Just realized why I’ve been struggling with the pacing of ‘Murderbot’, and it’s because I was applying the wrong pacing rules. Sitting at around 22 minutes, I was expecting sitcom pacing (A plot, B plot, maybe C plot, wrapped up by the end of the episode). But that’s not at all what this is.
It’s an old-school adventure serial! It’s paced just like ‘Doctor Who’ in the classic era, with an ongoing story chopped into 22 minute bits, ending on a cliffhanger each week to keep the audience coming back. How fun! I can’t think of the last show that was doing that; that method of television storytelling more or less died out in the 80s/90s.
I’m a little too young to have watched those serials as they came out, and have only ever watched them in a binge on DVD (or less … official means), so of course I’m finding it easier to watch ‘Murderbot’ in a binge. But now that I understand the pacing, I’m actually looking forward to knowing what it would have been like to be an audience member as one of the old serials came out in bite-sized, nail-biting chunks every week.