The new Apple TV+ sci-fi series Murderbot is many things. It’s a great adaptation of the wonderful books by Martha Wells. It’s a workplace comedy in space. It’s a new kind of sci-fi show that balances humor and drama like no show before it. And it’s also a show that has a secret Star Trek-esque TV series inside of it.
That’s right, while the primary story of SecUnit (Alexander Skarsgård) is the focus of Murderbot, the Murderbot itself is a big fan of a fictional sci-fi soap opera called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. While the book version of this meta-show was described by author Wells as “How to Get Away with Murder in Space,” the TV series version is very much more a Star Trek, complete with the hilarious catchphrase “boldness is all.” Speaking to Inverse, the showrunners of Murderbot, Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, revealed how their take on Sanctuary Moon happened.
Mild spoilers ahead.
In the series, we get John Cho of Star Trek fame as a kind of swaggering Captain Kirk figure, who may have the best collar and jacket in all of contemporary sci-fi. But both Weitzes note that casting Cho because of the Star Trek connection wasn’t the only reason to bring him into this project. “John did have that iconography coming in, as did Clark Gregg with his Marvel experience,” Paul Weitz explains. “But really these were just people who we had their phone numbers. We'd worked with John before on I think 12 films or something.”
Within the context of Murderbot, perhaps the most interesting character in Sanctuary Moon is DeWanda Wise’s character, who is, within the soap opera, an artificial life form. This creates an interesting layer in the series that isn’t exactly present in the first novella, All Systems Red. In a sense, the Murderbot show has given SecUnit its own version of a Star Trek-ish android storyline to follow and love, which would be a little like a Replicant in Blade Runner being obsessed with watching Data episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
“We didn’t want to quite do Galaxy Quest,” Paul Weitz explains. “We wanted in the emotionality of it, there's a degree of David Lynch to it, where characters are genuinely committing to the emotions.”
All of the surreality of Sanctuary Moon clicks within the context of Murderbot, part because not only is this spoof funny, but because the audience believes that this TV series could exist in the future, and be enjoyed by all sorts of people.
“We wanted it to be weirdly sort of over the top and too much, but also a little good,” Weitz clarifies. “Murderbot’s not an idiot, and Murderbot loves this show. We wanted to honor that.”
