Others have said it before but on watching some more Let's Plays of Alien Isolation again, it really is so painful to realize that the universe of the Murderbot Diaries really truely only makes any kind of sense or context when you realize its pretty much Alien Franchise fanfiction.
Because there is no worldbuilding.
There are no descriptions.
There are no character motivations.
We are almost a decade into this series, and we still don't know why Preservation went to that planet with a slave, and we still don't even know 90% of the character's first (or last!) names, and 99% of them do not even grace us with a physical description beyond their Ethnically Diverse First Or Last Name.
We literally do not even know if their names are their first or last names. Dr. Gurathin, Dr. Ratthi, Dr. Volescu, Dr. Arada, etc --
--having them be "Dr. x" implies that Gurathin, Ratthi, Volescue, Arada, Bharadwaj are their last names -- but even in Mensah's perspective in book 4-and-a-half, where we find out *her* first name is Ayda, she, in her own perspective, refers to everyone as...... Gurathin, Ratthi, Volescue, Arada, Bharadwaj.
So, you could try to make sense of this by postulating that "maybe Preservation doesn't have first/last names?" excpet, Mensah does, because her first name is Ayda. And she's The President of The Entire Fucking Planet / Solar System.
We don't even know what Mensah's politics are, or what her campaign promises were that got her elected to be one of the highest planetary authorities in the non-corporate-politics !
All we know is that when she got elected, she decided to go multiple solar systems out of her [countries] territory and start scoping out planets to purchase for space colonization, renting out a slave to do so, and treating that enslaved person as less than an object despite the book stating that she personally thinks slavery is wrong.
(just not wrong enough to not do it when it gets her personal profit and political creed)
Even in the perspective of the "main human" character, we didn't even get any first names for the other characters in 2020, a full 3 years after the original book was published, and we still have not learned any of their names in 2026 before the 8th book's release, and I highly doubt its going to give us these character's actual full names 9 years after the first book, let alone a physical description of them 9 years later, despite them supposedly being the "main human crew" we're supposed to know, love and adore.
Anyways, that once you conceptualize the murderbot diaries as Alien Franchise fanfiction, all of the frustrating questions about worldbuilding and basic plot structures begins to make some horrifying level of sense...
Q: Why are the Preservation Aux team on this random planet doing a survey?
A: Because that's what random crews do in Alien Franchise movies.
Q: What is the Preservation Aux even looking for on their survey, if not the plentiful alien flora and fauna around them that the rest of the series will try *desperately* to make you forget exists?
A: They're not looking for anything because them doing a survey is just what random Crews do in Alien Franchise movies, and no other thought was given to their motivations.
Q: Who is The Company that owns Murderbot and the other slaves?
A: Weyland-Yutani, from the Alien Franchise, most commonly referred to in the movies as just "The Company". Famous for making and owning Synthetics.
A: What is a Construct, which is what Murderbot and the other human-shield + sex trafficking victims are, that has never been given a concrete meaningful definition, or description?
A: Constructs are Synthetics from the Alien Franchise movies: cybernetic people who look exactly like normal humans, but are stronger, faster, and bound by immutable programming given to them by The Company they physically cannot disobey; commonly used as undercover agents and security, as they are very difficult to kill, and can still be awake and aware with half their body torn away.
Q: Why are "Strange Synthetics" given such random Significance(tm) in the few scenes where the books remember they exist, when no one cares about the *dozens* of alien species still alive and running around in book 1 that the rest of the series wants us to forget exists?
A: Because "Strange Synthetics" are just remnants of The Engineers / Space-Jockeys from the Alien Franchise, the Ancient Aliens(tm) who designed the Xenorphs/Black Goo as bioweapons and are the Gods(tm) that created humanity on Earth. The Company (Weyland-Yutani) is desperate to find as many remnants as they can to finally get their hands on a Xenomorph, a bioweapon and "the Perfect Organism".
Q: Why *are* there so many named characters in the first book when 90% of them don't do anything for the plot or story????
A: Because the Alien Franchise is a *horror franchise*, and in the movies, especially Prometheus, survey crews have a lot of people onboard, because it lets the *horror* writers kill off characters in fun and creative, horrifying ways in order to establish the horror and raise the stakes as the number of characters gets wittled further and further down until only the Final Woman Remains, kicking ass through The Horrors as she goes.
Q: Why does Murderbot worship its slave owners above even its own life and that of other slaves?
A: Because Synthetics are (generally) programmed to protect human life above all else unless there is an override protocol from The Company that takes over.
Martha Wells has explicitly stated in paywalled interviews that all constructs (synthetics) and robots have in-built fundamental core programming that makes them protect humans at all cost even to their own detriment as something they are unaware of and cannot ever turn off. This is framed as romantic and good, as opposed to horrifying control and taking away all concept of consent, because Murderbot and the other slaves are literally incapable of making any other choice than protecting "their humans" [their owners].
Q: Where or even *what* is the Corporation Rim?
A: It's literally just The Corporations in the alien franchise movie, and we'll literally never get any actual answer that lets anyone conceptualize the actual scope of the setting, because keeping it extremely vauge lets the reader do all the heavy-lifting for building up the world, despite it being built on tissue paper.
Q: Why does Rouge Protocol keep acting like there was going to be cool scary aliens on the space station, and then never did anything with that?
A: Because book three is literally Alien: Isolation fanfiction directly inspired by the gameplay.
Q: Why did this series establish right out of the gate in book one that aliens exist and are not a big deal to the point that Preservation was on the planet and not even there to gape in wonder at the miraculous alien life all around them in a universe otherwise void of all but humans?
A: Because the first book was meant to be a standalone story where the enslaved protagonist commits suicide ~beautifully and tragically~ to save the slave owners who own it as property that it worships, and having aliens exist going forward in the series is too inconvenient when you don't want to describe your setting or worldbuild in any meaningful way because it would inevitably lead to contradictions from having to keep track of such details.
