‘Murderbot’ Episode 4 Review

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

We pick up right where last week left off: Murderbot has been neutralized by another hostile SecUnit who places a control module on it to override its safety protocols so it can be turned against its 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 runtimes would have allowed for a full episode of around 45 minutes with a complete story arc, which would have made things flow a lot better.

The episode still suffers from the same problems as the rest of the show, especially with the characters, whom 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” personalities are 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’re doing their best while out of their depth; rather, they’re just incompetent, similar to the characters in the Fallout adaptation.

With this in mind, it might have been better if the show leaned fully into comedy. I don’t know how accurate it is to the books now, but as far as I’m aware, they’re humorous too. Maybe a show based on The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon (the cheap in-universe sci-fi drama that 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 it could do the same to its own team? I get that the big reveals will be saved 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 a time, and as this episode focused on action, everything else was sidelined. That’s not necessarily 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.