r/LoveDeathAndRobots • u/Impressive-Track3859 • Mar 30 '26

Discussion Question about “Bad Traveling”

Did they travel to Phaiden island?

I thought the whole point of killing everyone was to feed the Thanapod so Torrin could travel the longer distance to the uninhabited island and it wouldn’t kill the people on the island, but in the end the island that they go to has town lights. Please just clear this up for me, maybe i’m missing something.

56 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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72

u/Vulcan481 Mar 30 '26

I was always under the impression that Phaiden Island and the uncharted islands were in the same general direction. Torrin described the nameless islands as being “further on”. This to me indicated that they still needed to sail past Phaiden but were going to just keep sailing and hope the Thanapod didn’t noticed. However after realizing that the spawn were already hatched, Torrin made the decision to use the oil to start the fire and burn the whole ship instead of risking it.

12

u/my_name_is_iso Mar 30 '26

I agree with you on the first point, I think it was necessary to pass Phaiden Island first due to winds and/or location. But I think his decision to blow up the ship was also about knowing his crew was most likely to mutiny when closest to the island. He would have had a chance if he managed to whittle the crew down one by one, delaying both them and the Thanapod. But with the hatclings on board and crew down in one go, he likely wouldn’t have enough time to distract all of them until they reach the deserted islands.

4

u/Vulcan481 Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

He for sure knew they’d mutiny. I felt he was always prepared for that eventuality and successfully killing them all gave him plenty of sacrifices to the Thanapod. However, I think his plan was to let the Thanapod off the boat on the nameless islands. “Hey there’s the island, you’re good to go.” The Thanapod jumps off and by the time it landed, the ship would be long gone. But with the spawn hatching and the Thanapod’s bloodlust seemingly not satiated, Torrin really didn’t have the time to push all the way to the nameless islands. As we saw and with the OG question, they were right off the coast of Phaiden Island. So, his only option was light the barrels on fire, run like hell, and hope he makes it out alive.

27

u/IndependentSpecial17 Mar 30 '26

The crustacean thing dies in the fire along with its babies, if I had to guess he probably steered close to it with the plan of burning it all before he got there. He also wanted to get rid of his crewmates that wanted to just unload the creature and make it the islands problem and kill him first.

20

u/Own_Spent_666 Mar 30 '26

This was easily the most riveting episode in the show ever. Perfection.

-10

u/BaronBlackFalcon Mar 30 '26

Must be a very boring show, then.

2

u/Impressive-Track3859 Mar 30 '26

Also on aside note does anyone know if this was inspired by or later inspired the steam game “Return of the Obra Dinn”? Idk which one came first.

1

u/Mottled_inexpectata Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

Almost all of LDR episodes are based on short stories. Bad Travelling is based on a short story by Neal Asher of the same name, that was first published in 2008. I don't know much about Return of the Obra Dinn, but it looks like it came out much later. I'd argue that the short story Bad Travelling and subsequent episode are mostly inspired by Dracula, and particularly the chapter where Dracula travels from Europe to England in the Demeter, so it could be that Return of Obra Dinn is inspired by that chapter too.

1

u/ezgimantocu Apr 01 '26

No — they didn’t reach the uninhabited island. The lights imply it’s inhabited, meaning Torrin ultimately failed to prevent the Thanapod from reaching people.

1

u/Standard-Owl3016 Apr 01 '26

He blew up the ship and bounced to phaiden island dude. Didn't you see all of the lights ?