Martha Wells’s eight novellas/novels in the Murderbot Diaries series, published over the past nine years, are already regarded as classic science-fiction. A groundbreaking examination of the emerging sentient life of a security robot who has “hacked its governor module,” it is an emotional, funny, quirky, thrilling series, and one not easily packaged onto a screen. Amazingly then, Season 1 of Murderbot, directed and written by brothers Chris and Paul Weitz, is a resounding triumph. Anchored by a brilliant acting performance from Alexander Skarsgård as the deadly, confused, alien-thinking security robot (called SecUnit by the humans in this tale, named Murderbot by himself/itself), the ten-episode series closely tracks Wells’s Book 1, All Systems Red, but leans much more toward examining the awkward interplays between SecUnit and a bumbling, idealistic spaceship crew that begins to “adopt” him/it. The series especially plays up the hilarious inner dialogue of SecUnit as it continually retreats into watching a terrible human soap opera, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. The show is paced superbly, supported by wonderful acting (I especially appreciated Noma Dumezweni as the hapless crew’s leader, Akshay Khanna as an especially naive but loving scientist, and David Dastmalchian as a cynical augmented human), enlivened by splendid action scenes, and blessed with terrific world building and cinematography. Imbued with a different vibe than the book, this first season of Murderbot (may there be many more!) nonetheless does just as impressive a job of relating a thrilling tale of robotic sentience with a genuinely moving arc. Brilliant.
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