The Murderbot TV adaptation

Ahhhhhh!

I watched the whole first season Thursday. The episodes were short and not episodic, so it was one big thing cut up into episodes instead, really. The casting was brilliant, even for this face-blind person, such that it was immediately obvious who everyone was and it was very easy to keep them all straight. If you don't have face blindness, well, it's very hard to tell unfamiliar people apart or figure out who's who when they have similar looks. These actors were visually distinctive and wore distinctively different clothing. Is this what it feels like when something is translated into sign language for you, or there are captions on photos? Because that felt like such a kind and generous thing to do. I really appreciated it. It would have been so easy to put them all into uniforms.

Things I loved about the adaptation:

The cast. They were all lovely actors and all did a wonderful job with the story. Visually distinctive casting aside, they were a pleasure to spend time with and embodied the characters we already knew with care and accuracy and sensitivity. 

The focus on Murderbot's voice and point of view. Okay, the voiceover interjections were a little jarring sometimes, but only because it wasn't always clear who was speaking. But the story was Murderbot's story more than anyone's. I had been afraid it would be the object and not the subject, but it was fully the subject.

Humor. The book is funny! I loved that they kept that. I had also been afraid (though not since seeing the trailer) that they would have lost the humor along the way. Humor doesn't always translate.

Murderbot itself. It was socially anxious, traumatized, ironic, exhausted, and avoidant. It didn't like eye contact and wanted to be left alone to watch its shows. Perfection. 

Okay, there were some things I wasn't crazy about:

Murderbot was a man. The book character is NOT. It's genderless. They tried to do this by Ken doll-ing away its junk, but everyone still focused on that in a way that was way off kilter. It's not a man. It's a genderless construct. People treated it like a man who has had its genitalia removed. No, dude. Wrong. There was even this weird extra added character who made jokes about that. Went on for a while about it. That would not happen with a genderless construct. 

Now granted they had to cast a human in the role and humans are generally kind of gendered, but a 6'4" fit man is going to skew more gendered than not. There are actors who would have solved that problem, but I don't know if they would have knocked this part out of the PARK the way Skarsgård did. He absolutely killed with this character. Like I've read these books dozens of times and I still cried. I knew what was going to happen and still cried. Come on!

So if we had to sacrifice genderlessness to get the beautiful Mr. Skarsgård destroying us with this role, I call it a massive win. But leave out the peepee jokes next time, holy crap. 

Changes for the sake of the adaptation: I get it, it's a different genre of fiction entirely, nothing translates 1:1 when you adapt something. I still don't think we needed the dopey spy GrayCris woman there. What for? Probably the creators could explain it, like putting the threat of these unknown people into a visual and present person, plus giving Murderbot someone to kill in front of everyone so that its nature was real and unavoidable so we're not treating it like a sad little meow but still. Okay, maybe I talked myself into that one. You DO need to see that violence. And killing other constructs didn't really do it. Fine!

I stand firm on the peepee jokes, though.

Gurathin bothered me more than anything else. They made him into a much more prominent character and gave a lot of Mensah's story to him. They added whole complicated backstories about a drug addiction and being in love with Mensah (???) that I truly don't think added anything. And they made him level with or more important than Mensah, which...don't do that. Don't make it a story about man pain. Don't take a deeply feminist and equal story and suddenly elevate the one white man to prominence that was not at all part of the original story. Don't take story from the black woman who is president of the world and give it to this grumpy guy. That's a very bad look. Stop that.  

That one I can't talk myself out of. Gurathin was the skeptic, yes, but he didn't have to be half the story. 

Okay, now I see why they did that, FINE, but he could have changed his mind and been converted to Murderbot Fan without having it be the whole ending of the story. Again, why? It takes focus off Murderbot whose story it is. 

The whole oh no they're going to melt it down part was also wrongheaded as it says again and again they're too expensive, so of course they wouldn't do that, they'd save the mechanical parts to reuse them but wouldn't melt them--why add that? Being erased and getting controlled again is bad enough. Now granted that's a fairly passive role in the story at that point, but Murderbot was badly injured and needed to get fixed anyway. It's no worse than someone being hurt and in the hospital while fighting for their freedom. 

I kind of wish the novel had had a stronger role for Murderbot in that moment, but the whole point is that it didn't choose slavery and it did choose freedom from the governor module but it didn't choose to be bought out and owned again by these nice people, however nice they are. You can't make a choice in a moment that is about not being allowed or able to make a choice. 

The big moment at the end was between Murderbot and Gurathin. I see why they wanted it. You want someone to understand and let it go anyway. Why is it always Gurathin? It feels to me like they couldn't relate to anyone but the white man and put all the big emotional beats on him. Come on!

Why not imagine that part given to Ratthi, who is the best friend a Murderbot ever had and would see why it would want to leave and understand? I seriously don't see why not, if you had to have it in there. Why not give it to Mensah, whose story this is more than anyone's except Murderbot's? 

The Gurathin problem is a serious one with this adaptation. Maybe you have to be Not A White Man to see how bad it is. The way it was cast, we already have a great big tall good-looking white man at the center of everything. With guns in its arms and a head full of goofy shows. So it's pathological to force this other non-central character to take a huge emotional central role in your show given that Dr. Mensah is right there and going through these things not just also but first. First!

Also, given that it's an slave narrative straight out of the 1800s, seriously, read them and you will see, it would have been lovely to see Mensah and Murderbot having that meeting of the minds and understanding each other that way and watch her still let it go. It is HER emotional journey so I got really mad that they took it away and gave it to Gurathin.

I could also complain that Volescu and Overse were left out and somehow Arada and Pin-Lee are married? What? However, that's a lot of people milling around. What are you going to do when Arada is commanding missions later on, though? Pin-Lee is also much older in my mind but that's beside the point. I pictured a fierce lady in her 50s who takes no prisoners. 

Bharadwaj was absolutely delightful. This is a character I never pay attention to because she kind of disappears from the narrative after being injured. They did wonderful things with her. 

Okay one more thing I loved was the way they integrated the serials into Murderbot's behavior, like copying what they said in the show when it was helping them out of the crater in the beginning.

OVERALL: We're in it for Murderbot and Mensah most of all and we got wonderful things there. Some of my favorite moments were added, like Murderbot showing her Sanctuary Moon to calm down a panic attack and starting to sing the theme song, which made her head whip around. That is utterly delightful. 

I loved this adaptation so much that I had to go read All Systems Red again. My hardcover copy is coming apart. The back has become detached. Must glue it back together because I'll be reading it another million times.

Most of all, the adaptation got Murderbot exactly right, except for making it a giant Swedish dude, but it was worth it as a tradeoff to get this brilliant actor and all of those incredible moments when its feelings are right there on the surface. Murderbot is in an impossible position nearly all the time, trying to keep people safe who won't listen, getting treated as an object when it's a person, getting treated as a person when it would feel safer as an object, dealing with anxiety and depression, wrestling with its own identity and agency, and most of all trying to figure out what it wants. Skarsgård delivered brilliantly. It wasn't the genderless construct Murderbot in the books, but it was a wonderful addition and I'm very happy to have it.