Murder Drones
Entry updated 5 December 2022. Tagged: TV.
Australian animated webseries (2021-current). Glitch. Created, directed and written by Liam Vickers. Voice cast includes Allanah Fitzgerald, Shara Kirby, Nola Klop, Michael Kovach and Elsie Lovelock. Two 17-27 minute episodes. Colour.
After the people mining an exoplanet wipe themselves out by accidentally collapsing its core, the surviving Robot worker drones build their own society, which mimics that of humanity. However, the parent company, JC Jensen, considers them runaway AI, so dispatches murder drones to terminate them. The worker drones flee Underground, building protective doors to keep the killers out and to cower behind ... all save angsty teen Uzi (Lovelock), who is building a railgun "to save the world with it and earn my dad's respect and stuff" (see Weapons). Visiting the surface to acquire the final part she gets the opportunity to test the gun, blowing the head off of N (Kovach), a murder drone. The head promptly grows back – but N is left disorientated and befriends Uzi, showing her the Spaceship he arrived on – Uzi realizes it was only intended for a one way journey and suggests it is likely the company will dispose of the Murder Drones once their job is done. She plans to repair the spaceship and visit Earth to murder all humans.
N was accompanied by two other murder drones, both psychotic: V (Klop), who is captured, and the leader, J (Kirby), who is killed. However J was receiving orders from the Absolute Solver (Fitzgerald), a small insect-like machine that repairs drones and can create holograms; for the viewer and Uzi its actual powers are uncertain, as what is real and what is illusion is unclear (see Perception). When Uzi enquires about this, it replies, "Easier to assimilate than explain." Murder drones drink worker drone oil and die in sunlight, and there are other Vampire echoes; there are also hints that the plot could be deeper than it initially appears; for example, the robots might in fact be Cyborgs.
This is a funny (see Humour), violent (much oil is spilt) and nicely animated CGI sf series, with many Horror elements (a poster reads: "What Hurts? The existential dread of being a sentient machine created by gods that abandoned us") – though its flippant nature keeps it from getting too dark. Six more episodes are planned. [SP]
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