Love Death and Robots Plus

Thanks to Drarker, we're building a Tiermaker list for our thoughts on volumes 1-3. Can Kat and Dae agree on anything after Fish Night and The Very Pulse of the Machine?

We've covered all of the currently released three volumes of LDR, so come join us as we talk about our favorite episodes of the volume two and three, and also we'll talk about one episode each, that we could do without. Come join us on 37 because we plan to take a pause on LDR+ until volume four drops!

Deep in a forest, a band of knights take a break in their journey next to a small lake. Unbeknownst to them, the water is the home of a siren, whose body is covered in golden scales and jewels. She rises from the lake and ensorcels the knights, compelling them to a watery doom. Only one knight, deaf and unable to hear her calls, is immune to her spell and though he is initially frightened of what she can do, his greed drives him closer to the siren, who likewise seems intrigued by his ability to resist her powers. The two engage in a short-lived semblance of courtship, before the knight violently knocks the siren unconscious and strips her of her scales and gems. He disposes of her body in the river when he’s done and the blood that flows from her injuries seems to curse the water. When the knight accidentally takes a drink, his hearing is restored, but the miracle is short lived as the vengeful siren sings out and the knight is helpless. The short ends with his drowned body coming to rest on the lake bottom amongst the rest of his companions.

When a Special Forces team advances into a mysterious cave in pursuit of enemy fighters with a hostage, they end up getting way more than they bargained for. They stumble across several dead bodies just before they’re attacked by a horde of flesh-eating spiders, who chase the survivors deeper into the cave system until they stumble upon a massive cavern with a temple seemingly made for giants. Unable to resist a mysterious pull that calls them closer, the remaining pair of soldiers discover a monstrous demi-god chained in the temple. When it possesses the commanding officer, his subordinate defends herself and then takes extreme action to prevent herself from doing the monster’s bidding. She stumbles out of the cave alive, but blinded and whispering an alien language.

When Farmer Mason discovers that the rats living in his barn and stealing his wheat have evolved intelligence, he turns to an extermination company to deal with the problem. They install several laser turrets, which starts a full-on war, but the rodents take the first round by destroying the equipment. Mason then upgrades, purchasing a literal rat-killing scorpion machine. Its excessively violent methods make Mason uneasy however, and during the final battle within the barn, Mason has a change of heart, destroying the scorpion before it can wipe out the rest of the rats. The act seals a new truce between Mason and the rats, who offer Mason a tiny flask of the moonshine they’ve been brewing with his wheat.

When two humans are investigating a huge nest of highly organized, symbiotic creatures living in space, they think they have discovered an almost perfect system. Believing the creatures to be non-sentient, one researcher convinces the other to try and weaponize their discovery for the benefit of humanity. Unbeknownst to them, their efforts trigger a genetic defensive response in the organisms of the swarm, and the scientists are captured and then forced to comply with the swarm’s demands to breed more humans as new additions to its fleet of symbiont servants.

When a small special forces team encounters a killer cyborg bear on a mission in Afghanistan, half their team is killed before the bear is scared off by a Sergeant from a nearby secret CIA base. They learn that the bear is actually a prototype weapon designed by the CIA that went rogue earlier that day. Upon returning to the secret base they find all its occupants already slaughtered. After stocking up on weapons and ammunition, the team makes their stand. A bloody fight ensues and the team finally manages to neutralize the cyborg monster. But before they can celebrate, the bear initiates a self destruct and the whole place is blown to bits.

When a mini-couple makes a creepy cemetery the scene of their late-night drunken love-making, an unfortunate strike of unholy lightning awakens the mini-dead. The small horde (pun intended) of mini-zombies start to relentlessly hunt and convert other mini-people, and soon enough the mini-world is quickly overrun by them. With no options left, a mini-world leader uses mini-nuclear weapons to smite all of the mini-Earth, ending in a quickly forgettable gaseous blip in the galaxy. https://www.retrozap.com/love-death-and-robots-plus/

Two astronauts exploring Jupiter's moon Io are involved in a tragic accident, which kills one of them and destroys their rover. The survivor, whose damaged equipment makes her dependent on the dead astronaut’s functional oxygen tank, must drag her dead companion for several kilometers across the surface of Io towards their lander and safety. But when a mysterious voice starts talking to her and claims to be Io itself, she’s torn between believing it’s another hallucination from taking pain medications or if the moon is a sentient machine and it’s actually true. When she realizes that she will not make it back to the lander in time, she makes the decision to believe the voice and jumps into a large, boiling sulfur lake, in the hope that it might preserve her consciousness to merge with the mind of Io. https://www.retrozap.com/love-death-and-robots-plus/

On an alien ocean, a sailing ship is attacked by a monstrous crab-like creature, who kills and eats some of the crew before taking up residence in the ship's hold. When the surviving dozen or so crew force our protagonist, Torrin, to go below and investigate the situation, he discovers the monster can communicate and it demands to be taken to a nearby inhabited island where it plans to feast on all the residents there. After negotiating with the crab, Torrin returns above deck and shifts the balance of power when he retrieves a pistol from the former captain’s quarters. The crew deliberate on whether to obey the monster’s wishes, condemning hundreds to death, or risk their own lives to trap the crab where it can’t hurt anyone. Despite the selfish crew’s best efforts, Torrin outwits them all, eliminating one after another until he’s the only human left. When the ship finally reaches a location a safe distance from the inhabited islands, he sets fire to the vessel and escapes in the only rowboat alone.

In a follow-up to the story of K-VRC, XBOT 4000 and 11-45-G, the three robots continue their tour of fabulously ruined human locales. Starting at a prepper’s compound, then an oil rig modified by a tech billionaire, an underground government bunker, and then ending at a massive rocket launch site, the three talk about the sociopolitical workings of human civilization and how they expired. The tour ends as the robots realize that even though most of humans were unable to escape the dying planet, one rocket did successfully launch into orbit and they wonder if a remnant of humanity survives after all. (Spoiler: it doesn’t.)

When a giant human corpse is discovered washed up on a beach, it causes quite a stir amongst the locals, who visit and interact with the body like it’s a tourist attraction. One of these visitors is a scientist who is more enamored by the scientific repercussions of the giant’s seeming existence and what that might mean for humanity. He watches the progression of the giant’s decomposition over time, led by nature, but helped by humans, and reflects on his many observations until nothing but relics of the giant remain.

When a starship fighter pilot is shot down over a desolate planet, he seeks refuge in a survival shelter, aka a “life hutch”. Upon activating the small facility, he discovers that it, too, has been damaged when the automated maintenance droid goes on a rampage and attempts to kill him. Fortunately the pilot discovers the robot’s weakness and ‘plays dead’ while he comes up with a plan for survival. As he spends some time reflecting on the circumstances of the crash that brought him here, it results in a revelation about his gear. With the use of a simple flashlight, he is able to beat the droid and save himself.

Two children sneak downstairs on Christmas Eve, classically hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus delivering their presents. Instead, they find a ghastly monster devouring Santa’s milk and cookies. When the monster turns to confront them, both are frozen in fear as they expect to share the cookies’ fate. Instead, the monster judges both of them as "good", and literally barfs up a present for each of them. Challenging them both to “stay good”, the monster retreats up the chimney, and upon opening his present, the boy discovers it is exactly what he wanted.

When a train makes an unexpected midnight stop in a field of tall grass, one passenger disembarks for a smoke break. Dismissing the conductor's guidance to not wander too far, the passenger can’t help but wonder at these curious white lights he sees and gets lost in the fields trying to approach them. When his wandering leads him to some ghostly ghouls in the grass and with the train due to depart, he must run for his life. Only with the assistance of the conductor does he make it safely out of the tall grass and back on board.

In this short, we follow the eponymous Snow, who makes his home on a remote desert planet. We quickly learn that he has a huge price on his head, as his body possesses the ability to regenerate limbs and stay young, leading to bounty hunters seeking samples of his DNA for research. When things get bad, Snow is suddenly helped by a human woman who represents a government that’s equally interested in Snow’s secret. But as it turns out, she’s able to relate to Snow’s immortality in an unexpected way, and to Snow, that might be worth more than anything else.

“Pop Squad” envisions a dystopian future in which humanity has achieved eternal youth. But the trade-off is that the population must be tightly controlled, so special law enforcement groups exist to track down illegitimate children and ‘handle’ them. The job is starting to take its toll on Detective Briggs and when he finds a woman living in an abandoned home with her unregistered daughter, he honestly questions her about her choices and why she made them. As he tries to leave the pair alive in their home, he encounters his partner and suddenly must make a choice between following the rules or trying to protect the family a little while longer.

Two teenage brothers venture out on a daring late night escapade on the surface of a frozen ocean. The local colony kids are all genetically ‘modded’ like younger brother Fletcher and they are skeptical of the older brother Sedgewick’s ability to physically keep up with the rest of them, but when the frost whales start to break through the ice and Fletcher hurts his leg, Sedgewick has to be the one to step up and get them both to safety.

Automated Customer Service follows the story of a woman living in a futuristic retirement community when her autonomous cleaning robot starts malfunctioning and goes on a rampage, attacking her and her pet dog. When the woman attempts to contact the robot's automated customer service center for help, further mayhem ensues and she is locked in her home with the deadly robot. Finally, with a clumsy intervention from her shotgun-wielding neighbor, she is able to destroy the cleaning robot. But unfortunately not before the robot makes a plea to all the surrounding robots in town, which forces the pair to flee town forever.

In Episode 19 we will go over what we thought of volume 1 of Love, Death, and Robots. We've covered all of volume one, so come join us as we talk about our favorite episodes of the volume, and also we'll talk about one episode each, that we could do without. We're half way through the total number of LDR episodes so far, so its great time to do a little recap. Come join us!