This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

Given that video versions of our episodes are now being published to Netflix, I thought it fitting to cover a Netflix monster.

And they have quite a few to choose from.

In fact, we've previously discussed

on stuff to blow your mind, everything from Black Mirror's Bander Snatch, to the creature

from Panos Cosmotos is the viewing. Today, though, I want to take you back to a 22 episode

of the third season of the animated series, Love Death, and Robots titled Bad Traveling.

Now, this episode was directed by David Fincher with Frank Balson, Jerome Denjean, and Jennifer

U. Nelson, and adapted from the Neil Asher short story by none other than Andrew Kevin Walker.

The setting is a fantasy twist on the Age of sails with a crew of sailors who brave alien oceans on the hunt for javel sharks, which are harvested for their oil.

The ship in our story encounters a terrible storm and is bordered by a monstrous crab called a thanapod, which takes up resonance below deck. Lots are then drawn among the crew to see who has to go down to deal with the monster and our protagonist Torin winds up with the duty. Now this is where the plot gets clever. The Thanapod we learn can use the bodies of the dead to talk. It can puppet them. It's a nice twist that also seems to channel

some of that attack of the crab monster's energy. The Thanapod lays out what it wants to reach

the populated island of Faden. Torin strikes a deal with the monster. He will give it what he wants

in exchange for his own life and a key from the captain's body. The captain's body was

previously eaten by the Thanapot. So we then follow Toran as he employs this key to unlock the

captain's pistol and uses this pistol to claim control of the ship. And he puts the matter of

Faden Island to a vote. Should we bring the creature to the densely populated island or drop it off on a nearby deserted island and just tell the giant crab that this is where you wanted to go?

There's a great deal of turmoil over this.

Some crew members may be more than a few.

...