Okay, so, there is now in my mind an additional potential explanation for the…discrepancies, with the PresAux Survey Team’s general level of competency in the Murderbot TV show compared to All Systems Red:
All Systems Red is epistolary.
The book is revealed at the end to actually be a letter, an account of what happened during the survey from Murderbot’s perspective. It’s an actual diary, but also, it was an explanation for why Murderbot ultimately chose to walk away from the Preservation group and instead go it alone. Why, despite the risks, it’d rather be rogue than a pet robot.
And yeah, no, Murderbot doesn’t fully verbalize why it felt uncomfortable with their treatment of it…but it did intend the story to be an explanation of what happened for Mensah.
I repeat: the book All Systems Red is Murderbot explaining to its favorite human, Dr. Ayda Mensah, that it does care for her and her team but doesn’t feel at ease with them.
(It’s ambiguous exactly how much of the book is that letter. But to assume it’s the whole damn book does not conflict canon in any way.)
Do you think Murderbot would’ve felt compelled to talk to Mensah about any instances where the Preservation crew, with the best of intentions, did something stupid or silly or detrimental? Would Murderbot be willing to risk coming across as super sanctimonious and smug about their incompetence while saying an emotional goodbye?
Murderbot can be an asshole, but it’s not what I’d call mean-spirited. It’s only brutally honest when it serves a purpose, and it serves no purpose to shame PresAux for the silly mistakes they made that didn’t actually matter.
(Not listening to Murderbot about what it wanted was the only mistake that really counted.)
The format of the book explains why it might differ from the TV show, and specifically why the PresAux crew seem less competent in a crisis. The point of the letter/All Systems Red was to explain why Murderbot left, and then comfort Mensah about it. So no, it wouldn’t include repeated mocking of the Preservation crew.
So, technically speaking, the Murderbot TV show needn’t be considered super different from the books!
(Obviously some things are different, like Overse and Volescu being left out of the TV show. But that could also be part of the divergence — two of the most level-headed and even-keeled PresAux members didn’t come, so everyone else got more impulsive and emotional. This is an AU where Arada and Overse never got married and Volescu is retired.)
It’s not that the Preservation people wouldn’t do the dumb shit from the TV show, it’s that All Systems Red is ultimately a story told to Mensah by Murderbot, where recounting dumb shit they did serves no purpose.
(Given we learn in the later books that Ratthi was allowed to read that letter, we can even hypothesize that Murderbot might have retroactively edited out a lot of Ratthi being extra silly — perhaps after it reunited with the PresAux crew — because it didn’t want to hurt his feelings.)
Plus, y’know, obviously we wouldn’t get even anecdotes about all the love triangle stuff from Murderbot. It wouldn’t bother telling Mensah all that when 1.) she probably knows all the interpersonal drama on the team way better than MB, and 2.) that stuff isn’t relevant to the story MB was telling.
My point is: we tell a story differently depending on who we’re telling it to. Show!MB is mostly narrating to us, as viewers, and the camera is just showing us what’s “actually” happening. But Book!MB is recording its experiences for Mensah.
(And presumably, in later books, for Bharadwaj and the “documentary” she’s making as an alternative form of therapy for Murderbot.)
