The Three Smartest Changes AppleTV’s ‘Murderbot’ Made To The Books

Martha Wells’ “The Murderbot Diaries” is a breezy and confident series, each short installment coming in barely longer than a novella. Its vision of the future is neither enlightened nor fraught; it’s simply the natural evolution of capitalism, where unimaginable advances in technology are subverted by cost-saving shortcuts to bolster revenue, and we witness it all through the eyes of one such shortcut: a refurbished, malfunctioning SecUnit that calls itself Murderbot. As the series title suggests, the books are written in Murderbot’s POV, as the relatable cyborg offers his constant and hilarious commentary on the people and dangers he encounters. As a narrator, he’s practically omniscient (thanks to his access to camera feeds and data streams) yet also biased (he thinks humans are idiots) and unreliable (he can be glitchy or even shut down). World-building is limited to what Murderbot bothers to explain, which is not much because he frankly doesn’t care. His voice never seems to wear out its welcome, though. I’d read Murderbot trying to grill a steak.

Turns out, I’d watch Murderbot grill a steak too, or anything else Alexander Skarsgård bothers to attempt in character while awkwardly avoiding human contact. Chris and Paul Weitz have crafted a promising adaptation with AppleTV+’s Murderbot, starting with the main billing — seriously, Skarsgård is perfectly cast and I can only assume his performance is informed by years of being a little weirdo whom the world treats like a sex symbol - but he’s not the only reason to tune in. Are you looking for a quick hit of entertainment? Well, each episode of Murderbot clocks in at under 30 minutes! Do you like mysteries? There’s a whole group of researchers who just died under mysterious circumstances, and I bet Murderbot is going to get to the bottom of it! Enjoy a good cameo? Hey look, it’s John Cho!

There is so much that Murderbot gets right from the books, but it also makes a few wise changes in bringing the source material to life. Changes that I don’t think readers will miss, but may help viewers who are coming to the show fresh. Things like…

Less Technobabble

Murderbot is a SecUnit (Security Unit), and to perform his functions he has to monitor … everything. All the cameras and data feeds, the health signs of his group, the drones he sends on patrol. He hacked his own governor module, granting himself free will, but he also hacks into pilot AIs and other computery stuff. For every scene of physical altercation, there are countless more hi-tech hijinx he engages in from the shadows. If there’s one element of the books that might be considered off-putting, at least to readers of a less sci-fi bent, it might be the sheer amount of technobabble that threads Murderbot’s narration.

The show takes a, well, show don’t tell approach to all that. So far, the ever-present data Murderbot is connected to is mostly represented by pop-ups in his vision, which add to the proceedings without pulling too much focus. We get a bit of narration about the specifics of what Murderbot does internally - mostly his television habits - but the show also uses concrete examples of Murderbot’s tampering to keep things grounded. When the augmented human Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) probes a little too deeply into Murderbot’s archive, for example, Murderbot makes sure he sees a camera feed of their other crewmates joining a threesome to unsettle him. Even with small, petty moments like this, viewers can get a sense of Murderbot’s abilities and the ubiquitousness of technological information in this world without having to get too bogged down in baffling details.

The Rise And Fall Of Sanctuary Moon

Speaking of television habits, Murderbot spends a lot of time watching TV. Like, thousands and thousands of hours. He talks a bit about his shows in the books, because most of what he learns about human nature comes from his programs, but Murderbot takes advantage of its format to bring the shows to life as well. In the premiere, a scene from Murderbot’s preferred serial - “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon” - is depicted with John Cho, Jack McBrayer, and Clark Gregg in hilarious get-ups. It’s a minor thing, perhaps little more than an excuse to inject Murderbot with a parade of familiar faces, but I think it adds a nice bit of context for Murderbot’s own personality. It’s one thing to know he’s learned how to comfort a human because he saw it on TV; it’s another thing to witness the scene he mimics and realize he’s taking his cues from a cheesy space soap opera.

The Narrator Doesn’t Have To Do Everything

Don’t worry - Murderbot is still front and center in Murderbot. It’s his show, and with careful editing, it’s not even that hard to tell when you’re hearing his internal narration or if you’re hearing the words he’s saying out loud. But the show does what the books can’t ever really do, and that’s break away from his point of view from time to time to depict events he isn’t present for, without relying on seeing them through Murderbot’s constant camera monitoring. It happens when we see Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) and her team negotiating the bond for their expedition in the first episode, and it happens again in episode two when Mensah goes to explore a blank area on their map in person.

This change may prove to be the one with the biggest repercussions, as it opens the door for events to unfold differently than they do in the books simply because Murderbot isn’t there to witness them, and those differences can potentially stack up. I’m not too worried, though. So far, it hasn’t shifted the overall trajectory of the narrative; instead, it’s helped the story feel less claustrophobically bound to Murderbot himself, lest our cynical cyborg grow stale (never!). In small doses, especially to fill in context that Murderbot would never be interested in enough to explain, it can be a good thing.

Will there be more deviations from the source material coming? Undoubtedly. And maybe they won’t all be improvements, but so far I’m heartened to see how intelligently the Murderbot team has gone about bringing the books to screen. The series captures the tone and stakes of the books, where the violence is serious but never glorified, and the comedy is darkly cynical and pervasive. There’s nothing else quite like it on TV, and I hope it catches on with viewers the way only a rare few AppleTV+ shows have managed so far.

Make Murderbot the new Ted Lasso, dammit.

New episodes of Murderbot premiere Fridays on AppleTV+