Comment by vintagedave
5 hours ago
I read the series and have really enjoyed the TV show. It felt like it was made for fans (the portrayal of the embedded show, Sanctuary Moon, was wonderful and I felt like whoever did their hairstyles had an immense amount of fun), yet accessible without knowing the story. Murderbot’s self-narration was good; I wanted more since it drove so much of the book but what was there in the show carried its personality well.
Alexander Skarsgard pulled the character off well. My mental picture of Murderbot from the books was very different but now when I re-read the first book after watching the show, I heard his voice. I still feel slightly sad they didn’t get a more genderless or gender-ambivalent actor (he looks male, the bot was agender before the show) or tried to portray him differently… they could have reduced this but the way they filmed him assigns gender to an ungendered character.
The other actors were all excellent too. I felt far more of a sense of them as a team and individuals than I remember from the first book.
If you enjoyed the books I think you’ll enjoy the show, except for me that it has changed my picture of Murderbot and I am not sure for the better, in terms of what I felt were social / identity values the books encouraged.
Thanks for the analysis. I've been reading it with a thought toward how I might've adapted it for video. The narration seemed incredibly challenging (and kept making me think of "A Christmas Story", of all things). The integration of "Sanctuary Moon" sounds particularly fun.
I definitely see Murderbot as genderless and seeing it as gendered is going to be weird. Fortunately, the series isn't particularly "dear" to me and I think I can deal with the trauma of having my mental pictures wiped-out by somebody else's.
(There are properties like "Neuromancer" and "Snow Crash" that I hope are never adapted to video and, if they are, I will steadfastly refuse to ever see, because I can't imagine anybody else's mental pictures will be better than mine...)