Murderbot 1×04 Review: “Escape Velocity Protocol”

Murderbot continues with more ‘Sanctuary Moon’ and a growing friendship between Murderbot and Mensah, in its fourth episode, “Escape Velocity Protocol”.

TRIGGER WARNING: This review discusses enslavement and suicide.

The episode begins, not with a continuation of Murderbot or the PreservationAux team’s storylines, but by giving the audience a look at the broader world of the story. At a manufacturing factory in the Corporation Rim, indentured humans are forced to build other SecUnits like Murderbot. The humans’ extreme mistreatment is more than apparent, especially as they discuss their lengthy work “contracts”.

At different points, the humans talk about ‘Sanctuary Moon’ and rogue SecUnits, which creates subtle foreshadowing for later events in this episode.

Returning to the main story, Murderbot has been captured by the assailant from the previous episode. Too weak to fight back, Murderbot’s thought processing system is defaulting to what it has the most memories of, which is, of course, the ‘Sanctuary Moon’ theme song. The cheesy song and over-the-top opening credits of ‘Sanctuary Moon’ would have been hilarious on their own, but Murderbot’s injured condition creates a distorted effect on both the audio and visuals of the credits, which makes the sequence even more amusing.

One critique I have is that, throughout the episode, it is a bit unclear if Murderbot’s assailant is a human or bot, or if this is deliberately meant to be ambiguous. I think even a single line of dialogue from Murderbot or one of the other characters to clear this up could have improved the episode’s clarity.

The assailant tries to use a device on Murderbot to override its existing protocols. Taking over Murderbot’s combat capabilities, the assailant is planning to make it kill the PreservationAux team, just like it did with the DeltFall team and its SecUnit.

Attempting to distract the assailant, a weakened Murderbot starts to sing the ‘Sanctuary Moon’ theme song. As funny as this tactic is, I also wondered if it was meant to be a call-back to the moment in the first episode, when the PreservationAux team was singing in their meeting. If so, I thought that link between Murderbot and its humans was quite sweet.

Murderbot’s singing – to its own surprise – does successfully catch the assailant off guard. Unfortunately, Murderbot’s success is short-lived and the assailant is ultimately able to use the device. The control override begins to download into Murderbot’s systems, and it is unable to do anything to stop the takeover from happening.

Outside the DeltFall habitat, the PreservationAux team is starting to worry about Murderbot, as it isn’t responding to any of their communications. A frightened Pin-Lee tells Mensah that the two of them should return to the hopper, like Murderbot instructed, but Mensah refuses. As the team’s leader, Mensah orders Pin-Lee to return to the hopper alone, so that Mensah can carry out her own plan, despite how scared she is.

Mensah rescues Murderbot by attacking its assailant with a mining drill. Having never witnessed, let alone enacted, such violence before, Mensah is filled with horror.

With the control override downloading, Murderbot is also in a very vulnerable state. It’s unable to remember what is wrong with it and starts repeating itself to Mensah. Murderbot also begins to hallucinate itself and Mensah as characters in ‘Sanctuary Moon’.

I thought this part of the episode was effective at tonally striking a good balance between humorous and horrifying. Although the sight of Murderbot and Mensah as soap opera characters was funny, the overall scenario was very disconcerting. Murderbot talks to the real Mensah as though they were characters in the show, which obviously confuses and concerns her. It also made complete sense that Murderbot, in such a vulnerable condition, would fall back on ‘Sanctuary Moon’ as a way of both comforting itself and processing the situation.

At first, Mensah has to take the lead in their escape from the DeltFall habitat. This changes, however, when the assailant reappears and strikes again. Even in its weakened state, Murderbot still tries to protect Mensah from the assailant, but she won’t leave it behind.

Throughout the episode, Murderbot and Mensah’s regard for each other is very clear. Although the development of their friendship has differed from the books, I think “Escape Velocity Protocol” has done a good job at spotlighting their dynamic.

While Murderbot and Mensah go through everything, Pin-Lee returns to the hopper, where Arada and Ratthi are waiting. The team members discuss how out-of-character it was for Mensah to have so strongly asserted her leadership over the team by telling Pin-Lee to leave. Their worries highlight just how dire the situation is, as well as just how much concern Mensah has for Murderbot.

In the previous episode, it was established that Ratthi had missed the team’s weapons training, but in spite of this, he insists on leaving the hopper to rescue Mensah and Murderbot on his own.

Ratthi’s recklessness naturally worries Pin-Lee and Arada. Pin-Lee voices some of their concerns to Arada about the married couple’s relationship contract with Ratthi, but it seems like the two of them still have more to discuss.

Ratthi is unable to break into DeltFall’s habitat, but Murderbot and Mensah manage to escape on their own. Unfortunately, though, the assailant is still in pursuit. In the skirmish, Ratthi is injured.

Arada and Pin-Lee cleverly use the hopper to squash the assailant, stopping them in their tracks. I thought this would be it, but the hopper then lifted up the assailant and used the hatch’s doors to squash them again.

Pin-Lee and Arada’s unconventional plan works, but it’s unfortunately not enough to save Murderbot. With only a minute left before it loses control, Murderbot is at the end of its rope. For the first time, it’s too stressed out to repress its true self and tells Mensah that it hates having to make eye contact with humans.

Murderbot knows that the override is going to force it to kill the PreservationAux team, to create the false impression that Murderbot went rogue and attacked the humans. To prevent this from happening, Murderbot asks the PreservationAux team to kill it. When they won’t, Murderbot then shoots itself, bringing the episode to an even more alarming ending than the previous episode’s.

Even though this episode was only twenty-two minutes long, so much happened that it didn’t feel short to me. As well as its balanced tone, I thought “Escape Velocity Protocol” had a good mix of character-focused moments and plot developments. I just don’t want to wait until next week for the story to continue!

Author: Iris Autumn

Iris has a degree in Digital Media and a passion for writing. She has published in cultural arts magazine The Artifice. Iris’ interests include intertextuality, media portrayals of fandom and creativity, and stories that are campy.

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