Netflix’s 4-Season Sci-Fi Masterpiece Proves A Harsh Reality About The Genre

Although Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots might be a masterpiece, its critical struggles highlight a major issue with the sci-fi anthology genre as a whole. Netflix’s sci-fi anthology Black Mirror could last forever, or at least until its writers run out of speculative imaginary technologies that could ruin human lives in unexpected ways.

The beauty of the anthology format is that each new episode introduces a new set of characters and, in many shows, a whole new world to explore. This means that Netflix’s 4-season sci-fi anthology Love, Death & Robots never needs to revisit the same lore, the same characters, or the same premise, resulting in a show that feels truly unpredictable.

Love, Death & Robots Proves Sci-Fi Anthology Shows Are Tough To Get Right

This might seem like an unambiguously good thing, and, indeed, there are plenty of critics who have called series creator Tim Miller and executive producer David Fincher’s show one of the 21st century’s best anthology shows. Each episode of Love, Death, & Robots is a self-contained story and each features a different animation style, resulting in a broad, diverse array of stories.

Where season 1, episode 6, “When the Yoghurt Took Over,” is a silly six-minute parody of B-movies that focuses on the eponymous killer yoghurt, the next outing, “Beyond the Aquila Rift,” is a haunting, horrifying nightmare about an astronaut’s crumbling grip on reality. This sort of tonal diversity would be almost impossible in non-anthology shows.

However, the format still comes with built-in risks. Even this critically acclaimed series has at least one episode per season that fans and critics alike don’t care for. If the acclaimed Love, Death, & Robots has a hard time consistently keeping viewers happy, it is clear that this job must be a tall order. However, this is the reality of the anthology format.

Sci-Fi’s Many Canceled Anthology Shows Highlight This Issue

It is precisely because each new episode introduces new characters, a new premise, and all-new sci-fi story elements that some are bound to fall flat. Most shows can rely on likable characters to carry weak plots, or a compelling overarching story to get viewers through a few filler episodes, but anthology shows don’t have this luxury.

In fact, the deluge of swiftly canceled sci-fi anthologies in the last decade proves the genre is tough to get right. Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, Amazing Stories, and 2019’s The Twilight Zone all began and ended since Love, Death & Robots first arrived on Netflix, proving that keeping viewers invested in a show that starts fresh with every episode is tough.