin who starts to suspect Murderbot might be defective because he's acting weird…
This is a very funny series of 10 half-hour episodes in season 1 (and has renewed for season 2). The characters are good and Murderbot is great — 80% of the show is Murderbot's internal monologues especially as his clients do stuff around him as he's standing still "waiting" for commands. Each episode kind of ends in a cliffhanger so if you're not careful you'll watch all five hours in one go but worth it. The season does end at a good stopping point so not an annoying season-ending cliffhanger.