Love Death and Robots Plus: Recent Episodes
Dae and Kat
The LDR Plus podcast is, currently, discussing the hit Netflix animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots. Each episode we will be discussing one story from the show. We’ll talk about the story, art, and origin of the episode, as well as our thoughts on each. And stick around until the end for our Love, Death, Robot score.
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.
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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.
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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!
A reporter gets the opportunity to interview the exotic and remarkable artist Zima, as he debuts his last and final art piece to the world. But the true story turns out to be that Zima is not human at all, but instead a basic pool cleaning robot who evolved over time as he was passed from owner to owner. The short ends with the further revelation that he is giving up his life as an acclaimed artist to return to his humble origins, so that he may find meaning in his first purpose.
Blindspot follows a team of cyborgs on their quest to rob a futuristic train. The Rookie on the team gets to experience his first heist, but thanks to lackluster mission intelligence, pretty much nothing goes according to plan. When the enemy’s defenses come online, the scrappy fighters encounter overwhelming resistance and one by one they get taken out, with the second to last sacrificing himself and allowing the Rookie to grab the valuable prize computer chip that they set out to claim. Only when the Rookie gets picked up does he discover that all of the other team members have their memories stored in backup before the mission, so they’ll all be rebuilt soon and able to rob again.
Set during a futuristic war, Marine Lieutenant Colby is assigned as the pilot of a drop ship with an unfortunate name and history. But on their first mission together, Lucky 13 and her passengers end up the sole survivors, which causes the lieutenant to immediately change her mind about the ship being jinxed. Over the course of multiple missions, the pilot and her ship build up a reputation of reliability and excellence. But one day, disaster strikes as the ship is shot down by the enemy and, pinned down, Colby makes the decision to scuttle the ship so it doesn’t fall into enemy hands. She withdrawals with an apology and awaits the end with the rest of the evacuated personnel, as they continue to take gunfire. There’s several tense moments when it seems like the ship’s self-destruct has malfunctioned, but as the enemy starts to spread out all over the plane, it finally detonates, destroying the hostiles and saving the marines one final time.
In Alternate Histories we are treated to an advertisement and demo for an app called Multiversity, where six different histories are presented about what the world would have been like had Adolf Hitler been killed in 1908. The six wild and often nonsensical histories all result with various countries or creatures landing on the moon. The ad ends with the app suffering a fatal error on the last historical recreation.
Alexandria is an astronaut tasked with the solo repair of a satellite in Earth’s orbit. As she is on her spacewalk, carrying out the repairs, a piece of space debris makes impact, knocking her away from the satellite and damaging her suit. With limited oxygen remaining, she can’t afford to wait for a rescue team to arrive, so she makes the decision to first remove her glove, then her own arm in order to propel herself back to her spacecraft. She’s short one limb when she makes it back on board, but is relieved to have kept her life.
On a lonely Arizona back road, two traveling salesmen are stranded when their car breaks down. Stuck there through the night, they take time to reflect on their jobs and the beauty of the sandstone all around them as they fall asleep. However, they awake in the middle of the night to find the desert populated with the swimming ghosts of sea life long past. When the younger salesman manages to join in the beauty by jumping up into the parade of animals, his euphoria is short-lived, when the ghost of a giant shark consumes him.
Shape-Shifters takes place in war-torn Afghanistan where a US Marine Corps platoon has two unique marines assigned: men who are werewolves. These shape-shifters, with their regenerative powers, extraordinary strength and vision, are reviled by the other Marines, often insulted as ‘animals’ and ‘dog soldiers’. But when a surprise Taliban attack takes one of the werewolves out, it’s discovered that the enemies have werewolf soldiers as well. Bent on vengeance, the remaining werewolf marine meets the enemy werewolves under a full moon where they shape-shift into their feral forms and fight to the death. Victorious, the Marine decides service isn't for him, and he buries his packmate in the hills, leaving the Marine base behind.
When a city inspector comes to evict a man living in a dump, he is regaled by a unique story of how the dump caretaker came to discover that a huge pile of trash in his dump had come to life and would consume both trash and living beings alike. When the inspector refuses to believe it, he is startled to find out that it’s in fact true, just in time to be eaten by the monster, which the caretaker has affectionately named ‘Otto’.
Good Hunting starts out in early 20th century China, on the cusp of colonized modernization. The son of a spirit hunter, Liang, manages to befriend a shape-shifting fox spirit named Yan and they meet over the years as steampunk technology develops and advances. When Liang’s father passes away, Liang moves to Hong Kong and becomes a skilled engineer. He encounters Yan again, only she has lost the ability to shapeshift, due to the magic of the land being disrupted by the progress of machines. After Yan is maimed and transformed into a cyborg against her own will, Liang helps to replace and upgrade Yan’s mechanical body that allows her once again to transform into a fox, albeit a cybernetic one, and she sets out into the city to hunt once more.
On a distant planet, a rural community of farmers fight for their livestock as well as their lives, against an alien monster threat, using homemade mechanical suits loaded with guns, missiles and lasers. When their numbers prove to be too great, the more vulnerable families retreat to an underground bunker while the mech drivers buy them time, sometimes with their lives. Finally, as a giant-sized alien monster threatens the bunker, the mech pilots and their families work together to defeat it and save everyone.
When a woman witnesses a murder taking place in a room across the street from hers, she flees from the murderer to the sex club where she works. She gets on stage to do her act, but when she notices the murderer in the crowd, she promptly runs again, this time taking a gun from her boss’s office. The chase goes through city streets and back alleys until she manages to enter a room in a tall apartment building. But the perpetrator finds her even here. During the struggle she shoots and kills him. When she looks out the window, she notices the very man she just killed is observing her, this time as the murderer.
In an underground archeology dig, two researchers and their hired security team of mercenaries stumble upon what they are looking for, the tomb of Dracula. But surprisingly, the Sucker of Souls is not dead and immediately attacks the crew, killing the junior archaeologist. As a chase through the castle catacombs ensues, the crew discovers that the vampire is afraid of cats. This buys them enough time to set up a trap with an explosion that the crew hopes will destroy their enemy. But as they are fleeing the castle tunnels they find not just one vampire but scores more. The short ends in darkness as the vampires descend on the crew.
Set in Siberia during World War II, “The Secret War” follows a Russian squad of soldiers as they track an infestation of demonic beasts. We learn that the beasts are the result of a failed cultist ritual that was meant to create demonic minions to fight in the war. The team does find the source of the infestation, but when a bomb in the tunnel fails to destroy it, the team must hold out as long as possible as one messenger is sent back to request Russian planes to bomb the area. The team is lost, but in the end Russian bombers arrive to destroy the demonic lair.
In a cartoonish version of a world not unlike our own, an unfortunate mistake with a science experiment leads to the development of a sentient yogurt culture. The yogurt uses its high intellect to bargain for control over Ohio in exchange for knowledge. Eventually the yogurt is given full control of the government when it is shown that humanity cannot follow a plan for its own self improvement and despite some initial resistance to the yogurt’s takeover, humanity is eventually led to utopian bliss. In the end, the yogurt leaves earth to travel amongst the stars and humanity is left to wonder what it will do without its yogurt overlords.
“Sonnie’s Edge” is set in a futuristic cyberpunk world, where humans telepathically control huge beasts that fight to the death in gladiatorial games. Our protagonist, Sonnie, is the human controller of the beast, Khanivore. Before a match, Sonnie is approached by a fight organizer, Dicko, who asks her to throw the fight. When she refuses, her backstory of sexual assault gives us perspective into her motives for fighting. In the ring, Sonnie and Khanivore are victorious, despite a dramatic and close match. But after the fight, Sonnie is approached and seduced by Dicko’s mistress, who lures her into a vulnerable position before stabbing her in the head. Dicko enters the room as Sonnie appears to be dying. But to everyone’s surprise, Sonnie only laughs as she reveals that her consciousness is not inside the human body, but rather inside the beast that she fights with, and she promptly exacts her revenge.
“Ice Age” tells the story of a couple that moves into an apartment and they discover an antique ice box left by the former occupants. While getting some ice, they discover the remains of a tiny mammoth frozen in an ice cube. Further exploration leads to the discovery of an entire civilization living in the ice box. Over the course of the day, the couple observes them moving through the stages of development up to what would be modern times, and even a nuclear war. Despite their fears, the small civilization survives and develops to a point where their technology is far beyond our own, and the civilization disappears into a singularity. The couple goes to bed assuming the micro civilization is gone, only to find that in the morning proto-humans and dinosaurs living in the box, starting the cycle over again.
The Love, Death and Robots Plus podcast is a Retrozap network podcast, discussing the hit Netflix animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots. On our weekly podcast’s drops, we discuss one episode from the show. We’ll talk about the story, art, and origin of the episode, as well as our thoughts on each. We hope to touch upon the elements that we think make Love, Death & Robots an engaging and unique anthology story experience. And stick around until the end for our Love, Death, Robots score.
“Beyond the Aquila Rift” tells the story of a spacefaring cargo ship and crew who have a navigational error strand them at a friendly starbase off their main travel route. While technicians look into the ship, the ship’s captain, Thom, is reunited with an old love interest, Greta. But all is not right, as Thom and Greta rekindle their relationship, Thom begins to suspect that something’s amiss with the station and Greta’s presence. It all comes to a head when he wakes from his sleep pod to discover he is actually on an alien hive starbase and everything he experienced was a simulation in his mind provided by its arachnid inhabitants.
The Love Death and Robots Plus podcast is a Retrozap network podcast, discussing the hit Netflix animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots. On our weekly podcast’s drops we discuss one episode from the show. We’ll talk about the story, art, and origin of the episode, as well as our thoughts on each. We hope to touch on the engaging elements that we think make Love Death and Robots a unique anthology story experience. And stick around until the end for our Love, Death, Robot score.
Episode Overview: Three Robots follows the sightseeing adventures of, surprise surprise, three robots on a post-apocalyptic Earth. In this future where humanity has destroyed itself, the robots XBOT 4000, K-VRC, 11-45-G check out the places where people lived and worked and speculate about humanity’s culture. Their tour takes them through a few different landmarks of human society, such as a high school gymnasium, a diner, a home and a department store. Their final destination takes them to a nuclear missile silo where they have an unexpected encounter with a talking cat.
The Love Death and Robots Plus podcast is a Retrozap network podcast, discussing the hit Netflix animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots. On our weekly podcast’s drops we discuss one episode from the show. We’ll talk about the story, art, and origin of the episode, as well as our thoughts on each. We hope to touch on the engaging elements that we think make Love Death and Robots a unique anthology story experience. And stick around until the end for our Love, Death, Robot score.
This is our primer episode. A short discussion about the show LDR and what our podcast plans to do with it. If you are already familiar with LDR, then jumping directly into episode 1 may be fine for you. But we do discuss a bit of the origins of LDR in here.