Not Just Another ‘Murderbot’: How a Screen-Obsessed SecUnit Finds Its Moral Core
(ANALYSIS) “Premium, quality, entertainment.”
Whether or not you think the end of the AppleTV+ series “Murderbot” is irrelevant to the story matters little. This in-show dialogue evaluates an in-in-show — a space soap opera called, “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon” (really!) — that our friendly, neighborhood security robot chooses to watch for hours while he is supposed to be guarding planetary explorers.
The fact that he has a choice at all to stare at screens for hours (yes, it goes there) and make quality judgments is the essence of what sets this show and the character apart.
“Murderbot” follows the journey of this security-unit bot (SecUnit) in an undetermined future where corporations control planets, commerce and most of the industrial complex through technology, authoritarian policing and indentured labor. Fascism amok? Well, maybe, but sci-fi fans have been here before. The future is never sunny when the tech corps are in control.
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The difference between this and countless other dystopian futures is this SecUnit has a malfunction — a feature, not a bug. He’s not only gained sentience, but he’s also figured out how to hack his “governor module” — the company programming chip that will inflict pain if he ever disobeys a human’s order or tries to harm one.
So, “Murderbot” — a name he picks only because he likes the sound of it — has options, but only a few. Kill all the stupid humans and flee, which likely means another SecUnit would stop him and then the company would melt him down as scrap. Or play along, pretending to do the job you’ve always done but hope no one notices when you’re not all there because — you’re bingeing thousands of hours of “content” — human/bot/AI entertainment (maybe this really is our world).
The pivot for our AI-hero’s journey comes when his new assignment is — as he describes them — hippy explorers from a communal, non-corporate planet. These strange humans should be easy work — keep an eye on them, secure the perimeter and watch as much content as you can.
Of course, the job’s never that simple (or we wouldn’t have a story.) The planet is not quite as rustic and safe as it seems (they never are) and his hippies aren’t nearly the stupid humans like most others he’s protected or controlled. In fact, they consider synthetic constructs to be free agents where they come from and even try to make him a member of their crew.
Hijinks and dangers ensue – SecUnit saves the day, several times and earns then loses, then earns again – the trust of the people he thought he would ignore. The corporate evils that caused the troubles lurk in the background for future seasons – but these first episodes are clearly SecUnit’s story, told mostly through his eyes and voiceover. He is the reason some hint of morality – religion, even – might be unplugged with a closer look.
The robot (or AI) going rogue and harming his human masters is a sci-fi trope as old as the genre itself. From the synths of “Alien” to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator,” “they” have always literally embodied our worse fears of technology amok. When the machines become aware of themselves and their flawed masters, why wouldn’t they want to eliminate the imperfect species. But while these fictional bots might grow more human with each film or TV show, they gain sentience without gaining a soul.
Murderbot changes this tired but effective narrative, becoming a MORALbot, not because he is copying the behavior of his hippie humans, but because he finds something within his newfound will that calls out for a different choice. He seems to be tap into what C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity” calls universal moral law, that sense of right and wrong that transcends religious systems — it is because it is.
So, is our MurderBot another tired Christ-figure? No, although he does discover "greater love has no (hu)man than this, than to lay down his life,” — an example set that challenges his programming, his observations and his media storylines. He is and is not a savior to his hippie humans, but this journey clearly makes him a follower of something — a free moral agent who chooses his path carefully and ends up if not-ever human, at least human-ist.
Where this goes next is up to the storytellers in Season 2. We’ve limited our analysis to the TV universe and avoided the novels. Will MurderBOT find “god” in dystopia? Probably not.
Yet just as there is some unseen hand of morality buried in his programming, there seems to be a transcendent power guiding SecUnits’ journey. Saved from the literal scrap pile, MurderBOT is our window into nature and nurture. Moral agency is not just the product of our external governor modules – family, faith, law – but also the wellspring of something deeper. As the Bible teaches, morality is innate, through creation and revelation, and also acquired, through experience and interaction. The rules must, at some point, become what is right.
I don’t know where MurderBot is going by the end of season 1 and he doesn’t either … but I am fairly certain Moralbot will end up learning something more about himself on the journey than he gets from his hours of “Sanctuary Moon.” Fortunately, we stupid humans get to come along and learn a little something too, which is more than you can say with most hours of “premium, quality, entertainment.”
Randall E. King is a professor of communication at North Greenville University in South Carolina and a former television reporter and news producer. He has more than 40 years of experience in media work as educator, journalist and content creator.