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The Reason Murderbot’s Tone Feels Off
Martha Wells’ book series uses wry humor to tell a story about artificial intelligence, humanity, and free will. The Apple TV+ adaptation tries to do the same—with mixed results.
Polyamory, a matter-of-fact part of life in Wells’ books, gets turned into an unnecessary B-plot, attempting to add drama by pointing out that throuples exist. Murderbot wants, then, to be a quirky sci-fi dramedy with hints of a deeper anti-corporate message—a welcome reprieve on the streaming network most known for big downers like Silo,Foundation, and Severance —but it struggles to be all those things at once. At a time when the threat of an artificially intelligent bot taking one’s job feels very real, All Systems Red asks whether creating humanoids to do dirty work is any different from slavery.
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