SEASON ONE
*Sonnie’s Edge: Based on space opera author Peter Hamilton’s story, this features the most freaked out Pokemon matches ever. The owner of a genetically engineered monster that’s used in underground matches against other mutants but secretly uses this monster as a means of revenge on her former rapists. The skeevy bastards get what they had coming in this violent escapade.
*Three Robots: Satirist John Scalzi wrote this tale of a trio of different robots that take a tour on the remains of Earth after mankind died out after an apocalyptic event. The true reason behind this is revealed in a later episode, but the snarky robots are absolute gold with their criticisms on humans and what lead to their destruction.
*The Witness: A killer chases after a witness who looks like the woman he just murdered, and she manages to get the better of him, even though she notices a witness in a nearby building who looks like her pursuer. The Groundhog’s Day time loop is somewhat effective even though you do see it coming.
*Suits: “Rednecks in Robots” is what’s in store when farmers use mechas to protect their fields from invading giant insects. There is some amazing action, even though the character models are mediocre.
*Sucker Of Souls: An archeologist along with a team of mercenaries are attacked by none other than Dracula in an underground series of tunnels. They manage to defeat the vampire king via his fear of cats but reach a dead end as they go into a cavern full of more vampires. Decent monster hunt inspired by survival horror video games.
*When The Yogurt Took Over: Yogurt all over the Earth becomes sentient and slowly begins to influence its way over the world’s governments. Eventually, world peace is achieved with the yogurt overlords reaching out into space while leaving the humans behind. Interesting DreamWorks’ character designs and sardonic view of mass consumerism.
*Beyond The Aquila Drift: Dipping heavily into Ridley Scott territory, space captain Thom awakens from cryogenics and is reunited with his old girlfriend, although it's revealed that he’s really in a simulation while inside a huge alien hive. The animation is convincingly realistic, although not too far above that of your average current video game cutscenes.
*Good Hunting: One of the few steampunk episodes in the series, set in early 1900s China, a shape-changing fox spirit befriends a boy who years later she calls on his services as he provides her with a new mechanical body to get protect young women from being molested. This was a splendid blend of automation and the supernatural.
*The Dump: Bubba Ho-Tep author Jon Lansdale wrote this gross out short about an old coot who lives in a junkyard inhabited by a living mound of muck that comes in handy for devouring pesky city inspectors. Gorehounds will get a kick out this splatter punk special.
*Shape Shifters: Before the Creature Commandos got animated, this story has werewolves working with the US Marines in the Middle East fighting against the Taliban army which also has lycanthrope soldiers. Dog Soldiers meets Call Of Duty in a story that shows discrimination on both sides of a war.
*Helping Hand: More of a realist drama than straight sci-fi, an astronaut repairs a faulty satellite in orbit over the Earth who must make a quick decision or die alone in space. An impactful survival thriller.
*Fish Night: A pair of travelling salesmen get stuck in the middle of the desert after their car breaks down and remark how there was sea life millions of years ago where the stand. They are later visited by the ghosts of prehistoric fish as one of them gets eaten by a huge shark. A weird west story straight out of Twilight Zone.
*Lucky 13: A space military adventure sees a squad of grunts get transported by an old transport which on its last mission ends up saving its crew and killing the enemy forces. Michael Bay die-hards will find it appealing.
*Zima Blue: Wonder Woman animator Robert Valley created the most stylized episode of this season about a cybernetic artist who became renown throughout the universe when he retires and goes back to his original form, that of an automatic pool cleaner. A showcase of how simplicity can be more satisfying than fame.
*Blindspot: A heist flick in the spirit of 80s cyberpunk anime sees a quartet of criminals trying to get an important microchip from a moving convoy that gives off some major Mega Man vibes. Even though nearly everyone dies in it, it turns out they have backup bodies, so an impressive fun romp.
*Ice Age: Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Topher Grace star in this mostly live-action short discover their fridge contains a micronation that quickly evolves in a matter of minutes and eventually become pure energy. Despite the big-name actors, the main draw is the sped-up animation.
*Alternate Histories: In what seems like something out of Hitchhiker's Guide, a simulation app shows what the world would be like if Adolf Hitler was killed in various Looney Tunes fashion even though each death cause even weirder results. A fine spoof of instructional videos.
*The Secret War: This epic war story is right up Mike Mignola’s alley. Animated by a Hungarian studio, this is a story of Russian soldiers who are tracking down unholy ghouls that were intended to help the Red Army but get out of control and slaughter their hunters resulting in the entire area getting bombed by the military. Blood, guts, and gore help end this season on a bang.
SEASON TWO
*Automated Customer Service: One of the first “Rise Of The Machines” themed episodes when an elderly lady orders a new vacuum robot that becomes self-aware and gets aggressive, and calling up customer service only results in having it go into purge mode blasting anything in its path with lasers. This nonsensical spin on how we’re slowly becoming more dependent on AI is laughable but true.
*Ice: Another Robert Valley winner, the brothers Fletcher and Sedgewick move to an ice planet named New Greenland where everyone except Sedgewick has been genetically modified to survive on an alien world. One night, the brothers along with some new friends try to catch a ride on humongous frost whales, but Fletcher apparently fakes breaking his ankle to help boost Sedgewick’s moral after he carries him back home despite not being modded. This shows that blood is thicker than artificial enhancements.
*Pop Squad: Probably this season’s grimmest chapter, biopunk author Paolo Bacigalupi wrote this Blade Runner-inspired story, children are hunted down by special police to maintain population control while the rich can be rejuvenated. A detective comes upon a poor woman secretly raising her child but spares them only to be shot by his partner for neglecting his duty. There’s a definitive color scheme throughout the feature indicating a distinct mood for each setting.
*Snow In The Desert: Neal Asher wrote this space western about an albino man named Snow who is being chased across a desert world for his power to regenerate. Bounty hunters track him down while a female cyborg helps him even as the two bond over their mutual immortality. Brilliant creature designs and fascinating world-building.
*The Tall Grass: How To Train Your Dragon’s animator Simon Otto did this eerie tale set in 1901 where a train stops in the middle of a grassy field which a passenger wanders into and encounters faceless monsters who according to the train conductor were former passengers that got lost in the grass. There’s no given reason to this phenomenon, but the layer of mysteries is salivating.
*All Through The House: Animated by Blink who did Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared, this apparently innocent holiday story is derailed as a brother and sister discover that the real Santa Claus visiting them on Christmas Eve is a hideous monster capable of determining whose naughty and nice while spitting out presents for the good kids from his stomach. This would be pure nightmare fuel for any kid.
*Life Hutch: Based on a Harlan Ellison short story, Michael B. Jordan voices the character of Terence who is a space pilot that crash lands on an alien world and finds an automated shelter called a Life Hutch run by a robot gone haywire. The CGI is very convincing with little uncanny valley effect as Terence looks exactly like Jordan.
*The Drowned Giant: Written by new wave author JG Ballard, the body of a naked giant shows up on a beach and a scholar tries to make sense of this spectacle. Despite the appearance of this unexplained occurrence, life goes on with everyone eventually forgetting all about it. An exemplary example of how even a miracle can give way to mundanity.
SEASON THREE
*Three Robots-Exit Strategies: Being the only sequel chapter in the entire series, the robotic trio continue their tour of the post-apocalyptic Earth while stopping by a survival camp, an oil platform turned into a resort, and a rocket station where they ride up to Mars and find the mega-rich's efforts were futile as their own greed is what caused their downfall, or at least that’s the message without giving the ending away. This was a strong message about wasting resources while still being hilarious.
*Bad Travelling: A tremendous man-eating crab holds a crew of fishermen hostage and demands that they take him to a nearby island to feast on the many people there. The devious captain kills the remaining crew because they weren’t willing to sacrifice themselves and then leaves the crab to go down with the exploding ship. Profoundly dark and moody with an explosively colorful ending.
*The Very Pulse Of The Machine: Authored by sci-fi scribe Michael Swanwick, Martha is an astronaut exploring the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io with her partner Burton who apparently dies when their rover crashes. Martha carries Burton’s unconscious body across the moon mostly to feed off her oxygen, but she also starts hallucinating after taking some morphine and follows trails of energy, so Martha’s perspective is off kilter which causes her to sink into the ground which somehow sends an audio message back to Earth. The animation by anime studio Polygon Pictures is exceptionally trippy.
*Night Of The Mini Dead: Done holistically with fast forwarded miniatures by Buck studio, this quick but humorous take on a zombie apocalypse escalates out of control after a couple make out in a graveyard causing the dead to rise leading to the zombies mutating into giants. All the world’s governments launch their nukes as the Earth farts out of existence. This is like World War Z taken all the way to Ludicrous Speed.
*Kill Team Kill: Cartoon Network animation regulars Titmouse handled the production of a survival horror case where a task force must track down a killer cyber-bear in Afghanistan. The soldiers lure it into a trap at an abandoned base, but the minigun-toting machine succeeds in blowing up everything around them. A crazy callback to the insane action movies of the 80s with outdated meme references.
*Swarm: Rosario Dawson stars in this twisted space oddity is about two doctors researching another world inhabited by insect beings called the Swarm. The doctor Galina is there to study the alien race, but her partner Simon wants to exploit them for humanity’s benefit. The Swarm had already replaced Galina with a hybrid clone and let Simon decide if he wanted the same treatment which he agrees to as he only cared about himself. A profound dive into what someone will do to stay alive is displayed here in grotesque glory.
*Mason’s Rats: Set in futuristic Scotland, old farmer Mason has a rat problem as they’ve evolved to walking on two legs and building their own tech. Mason orders a special scorpion robot to exterminate the rats, but the android arachnid barely keeps up the waves of weapons the rats come up with. The prime lesson is how life can adapt to its surrounding whether it be man or mouse.
*In Vaulted Halls Entombed: We finally get to some Lovecraft as dark fantasy writer Alan Baxter concocts a military horror animated with a dynamic unreal engine. Some marines must rescue a hostage being held in a cave where they encounter corpses being eaten by large spider creatures. They discover an underground temple holding none other than Cthulhu being held in a confined chamber which causes the surviving soldiers to either go mad or killing themselves. This is another example of sacrificing one’s life for the sake of the many.
*Jibaro: Tron art director Alberto Mielgo directed this, and you’ll swear some of it is live action. Spanish colonizers are lured in by a siren totally decorated in gold and jewels that compels them to kill themselves, all except for one deaf soldier named Jibaro. Even though he couldn’t hear her song, Jibaro’s greed gets the better of him as he thinks he kills the creature, steals her gold, and after drinking some of the siren’s river water allowing him to hear which seals his doom.
SEASON FOUR
*Can’t Stop: The first clue that this series was circling the drain as it just a music video of Red Hot Chili Peppers performing a live concert but as marionettes. Fans of this show waited three whole years for the next season, and they open with this crappy MTV reject.
*Close Encounters Of The Mini Kind: Buck returns with another take on old alien invasion blockbusters where a mishap between visitors from space becomes a full-blown War Of The Worlds with hints of Mad Max and Independence Day. Earth’s attempts to reverse engineer the alien weapons results in a singularity taking the planet and part of the galaxy with it once again which seems like an insignificant poof in the grand scheme of things.
*Spider Rose: Even though it's supposed to be set in the same universe as the Swarm chapter, this might as well have been in its own separate reality. A solitary cyborg in space named Lydia plans to get revenge against the criminal lord Jade and his many clones. Hoping to gain a weapon against Jade, Lydia works out a trade a race of machinists who instead allow her to take care of their pet creature she calls Nosey that can begin to mirror their owners. Lydia bonds with Nosey and wants to give up on vengeance, but an attack by Jade left her in shambles, so she allowed Nosey to absorb some of her DNA and goes back the machinists now appearing more like Lydia. This had particularly realistic designs to the humans and alien making for stunning and harsh visuals.
*400 Boys: John Boyega stars in one last great tale by Robert Miller which is a ballistic blend of The Warriors and Akira. In yet another post-apocalyptic world, a psychic gang lead by Slash must protect their turf in Fun City from giant monster babies that are dubbed the 400 Boys because that’s the street they appeared at. Slash unites with some roller-skating amazons along with some other gangs and use their mental powers against the titanic toddlers. Some seriously uncanny X-Men action in this telekinetic thriller.
*The Other Large Thing: Want to know what started the end of the world from the Three Robots shorts? Before humans became extinct, a cunning Persian housecat has cartoonish plans for world domination, but with no way to implement them. The cat’s lazy owners get a new helper robot voiced by John Oliver that the cat takes advantage of and talks into helping him kill off his owners and lead a cat revolution against mankind via the helper robots’ online capabilities. An immensely entertaining look at how relying too much on computerization can lead to a dead end.
*Golgotha: The most peculiar of all this season’s entries as it is largely done in live action, author Dave Hutchison wrote this short about an ambassador from the squid like alien race called the Lupo who visits Earth to negotiate with the priest Donal on a beach. The father witnessed the resurrection of a dolphin after an oil spill who in the Lupo’s eyes is their Messiah. The Lupo interpret the dolphin’s message as mankind being the scourge of the planet, so the aliens begin their campaign to wipe out humanity. An impressive view of conservation from an outside perspective.
*The Screaming Of The Tyrannosaur: Dinos in spaaaace! Taking place on one of Jupiter’s moon, interstellar plutocrats hold gladiator matches between enhanced humans and trained triceratopses. One of these fighters is the mostly naked Mei who uses his opportunity to get revenge against the elitists who use people as slaves fighting monsters. The cherry on top is Mei wrangling a T-Rex to literally eat the rich! An extreme thrill ride of nearly every possible kind of sci-fi/action trope.
*How Zeke Got Religion: Taking a hint from the Heavy Metal fighter pilot segment, this weird war rarity right out of a Mike Mignola comic. During WWII, the crew of a B-17 are assigned to drop a bomb in French territory that is currently under Nazi occupation where they plan to summon a demon. The bombing succeeds, but the demon emerges and flies off to attack the plane tearing through the crew. The atheist Zeke is one of the few survivors and uses a crucifix against the demon. This nail-biting occult action was executed perfectly.
*Stupid Appliances, Stupid Owners: The most unoriginal episode in the series shamelessly rips off Aardman’s old Creature Comforts shorts and does a mockumentary of modern-day household appliances giving interviews. Everything from anthropomorphic smart toilets to electric toothbrushes. Exceedingly lacking in subtlety and humor.
*For He Can Creep: Inspired by the Siobhan Carroll novel, a poet in 1700s London is locked in an insane asylum and forced by Satan to create a poem that would bring about the end of the world. Luckily, a council of mystical alley cats who were descended from angels are there to stop them lead by the noble Jeoffry who eats the final manuscript. A suitably dark fantasy to end the series out on.
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