A Bucket O’ H

I’m still not sure how I feel about the changes that have been made. This episode especially, with them going to DeltFall. In the book MB is already at “my humans” territory. In the show, all of the humans are so paranoid about it and pushing its boundaries to the point where it doesn’t even consider them past doing it’s job. (evident especially in it saying “Aww thanks.. should’ve let that thing eat your wife.” when Pin Lee said Gurathin might be right). It doesn’t feel like Murderbot in that regard, funnily enough. It’s too detatched, it isn’t as protective of it’s humans as it should be at this point.

“I didn’t care. Nobody was touching my humans.” versus “I was curious.”

It’s also very evident in the fact that it outwardly lies to Mensah about what happened in the DF habitat. It doesn’t trust her. It’s closed off from her. Don’t get me wrong—it makes for fantastic drama. But it’s not Murderbot. MB at this point in the book is so absolutely gone on these humans (even Gurathin, not that it would admit it) that it’s willing to walk into a fight with two—possibly deadly—rogue SecUnit’s to protect them. TV show MB doesn’t seem to care nearly as much. It doesn’t want the humans to get hurt, but it isn’t doing this for them. And I feel like the show has taken away such a core part of what makes PresAux its humans.

Mensah doesn’t feel like Mensah, she feels inexperienced. Hell, she basically vent-dumps onto MB. and sure, she wasn’t doing too hot in the books. But she still feels like a planetary leader, she feels put together and calm, because she has to be. Because her team needs her to be. She isn’t reckless in the books like she is in the show. Everything book Mensah does is carefully calculated for the safety of her friends and family. She defaults to SecUnit because—despite its very clear rampant social anxiety—it knows what it’s doing and she knows that. There’s a barrier of mutual trust and respect, they respect eachother’s boundaries and default to eachother’s strengths. It’s what makes them work so well together and the lack of that understanding is why they’re clashing so much in the show.

It’s similar with a lot of the other preservation humans. They don’t respect boundaries. In the books, even Ratthi who’s overexcited and Gurathin who literally reveals MB’s name are both more respectful than the entirety of the character’s in the show. The show character’s are too paranoid, too overenthusiastic about getting in MB’s space, too disrespectful of its choices/opinions. and it shows in the breakdown of trust between MB and the humans. It shows in the way MB was too quick to lie to Mensah because “humans become volatile when they’re in percieved danger”. Because Mensah in the book was scared, but she held her shit together and kept everyone calm because that’s just how she is. She forces her own calm to keep order, it’s part of what makes her such a good leader of a group. TV show Mensah would probably have panicked. Maybe not to an extreme extent, but the whole group would have delved into chaos. MB was right about that.

It’s these little differences in characterisation that just make the whole group feel childish. and i get that the show is playing up their more volatile natures to edge the comedy up, but it just makes them all feel incompetent imo.

also the complete lack of feed except for the one mention with Gurathin and MB’s display has taken a huge chunk of important narrative out of this as well. The fact that MB is verbally relaying information instead of just pushing drone views into the feed or tapping requests/orders via it has honestly also caused part of this disconnect. It’s partially understandable from a TV show perspective because having your actors all stand around not talking while you CGI in feed stuff is not the way to go. But getting rid of it entirely is almost worse. MB says it best itself, “[the feed] made it impossible to lose track of someone.” Without it, the whole team feels disconnected, separated in ways that they aren’t with that feed connection. It just doesn’t work in terms of an adaptation of the books.

I think if I watched this series with no knowledge of the books I would really like it. It is funny, the characters are still loveable even though they’re fundamentally different. It’s a good show. But it’s only a decent adaptation at best.

Im really not sure how I feel about TV Gurathin. Book Gurathin is also paranoid as shit don’t get me wrong, but he never outwardly antagonized SecUnit to these extremes. It was more of a “I don’t like you, you don’t like me” and he only really spoke out when SecUnit was officially outed as rogue. I think the fact that he’s clocked it so early is for more outward drama which is so valid because TV adaptation is tough but having Gurathin be this SecUnit wary, kind of against free bots, guy just doesn’t sit right with me (I still love him don’t get me wrong, I just don’t know how to feel about it yet.)

Mensah and Bharadwaj going on the check out survey alone and the big thing with seeing visible alien remnant so early must be a TV adaptation part to add more drama and suspense but I’m interested to see where they go with it. A little upset we didn’t get to see Murderbot mother hen a whole bunch of grown adults and not loving how it makes the whole presaux team look I’m ngl? They feel a little too naive, not going as a big group, not taking their security, etc. But I understand that big changes like this have likely been made to up the suspense and make the series more visually engaging.

Congrats to Ratthi for joining the cursed(/silly) Pin Lee and Arada relationship 🙌. I hope Pin Lee gets her shit together though because girl you can’t add a whole other person to your relationship just because it makes your partner happy 😭😭.

On the topic of SecUnit’s appearance I think I figured out what’s been bothering me so much about it. It’s the fact that SecUnit, multiple times throughout all of the books, expresses its dislike for its organics. Whenever it describes itself it always talks about its inorganics (and its hair) like its robotic feet or the way it has to modify itself to appear heavily augmented rather than robotic. Its inorganics are such a huge part of its identity and how it feels about and expresses itself so taking that away almost feels like stripping away such a core part of its identity. Especially considering how much of a trans/enby allegory it is in the books, changing itself willingly with the alterations ART makes in Artificial Condition and the way it starts choosing its own clothes and feeling comfortable in its own skin. Taking away such a key part of that storyline feels wrong to me, as a trans person who relates so heavily to Murderbot in so many ways but this way especially. I think that it’s one of the creative choices that the team made that I can’t really get behind. Some of the changes are understandable and even good considering the change in media format but this specifically is just not something I can reconcile with even though I still love the show so far.

I’m enjoying the show quite a bit, it’s funny and Alexander Skarsgård is delivering the perfect amount of “oh fuck oh fuck why are the humans interacting with me” facial expressions. I really appreciate the acting from all of the humans too, they feel really accurate and I love watching them interact with eachother! Ratthi is, as expected, my favourite. Love that guy.

There are a lot of changes that were made, but I can understand why those changes were made to better adapt the book for a tv series.

I’m not sure how I feel about the govmod hack/naming scene? It was good for what it was, cute and funny, but considering the nature of the reason for the hack in the book it felt almost too blasé about the whole thing. And considering how its name is a literal reminder of the terrible things that it’s done that it never wants to do again, idk. I also personally like just getting thrown right into the thick of it without a lot of context, but I understand how that can translate poorly into a TV series style. I trust Martha and the team to work it’s trauma into this in other ways and I am interested to see how this change affects the story.

That being said. Why is it just a guy? Where are its inorganics?? I mean I know it’s mostly robot on the inside given the… less than fortunate gaping hole it ended up with, but why doesn’t it have any visual inorganic parts? What happened to the stuff it had to alter to appear more human? Why does it just look like a regular human guy? I understand if there were budget concerns but (again considering the gaping hole in its side ((which was insanely impressive work btw props to the vis effects team))) I really think that getting rid of the inorganics detracts something from its character in a way that I don’t really like… it’s supposed to be Not Human, to be recognisable as a SecUnit by actual people as well as other units (given how hard it has to work on its Act-Like-A-Human code in the books and how it had to have its inorganics fixed up to look more like augments). The fact that it literally looks like a human guy without genitals takes that away completely. It has such a huge narrative importance in the books and I really don’t understand how they’re going to rectify that? It detracts something integral from the whole “it’s not a human and not trying to be” thing to make what’s supposed to be a bot/human construct just, look like a human. It’s really the only part so far that I’m having trouble adjusting to, the rest of the changes made sense given that this is a comedy tv series and they had to make changes to adjust but this one just feels like a massive change that completely alters so much of the story.