Murderbot is fond of all media, but seems especially fond of serials. Though its favorite is without question The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, Murderbot is also a fan of several other serials.
Martha Wells notes, "What I do, when I come up with the different shows—in Network Effect a whole bunch more are mentioned—for each one I have a real-world analog. So I kind of know what show it is and can keep track of—when I make plot points for the TV show—what kind of things would be happening. Like, Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon is kind of based on How to Get Away with Murder, but in space, on a colony, with all different characters and hundreds more episodes, basically. In Artifical Condition, ART's favorite show is Worldhoppers, which is almost like a Stargate Atlantis or Stargate SG-1 kind of thing, with people exploring. So each one has an analog like that, which helps me keep track." Newsweek May 7, 2020.
Named Media[]
- Adventures in the Free Systems: A series made on one of the Preservation Alliance worlds.[1]
- Cruel Romance Personage: One of the few serials Murderbot has not watched, due to its off-putting title.[2]
- Drama Sun Islands: Murderbot absently mentions wanting more episodes of this in its internal narration.[3]
- Farland Star Roads: Murderbot refers to an unsettling episode featuring a haunted station.[4]
- Legends of the Fire: Murderbot used spliced conversations from this serial (and others) to mimic typical human jaw movements in Exit Strategy.[5]
- Lineages of the Sun: A complicated, long-running historical family drama.[6]
- Medcenter Argala: An oldish historical drama that's still widely available for download due to its earlier popularity. Its medical practices are inaccurate.[7]
- The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon: A legal thriller (if being based on How To Get Away With Murder is anything to go by), and also Murderbot's favorite serial.
- Timestream Defenders Orion: An unrealistic serial, one where space monsters and character-shrinking plots make appearances.
- Toward Tomorrow: Murderbot used spliced conversations from this serial (and others) to mimic typical human jaw movements in Exit Strategy.[8]
- Valorous Defenders: A show with negative (and generally inaccurate) portrayals of SecUnits.[9][10]
- Worldhoppers: A show about freelance explorers who extend the wormhole and ring network into uninhabited systems.
Unnamed Media[]
Untitled show #1[]
A show mentioned in chapter 1 of Rogue Protocol, about a pre-terraforming survey that turns into a battle for survival against hostile fauna and mutant raiders. Murderbot dislikes it for having overly helpless characters, and considers it "the wrong kind of unrealistic."
Untitled show #2[]
A show mentioned in chapter 2 of Rogue Protocol, set in an alt-world featuring magic and talking weapons which Murderbot describes as "improbable."
Notes[]
- In an Instagram AMA, Murderbot states that if its diaries were to be turned into a serial, it would want to be portrayed by "Istarta Sree from Lineages of the Sun, the new one not the old one."[11]
- At a library event, Wells stated that the show is basically "any telenovela where everyone's obsessed with a hot person even though they're really mean."[12][13]
References[]
- ↑ “She didn’t say ‘goons. ’” It was an archaic word. I knew it without having to look it up because the new series of Adventures in the Free Systems, which was made on one of the other worlds in the Preservation Alliance, had dropped locally twenty hours ago and it had used the word “goons.” I was 93 percent certain that was where Mensah’s small human had picked it up, too. Chapter Eight, Exit Strategy.
- ↑ ...Cruel Romance Personage, which I had never watched (maybe it was good, I didn't know, I couldn't get past the title). Chapter Six, System Collapse
- ↑ I didn’t know if I could trust them. I wanted to. But I want a lot of things—freedom, unlimited downloads, new episodes of Drama Sun Islands—most of which I wasn’t going to get. Chapter Three, Exit Strategy.
- ↑ It was so shocking and weird, my performance reliability dropped and I lost circulation in my organic parts. And not weird = violating norms in an annoying way but weird = eerie, like in Farland Star Roads', the story arc with the haunted station with ghosts and time-shifting. Chapter Four, Network Effect.
- ↑ Humans, even augmented humans, subvocalize when they speak on the feed. I had written a quick set of code that I could run in background to mimic those jaw movements. (I pulled a selection of conversations from Sanctuary Moon, Legends of the Fire, and Toward Tomorrow to use as a template for the movements.) Chapter Three, Exit Strategy.
- ↑ It was only four standard Preservation day-cycles back to Preservation via wormhole, and I meant to use the time to finish watching Lineages of the Sun. It was a long-running historical family drama, set in an early colony world, with one hundred and thirty-six characters and almost as many storylines. Chapter Three, Network Effect.
- ↑ Most of my medical knowledge came from watching MedCenter Argala, a historical drama series that had been popular twenty-seven corporate standard years ago and was still available for download on almost every media feed I had ever encountered. Even I knew it was inaccurate. I also found it kind of boring, so I’d only watched it once. Chapter Six, Network Effect.
- ↑ (See Quote in reference for Legends of Fire.) Chapter Three, Exit Strategy.
- ↑ While that was going on, I did a quick search of my archived video and pulled an episode of Valorous Defenders. It’s not a bad show but this is a terrible episode where the characters are attacked by evil SecUnits. [...] I grabbed the three-minute sequence where the SecUnits swarm the base and slaughter the helpless refugees. Chapter One, Network Effect.
- ↑ I was absolutely great. It wasn’t like this situation needed to get any more emotionally fraught, or anything. I said, “I am functioning optimally.” (This was a line from Valorous Defenders, which is a great source for things humans and augmented humans think SecUnits say that SecUnits do not actually say.) Chapter Thirteen, Network Effect.
- ↑ Feelings REDACTED: What Happens When Murderbot and ART Talk to Instagram, https://www.tor.com/2020/04/24/feelings-redacted-what-happened-when-murderbot-and-art-talked-to-instagram/
- ↑ https://www.tumblr.com/young-astro/744510008485609472?source=share
- ↑ https://tockify.com/bcslibrary/detail/4765/1710014400000
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