Summary
Murderbot really sings in Episode 7. It’s a fast-paced episode packed with action and intriguing details, and builds on a lot of the good work done in the previous outing.
You can make a lot of simple declarative statements about Episode 7 of Murderbot. It has the least Murderbot, for instance. It has arguably the most gore, though last week’s improved outing likely competes in that regard. It has no The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. It has the best David Dastmalchian performance. And even though I could go on, I don’t think these things in isolation necessarily communicate how well “Complementary Species” works in its totality. It’s a best episode yet contender immediately following the best episode yet.
The smartest play might be keeping Murderbot sidelined for so long, and then Alexander Skarsgård – or at least his face – off-screen for even longer. The cold open finds the PresAux crew out to dinner at Port FreeCommerce just before the expedition that is sure to kill almost all of them, and the vibe is completely different. They’re playing a truth-or-dare-style party game that requires sharing one sweet memory and one bitter one, and it’s sweet and understated and characterful, adding depth to the romances and the connections we’ve seen play out at high speed in the present day.
And then Gurathin takes his turn. He tells the story of meeting Mensah while he was working as a Corporation Rim spy on the cusp of suicide, being strong-armed and manipulated by his substance dependency. Mensah “saved” him, so to speak, by showing him empathy and kindness, and that moment has colored their dynamic ever since, without us ever realizing it. Dastmalchian is superb here, but it’s nice that his most tightly-held secret is one which really speaks to the show’s underlying conflict between rigid mechanical efficiency and freewheeling human emotion – the exact conflict that, in the present day, is sending the newly untethered Murderbot increasingly haywire.
Speaking of which, following the shocking end of the previous episode, Murderbot’s job is to spirit everyone away before Leebeebee’s associates turn up and become displeased with her head having been splattered all over the walls. But everything’s happening so quickly and violently that nobody quite knows where they stand on Murderbot, who is interpreting the lack of enthusiastic thank-yous as ingratitude because he can’t compute how suddenly blowing someone’s head off might be a little disconcerting.
Tamara Podemski, Akshay Khanna, Tattiawna Jones, and Sabrina Wu in Murderbot | Image via Apple TV+
In other words, as Murderbot becomes more human internally, the PresAux crew begin to see “him” – the pronoun is less relevant in Episode 7, since the SecUnit’s helmet is frequently up to obscure Skarsgård’s human-looking mug, which is a very smart way of using that deviation from the novel to good thematic effect – as more robotic. If they imagine Murderbot as technology, an object belonging to the Company, they can better morally justify leaving him behind. Murderbot’s having a similar internal crisis, but has more out-there solutions, one of which being essentially suicide-by-TV.
“Complementary Species” is very smart with all this; the way it keeps Murderbot sidelined for a while to show a much more human side of the team, then has him wear the helmet all the time, then finally, at Mensah’s urging, using his face to give the argument a more human contour. But then it interrupts the conversation again by slotting in a suspense sequence that requires Murderbot to take action again to protect the team from two giant insects – one of them being the same species that attacked Bharadwaj in the premiere – who initially seem murderous but turn out to simply be mating.
The sudden arrival of another SecUnit throws things even further into disarray, but here the humans leap to Murderbot’s aid, almost in the manner of people protecting a child or a pet. The lines are so enjoyably blurred at this point that it really is difficult to figure out how anyone really considers anyone else in this show, which is going to become of paramount importance since, at the end of Episode 7, Gurathin collapses in need of the medbay. Since getting Gurathin medical attention might get everyone killed, Murderbot is going to have to determine whether he’s willing to risk his own life – which he is only just now starting to understand in any meaningful sense – to save people who he isn’t sure view his existence as “life” at all.
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