Main cast: Troy Baker (Torrin), Kevin Jackson (Turk), Fred Tatasciore (Turk), Anthony Mark Barrow (Melis), Chantelle Barry (Maril), Parry Shen (Suparin), Time Winters (Deacon), James Preston Rogers (Jorvan), Jason Flemyng (Paln), Elodie Yung (Chantre), and Max Fowler (Cert)
Director: David Fincher
Bad Travelling refers to, simply, a ship getting lost at sea, and this is what happens to the ship of our crew of characters, I suppose. Then again, they do have a map that they will later consult, so I’m not sure how their predicament qualifies as “bad travelling”.
This ship is clearly sailing on a sea that mirrors those of Earth in a previous century or two, but it’s clearly one set in a different planet or alternate Earth, because the ship is soon attacked by a beast called the thanapod. This creature kills the captain among a few more, and then happily shacks up in the space below deck.
This creature wants two things: fresh human meat for its meal at regular intervals, which means a crew member has to be sacrificed each time, and the ship to sail to the nearest populated island for it to have the best buffet of its life.
How will be the crew deal with this situation?
Simply put, this is the best episode to date since the whole of the second season. I know, that isn’t much, as the previous season didn’t exactly set the bar high. However, this is a solid, well-contained horror episode.
There’s also lots of gore, which is always welcome!
Sure, in one way, I can ask why first mate Torrin will go through all the hassle that is the whole episode if he could have just done what he did in the penultimate moment in the first place. To me, there is a simple reason for this: to plan his own getaway, and to have revenge on how his crew mates treated him early in the episode. He probably doesn’t like any of them anyway!
However, there is one issue here that drags this episode down: someone thinks it’s a good idea to have every word out of Torrin’s mouth to be part of a quip.
This is supposed to be a high tension episode in which no one can fully trust the other person, so the atmosphere deflates like a punctured blimp each time Torrin says something. How can I take the episode seriously, much less find it frightening, when the lead character acts like he was auditioning for a Disney+ MCU show?
Compared to the previous handful of episodes, yes, this one is a solid watch. Judged on its own merits, though, it tends to happily shoot itself in the knees each time Torrin opens his mouth. In many ways, this one is a solid and watchable example of a hugely wasted potential.
