“Bloody waters do not run deep”

Blood Drive: Season One

Network Syfy

Release Date 14 June – 6 September 2017

Episodes 13

Binge Time 9 hours 25 mins

Blood Drive starts off as fairly odd (see my first impressions), but it only gets weirder. It’s about cars that run on human blood after all.

Blood Drive is set in a dystopian United States where petrol prices have skyrocketed. As a result, some Americans have developed an alternative fuel source; human blood!

Arthur “Barbie” Bailey (Alan Ritchson) and Grace D’Argento (Christina Ochoa) are the two main characters. Bailey is a straight-laced cop, while D’Argento is willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure that she and her family can be financially secure.

Each leg of the race involves our two main characters encountering some issue and then having to cause a lot of bloody mayhem. However, it isn’t always easy to classify their foes as people per se. Resulting in each episode feeling repetitive with some unique moments.

The bond between the two heroes grew as the season progressed, which was predictable, to say the least. Heart Enterprises, the company responsible for the race and the engine, is the one constant as the antagonist. But it made little sense for this season’s villain to be revealed as who they turned out to be.

The science featured in this season is hard to grasp and never fully explained, so maybe its writers were hoping to explain it further in future. That or they just didn’t care. Blood Drive also featured androids that were capable of free thought and bleeding synthetic blood, as well as a sadistic sexbot that breaks free of her programming and learns to love.

And this is supposed to be set in 1999, which makes it all the more confusing. The world’s setting and history are never explored in any real depth.

Not that we’ll get that closure, Syfy cancelled Blood Drive after its first season.