A space pilot ends up trapped in a rescue pod with a malfunctioning robot...
Adapted from a short story by Harlan Ellison.
Tropes:
- All There in the Script: The pilot remains nameless in the episode but he's credited as Terence.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The titular life hutch got damaged during the landing, making the maintenance robot go ballistic.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: There are only a few minutes of air supply in the suit of the pilot.
- Anachronic Order: The story jumps back and forth between current and past events.
- Chekhov's Gun: The flashlight. Interestingly, it's held in what looks like a gun holster.
- Darkest Hour: The pilot didn't manage to activate the rescue beacon, so no outside help is coming, he's locked in a tiny pod with a rampaging robot, has no means to defend himself, his suit is perforated, preventing escape, and he's bleeding to his death. This is how the short opens.Terence: (whispering, out of breath) I'm going to die here.
- Deadpan Snarker: At the end of the short, as Terence activates the distress beacon and slowly recovers from his battle with the now-destroyed maintenance robot.Ship A.I.: Warning. Maintenance robot malfunction.Terence: No shit.
- Fingore: The robot unwittingly steps on the right hand of the pilot, crushing it. Two of his fingers are badly mangled and he has a hard time using the hand.
- From Bad to Worse: The entire plot is built on the ever-worsening situation of the pilot: his ship gets damaged, he has to improvise fixing it, he still crash lands, he barely makes it to a rescue pod, the pod locks him in with a Killer Robot, he gets badly wounded and then his hand is crushed.
- Great Offscreen War: Not entirely offscreen, but it's just a background event for the plot - the pilot might just as well be a civilian on a civilian flight, and it would change nothing. The big battle still happens on the orbit while he's busy fighting for his life and we are never given any context or details about it.
- How We Got Here: The episode opens with a scene towards the end of the story and then goes back to show how the protagonist ended up in his predicament.
- Kirk's Rock: The spiky rock formations on the alien planet resemble the original Kirk's Rock.
- Murderous Malfunctioning Machine: The whole premise is about being Locked in a Room with one of those. Notably, the malfunction is also working against the robot, since at least some of its systems aren't operating properly.
- Military Science Fiction: There is an unspecified war going on in space and the pilot along with the robot are military.
- Shout-Out: To Red Planet. The visual design of the robot, right down to the way how it sees it surroundings, is that of AMEE. There is even a recreation of the (in)famous "flip head over the target, then do a slow back-flip without moving the robotic head" scene. This is done to such tiny details, numerous people considered the whole short to be a rip-off. There is also the way how the pilot's suit displays the oxygen meter.
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: The robot from the hutch isn't a combat unit, but a maintenance one. It still trashes the pilot like a ragdoll and has enough power to dent reinforced steel - or break itself.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Since this is a non-combat unit, the only way the robot can find its target is movement, so staying still makes the pilot invisible, even if the onboard camera registers his shape as such. The robot is apparently "deaf", too. It's hard to tell how much of the robot's behaviour is the limitations of the unit itself, and how much result of the malfunction.
- The robot is also able to be tricked by the light of a flashlight, which Terence first shines on the wall to get the robot to punch it, and then maneuvers the light onto the robot's body, so that it begins to beat itself up.
