Forget Murderbot season 2, I want more Sanctuary Moon

I knew I had to watch the new Apple TV Plus sci-fi comedy Murderbot the minute I saw the first trailer. Without spoiling any of the action, the story follows a SecUnit’s adventure on an unpopulated planet where it’s tasked with defending a small team of explorers.

Things go wrong, of course, but that’s not the point of the story. The SecUnit, also known as Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård), hacks itself and essentially becomes sentient. Of course, I wanted to watch a show with that premise.

After all, we’re in the early years of AI, and we’re developing robots with AI at the core. Some people already worry about AI going rogue and possibly initiating events that could lead to humanity’s extinction.

With its short episodes, Murderbot is perfect for escaping your day-to-day with some quick comedy, drama, and action. It turns out Murderbot uses the same kind of escape. He streams shows online, including one called Sanctuary Moon.

Murderbot is fun on its own, but the incredible effort that went into those Sanctuary Moon clips is absolutely mind-blowing. I’m happy to see Apple renewing Murderbot for a second season, but all I want to watch is more Sanctuary Moon.

If you haven’t seen Murderbot, I won’t spoil anything from the series’ main plot, but I will tell you all about the Sanctuary Moon brilliant cameos below.

Watching shows to escape other humans is such an incredible thing for Murderbot, and it’s so meta. Many of us retreat to streaming shows on all sorts of platforms rather than dealing with more pressing matters.

Murderbot downloaded thousands of hours of shows to avoid the team (family?) of humans he has to guard, to the point where the android actually deleted files he should have kept. Again, that’s somewhat meta. We all remember the iPhone “not enough storage” errors from the more distant past.

Sanctuary Moon is easily one of his favorites, and the show comes up a lot during the first season.

Murderbot doesn’t just reference the show verbally while engaging with the other humans. We actually see several scenes from the hundreds of Sanctuary Moon episodes that Murderbot watches, as the action in that space sci-fi soap opera mirrors the real-life events the android experiences.

My jaw hit the floor when I saw the level of sophistication from Apple’s Murderbot production team for the fake Sanctuary Moon TV show. They built Star Trek-like sets, came up with costumes, and devised special effects for this show-within-a-show.

Even more exciting is the list of amazing actors Apple hired to perform in the Sanctuary Moon episodes that Murderbot watches throughout season 1. This cast makes me actually want to watch a standalone Sanctuary Moon TV series:

• John Cho (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Star Trek)
• DeWanda Wise (Jurassic World Dominion, She’s Gotta Have It)
• Clark Gregg (Iron Man, The Avengers)
• Jack McBrayer (30 Rock, Wonder Over Yonder)
• Alex Cruz (The Man from Toronto)
• Chantria Tram (SkyMed, The Expanse)
• Ron Kennell (Pompeii)

I can’t wait to see who else will make the list of Sanctuary Moon actors in Murderbot season 2. There’s plenty of story to explore.

Spanning dozens of seasons and hundreds of episodes in-world, Sanctuary Moon has plenty of fans and critics. Murderbot is clearly one of the former, given that he can’t wait to stream episodes and debate them with others.

While we might never see a standalone Sanctuary Moon TV series, Apple TV Plus’ head of programming, Matt Cherniss, teased that we’ll see more from that universe in the second season. Since Sanctuary Moon turns out to be a pivotal element in the final episodes of Murderbot season 1, I’m not surprised. But you’ll have to stream the Apple TV Plus show on your own to understand what I’m talking about.