Love Death and Robots Plus – Details, episodes & analysis

After far too long of a wait, we are finally looking down the barrel of the ten new episodes of LDR in Volume F**** (four)!

Join us on this episode of Love, Death, and Robots Plus!

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?

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.