Station Eleven the tv show

Recently I finished both Station Eleven the book and the tv show. You can find the post about the book here. In general, I didn’t like the show as much, but it did have its moments and there were some interesting additions to the story that I definitely want to discuss.

I’ll start by summarizing the show, it follows more or less the same plot as the book, but again there are some changes. The beginning is the same with Arthur dying on stage, but Jeevan ends up taking Kirsten home with him and she stays with him for roughly the first 100 days of the collapse. I liked this choice a lot, Jeevan’s story line is less integrated than the others and this pulls him in more. Jeevan then gets a call from his sister (not his friend) who is a doctor in a hospital. She tells Jeevan to barricade himself in Frank’s apartment. This is so much more minor but I’m not a fan of it, her telling Jeevan exactly what to do just doesn’t fit with the vibe of how this pandemic suddenly sprung up and no one knows what to do. Oh and the whole thing is a lot more dramatic, there’s a plane that crashes into a ferris wheel and stuff like that. Episode 2 introduces the Traveling Symphony on their way to St. Deborah-by-the-Water. This is where things change quite a bit. Kirsten is close to Alex, who was born after the collapse and she’s portrayed in a really innocent and clueless way. Which I don’t love. Anyways during the episode the Symphony performs “Hamlet” and a work that the conductor wrote. This is also when Charlie and Jeremy decide to have a baby and stay at St. Debs. First of all, the baby is very conveniently born during the performance, which is a little too convenient for me. The decision to have them perform “Hamlet” I think is interesting, it’s definitely the most famous Shakespeare work. It also comes back later. There is a gorgeous sequence that intersperses Kirsten playing Hamlet and talking about his father being dead with a young Kirsten realizing that her parents are dead. It’s a lovely sequence, but I can’t help but think that having the fate of Kirsten’s parents be uncertain is much more interesting. Every story has orphans and dead parents, dealing with uncertainty is much more interesting. It ends with Kirsten confronting a strange man the Symphony met earlier and stabbing him when he threatens to make members of the Symphony disappear.

That’s the second episode, the show alternates episodes following the main cast and flashback episodes focusing on a single character. Episode 3 then is Miranda’s episode. She’s a Black woman and I love that choice so much! In general I liked the flashbacks much more than the other episodes. Her story sticks to the book for the most part, but one key difference is that Arthur is so much more of a dick to Miranda. He initially meets her by harassing her at a diner. She shows him the finished Station Eleven and he says that this book ruined his life. In the book he isn’t a great guy, but by the end of his life he is trying at least. But then in Miranda’s final days she’s in Malaysia and is offered a chance to escape on some boat that her boss conveniently (too conveniently) knows. She turns it down because she finds out that Arthur died and is heartbroken. Are you kidding me? This guy was a dick so you just want to die now? Also Jeevan isn’t shown as a journalist either outside their house or interviewing Arthur. Actually, the show doesn’t show anything of Jeevan’s day-to-day life before the pandemic. In Episode 4 we are back to the Traveling Symphony who have decided to head to where their old director is. While there, they find out that the Prophet beat them there and stole the children. He later on sends the kids back, but with mines strapped to them. The mines blow up the previous director.

Episode 5 goes to Clark at the Severn City airport with Elizabeth and Tyler. This episode is also very different. In general it’s less depressing than the one in the book, the people band together almost immediately under Clark, Elizabeth, and Miles who worked at the airport. There isn’t the teen who dropped off her anti-depressants and ran off into the woods to die. The ending is bizarre though, Clark sets up the Museum of Civilization as “something to aspire to” which is really odd to me since museums don’t do that, they’re just about remembering. Plus there’s a survivor of the infected plane that comes out and finds Tyler. Tyler presents him to the airport and the survivor is shot and Tyler and Elizabeth are put into quarantine. Tyler then gets out and burns the rest of the plane, faking his death. And it’s revealed then that he’s the Prophet. Episode 6 has Kirsten running after the Prophet while the rest of the Symphony heads to the Museum of Civilization. She finds him with a bunch of kids. How the hell Tyler is keeping all of these kids alive is beyond me. They head to the Museum as well (strangely enough they’re cooperating now) and get attacked on the way, Kirsten gets hit with poison.

Episode 7 is a flashback episode to Frank’s apartment. It’s cute seeing Kirsten with Frank and Jeevan. I have two main quibbles here, the first is that Frank is given a heroin problem that appears once and then is dropped. And then later when they’re about to leave, instead of Frank committing suicide a man enters the apartment and stabs Frank. The only purpose of this man is so that Frank doesn’t commit suicide, it’s never talked about how Jeevan had to murder the guy or that they left the apartment unlocked or something. It’s straight up “well we didn’t want to show a suicide” and that’s cowardly. Anyways then episode 8 is back with Kirsten in the woods. They eventually get to the Museum and have to go through a quarantine as well to make sure they aren’t sick. Tyler is eventually found out, and he blows up the museum.

Final section here, penultimate episode is around Jeevan and Kirsten living in the woods together in a cabin. Jeevan is playing with a radio and eventually gets kidnapped and thought to be a doctor. So he’s forced to help a bunch of women give birth in a makeshift hospital. First of all, it’s ridiculous that so many women are due at the same time, and I really don’t like that it’s not his choice to go into medicine. In the book he knows after trying to save Arthur that this is what he wants. Jeevan in the show just kinda drifts into it. Final episode now, we are at the Museum and Jeevan is called in to help with the conductor who is dying (not specified what of, she suddenly collapses). The Symphony puts on a performance of “Hamlet” with Elizabeth as Gertrude, Clark as Claudius, and Tyler as Hamlet. Which is a cool portrayal of how art can be ancient and comment on modern interpersonal dynamics, and be super powerful. But we only see the one scene with the whole family, and I want the rest of it, not just the part that is a direct application to what’s happening since that doesn’t really expand on it. It’s also revealed that Miranda called the plane that was infected at the airport and convinced the pilot to quarantine the passengers, saving Clark in the airport. This is cool because it elaborates on her backstory in the process and has us reckon more closely with the humanity of those passengers. But she has no guarantee that there wasn’t another infected plane, she’s doing this on a whim. Which is weak, I am willing to overlook it in this instance. Finally after the performance of “Hamlet,” Jeevan and Kirsten reunite. Alex disappears into the woods, I’m not sure why she doesn’t stay at the Museum like she wanted. And Elizabeth disappears with Tyler and a bunch of kids into the woods. Which I’m still confused how he takes care of all of them or how he explained that to Elizabeth.

This post is already ridiculously long but I want to comment on some themes. First is that there is so much more technology and things saved in the show. There are plenty of places with electricity or batteries or other things that were just so rare in the books. It feels like a representation of how it’s easier to show the end of the world but not the end of technology that we take for granted. And that just feels lazy to me tbh, find a different way to light the scene or whatever. Along with this is that the phones work after the collapse for much longer than in the book, so people are able to call each other and confirm that people are sick/dead or alive. There is much less uncertainty as a result over characters’ fates. Kirsten’s parents are the most obvious, but it’s also confirmed that Clark’s boyfriend is sick among others. I mentioned this earlier, but I think it’s much more interesting to see people deal with uncertainty when going through loss. Grief is difficult to portray effectively though, so I guess I understand why they would shy away from that. It’s still disappointing though.

What I really like about the book is that they talk about the benefits of many different forms of art and human culture when looking at how they get preserved and remain after the pandemic. There are the obvious ones like theater and music with the Traveling Symphony, but there’s also the Museum of Civilization and a newspaper that a librarian starts up. And none of them are held above any of the others! They all show something about art and culture. That isn’t really the case with the tv show. In the show, the Traveling Symphony still performs plays and symphonies, but the newspaper isn’t mentioned and the museum gets destroyed. This implies that somehow the museum is a “lesser” form of art, that it isn’t as worthy of preservation as the others. Which I don’t agree with, museums show art as well and are certainly worthy of sticking around. I think the show is making the point that museums only look backward, not forward. But that isn’t necessarily the case either, artists go to museums all the time to be inspired. I don’t like it, I love museums and I think they’re a great source of culture.

While on the subject of art, what is cool about the tv show is there’s a number of performances that we watch. There’s multiple performances from the Traveling Symphony of “Hamlet,” but Kirsten does an adaptation of “Station Eleven” as a child and as an adult. Every time, the characters that are being portrayed comment on and reflect on the characters acting them out. There’s the family dynamics in “Hamlet” and the grief that Hamlet feels at his father’s death, this reflects Tyler refusing to speak to his mother and his grief for his father as well as Kirsten’s grief for her parents. The “Station Eleven” scene is similar as it portrays Dr. Eleven carrying on after the death of his mentor, which then reflects on Jeevan carrying on after Frank’s death or Tyler carrying on after the death of his father. I think more could have been done here, it really just reflects what the characters are feeling and doesn’t day much more, but it is a really cool portrayal of how powerful art can be. And this is missing in the book, we don’t see many performances and the ones we do see are shorter, just snippets of scenes.

Taking it back to the plot now, I think it’s interesting that the writers completely changed the Prophet’s message and goals. In the book, the Prophet says that since we survived the pandemic, we are morally superior to those that died. And he starts a cult where he amasses wives. In the show, Tyler treats “Station Eleven” as a prophecy and uses that to destroy everything, but especially anything relating to the world before the pandemic. And to do this he collects children born after the collapse. The book is more straightforward, you can see how he got this idea from his mother, and it also makes more sense. How would Tyler take care of all these children? But the tv show version is fascinating when you compare it to other characters. Clark is absorbed in the past, as represented by the museum (remember the show is quite negative about the museum) while the Traveling Symphony is shown as looking to the future and preserving the best of the past with new symphonies and plays. (This is different from the book where the Symphony doesn’t do new works.) The comparison is a little sloppy at times (museums are great, Shakespeare is still really old and could be seen as looking at the past, etc.) but it is trying to say much more and I give it points for that.

Finally, it feels to me like a lot of the changes made to the plot of the show tries to set up Kirsten as the factor bringing all of these people together instead of Arthur. In the book, Arthur is clearly the center. Kirsten doesn’t remember much of her life before the collapse (and she’s grateful for that) and didn’t meet people like Clark and Elizabeth. Jeevan also has a much stronger connection to Arthur in the book, while they never meet in the show. But in the show Kirsten remembers everything and not only knows everyone but she uses these connections to her advantage such as when persuading Clark to let them perform. It’s not a change with a ton of impact, but similar to the dead parents point, I just think it’s more interesting when it’s the memory of a person who died connecting all of these people instead of the protagonist.

This post got away from me and ended up being incredibly long, but as I think is clear, I did really enjoy watching and thinking about this show. And the book. By far the book is one of the best things I’ve read in a while, the show not so much. But it is still thought provoking and really well done. There are certainly aspects that I like more than the book, but overall if I had to pick one I would still go for the book!