I’m Glad Murderbot is Divisive in So Many Ways

Apple TV+ is bringing The Murderbot Diaries to life in its new series Murderbot, and while the reviews are generally very positive, there’s a noticeable hesitance among fans of the original book series by Martha Wells. All adaptations make some changes to their source material, but it’s interesting to take stock of the more subtle things existing fans find odd about this show — its tone, its pacing, its focus. Commentary on forums like Reddit is reserved, as fans simultaneously want to love the show for what it is and also want to see the show they’d already envisioned in their heads. For this particular story, that response is so perfect, it’s as if it was designed that way.

The Murderbot Diaries are a series of novellas, novels, and short stories by Martha Wells told from the first-person perspective of manufactured cyborg why is typically referred to as “SecUnit.” The bot’s wry commentary undercuts the brutal and gruesome sci-fi setting of these stories, while its disinterested perspective often leaves the most tantalizing worldbuilding mysteries just out of reach. The books are definitely funny, but when Apple announced a screen adaptation, fans were not expecting a half-hour sitcom format.

There are a lot of other aspects of the adaptation that have caught fans off-guard — casting Alexander Skarsgård as a genderless, sexless, manufactured being; portraying his clients as not just egalitarian, but full-on hippies; padding the story with more sexual entanglements than it originally had, and so on. All of this is influenced by the half-hour action-comedy format, as fans had largely been anticipating hour-long episodes with a more dramatic feel.

Read Next

Murderbot: Everything You Need to Know About the New Apple TV+ Scifi Series

Still, scanning these same message boards — as well as reviews from around the internet — it’s clear that these surprises aren’t driving fans away from the show, for the most part. Many book-readers are along for the ride, whether they’re pleasantly surprised or still nervous about what’s coming. To me, that suggests these changes were not mistakes — they’re complimentary to the books, adding depth and perspective to SecUnit as a character, as well as the story itself.

Sex, Gender, and Pronouns

If anything was not surprising about the general response to Murderbot, it’s the endless discourse on gender and sexuality. SecUnit uses it/its pronouns, which are legitimate used by people in real-life, but are also easy to accept in this context, as SecUnit was manufactured with no sexual functions and was treated as an object for most of its life. So far, the show’s biggest change here is that the human characters often use he/him pronouns for SecUnit by mistake, while in the books, they are familiar with constructs and do not need to discuss this issue among themselves.

There are many fans who were disappointed to see Skarsgård cast as SecUnit, as the actor presents a very masculine appearance. Most critical commenters had hoped for a more androgynous look for SecUnit, and some even said they would have liked the character to skew more femme. However, considering SecUnit was purpose-built to intimidation and combat, most were able to accept that its creators would want it to look masculine. The show has also captured SecUnit’s inner monologues well, including its disdain for human sexuality and disinterest in gender identity.

This is a prime example of the show making a necessary, practical choice work in tandem with the books. Readers only get SecUnit’s perspective, and it is disinterested in describing its own features. The same is true on the show, but as we can see it, it had to have an appearance here. The series couldn’t have turned down Skarsgård’s star power, and his masculine appearance works well considering SecUnit’s function. There is plenty of time later in the series for SecUnit to experiment with androgyny.

Complaints about the sexual drama among the other characters can be answered the same way — SecUnit did not care to describe these things in the first-person perspective books, but on the show, they contrast between its focus and the actual events of the story. It’s a great way to characterize SecUnit at all times — the construct is practically omniscient when its networked with all the cameras and microphones in the habitat or the hopper, so we learn a lot about it simply by what it pays attention to. Fans have a right to be disinterested in these subplots, but there’s no denying that they’re being used effectively, especially in a five-hour adaptation of three-hour book.

Sitcom Format

The greater issue for disgruntled fans seems to be the half-hour-long episodes and its impact on pacing. Many seem to feel that the runtime was cut down to save money, and that it threatens to shorten the whole story. As mentioned above, the first audiobook in the series, All Systems Red, is three hours and 17 minutes long, as with 10 episodes, Season 1 will actually tell a longer version of this part of the story.

The longer the season goes on, the more I love the choice to have half-hour episodes, as it’s a perfect inversion of the way the novels play with formatting. Sci-fi novels are generally dense, grim, and thoughtful, and The Murderbot Diaries inevitably check all those boxes at some times. However, SecUnit’s first-person perspective undercuts the brutality of the Corporation Rim, and it is extremely sparing with the dense worldbuilding, especially in the beginning. Its escapist obsession with media is not just relatable — it often threatens the philosophical attitude associated with the sci-fi genre in general.

In the same way, cramming this dystopian space opera into a half-hour sitcom format scrambles expectations in both directions. Viewers come in unsure if they’re in for a prestige TV book adaptation or an awkward ship-bound bottle story. It compliments SecUnit’s love for melodramatic serials, making for more cliffhangers and awkward cuts. All in all, I’ve been surprised at just how well this choice works.

The formatting has reminded me why it’s so important to give series time to tell their story before making up our minds about them. Even as streamers lean away from dropping whole seasons at once, fans and critics seem more determined to give shows a score on a first impression. It’s sad to see since creators are now able to produce whole seasons before they ever air. This means a choice that seems confusing or out of place might be meant that way, and it might pay off later. In this case, it certainly is.

There will be much more to say about Apple TV+’s Murderbot in the weeks to come, as there are three more episodes premiering on Thursday nights through July 11th. There will be even more to discuss if the show is renewed, and Wells’ other books are adapted. The Murderbot Diaries are available in print, digital, and audiobook formats.