‘Murderbot’ Episode 4 Review

Episode four of ‘Murderbot’ on AppleTV+ continues the story from last week, as the show drags out its storyline.

We pick up straight away where last week left us, Murderbot has been neutralised by another hostile SecUnit who places a control module on him to override his safety, so he can be turned against his own team.

In a few ways, this episode was an improvement over the previous three. The pacing was much better, and the use of a “ticking bomb” device meant there were some actual stakes. As I predicted last week, though, this episode and the previous one could have been spliced together. Their sub-25 minute runtime would have allowed for a full episode of 45 minutes or so that had a complete story play out, which would have made things flow a lot better.

The episode still suffers from the same problems as the rest of the show, especially in the characters, who I would gladly see thrown out of an airlock. They have the kind of unintelligence that makes you wonder how they ever obtained the qualifications to do what they do, and certainly how they were ever picked to take part in such a mission, when they possess none of the required skills. I know it’s meant to be a comedy and that their incompetence and “quirky” characters are a part of that, but there’s a line between endearing and irritating, and these fall on the wrong side of it. It’s not like they do their best while out of their depth, but rather that they are just incompetent, similar to the characters in the ‘Fallout’ adaptation.

With this in mind, it might have been better if the show was a comedy. I don’t know how accurate it is to the books now, but as far as I’m aware they are humorous too. Maybe a show based on ‘The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon’ (the cheap in-universe sci-fi drama the Murderbot watches) would have been more entertaining, as a spoof on classic series like Star Trek.

Once again, the episode ends on a cliffhanger to lead into the next one, but it does seem odd that we’ve gone through two episodes without really advancing at all (another reason why these two should have been released as one). What is the mysterious black SecUnit doing? Why did it apparently wipe out the base and attempt to take over Murderbot so he could do the same to his own team? I get that the big reveals will be saved up for later, but at least give a few hints to keep the story ticking over.

As it is, it seems like the show can only focus on one thing at once, and as this episode was focused on action, everything else was sidelines. That’s not a bad thing considering the characters aren’t much to be interested in, but it does seem like we’re a long way into the show and nothing much has happened yet.