Well, Dax did beat a guy to death, and Jasper and Monty ended up there for stealing pharmaceuticals… I suspect a good chunk of the original 100 were there for garden-variety reasons like theft or violence, but that's not as interesting a backstory as being put into lockup for some noble cause or civil disobedience.

Seems simpler than that to me. I get the impression that a large factor in his change of approach is that he realizes that not only does he not want to die alone, but that he also won't survive alone for very long. In his shoes, I imagine I'd figure out who I had the best chances of surviving with, bite the bullet and…

I'm not even sure I'd consider Murphy a 'bad' person. He did some pretty awful shit, but apart from Raven (for some reason), pretty much every character who's shown up more than once has done questionable things.

Minor nitpick, but it does make a bit of sense for most of the Ark to speak English. Of the twelve countries whose stations formed the Ark, four overwhelmingly speak English (Australia, Canada, UK, US) and two have it as one of their official languages (India and Uganda). Plus, it's an extremely common second…