‘GunDog’ Blasts Off From Podcast Makers Realm With Sci-Fi Thrills

It’s long been a popular sci-fi trope to set a series in a destroyed or near-destroyed Earth and put its protagonists in the aftermath of a conflict. Battlestar Galactica comes to mind as the Cylons in that show forced Earth’s survivors onto a spaceship to fight for their survival. The new podcast series Gundog, from Realm and producer Gary Whitta, writer of the film Book of Eli and co-writer of the NetflixNFLX
series Rogue One, takes place in the aftermath of a 10-year war on Earth. The Earth was conquered by Meks who at first came in peace, but when they were attacked, launched a full-frontal attack that destroyed most of the Earth’s cities and places its survivors in slave camps.

Shannon Woodward narrates and stars as Dakota Bregman while Troy Baker plays the voice of the terrifying alien-machines, the Meks. The bulk of the series rests on Shannon’s raspy weary voice, and music is only utilized for the opening and closing of each episode. If you haven’t heard a narrated audio drama before, it’s not like an audio book which is sometimes read flatly. Instead, in a narrated podcast, the action comes through in the voice of the narrator who changes their voice to read the lines of each of the different characters who come across the path of the hero voice. At the same time, sound effects are kept to an absolute minimum so we can focus on the ever-evolving story of Dakota Bregman and her companions, which at first involve her brother and a mysterious stranger.

She is not a neutral narrator describing the human race thusly: “We are a greedy and selfish species and fought over everything, even over whose God is greater, if you can believe it.” She is, however, incredibly pragmatic and strong as a character who provides just the right amount of heroism and believability to function as the proverbial “final girl” from a horror movie, in this case, it’s incredible to listen to her tale of survival, knowing that she will inevitability save the human race in some way. As we journey with her swapping stories and legends of battles long ago in the Mek township, I couldn’t wait for her to find out the secrets of the GunDog battle robots that humans used to battle the Meks. I know this admittedly sounds very similar to Robotech, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Look, she is going to escape from the Mek slave camp and find those GunDogs! The slow crawling pace of the show means that every little victory feels hard fought and won and every defeat that much more devastating. At one point I was half-convinced the writers had backed themselves into a corner, but they managed to surmount an obstacle that was previously explained in the series as being necessary.

Yes, there are themes of the brutal toll that capitalism has taken on the planet and maybe the Meks represent our worst fears, but I couldn’t help still cheering for them to be taken down, because I want us to win!

Gundog completely won me over and I’m breathlessly waiting for the final episodes to release from this masterpiece of storytelling from podcast studio Realm.

The 9-part series launched on September 27, 2022, and has been releasing episodes weekly since then.