2024 proved to be an amazing year for adaptations. Shows such as Shogun, All the Light We Cannot See, and The Three-Body Problem were all excellent and well-crafted. In fact, last year’s adaptations have inspired me to go back and read the original source material, though I have yet to read Shogun as it’s over a thousand pages and I need a good chunk of time set aside for that journey. But I did read All the Light We Cannot See after watching the miniseries. But there was another miniseries released back in 2022 that was never on my radar until early December of last year when I was recommended to give it a watch by a friend of mine. That show was Station Eleven.
Set twenty years after a flu pandemic ravages the world, a group of artists calling themselves The Traveling Symphony, wander around from town to town performing Shakespeare in the greater Lake Michigan area. When a man calling himself “The Prophet” threatens to destroy what little remains of life in the apocalypse, Kirsten, the main character, must find a way to stop him from taking away everything she’s built and protect her chosen family at all costs. It is one of the most beautiful miniseries I’ve ever watched and I knew I had to add this to my reading list.
The miniseries is based on Emily St. John Mandel’s novel of the same name. About a month after I finished the series, I picked up the book and read it in three days. I was surprised to find just how different the novel was from the series. For one thing, the book is 333 pages and the miniseries was 10 episodes, all around an hour each, so I was shocked to learn the book was much shorter than I had anticipated. After reading the novel, I realized that the writers and creators of the show had a lot of creative freedom, and that freedom allowed them to expand upon the original story in a number of ways.
Once again, if you have not read the book or watched the miniseries, there will be spoilers ahead.
After watching the show, obviously I had some ideas in my head about what would appear in the novel, but I was surprised to find that some of my favorite dialogue or scenes from the miniseries were missing from the book. For the most part, the miniseries tells the story from the novel, but it takes a few different paths to get there. For example, one of my favorite aspects of the show has Kirsten meeting Jeevan at the beginning and going with him to his brother’s apartment after learning about the severity of the rising flu pandemic. Just like the book, the show has various flashbacks to the time before the pandemic occurs, giving the audience an idea of how these characters survived a devastating illness, but the majority of the story takes place twenty years later. Throughout the show, we learn that Kirsten and Jeevan somehow get separated and the audience is left wondering how and why they get separated, and whether they ever find each other again. In the novel, although Jeevan is one of the main characters, he and Kirsten never take that journey together and instead go separate ways.
The relationship between those characters in the show had so much more meaning than it did in the novel, and it was easily one of the driving forces that kept me watching. Were they ever going to reunite? How did they get separated? Whatever happened to Jeevan? On the final episode, we finally get to see these characters reunite and it’s a beautifully moving scene that had me close to tears. In the novel, you don’t get that emotional payoff at the end as the relationship between those two characters is basically nonexistent.
Another huge aspect of the novel that was changed had to be the ending and this is where I wonder if I had read the novel before watching the show if my opinion would be different. Right now, the show’s ending was better than the novel’s. Throughout the miniseries, The Traveling Symphony is performing Hamlet and it’s a direct correlation between some of the main characters who survived the pandemic. It’s similar to The Lion King which was basically Hamlet with lions. This correlation did not appear in the novel either, which isn’t to say that it was a bad thing, but I thought it was a brilliant addition that mirrored the struggles of the main characters.
I want to briefly mention some of the lines from the show vs. the novel. Some of the dialogue from the show has never left my head. “I remember damage. Then Escape.” “Survival is insufficient.” “To the monsters, we’re the monsters.” “I don’t want to live the wrong life and then die.” These are all quotes from the TV series that really stuck with me. Surprisingly, they are not at all mentioned in the novel, which I had assumed they would be. Although, the “I remember damage” line is from both the series and the novel. The writing is remarkable.
The last addition I want to discuss is Station Eleven itself, the graphic novel Miranda creates as a means to come to terms with her trauma. It’s significance plays a prominent role in the show and the novel. However, I feel that the show focused more on how the graphic novel influenced and affected the characters who had a relationship with it. The graphic novel connects all the main characters in some way, but the biggest difference is that in the show, The Prophet was heavily influenced by the graphic novel that made into the man he would become. The novel, on the other hand, mentions that he read the graphic novel, but it was actually the bible that changed him into The Prophet.
There’s so much more I could write or talk about, but then this post would be far too long. But despite the differences between the show and the novel, I liked them both for different reasons. Maybe if I had read the book first, my opinion would be different. Who’s to say? I could talk about Station Eleven all day. It’s a beautiful story, one that will continue to stick with me for years to come.
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