In 1845, Sir John Franklin guided the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror through the Arctic waters above North America, hoping to find the elusive Northwest Passage that would open up a new trade route from Europe to Asia. And then… he disappeared along with his two ships and 128 crew members.

The Terror, a new AMC series that launched to critical acclaim two weeks ago, offers a fictionalized version of what happened to the expedition, contrasting the aristocratic hubris of Franklin (Ciaran Hinds) and Commander James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) with the more practical leadership of Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris).

Fictionalized or not, the story of Franklin’s last expedition is full of mysteries. Various European expeditions were sent out to find Franklin’s crew and the wrecks of the Erebus and the Terror, bringing back fragments of the story from local Inuit, but never learning the full truth of what happened. Here are 10 Astonishing Facts About The Franklin Expedition.

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10. Franklin’s Last Contact With Europeans Came in August 1845

HMS Erebus in the Ice, 1846 by François Etienne Musin

In August of 1845, The Erebus and the Terror came into contact with the Enterprise and the Prince of Wales in Baffin Bay. They had last stopped for supplies in Greenland and were waiting for better conditions to cross the Bay. It was already August, meaning that they would be heading into uncharted territory as summer was coming to an end.

Still, the Franklin Expedition had reason to hope. They had enough supplies for three years, meaning they could continue sailing in the summer if they got stuck in the Arctic ice. Furthermore, by 1846, much of the Arctic had already been mapped, and so had the West Coast. It was Franklin’s goal to fill in the last gap, while also doing numerous other scientific surveys.

9. Franklin and Crozier Had Experience Exploring the Arctic

Photograph of Francis Crozier, Captain of the HMS Terror

This wasn’t the first time Frasier had visited the Arctic. Previously, Frasier had explored the North American arctic over land in several expeditions. In his first expedition, Franklin hoped to map the north coast of North America by following the Coppermine River from 1819 to 1821. In events that would foreshadow his later expeditions, 11 members of his 20 person team lost their lives in the harsh conditions. The crew had fallen apart, which even led to a murder once the crew reached their base at Fort Enterprise.

Francis Crozier had also explored the Arctic multiple times as a crew member on the ships of explorer Captain William Pary, and also spent time searching for missing whalers in the region. During this time, he even learned to speak Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.

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8. The Terror and the Erebus Were Two of the Most Technologically Advanced Ships of Their Era

Profile of the HMS Terror

John Franklin and his men knew (to some degree) how cold and harsh the Arctic could be, which is why the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror were some of the most technologically advanced ships of their day. Prior to the failed Franklin expedition, the two ships actually sailed to Antarctica under Commander James Clark Ross, proving they could withstand extreme temperatures.

Before the Franklin expedition, the Erebus (built in 1826) and the Terror (built in 1813) were outfitted with steam engines, rare at the time, to help the ships break their way through the ice. According to a Toronto Star article on the excavation of the ship, it also contained “a 3,000-volume library, equipment to print a ship’s newspaper and materials to stage amateur theatricals. It held a Daguerreotype camera — capturing, maybe, images from the voyage.”

7. Ships Only Found Recently Thanks To Inuit Storytelling Traditions

Louie Kamookak (Image via screengrab Louie Kamookak: Lost & Found)

Despite numerous expeditions to find the remains of the Franklin expedition, both in the 19th Century and up to the modern-day, the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror were only discovered by interested parties in recent years. At least in part, this was thanks to an Inuit historian named Louie Kamookak, who was inspired by the Inuit tradition of oral history to explore stories from the region to see if he could pinpoint the actual locations of the ships.

By collaborating with experts in traditional methods of archaeology and history, they eventually discovered the wreck of the HMS Erebus in 2014, off the coast of Nunavut near King William Island. The HMS Terror was discovered off the shore of King William Island in 2016, proving that researchers can learn a lot from traditional Inuit histories.

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6. Early Expeditions Found Relics and Stories of the Expedition

Artifact from the Franklin expedition (Image via screengrab Louie Kamookak: Lost & Found)

 Lady Jane Franklin, Sir John’s wife, grew restless after hearing nothing from her husband for three years, and in 1848 began requesting the government to send an expedition to find the ships. At times, Lady Franklin funded her own expeditions to find Franklin’s remains and even broke protocol by writing to Zachary Taylor, president of the United States, to send his American ships in search of the remains. A ballad known as “Lady Franklin’s Lament” became popular during this period, as the mystery of the lost Franklin expedition captured the public’s imagination.

Early expeditions failed to find the remains, but they did come across artifacts from the expedition, along with stories about the ships from Inuit who had interacted with them after their ships got stuck in the ice. In 1859, an expedition led by Francis Leopold McClintock discovered a message left in a cairn, dated to April 1848, which detailed the abandonment of the ships and the death of several crew members, including Franklin.

5. Some of the Men May Have Resorted to Cannibalism

A note found by John Rae in 1859 detailing the fate of Franklin and his men.

According to the note left in the cairn, the crew abandoned the ships in 1848 and began a 1000 kilometre hike along Back River to the closest Hudson’s Bay Trading Post, led by Francis Crozier. In 1854, explorer John Rae encountered a group of Inuit who seemed to have relics from the remaining members of the Franklin expedition. They also told Rae that the group had resorted to cannibalism, although none of the Inuit claimed to have seen the “white men” themselves.

When the remains of that group of men were found on Beechey Island in the 1980s and 1990s, studies confirmed that cannibalism was likely. The bones of the men were covered in cuts, which are a sign that the other men had begun to carve up the dead bodies to sustain themselves.

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4. Death Was Probably Caused by Tuberculosis

Wheel of the HMS Terror (Image via screengrab Arctic Research Foundation)

Out of 129 people on board the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, none survived. Death has been attributed to scurvy, starvation, exposure and even lead poisoning. (The Franklin expedition was the first to use canned food and lead was used to solder the cans, but more recent studies have cast doubt on this hypothesis.) Still, the ships were well-stocked with this food, suggesting that starvation isn’t the answer, either.

More recent considerations suggest that the cause of death may have been tuberculosis, which is a contagious disease and could have spread among the men. Inuit accounts of the men suggested that they had black mouths, which could have been a sign of adrenal insufficiency, or Addison’s disease. At the time, the most common cause of Addison’s disease was tuberculosis, suggesting that the then-common infectious disease is the most likely cause of death for the men of Franklin’s expedition.

3. The Franklin Expedition Has Long Been Referenced in Pop Culture

The Terror by Dan Simmons

In the years following the Franklin expedition, the story of the lost ships penetrated the popular imagination. Charles Dickens, for example, often wrote about various attempts to recover the findings of the expedition in his newspaper Household Words. He also produced a play about the doomed ships known as The Frozen Deep in 1856. Statues of Franklin have been erected in his hometown of Spilsby, England, as well as London and Tasmania, where Franklin served as Lieutenant Governor when it was known as Van Diemen’s Land.

In more recent years, the Franklin expedition has become the subject of several non-fiction works, including Ken McGoohan’s Fatal Passage and Lady Franklin’s Revenge. Documentaries have also been produced about the expedition, including Discovery Channel’s “Franklin’s Lost Expedition.” The exploits of Franklin have also been referenced in various fictional works since Jules Verne’s Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras. More recently, Dan Simmons’ novel The Terror is the basis for the current AMC television series. (If you’re worried about spoilers, one should mention here that the novel was published in 2007, before the wrecks of Erebus and the Terror were discovered.)

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2. Roald Amundsen First Traversed the Northwest Passage in 1905

Roald Amundsen

The Northwest Passage would not finally be traversed by Europeans for over half a century, when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen sailed the Gjoa through the Passage, successfully, in 1905. Unlike the Franklin expedition, Amundsen had a small ship with only 6 crew members, and he survived by staying close to the coastline. Curiously, Amundsen’s goal on this journey wasn’t to complete his childhood dream of crossing the Northwest Passage, but rather to find out if the magnetic North Pole had moved since its discovery.

He spent two winters among the Inuit of northern Canada, learning their language and way of life, while also conducting scientific inquiries and exploring the arctic region. Still, Amundsen could only make this journey due to the small stature of the Gjoa. A commercial route through the arctic would not become viable until recently, as climate change reduces the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean.

1. Franklin’s Grave is Still Unknown

Sir John Franklin

One mystery that still remains is the location of John Franklin’s gravesite. Louie Kamookak, the Inuit historian whose work proved essential for discovering the locations of the Erebus and the Terror, believed that Franklin’s body would be found somewhere on King William Island in a “vault,” based on his conversations with Inuit elders and correlations with European historical sources. Kamookak had collected stories of a chief being buried underground beneath a large flat stone.

Sadly, Kamookak died in March 2018. Franklin’s grave has still never been found. Kamookak and other Inuit believed that there was a curse on King William’s Land, and it would continue until the body was found and returned to England. He also wanted to find it “to prove [his] great grandma’s story was right.”

The post The Terror: 10 Astonishing Facts About The Franklin Expedition appeared first on That Shelf.

In 1845 a British voyage consisting of two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror – departed England with aims to chart the fabled Northwest Passage. The expedition was lost. Join Dork Shelf Editor-in-Chief Will Perkins and horror culture writer Peter Counter week-by-week as they recap AMC’s ten episode television event The Terror.

“No one can convince me that optimism or confidence is warm enough.” – Lady Jane Franklin

Your Time Has Come, My Love

Will: Episode 4 of The Terror begins with a welcome respite from the Arctic cold. Sort of. In England, the creaky old halls of the Admiralty seem nearly as indifferent to the plight of the Franklin Expedition as the ice and snow that now traps man and ship alike. Fearing the worst, Lady Jane Franklin and her niece Lady Sophia Cracroft have come to appeal to the Royal Navy’s commanders to enact a rescue plan, only to have the situation mansplained to them by the guffawing, scotch-drinking admirals. A rescue will not be sent until 1850 at the earliest. Lady Franklin, expecting to be rebuffed, is already hatching a public relations plan to win the Admiralty to her cause, even name dropping author Charles Dickens with whom she and Sir John were friends. Can a celebrity telethon be far behind?

Peter: Dan Simmons’ novel only ever speculates on the actions of Lady Franklin’s actions, choosing to stay in the Arctic for maximum cabin fever effect. Seeing her and Ms. Cracroft appeal to the Admiralty and come out the more competent (albeit more frustrated) is yet another welcome revision of the source material. By necessity, The Terror’s primary storyline is filled to the gunwales with mutton-chopped white dudes, so it’s a relief to see a strong diversion exploring the more historical side of the story that focuses on the women affected by this slow motion disaster.

Will: Lady Jane’s subplot is a really great addition to the show – and very true to the real Mrs. Franklin’s efforts to get her husband and his men out of trouble. It’s heartbreaking to see her lobby the Admiralty so vehemently knowing full well that Sir John has, by this time, been dead for over five months. The opening scene also reveals a fact that I think really adds to the tension north of the Arctic Circle: there is no rescue plan in the works. Things are going south fast aboard Erebus and Terror, but the men of the expedition are going nowhere.

Peter: My favourite part of the cold open in damp old England is how little faith Lady Jane has in her now-dead husband. “He’s as wonderful as he is fallible,” she tells the Admiralty, in a comedic beat that gets to the sympathetic heart of what makes this story so painful. Too often stories of hubris forget that the subjects of divine retribution are as frail as the rest of us.

Will: She really throws Sir John under the bus, doesn’t she? Lady Franklin will apparently do anything to bail her husband out, whether it’s urging him to take on a mission he’s probably ill-suited for in order to restore their reputation or telling others he sucks and needs help when he screws said mission up. A great rescue is still a good story, right? She’s hoping to salvage whatever she can from this debacle before it’s too late.

Pudding Cathedral

Will: Back aboard Terror the men are in good spirits thanks to a birthday party, but Goodsir is not in a celebratory mood. Ever the scientist, the young anatomist is examining pictures from the day Franklin died (hey, at least the sweet group shot turned out well!) and photos of the aftermath to try to the size of the jaws of the beast that now stalks the ship. His conclusion? It’s big!

Peter: Viewers craving more of the ice beast terrorizing the men of the expedition should come away satisfied from “Punished, as a Boy.” Sure, the Terrors and Erebuses still aren’t sure what is systematically dismembering their shipmates, but they do have insight into how grotesquely playful it can be, cutting two men apart at the waist and then returning them to The Terror’s deck as one mismatched corpse.

Will: It’s a reveal that goes from gruesome to horrifying as soon as Hickey touches the figure. Many viewers, including myself, likely believed the creature had simply twisted a single man around like some sort of human washcloth (super gross!), when in fact it had surgically bisected two men and gingerly stacked the remains. Also – and I don’t know if I should even ask – but what has become of their other halves?

Peter: The abominable bear-thing left its first survivor: Royal Marine William Heather (Roderick Hill) who miraculously is still living in spite of his exposed brain. This is the content I’m here for. As the doctors examine the semi-skulled seaman a brief exchange of human philosophy brings to light what the darkness is doing to the expedition’s moral. “It’s a pudding, basically,” says Dr. MacDonald.

“I would have said cathedral,” says another.

The man with a working body but no high functioning brain activity recalls the metaphor established in the first hour of The Terror, in which HMS Erebus was likened to a human body by juxtaposing its broken propellor shaft with a fresh corpse. In this case, the disabled Heather is the living image of the expedition’s command. With Sir John below the ice, the body politic of both ships is brain damaged if not headless.

Made Comfortable and Safe

Will: The beast has come onto the ship. The men’s refuge from the mother nature and whatever it is that hunts them is a refuge no longer. Meanwhile, Terror’s captain drinks away the hours in his slanted cabin as the crew are picked off one by one. What is to be done? Never fear, Cornelius Hickey is here! After coming face to torso with the bear-thing’s handiwork, Hickey takes the initiative and hatches a plan to kidnap Lady Silence, who most of the crew have come to believe controls the man-eating creature.

Peter: Based on what we, the audience have seen, it’s safe to say that assumption is incorrect. While the great white bear-thing is not hostile to her, Silence’s reactions to its initial offering of seal two episodes ago clearly showed us her fear of the beast. The real horror here isn’t the monster, however, it’s the prejudice with which the Netsilik woman is treated. The Terror’s most difficult to watch scenes are those that are littered with racial slurs and colonial violence, brought into sharp relief when juxtaposed with the actions of more sensitive characters like Goodsir.

Will: Hickey’s methods are most certainly not above board (going AWOL and kidnapping Lady Silence at gunpoint), but his mission is almost laudable given all the available information. The creature and the woman do seem linked somehow, and they did show up at the same time. Yes, it’s a superstitious, xenophobic response, but something is still killing the men of Erebus and Terror. Someone had to do something – or so Hickey argues to the commanders during his disciplinary hearing (“I just saved your life!”) – even if it costs them their hide. Crozier, knock-me-down in hand, now seems as feckless as the late Sir John. It’s an ultimately self-serving response on Hickey’s part, but can you really blame him for wanting to do something, anything?

Peter: Some people just aren’t cut out for the servitude of a career in the navy and Hickey is one of them. In the book, Crozier frequently refers to him pejoratively as a “sea lawyer.” The show does a good job of making his thirst for agency sympathetic, especially as the command struggles to tread in the dark dold waters of despair and brown liquor.

Will: Did Hickey actually see the creature and Lady Silence communing? We don’t see it and he seems to be an unreliable narrator. The Caulker’s Mate, for his part, seems very sure of what he saw – or is at least very eager to convince others of what he claims he saw – but his compatriots don’t weigh in one way or the other. I’m inclined to agree with the commanders. I don’t believe Cornelius Hickey for one minute.

Peter: As a book reader it’s tough to say. In any case, it’s a strong choice to keep Hickey’s reality defined by his fork-tongued word.

As a Boy

Peter: Will, you made the comparison last week to Game of Thrones in the wake of Franklin’s untimely death. I’ve got to say, this episode bested HBO’s wintery deathfest once again, only this time in the category of most painful and compelling torture scene.

Will: I mean, it’s not Ramsay Bolton levels of torture we’re talking about here, but being publicly flogged by a cat-of-nine-tails is no walk in the park. The cat makes short work of Mr. Hickey’s backside, and 30 of the best is sure to make for an uncomfortable recovery. It’s not something the Caulker’s Mate is likely to forget any time soon – you can see it in his eyes.

Peter: You’re right, Hickey isn’t getting the full-Theon here, but in terms of audience affect, Mister Hickey’s flogging was more uncomfortable than any abstracted mutilation GoT has given us over the years. The camera plants us in the lower deck with everyone, making every strike count to the point where even my morale was down. The Terror stands out here as it has all season so far, by committing to its promises of punishment.

Will: The episode closes out with a quiet scene between Lady Silence and Goodsir. Goodsir formally introduces himself and tries to apologize for the behaviour of his crewmates (“This is not how Englishmen act…”), but it’s little comfort to the traumatized woman. Still, it’s a heartening development, and the first real kindness anyone has shown the woman since her father’s death. Will a connection between the two provide answers to what is going on?

Peter: I’ll tell you what it won’t do: save Doctor Henry D.S. Goodsir. Good intentions or no, this cold place wasn’t meant for these men.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Will: In the cold open Lady Sophia stares at the weathered portraits of Franklin and Fitzjames and says she’s made a terrible mistake. That mistake, as it is later revealed, has to do with the expedition commander not pictured in the admiralty anteroom: Francis Crozier. Lady Jane and Sir John arranged to finally give Francis that command he’d been after, and in the process put the Irishman safely out of marriage proposal range. Harsh!

Peter: I noted the absence of Magnus Manson in past recaps. Happy to see the big guy here, even if it’s under such dire circumstances.

Will: Terror’s unnatural list really adds to the sense of unease in this episode. The ice is getting the better of this mighty bomb ship. Nobody can quite get their footing, every camera angle is canted, everything is just off. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it must be to live in those conditions?

Peter: Just to keep track of the major revisions from Simmons’ novel: while Hickey is lashed in the book, he is not punished “as a boy,” nor is it for the same infraction. In the book, the caulker’s mate is whipped raw with Manson and Richard Aylmore after a grand and disastrous carnival in which they disrespect the memory of Sir John.

Will: The good Mr. Goodsir doesn’t get much to do in this episode, aside from learn what he can from corpses or the nearly-dead, but I suspect his scientific curiosity will come in handy in future episodes (see: Mr. Morfin’s headache and gum issues). The real Harry Goodsir was the brother of Dr. John Goodsir, one of the pioneers of Cell Theory in biology, and the younger scientist actually contributed to his older brother’s groundbreaking work. Not a bad guy to have on your expedition!

Peter: In much the same way that episode three was rife with titular ladders, the “boy” of episode four refers to more than the flayed Mister Hickey. Ship’s boy Thomas Evans meets his own punishment under the green glow of Aurora Borealis, making up one of the halves of the corporeal abomination found by Hickey.

The post The Terror Episode 4 Recap: Punished, as a Boy appeared first on That Shelf.

In 1845 a British voyage consisting of two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror – departed England with aims to chart the fabled Northwest Passage. The expedition was lost. Join Dork Shelf Editor-in-Chief Will Perkins and horror culture writer Peter Counter week-by-week as they recap AMC’s ten episode television event The Terror.

“I think I made a connection tonight, me and it. Feel like we got engaged, I wanna celebrate.” – Ice Master Thomas Blanky

The Sound of Silence

Peter: We’re in the cold darkness of winter now, and things are getting claustrophobic on HMS Erebus and Terror. Cabin fever, stoked by fear of the terrible beast stalking and killing the remaining discovery servicemen, has the men under Fitzjames’ command abandoning the Christian God of their late great leader, Sir John Franklin. The men have taken to laying tokens of tribute to the Netsilik woman below deck who they think may be the key to protecting them from a gruesome fate.

Will: That sense of cabin fever isn’t just because of the fearsome -52 ° temperatures outside (that’s Fahrenheit – ouch!), the flagship Erebus, having taken on all but 10 of Terror’s crew, now houses most of the expedition’s men. Close quarters and too much time on one’s hands is bound to lead to a certain level of superstition.

Peter: Goodsir is also spending time with Lady Silence, whose nickname is all but a thing of the past now that she’s helping the surgeon compile an Inuktitut to English dictionary. This is remarkable for many reasons, the most prominent being yet another major revision of the horror novel source material. In Dan Simmons’ book Lady Silence is so called because she has no tongue. Politically, this revision is welcome, allowing for Nive Nielsen to act in Inuktitut, bringing the language of the North to this passion play about the toxic colonial paradigm.

Will: The young anatomist’s efforts to learn Silence’s language appear to be paying off, but he’s still no closer to providing an answer about what it is that is hunting the men. No doubt frustrated by Goodsir’s lack of progress on that front, Commander Fitzjames sees fit to make Lady Silence – and in turn Mr. Goodsir – Terror’s problem. In fact, Fitz seems to be in a deciding mood in the absence of Crozier (“Are we to have a command meeting without our commander again?”), tracing a line from their current position on the map to the Back River far to the south. Is he thinking of abandoning the ships?

Unstoppable Kindness

Will: Cornelius Hickey’s backside is on the mend, but he’s still not supposed to lift anything heavy. As his crewmates drop dead on the ice and lose their digits to the frigid cold, Hickey gets light duty in the safety of the ship. Perhaps that brutal flogging had some advantages? With nothing but time and caulk on his hands, it’s likely Hickey has been scheming some way to get back at Crozier for all those lashes. He immediately perks up when Silence is brought aboard Terror – you can practically see the wheels turning in his head – and before we know it he’s attempting to flatter Mr. Goodsir and ply him for information. Goodsir, for all his naiveté in some matters aboard ship, has Hickey’s number though. “Does that really work with anyone, Mr. Hickey?” There’s wisdom in those mutton chops!

Peter: Positioning Goodsir as Hickey’s foil is an inspired bit of character placing. The sawbones’ ironic optimism, and his resistance to Cornelius’ Jedi mind tricks, help define both characters in opposition to one another. Strong minds of opposite paradigms. A hero and a villain. In the novel, the characters aren’t so quick to come to conflict. Yet another revision that makes AMC’s adaptation sparkle.

Will: When we spoke with actor Adam Nagaitis last month, he told us that Hickey’s relationship with Goodsir was his favourite of the whole series. The two characters haven’t interacted much so far, so I’m glad we’re finally seeing a fun dynamic begin to develop between the two characters. Harry Goodsir is proving he has more guile than we – or his crewmates – might have expected, particularly where medical matters are concerned. In a short but important scene following the exchange with Hickey, we see that Dr. McDonald (Charles Edwards) has taken a real shine to the young anatomist, even going so far as to say that Goodsir is sounding more and more like a full blown doctor of medicine. Peter, I’m so proud of him!

Peter: Our little mutton chopped bones boy is making a name for himself! (“I do wish you’d call me Harry.”) Hickey, meanwhile, has to spend some time with the dead as he, Magnus Manson, and John Irving must transport the corpse of Frederick Hornby to the aptly named DEAD ROOM. It feels like it’s been a long time since we’ve seen the homophobic Lieutenant, and here he is being more insufferable than ever, threatening to have Manson locked in the corpse freezer as an alternative to lashing for his hesitancy to follow scary orders.

It’s in this corpse duty that we see Hickey’s strengths at work, comforting the childlike big’un, gaining loyalty in the ship’s underworld of low morale seamen.

Tuunbaq Attack

Peter: I am absolutely giddy about how hard The Terror is leaning into the horror now that we’re halfway through the series. Not only are we treated with multiple on-screen amputations and the gothic splendour of semi-skulled William Heather’s grooming, but episode five gave us our first true glimpse of what we now know as Tuunbaq.

Will: This is full on survival horror. Blanky, outmatched and unarmed, takes on the creature using only his wits and his knowledge of Terror’s rigging. He even fashions a makeshift tourniquet out of rope! Scrappy, Mr. Blanky. Very scrappy.

Peter: The encounter between Blanky and Tuunbaq is absolutely thrilling. Even as a book reader who knew going into the blizzard covered confrontation that Thomas would survive, my stomach was in knots as I watched one of the most loveable characters on the show narrowly escape the razor sharp claws of evisceration.

Will: Not only do we get our first real look at the Tuunbaq, but we finally get an idea of just how big it really is. It’s huge! As big as the biggest polar bears, but… different. It’s strangely hand-like paw made short work of Blanky’s leg. The combination of kerosene and cannon-fire were enough to knock it from Terror’s rigging, although it appears to have survived the fall. I suspect it will not forget this encounter with the Ice Master.

With all the death and violence aboard the leaning ship, Silence rightfully takes the opportunity to peace out. Can you blame her? She does seem to leave behind a clue for Goodsir though.

The Coldest Turkey

Peter: It was bound to happen. Poor old Captain Crozier is all out of whiskey, and now the miserable self-sorry man has to pull a Trainspotting at what must be the most inopportune time possible.

Will: It’s been heartbreaking to see the drink take Francis the way it has. He’s clearly a very competent captain, but having had the foresight to predict the expedition’s current predicament and been unable to prevent it has surely weighed heavily on him. I’m not surprised he and Fitzjames finally came to blows. The bottle is no escape from command, as much as Crozier might want it to be. His passion for running a tight ship has been surpassed by his taste for whiskey, and it’s taking a toll on everybody. I feel more for Terror’s officers, who’ve been shanghaied into smuggling booze, especially Lt. Little, who is walking a tightrope between following orders and enabling his captain’s bad habit.   

Peter: From a viewer’s perspective, the drunken Crozier of episode five added some levity to an extremely dark and gruesome hour of television. Jared Harris’ moon-faced smile and cartoonish scheming lightened the mood in his earlier scenes, only to be undercut later when his inebriation betrayed his authority and gave rise to conflict. I’m excited to see how this show depicts Crozier’s painful detox, though I dread to think what the expedition will look like when he emerges from his quarters, if indeed he does.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Peter: Poor Doctor Stanley’s never been invited to a wedding.

Will: He’s a racist and a misanthrope, but man oh man is he ever good at snipping off frostbitten toes! Eesh.

Peter: Happy to see the show finally include one of my favourite factoids from the book: shattering teeth explode in extreme cold.

Will: That is horrifying! In other news, poor dead David Young’s ring reappeared in this episode. The jewelry Mr. Goodsir was supposed to deliver to the dying lad’s sister ended up in the hands of one Cornelius Hickey, and then on the finger of Hickey’s on-again, off-again lover Edward Gibson. He obviously pilfered it from Young’s body during burial duty. Sneaky.

Peter: On another Hickey-ish note: you and I have had some conversations about the ethics of imposing villainous behavior on these real dead men through the fictionalizing of a real life disaster. I feel like we’re about to enter into territory where that topic will be unavoidable, as we cross the threshold into the back half of the series.

Will: The Tuunbaq attack wasn’t the scariest part of this episode to me. A thrilling sequence, as you say, but the true horror aboard Terror for me is in the ship’s hold, steadily filling up with rat-eaten corpses. I’m with Mr. Manson – don’t make me go down there.

Peter: “It’s alright Manson. He’s stone.” The Gothic horror at work in this episode was delightful. For me, the prize for most skin-crawly moment was seeing the strange apparatus being used to keep William Heather’s exposed brain from freezing: a small candle and a white curtain draped over the man’s forehead.

Will: And now for a bit of a deep dive on a passing moment from this episode. While trying to calm down Francis after his spat with Fitzjames, Mr. Blanky makes mention of an incident involving Sir John Ross (Game of Thrones’ Clive Russell) at a place called Fury Beach. The Fury Beach incident has been largely clouded by history, but contemporaneous accounts of Ross’s second Arctic voyage seem to hint that his starving men nearly mutinied against him just before rescue came. Blanky’s comparison to Crozier’s current behaviour is apt. John Ross was known as a stern commander who demanded obedience because of rank but offered his crew little in return during desperate times.

Peter: That really puts Ross’ “You’ll eat worse…” monologue from episode three into a scarier speculative territory.

The post The Terror Episode 5 Recap: First Shot a Winner, Lads appeared first on That Shelf.

In 1845 a British voyage consisting of two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror – departed England with aims to chart the fabled Northwest Passage. The expedition was lost. Join Dork Shelf Editor-in-Chief Will Perkins and horror culture writer Peter Counter week-by-week as they recap AMC’s ten episode television event The Terror.

“Think of the carnival. It will sort us all out. I have no doubt.” – Dr. Stanley

Papa’s Got a Brand New Leg

Will: It’s been two weeks since Ice Master Thomas Blanky faced down the Tuunbaq high above the decks of Terror – with some help from Mr. Hodgson’s well placed six-pounder shot. The not-quite-polar bear, or “Mr. Teeth and Claws” as Commander Fitzjames describes it, appears to have survived the encounter, but wounded and burned it has not bothered the men since.

Peter: Blanky is fine, but last week left us with a different kind of casualty: Captain Crozier is weathering a terrible withdrawal from his beloved whiskey, attended to by the loyal Jopson. Nobody knows what Crozier is up to save the men he told fourteen days previously, leaving poor old Fitz to deal with one of the worst cases of mass seasonal affective disorder ever committed to film. But the darkness assailing the men of Terror and Erebus is invisible, leaving everyone to their monsterless and mindless work as the vernal equinox approaches.

Will: Save for Crozier’s conspicuous absence, things aboard ship appear to have returned somewhat to normal – or at least as normal as they can be under these increasingly dire circumstances. Lt. Gibson runs down the ship’s remaining stores of provisions and fuel at the officer’s meeting, and the picture he paints is grim: the coal that heats the ships will run out soon, the food that hasn’t spoiled already will run out by next winter, and the lemon juice brought along to ward off scurvy has lost all of its antiscorbutic properties. Even darker days lay ahead. The ship’s company is to be put on 4/5ths rations moving forward, and Fitzjames’ next order to preserve as many canned goods as possible means that a long march south is not far off.

Peter: The doom continues to mount and it’s delicious. That said, the talk of the diminishing antiscorbutic benefits of lemon juice highlight an area where AMC’s The Terror could stand to add a bit more clarity. In this episode, multiple primates suffer the mutilating effects of both scurvy and lead poisoning. Jacko, the poor little monkey used by Goodsir as a culinary canary has the gums of a number two pencil, while Fitzjames looks in the mirror and sees his hairline is bleeding from the follicles (classic scurvy move). With so many invisible threats facing our doomed seamen, it’s hard to keep track of why any given character is falling apart.

Will: Spirits (liquid and otherwise) and provisions may be running low, but wood, it would seem, is not in short supply, as it’s revealed Mr. Blanky is now sporting a shiny new wooden leg. Coffins and peg legs. The officers may be trying to insulate the men from the seriousness of the situation, but I suspect the poor state of affairs is not lost on the ship’s carpenter.

A Darkness

Will: Even in his feverish state, Francis Crozier has a way with words. Not that I have experienced the symptoms of withdrawal, but “like Christ, with more nails” is a beautifully torturous description of what the process must feel like. Also, if I were going through delirium tremens due to alcohol withdrawal I can think of no better person to have at my side than Mr. Jopson. Incredibly caring and loyal to a fault, he tends to Francis like he would his own mother – in fact, he cares for his captain as he did with his own mother, who was addicted to laudanum. By the sounds of it poor Jopson’s mum did not make it through the ordeal, which certainly explains the young petty officer’s devotion here. He is determined to get his commander through this!

Peter: The Crozier withdrawal plotline is highly abridged and revised from the source material, and while I prefer this episode’s take on Francis’ recovery, it’s worth noting that the novel uses the gauntlet of sweat and expulsion as a way of teasing extrasensory powers. In Dan Simmons’ book Crozier’s grandmother is a mystic, and as he writhes in his cabin he is given visions of the future.

Will: I think Francis’ powers of prediction have already been well proven on the TV version of The Terror. Is it mystical wisdom or just experience? Whether he actually is able to see the future or not, nearly everything Crozier warned Franklin, Fitzjames, and the other officers of has come true. The ships are trapped, the food is running out, and the long march is on the horizon like the first sunrise of the year.

Peter: When Mr. Collins visits Dr. Stanley for a treatment to his inner darkness, the mad doctor prescribes fun. And thankfully, on the encouragement of Ice Master Blanky, Fitzjames dug out the late Sir John’s tickle trunk and ordered a grand spring carnival.

Will: Ah yes, what has ever gone wrong when men confronted with their own mortality are given leave to throw a party?

The Awkward Silence

Peter: We were treated to further insight on Lady Silence’s father’s relationship to Tuunbaq. Calling it to her through song, she spoke to the abominable thing of taking her father’s place as its shaman. And then she cut out her tongue.

Will: Actress Nive Nielsen is also a wonderful singer-songwriter, so I’m happy the producers saw fit to put her other talents to use before robbing her character of the ability to sing! The real question is what this blood sacrifice mean for the Tuunbaq going forward? Will it still be as hostile to the British interlopers?

Peter: Like so much of “A Mercy” the Tuunbaq scene is highly revised from the book. As I mentioned in a previous recap, Lady Silence is tongueless for the entirety of the novel, which is the literary genesis of her nickname, and therefore there is no need to read about her grisly self-surgery.

Will: I’m glad we – and Mr. Goodsir – got to spend at least a little bit of time with Lady Talksalot before she finally lived up to her true namesake. Despite their respective troubles, the relationship between the two has been a bright spot in an otherwise extremely dark tale. Goodsir’s Inuktitut dictionary is a casualty of Silence’s fateful decision, but will there be more now that the Tuunbaq is in her thrall?

Peter: As if Silence’s equinox could get any worse, she shows up to the party late but not late enough. Bleeding from the mouth the Netsilik woman is present for Dr. Stanley’s horrid self-immolation.

Will: In his deranged state did Stanley see his attempted mass murder as the titular mercy? There’s a grim logic to it, in a way. Better a quick (and warm) death for the men than the lingering, frozen fate that likely awaits them. In any event, what a piss poor party guest Dr. Stanley turned out to be.

Peter: It’s an incredible feat of televised storytelling that The Terror is consistently becoming more beautiful and horrific every week. The three-way juxtaposition of the carnival inferno with the ghostly aurora in the sky and the first sunrise of the new frozen year was lyrical and haunting. In the aftermath of the hot carnage, as Fitzjames collected the dead and Goodsir prayed he wasn’t the only medical man left in the expedition, the only thing more bleak than these men’s prospects for survival was the inevitable sunset.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Peter: Cornelius Hickey continues to be the most compelling character on TV. One moment he’s sticking his finger in the exposed brain of Mr. Heather, the next he’s genuinely trying to save his shipmates (albeit with a murderous pragmatism). No other character in recent memory has so quickly swung me from abhoration to sympathy like the slippery caulker’s mate.

Will: Poor Dr. MacDonald! Did Hickey really have to stab the canvas tent so forcefully – and at chest level? Why not cut from the bottom up? Oh well. Me thinks the poor doctor won’t be the last person on the receiving end of the caulker’s blade.

Peter: Another note on Hickey in this episode: what are the odds his carnival attire was a reference to Dan Simmons’ Dickensian speculative novel Drood?

Will: We briefly touched on the rumours surrounding Sir John Ross’ Arctic expedition in the Flotsam and Jetsam section of last week’s recap, and early in this episode Mr. Blanky reveals the truth of that ill-fated voyage of which he was a part to Fitzjames. The Ice Master is a survivor through and through. Visiting this part of the world again is revisiting the trauma he experienced. Blanky reveals that the expedition was nearly lost in large part to Ross’s command style, and things got so bad that he and the men seriously contemplated killing their former commander. He tells Fitz that he believes the Franklin Expedition can head off such a fate, but only if its commanders throw the men a bone, so to speak.

Peter: Blanky’s was the winner of best monologue in an episode of absolutely fantastic monologues. While the monster attacks and tent fires make for excellent tent poles, The Terror’s greatest strength is its elegant writing, superbly acted.

Will: That might be my favourite scene of the series so far – and that’s saying something. Many might not recognize Blanky actor Ian Hart from his role as Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He also played John Lennon in the surprisingly decent Beatles biopic Backbeat. Both Hart and Mr. Blanky are quickly becoming favourites of mine.

Peter: One must wonder if this all could have been avoided had Dr. Stanley ever been invited to a wedding.

The post The Terror Episode 6 Recap: A Mercy appeared first on That Shelf.

In 1845 a British voyage consisting of two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror – departed England with aims to chart the fabled Northwest Passage. The expedition was lost. Join Dork Shelf Editor-in-Chief Will Perkins and horror culture writer Peter Counter week-by-week as they recap AMC’s ten episode television event The Terror.

“When the ship sets sail, be sure you’re aboard.” – Lieutenant Hodgson

Skeletons

Peter: There’s a skeleton crew on Terror, skeletal seamen sledging for rescue, and skeletons in Mr. Hickey’s closet. This week’s episode of The Terror opens with a confusing flashback of a young boy signing up for his virgin voyage with the Discovery Service. Getting the signature of Lieutenant Hodgson, the young man has papers calling him Cornelius Hickey. Because this show is stacked to the gunwales with white Englishmen, I initially read the scene as a deep flashback to Hickey’s very first voyage. But by the end of yet another fantastic hour of doomcore on ice, I understood: we know even less of the incorrigible Mr. Hickey than we thought.

Will: I think we both assumed by this point in the series that there was more to the sly caulker’s mate than he let on, ever since that rather strange exchange between he and “fellow Irishman” Captain Crozier in episode two. Despite their decidedly more bright and healthy appearance, I immediately recognized the ship and her crew in the flashback, but I did not recognize the young lad Mr. Hodgson addressed as Hickey. My first thought was “Oh, well at least that poor boy was spared the horrors of the Arctic voyage,” but then I began asking myself just how did Mr. Hickey… or whoever he really is… come to take this lad’s place? There are sinister implications here.

Slightly less sinister (but not by much) is the scene that follows it. As the expedition moves to abandon ship and begin the long march south, Hickey, Irving, Tozer and others are now openly planning to desert and make a go of it themselves. I expect they won’t go peacefully.

Scent Memory

Peter: Once the sledging party finally makes it to Terror Camp on King William Island we are treated to one of The Terror’s signature monologues by Mr. Collins, the poor depressed man who was compelled last week to attend the Carnival by the late Dr. Stanley – the same man who set the tent ablaze. Collins is haunted by the visceral reaction he had to the smell of his burning shipmates. They smelled like grease, he tells Mr. Goodsir, remembering how he salivated as they burned to death.

Will: Collins has not had an easy go of it on this trip, has he? The ship’s diver first experienced those terrible visions of death below the waves early in the series and now this. I can’t imagine. With most of the crew I simply worry for their physical well being – hauling the massive sledges is backbreaking work – but with Collins I see a man nearing a mental breaking point. At least Goodsir is willing to lend an ear, unlike his crispy former counterpart.

Peter: The looming spectre of cannibalism hangs over all of AMC’s The Terror, and we’re finally at the point when the c-word is all but on the lips of the men under Crozier’s command. The flashbacks and monologues up until now have implied that many veteran explorers have at least seriously considered eating human meat, but now we’re invited to actual practical conversations on the benefits of having a work friend for dinner.

Will: In fairness the conversation doesn’t immediately jump to eating crewmates. Initially Hickey and company seem satisfied with hungrily eyeing Neptune, the ship’s dog. Not exactly my first choice, but definitely understandable under the circumstances. Perhaps dog was the “worse” to which Sir John Ross referred when haranguing the boot-eating Franklin so many years ago, not what we’re thinking?

Peter: The pragmatism of the scenario Hickey poses to Lieutenant Hodgson after presenting him with a bag full of Neptune the Dog is intriguing. I have to admit that when I first watched this scene I assumed the bag contained human remains pilfered from the dead Morfin, and I think it’s safe to assume the dog is a human surrogate in terms of the thought experiment Cornelius is presenting: if you had a choice between eating lead tainted canned food and the antiscorbutic remains of a person who died for reasons other than being consumed, what would you do? It’s uncomfortable to admit that Hickey is making sense here, and I think it would be naive to assume Crozier and Goodsir haven’t also dwelt on the inevitability of chewing on long pig.

Will: Well, you’ve nearly convinced me! Wait a minute… Is it just a coincidence that you keep writing about TV shows featuring cannibalism, Peter? *slowly backs away*

Peter: What can I say? Some people just have a type, I guess.

It’s Not a Man

Peter: With all the revisions this show is making in regards to the novel it’s based on, I’m not taking anything for granted. That’s why I was delighted that the final sequence of “Horrible From Supper” was so faithfully translated to the screen. The only liberty taken in Mr. Hickey’s lethal dance with Irving is that in the book he’s fully nude.

Will: Hickey’s cold blooded murder of Farr and Irving – for the purposes of eating them no less – is the final turn for the caulker’s mate. Until now you could easily root for him, despite all the smarm and lying, but now the truth of what happened to the real Mr. Hickey is clear. No one kills with such ease if he’s never done it before. Cornelius Hickey is a bad man. How will he talk his way out of this? Or will he simply cut and stab his way out of trouble this time?

Peter: Hickey is almost as fantastic a murderer as he is a liar, but I don’t think he can fool the newly sober eye of Crozier’s scrutiny. The captain already smells mutiny on the wind. I think at this point the question is how quickly Hickey will be able to rally support for his starving promise of liberty.

Also worth noting here is the series’ conflation between the literary depictions of Goodsir and Irving. Goodsir’s on screen relationship with Lady Silence is adapted largely form Irving’s arc in the book, in which the Lieutenant actually spends time with the Netsilik woman in an igloo and witnesses her commune with the Tuunbaq. Irving in the show hasn’t had much development, so his death seems to serve the plot and Hickey’s own character transformations.

Will: The show’s version of Irving was a dick and a zealot to boot, so I can’t say I’m that sorry to see him go. I do feel sorry for how he went though. That’s a lot of stabbing. Yeesh! Kudos to the show’s music team for that twisted, creepy sting that accompanied the lieutenant’s terrible death.

Peter: The show’s score under that beautiful final shot of Hickey dancing about all alone under the everlasting light of an Arctic summer is what I’m here for. Also, I’m here for the cannibalism. It’s dinner time, everyone.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Peter: In the second flashback, it was heartbreaking to see Mr. Morfin report for duty in such good spirits.

Will: I mean, can you blame any of them for being so excited? He and most of the men can’t have known what awaited them, and being chosen for such a posting was the equivalent of being picked for the Apollo program. These sailors may have had the right stuff, but they picked the wrong ships.

Peter: While I understand that the characters are starving and cold, it’s a difficult thing to see sometimes. Even succumbing to scurvy and lead poisoning and starvation most of the characters on this show still look pretty good. That said, I have a feeling we’ll see the Terrors and Erebites fall apart a bit more in the coming weeks.

Will: That is almost a certainty. And as we bid adieu to HMS Erebus and Terror I wanted to relay one more fascinating fact about the mighty bomb ships that now lay on the bottom of the sea off King William Island. Terror famously took part in the War of 1812, including the Battle of Baltimore, where she provided the “bombs bursting in air” now sung about in the “Star-Spangled Banner”. A historic vessel, if ever there were one.

Peter: I mentioned above that humans are antiscorbutic, but it’s worth noting that it was only recently discovered that freshly killed meat has sufficient levels of vitamin C to ward off scurvy. I just mention this because even as pragmatic as Hickey’s case for man eating is, it would fall apart if the rations weren’t filled with maddening levels of lead.

Will: Now I’m not condoning murder or cannibalism, but there really is a grim practicality to it here that’s almost admirable, isn’t there? There’s no going back from this for anyone involved and Hickey has done the math: At this point any man is fair game.

Peter: I also want to emphasize that my cannibal sympathy here is mostly an affectation for your entertainment and that I do find the very concept quite upsetting.

The post The Terror Episode 7 Recap: Horrible from Supper appeared first on That Shelf.

In 1845 a British voyage consisting of two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror – departed England with aims to chart the fabled Northwest Passage. The expedition was lost. Join television critic Susan Stover (filling in for Dork Shelf Editor-in-Chief Will Perkins) and horror culture writer Peter Counter week-by-week as they recap AMC’s ten episode television event The Terror.

Falling Apart

Peter: It’s confession time on The Terror this week. As the men of the expedition come apart socially, emotionally, and physically, Fitzjames and Crozier come closer together, finally, as brothers. Venturing out to update the late Sir John’s message in the cairn, James undresses his vanity, calling himself a fake, admitting to benefiting from political luck, and saying aloud for the first time that he sees himself as a joke. “Even my name was made up for my baptism,” he says. “James Fitzjames. Like a bad pun.”

Susan: Fitzjames gushes his fee-fees like many of the men gush blood from their gums, and one can definitely say Fitzjames and Crozier’s blooming bromance is pretty much the only happy-ish thing that occurs in this episode. For a brief moment in time there is some reprieve from the physical and mental degradation of the expedition’s men.

Peter: Tobias Menzies shines in this cold open, delivering yet another of the series’ golden monologues. Throughout the episode, the concept of manhood continues to rise up as a theme, so beginning with an honest contemplation of the toxic masculinity under which the Terrors and Erubites live is key to fully depicting the gruesome events to follow.

Susan: Toxic masculinity is a pervasive theme throughout the series, with Crozier definitely attricuting maleness to creature who hunts them.

“It’s most definitely a he.” – Captain Francis Crozier

Susan: Another ‘he’ proves a predator for the men, the one and only venomously verbose Mr. Hickey spins a titillating tale about the “savage” attack by the Netsilik peoples. I could barely watch the scene as Mr. Hickey pontificates in an undeniably politician-like portrayal, stirring the fears of the men. The terror of The Terror exists not just in the real but also the imagined, as the men fear they are under potential siege of the vengeful relatives of the souls who were killed. Crozier began the episode by explaining it best not to discuss the creature, lest comforting the wise men stir the foolish ones, and this is something Mr. Hickey understands perfectly, and plays to his advantage, or so he thinks.

CSI: King William Island

Peter: As much as he understands the power of fake news in the deep North, Hickey’s lie barely lasts a full day. After learning the full extent of the massacre from last week’s episode, Crozier marches out to the site of the violence with Goodsir and Lady Silence in tow. The Captain already suspects Hickey of sowing mutiny (as he has for a very long time now), so he approaches the forensics with a heavy dose of confirmation bias.

Susan: Crozier proves himself as the OG Horatio Caine with a clever and gruesome discovery of the seal meat shared in the dead man’s stomach. I guess dead men do tell tales on this voyage, a fitting theme for a story of doomed men. When seal meat is discovered in the stomach of the unlucky Lieutenant Irving, Crozier’s figured out who committed the murders: Hickey. It’s just a shame he didn’t have The Who to underscore this revelation. Time to get the carpenters to work for a good ol’ fashioned hanging.

Nicer Back Home

Peter: After the field trip to the massacre site, the returning party is fired upon by a now heavily armed Terror Camp, and it’s decided that Lady Silence is safest if she stays away from the angry, lead poisoned men with guns. Poor naive Goodsir is the very portrait of white guilt in this moment, when he must bid farewell to his friend, promising that what she has witnessed isn’t what English people are like.

Susan: But I mean England in 1848, really? In all reality that would probably be the worst place in the world for Lady Silence considering the institutional racism and colonial headspace where particularly women of colour were paraded around like circus freaks, like the unfortunate Sara Baartman. Not to mention the fact London hadn’t even figured out sanitary sewage systems, with outbreaks of cholera on the way for L-town in the 1850s. London is a nice place for YOU Mr. White and Educated Goodsir, but would Lady Silence really find the people there “good”?

Peter: I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s important to understand this show within a modern context, because while the story is based on historical events, the speculative horror framework is built on the dramatic irony of two key pieces of information we have that the characters do not. First of those pieces of information is that all the men of the Franklin Expedition are doomed, regardless of their actions. The second is that the colonial ideology that brought HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to their watery resting places inevitably succeeds in an ongoing genocide. Like it or not, Goodsir’s genuine kindness to his Netsilik friend is not active enough to stem the tide of imperialism that brought us to a point where now, in 2018, the people of Nunavut are ignored by the Canadian media during a tuberculosis crisis.

Deus ex Ursa

Peter: Cornelius Hickey, in the golden fog with a noose around his neck and a smirk on his lips, is an iconic image for The Terror. Adam Nagaitis’ air of confidence makes delivering Hickey’s last words feel like the moments before a checkmate. And while I had no doubt Hickey could weasel his way out of the gallows, the series used the opportunity to treat us to a daytime Tuunbaq attack that served as a catalyst to move the pieces into the show’s true end game.

Susan: Hopped up on the cocaine and wine mixture nicked from the medical tent, Collins seems to seems to have a sense of gallows humour as he laughs hysterically in the fog. He brings with him the Tuunbaq who flashes in and out of misty landscape, creating enough chaos for the mutineers to make their escape. Collins meets calamity when he is struck down by the Tuunbaq, witnessed by Tozer who notices a curious detail to the departed’s death: an aura, similar in colouring and sheen to a bubble blown from dish soap, separates itself from Collins’ form as he dies. It does bring up the question of what exactly the creature wants when it attacks so many men at a time, as a more tactful predator would take its kill and drag it off for the meat.

Peter: The motivation of Tuunbaq is a fascinating topic. We haven’t seen the big bear-thing for what? Three episodes? And sure enough it comes to the slaughter after the colonists murder an innocent family who call the land home. I don’t think we have enough information to pin down the ‘why’ of the violent spirit, but it’s clear that narratively it represents an inversion of the violence the late Sir John brought to this place.

Also: can we talk about Fitzjames getting his fucking groove back within one televised hour? As soon as the court martial is interrupted by a bear-god, Mister “It’s all vanity” rushes to his tent and digs out fireworks to launch at the monster, holding the matchsticks between his lips like that’s just something people do.

Susan: Stella had to go to Jamaica, Fitzjames went on a ship trip with constant threat of death and the food supply slowly poisoning everyone. But I mean, some people really like cruises.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Peter: Those hungry eyes between John Bridgens and Harry Peglar are not a symptom of scurvy like that latter’s unexplained bruises. In Dan Simmons’ novel, the two men share a heartening romance that lasts the entirety of their respective story arcs. Too bad they didn’t go for the kiss. But there’s still time!

Susan: Despite the lacks of smooches, the love and affection they have for one another is totally palpable. Another love story is that of Mr. Goodsir and Lady Silence. Crozier makes the wise choice to send Lady S off on her own lest the men attempt to hurt her after the “murders” and you see poor Mr. Goodsir’s heart break in two when he has to say goodbye to his friend. “I wish I could show you London,” says Mr. Goodsir, in an attempt to explain that not all people of his kind are like this.

Peter: On a note of Fitz’s vanity, those scurvy sores are nasty. The makeup on this show is very subtle at times, but when they want to make you squirm it’s as easy as getting Tobias Menzies to take his shirt off.

Susan: We have to hand it to the makeup, props, and costume folks on this one. From viscera to bruise, the devil is in the details, and The Terror does this terrifically.

Peter: One final book note! The mutiny in the show is highly abridged from the book. While the component parts are all there – the massacre, the gun hoarding, the discovery of meat in Irving’s stomach – the actual fracturing doesn’t occur until the men are much closer to their destination, much sicker, and much more depleted of food. In terms of storytelling, this version works best for a shorter television series. But the abridged format has left me wanting a bit more body horror regarding the advanced stages of scurvy, hunger and lead poisoning.

The post The Terror Episode 8 Recap: Terror Camp Clear appeared first on That Shelf.

In 1845 a British voyage consisting of two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror – departed England with aims to chart the fabled Northwest Passage. The expedition was lost. Join television critic Susan Stover (filling in for Dork Shelf Editor-in-Chief Will Perkins) and horror culture writer Peter Counter week-by-week as they recap AMC’s ten episode television event The Terror.

“Don’t indulge your morals over your practicals.” – Cornelius Hickey

It Was The Worst Of Times

Peter: We open the penultimate episode of The Terror back in London, as Charles Dickens (yes, Mr. Great Expectations himself) introducing Lady Jane Franklin to an audience of arts patrons she hopes to rope into a crowdfunding campaign to rescue he husband and his men. Little does she know, Sir John is long dead, and the men once under his command are perishing at an accelerated rate.

Susan: While it was the spring of hope for Lady Franklin, it was most certainly the winter of despair for her departed husband’s expedition. Lady Jane’s ignorance of the horrors bestowed upon her husband’s voyage works to her advantage to attempt to furnish a ketch to rescue the voyage. As her pep rally continues we see a close up on her face with a concentration on her mouth – sharp cut to maimed head that’s been relieved of all but the lower jaw,  a stark juxtaposition to the society woman’s delicate features, and a macabre metaphor for the rapidly deteriorating mission.

Peter: The day after Lady Jane’s pitch to investors Crozier, Fitzjames and John Bridgens (now the closest thing to a medical officer on Terror Camp) take a corporeal inventory: 32 men died during the combination mutiny and Tuunbaq attack, while 23 remain unaccounted for. Such a volume of corpses can’t be properly laid to rest. There will be no more burying, and the sledging party isn’t well enough to double as a man-hauled herse.

Susan: As Crozier put it, they’ll also be carrying grief with them on their attempt to get home. Hickey’s taken off with his mutineers and taken Mr. Goodsir captive, and with the crooked comrades, the beast, the utter lack of food, and you know, the whole lead poisoning thing, it’s not looking great for team Crozier. The remaining loyal crew leave the crackling and flame engulfed bodies of the departing behind as they make their way south.

South. The both literal and figurative direction this expedition heads.

You Cannot Walk Away

“You’ve got holes in you, James.” – Captain Francis Crozier

Peter: Seeing James Fitzjames screaming in the bow of a whaleboat as it’s pulled across King William Island is bone chilling. The sustained pain he experiences, as his scurvy opens up his old war wounds and wreaks havoc on his senses, is almost tangible. The makeup team once again shows their chops, making Tobias Menzies look absolutely zombified in his final hours on the show. Of course, nothing compares to the romantic horror of the man’s last scene, gently euthanized by Captain Crozier, who massages his throat so he can swallow poison.

Susan: There’s a lot that’s tough to swallow in this episode as we see the men’s situation get more desperate – the salted meat is totally depleted and the weight of the situation is doubled by the extra weight being pulled by the sick men. As Crozier puts it, there is a “reasonable logic” to leaving the sick men to die while giving the well men a chance, but Crozier wouldn’t do his boys like that, he wants to return to England a man, not a thing. He would never walk away from his crew.

Crozier won’t walk away from his men, and Lady Silence can’t walk away from Tuunbaq, or so a fellow Netsilik man tells her. He likens the appearance of these men as previous imbalances in nature: one year too many caribou, the other too many bear. They’ve disturbed an equilibrium Lady Silence needs to help restore.

Peter: Yet another foreboding irony. Just as the men of the Franklin Expedition were doomed from the outset by virtue of their historical fates, we know that whatever havoc the Tuunbaq delivers to white colonizers will not be enough to prevent the terrible violence of the Crown.

Susan: For the Queen!

Communion

“There’s no game here, but we’ve got food.” – Cornelius Hickey

Peter: Well, it’s finally here: fresh meat’s back on the menu for the mutineers as Cornelius Hickey has his former lover Billy Gibson cut up by Goodsir and served by Mr. Diggle (which, by the way, is the perfect name for a cannibal cook).

Susan: Mr. Hickey might have been okie-dokie with literally stabbing his lover in the back after Billy’s not well enough to pull the next day, but he still will not be the butcher. Goodsir’s been sourced out for this job due to his surgical skills, Hickey’s sharpest tools are that of his twisted mind, and despite Goodsir’s reluctance, Hickey ultimately blackmails him into butchering poor ol’ Bill.

Peter:  As is everything with Hickey, the cannibalism has a cold practicality to it, but the emotional horror seeps through the uncanny supper scenes, culminating in a mystical midnight monologue by Lieutenant Hodgson, speaking of the first and only time he received the Holy Eucharist. Susan, as a fellow student of the Ontario Catholic School system, I was immediately glad to have the excuse to talk with you about the religious experience of cannibalism we both experienced as children.

Susan: The fact we tell kids when they are eight or so they have to go to church and eat the body and drink the blood of a their god is fucking terrifying, so no wonder lil’ Hodgson found it so chilling as a child. At the time I thought it was fine, I got to wear a pretty white dress and I think I got some cash out of the deal.

Peter: Yeah, plus, communion tastes good. As it turns out, if the miracle of transubstantiation actually transforms host wafers into human flesh, well, I guess I like eating human flesh. On a more literal level, though, it seems like long pig is at least more appetizing than the leather boot Hodgson attempted to eat at the top of the hour.

Susan: Another food source we discover is that unlike the man meat starting on the menu for Hickey’s men. Solomon Tozer shares what happened to Collins when he was attacked by the Tunnbaq – that this animal eats souls.

Forks and Knives

Peter: Many, many people die over the course of this hour. Most of them loveable characters like Harry Peglar and his secret lover John Bridgens, some of them difficult to remember like poor Hartnell who was shot in the climatic abduction of Crozier, others heartbreaking like the euthanized Fitzjames. But nothing, not even having read the novel from which this show is adapted, could have prepared me for the final badass moments of Thomas Blanky, covered in forks, all but screaming into the Tuunbaq’s face: “Eat me!”

Susan: Also his stump was also another great special effect/makeup job! I can’t help but connect the fork Hodgson uses to eat man meat for the first time and the fork trap Thomas makes of himself. One man unwillingly dead by knife and fork seen as a sacrifice to keep the other men alive; and another man baiting himself to help his men, using forks and a knife to slay the beast.

Peter: As a swansong for Blanky, “The C, the C, the Open C” is wonderful. The sickening special effects you mentioned, a tearful farewell, and genuine laughter between him and Crozier as Blanky suggests his suicide Tuunbaq trap. Genuine laughter! The most doomy show on TV deprived us of the sound for weeks, and Thomas is the one to bring it back just before he leaves us. As a parting gift, the showrunners bless Thomas Blanky on his deathmarch: alone under the Arctic sun, the indomitable ice master becomes the first British explorer to lay eyes on the fabled Northwest Passage.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Susan: Do we think Mr. Hickey was always this insane, or is his mind becoming slowly twisted by the lead infused (dog or horse?) meat? He’s not showing any physical signs, despite looking a little pale, but his gums aren’t bleeding, nor does he have the deep bruises.

Peter: It’s difficult to say if he was this unhinged, but given he’s operating under an assumed name in the first place it’s probably safe to say he was never a moral paragon.

Susan: Why does Mr. Hickey want Crozier so bad? Eat his brains gain his knowledge?

Peter: That’s a good question. In the book, Hickey just attempts to murder Crozier. But the abduction in this episode makes me think he’s got plans. If Hickey’s the vengeful sort we’re probably going to see some as-a-boy style flogging in the finale. Though I personally like the zombie plot you’re pitching here.

Susan: I mean Hickey did put his finger in a man’s brains not so long ago, and there is something about losing humanity and eating humans that’s a touch close to the zombie genre.

Peter: A longer version of this show would probably have given us more time with Bridgens and Peglar, helping build greater emotional attachment for their romantic and heartbreaking ends tonight. As it was, though, the images of the old man carrying Peglar to his death bed in the bow of a boat and subsequently lying down on the rocks to die were truly haunting.

Susan: It’s such a desperately sad moment in the show, and you have to wonder if Bridgens was planning to do this as soon as he saw how sick Peglar was.

Peter: With only one more episode to go, the show has made decisive deviations from its source material. Heading into the finale, it’s hard to know what to expect. Here be monsters.

Susan: Like in AMC’s other horror series, The Walking Dead, the general underscoring message of The Terror is that it’s the people who are the real monsters.

The post The Terror Episode 9 Recap: The C, the C, the Open C appeared first on That Shelf.

In 1845 a British voyage consisting of two ships – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror – departed England with aims to chart the fabled Northwest Passage. The expedition was lost. Join Dork Shelf Editor-in-Chief Will Perkins, television critic Susan Stover and horror culture writer Peter Counter week-by-week as they recap AMC’s ten episode television event The Terror.

“Close.” –  Lieutenant Edward Little

Dead and Consumed

Susan: They told us from the very beginning they were dead, and we even know from history the voyage never returned, but somehow The Terror’s finale managed to make the loss of the Franklin Expedition palpable and very real.

Peter: Well, here we are: the final hour of the most compelling and heartbreaking drama of the year. The abducted Captain Crozier is taken to the united tents of Cornelius Hickey, where Henry Goodsir briefs him on the latest happenings. Billy Gibson is dead and consumed, the Tuunbaq has been sighted to the north, and he will not be returning to London. “This place is beautiful to me even now,” he says. “To see it with eyes of a child. There is a wonder here, captain.”  

Susan: The inspiration Hickey gleans from the landscape is insidious yet logical; here is a place where he could be king. Forget his accent, forget his rank on the ship, forget England – this is where he can have it all.

Peter: Alone on his final night, Goodsir turns himself into the last meal of his captors, thoroughly poisoning his meat. It is a martyrdom, and a heartbreaking one. For all his naivete, Goodsir truly lives up to his namesake. But keeping with the show’s cynical treatment of human bodies, we see his heroism juxtaposed with the ruin of his butchered corpse in sight of Hickey’s dining table.

Terrible and Meaningless

“Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.” (Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are) – Lieutenant George Hodgson

Will: At the end of this journey the truth is revealed: the men of the Franklin Expedition did not simply “vanish without a trace” as the epigraph in the opening moments of the series told viewers – they destroyed themselves and one another in the most brutal way imaginable. Good or evil, kind or cruel – or somewhere in between – a terrible fate awaited all of these men. Did Goodsir’s sacrifice, while noble in its way, even matter in the end?

Susan: I don’t want to put people off the show, but terrible and meaningless might be right on the money there Will. Goodsir sees into his future as dinner, but also the stunning and chilling images Goodsir witnesses on the border between death is one of the more disturbing aspects of his death. Specimens of nature like a seashell floating with no context, perhaps something he’s seen in real life? Or maybe even just in a book? There are ideas about death portrayed in television or novels that have the dying seeing a light, or beloved dead ones, but there’s something truly chilling in the image of the mundane, the unexceptional, which makes Mr. Goodsir’s death all the more haunting. Jopson, on the other hand, when abandoned to die with his other sickly comrades begins to crawl towards his death with a vision of Crozier enjoying an opulent meal.

Will: Poor Jopson. Poor Goodsir. Poor Little. Poor Blanky. Poor Fitzjames. Poor everyone who remained faithful to their captain. He could not save them, nor could they be saved. Not even close.

You Are What You Eat

“It’s sick from what it eats.” –  Captain Francis Crozier

Peter: All of The Terror added up to a wonderfully brutal comment on the horrors of colonial thinking. As we’ve discussed in previous recaps, the metaphysics of the show don’t favour its main characters. The underlying nature of the Arctic has revealed itself partially to the colonizers, and Hickey muses on the Tuunbaq, “What mythology is this creature at the centre of?” But Crozier knows the score: “We were not meant to know of it.”

Will: The mutineers’ final confrontation with the Tuunbaq is the stuff of myth. A handful of dying men, marooned at the edge of the world and facing down a spirit clothed as an animal. Is it any wonder that Hickey, cursing god and country, is having delusions of grandeur? His actions, his scheming, has brought about this moment. At this point the ravings of the caulker’s mate come within a table knife’s length of breaking the fourth wall: “What if we’re not the heroes of this story?” he asks the survivors. And then the beast is upon them.

Susan: Hickey’s demise functions perfectly within this metaphor of the Empire assuming its control over the rest of the world. Hickey’s narcissism (combined perhaps with a healthy dose of madness) thinks that he can control the Tuunbaq, offering it his tongue. Hickey did not witness Lady Silence’s offering of her tongue to Tuunbaq, which begs the question of how he knew this was the traditional way to tame the beast? I can only guess he made the connection seeing that Lady Silence’s father was without a tongue as well and figured it out (he is a pretty sharp man after all). Whatever the case, Hickey was not deemed worthy of for the Tuunbaq and, along with the other men, is eaten.

Peter: The fate of the Tuunbaq is one of the most notable revisions this series has made to its source material. In the book, the beast is not killed by the poison bodies of white men. Instead it simply eats Hickey as he sits frozen on a throne of his own making, surviving long enough to know the literary Crozier as its Shaman, eating the tongue straight from his mouth. Killing Tuunbaq is a sad, pessimistic choice, but it fits in line with the sorrowful message of for which this show stands. No good has come from this journey. Only death. Only violence. Only destruction.

The End

Susan: Lady Silence – or what we learn later Silna – gives Crozier a hand by relieving him of his. She’s sifted through the ruins of camps and seen her good friend Mr. Goodsir face down and eaten almost whole. This is one of the only glimpses we get of a full corpse that’s been devoured. Before this the meat could still be disassociated with its origin, but like Crozier walking through the devastated and death-filled camps of his men, the horror can no longer be looked away from.

Will: Watching Hickey and the mutineers consumed by the Tuunbaq was nothing compared to the shock of seeing Goodsir – perhaps the expedition’s only remaining bastion of true goodness – butchered like an animal. It was extremely upsetting. We’d already seen the act of cannibalism on the show, but we’d never seen its aftermath.

Susan: Despite the absolute horror, gore, and trauma of the show it does end on a slightly positive note — with Crozier, now in Inuk garb – sitting by a seal hole in the ice with a sleeping child at his side.

Will: It’s a fascinating and somewhat hopeful image to close the series on, but one that’s not without baggage. Crozier did what Hickey could not: he adapted to survive. But I use the term “survive” loosely here, as it’s clear the Francis Crozier we knew died with the Franklin Expedition. There’s no return from this sort of disaster, from seeing all your men die and murder one another, even if you live through it. And as problematic as the concept of “going native” is – particularly in the context of a Victorian explorer and the broad strokes of the series – it really was the only way to live in the North at this time. In fact, it was these very same survival skills that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen learned from the Netsilik Inuit of King William Island that allowed him to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage decades later.

Peter: The final image of Crozier is problematic, but that discomfort is emblematic of what The Terror stands for. Colonial history is a complex and upsetting topic. Even the best, most kind hearted men brought violence to what we now call Canada. For ten hours, we cried and cried and even occasionally launched along with people who, by the very nature of their occupation, were responsible for unspeakable horror. As the camera zooms out, we lose Crozier’s face among the icons of the Netsilik people who allowed him to live in their society. He disappears into the North, rather than claiming it. As the Netsilik man who told the former captain of Silna’s lonely fate said, “You must remember where you are and accept this, also.”

Flotsam & Jetsam

Will: There’s obviously much to discuss from the season finale, but as I’m an aficionado of title sequences, I noted the opener to this final episode was slightly different than the ones that preceded it. While the main titles’ visuals remained largely unchanged, the musical score was muted and hollow, slightly less foreboding than before. A nice touch!

Susan: What really killed Tuunbaq? Forks? Poison? Chains? Or was it the pure evil of the souls it consumed that really did it in? Either way Silna slightly nods her head “no” when Crozier is asked about Tuunbaq’s death.

Will: I’m going to go with E) All of the above!

Peter: Edward Little really went fucking crazy, eh? The chains were pierced to his facial orufices, so I’m assuming the jewelry was at least initially intended to keep him breathing and awake?

Susan: I really had no clue why he had the chains on his face, but it was a stunning visual. Who knows, when people go nuts on this show, they go B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Like a veritable space madness, this Arctic chills down to the mind. Even Goodsir was carrying around the corpse of Jacko whispering to the dead capuchin, “I’m trying.”

Peter: While the ending of the series had very little in common with Dan Simmons’ novel, there is one major difference I am pleased to report. In the chapters chronicling Goodsir’s time with the mutiny camp, Mr. Hickey mutilates the doctor to keep him in line, butchering the fresh corpses and eating with the rest of the cannibals. The bits and pieces removed from Goodsir in the book are truly gruesome and I think even AMC would have trouble showing those frosty amputations on TV.

Will: If it’s any consolation, it appears the real life Harry Goodsir did not suffer a fate quite so brutal. Remains eventually identified as Goodsir were found in the Arctic in the late 19th century, buried in a shallow grave showing no signs of cannibalism – although some of the bones were discovered to have a few Arctic Fox gnaw marks. Coincidentally, the work of Goodsir’s biologist brother, John Goodsir, allowed the remains to be identified more than a century later.

Peter: On a similar note: I appreciated the loophole the writers used to turn Hickey so villainous without sullying the name of a man who probably wasn’t nearly as evil. But having him brag about killing the real Cornelius Hickey, the writers of the show introduces a man of fiction to go full Kurtz in the Arctic.

Will: A small moment almost lost amongst all the madness and cannibalism is the scene with Sir James Clark Ross back in England. Thanks to Lady Franklin’s efforts, he and two other expeditions are finally about to set out to find Sir John and his crew. However, upon meeting with his expedition’s financial backer, Ross learns the voyage is not really about finding his friends, it’s still really about finding “it” – the Northwest Passage.

Susan: CUE SEASON 2 – THE PASSAGE. I joke, but the next expedition, the McClure Expedition was “successful” in the sense they made way through “it”, but the men were nearly dying of starvation when they were finally rescued.

The post The Terror Episode 10 Recap: We Are Gone appeared first on That Shelf.