Love, Death & Robots: Season 1 recap and review

Netflix

Helping Hand

A story about the ruthlessness of open space, this episode called to mind Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity both in terms of the survival tale and the sense of scope. A woman named Alex arrives at a satellite and prepares for an EVA to make a repair.

She works for some kind of company that is saving money with solo jobs like this, so she has no backup once she’s out there. Once outside everything goes smoothly until a stray piece of space junk flies into her and damages her suit and sends her drifting away from the satellite.

The impact damaged her mobility unit and the backup so she has no way to maneuver, plus she’s losing oxygen and doesn’t have time to wait for the rescue team.

She drifts for a while until she suddenly gets an idea. She tourniquets her arm and takes her space glove off, calculating the right moment to throw it to create counter-momentum to send her back drifting toward the satellite. All this while her arm freezes solid.

Once she gets close she is unable to get a handhold and goes drifting past. Her one last chance is to tear her own frozen and brittle arm off and use it as another counter, sending her back to her space vehicle.

She makes it and is able to stabilize herself, bandaging her arm and making her way back to the space station. Control asks her if she needs and hand, and she laughs, saying “funny you should ask.”

We don’t always think of space as being as vast and empty as it is. As many billions of astral bodies as there are, it’s hard to visualize just how far apart everything is and how much of space is empty. If Alex kept drifting forever, she might never come into contact with another object.

This is also a really cool survival story about the extreme lengths some might take in order to save themselves, including sacrificing their arm to space.