I've been thinking about how a specific change between book-MB and tv-MB are creating a very different scenario in ep3, which is going to lead to a very interesting difference.
Book-MB knows from the get-go that it murdered a bunch of folks on a previous assignment. In typical book-MB fashion, it doesn't tell us this. Knowledge that it has, but also doesn't have the full details on. This knowledge permeate so much of how book-MB thinks about itself. It informs that opening statement that it could have gone a murder spree, but doesn't because shiny media. It's inherent within all the statements by book-MB that it is both a murderbot (as in SecUnits are good at murdering) and is self named Murderbot. It's baked into how it thinks about itself and other SecUnits. Can't be sentimental. Can't trust, and somewhat inherently isn't sure if it can trust itself.
When book-MB goes into the DeltFall habitat with the intent to kill the other murderbots, who as far as it knows have gone rogue, there's always been the re-read implication for me that book-MB wants to kill this past kill-the-humans self.
This isn't the situation for tv-MB, who knows something bad happened. It has a scattered memory, but doesn't know what it is. Well, probably does know what's going on from context, but doesn't want to know. Because any MB is going to disassociate from bad shit if it can. I'm fascinated by the decision to overlay this disturbing memory with quotes from the sorta-Trek-Sanctuary-Moon captain. "Stay calm. It'll be okay. You have my word."
So when tv-MB goes into the DeltFall habitat, it does so out of curiosity. Granted there's the Doylistic reason that it's considerably easier to film a person walking down a hallway - look dead bodies - than it is to have that same person climbing around habitat tops. But Watsonianly, tv-MB's motivation is different.
There is no feed and the others aren't seeing what it's seeing. Instead, it's lying about what it's seeing. In a way, this is recreating / reframing the fragmented memory into a new context.
It's generating static like a (heroic) character in Sanctuary Moon. There's this fake it till you make it quality to the whole sequence of events.
This makes me super curious about how far we're going to go in the reveals in Episode 4.
Err…
spoilers for the book,
speculation for the tv show.
Will we get past the combat plugin to the revelations with the PresAux team that it has free will? Will Gurathin reveal that tv-MB killed a bunch of folks? But somewhat importantly, if Gurathin could find that out from info they have available, so could tv-MB. Did it? Did it just archive that information in favor of re-imaging itself as the hero of a story?
Mind you, there's also a blond character shown in the previews who isn't a member of the PresAux crew so…maybe going into the habitat will have other implications.
Sits politely like a PresAux sitting obsessed human and wants more episodes now please.
