The Terror Review: Save our Souls

Do you ever get the feeling when you’re watching, listening to, or reading something and think that this might be your favorite thing? I thought that a lot watching The Terror. It also scared me off writing a full on review. I liked it too much. It had so many things I loved in one place. Great English actors on sailing ships, 19th century exploration, paranoia thriller plotting, and a solid idea for a cgi monster with the budget to make it happen. This review will not be objective. This is the only box set I’ve bought in a decade. I’ve watched it more than 3 times all the way through. I love this show and hope some of that wafts off me in your direction.


Your experience may hinge on how much you enjoy watching English people in uniforms arguing life or death stakes. Can you deal with hours of that? Can you put up with that for fleeting jaws-like glimpses of a demonic polar bear? If you were sold on this by the formula of Ridley Scott + arctic + cgi monster = Victorian Alien, I have some bad news. This is way more about the hubris of Sir John Franklin (Ciaran Hines) and the infuriatingly optimistic way he gets every man in his service killed.

Slowly.

Over 3 years.

His doomsaying second officer (Jared Harris) is driven deep as he can go into the bottle after pleading for The Erebus and The Terror to take a slower, steadier, route away from the ice pack. Instead they press on, becoming part of it, never to be rescued. That's just the first episode. This is just how it all starts.




It’s the kind of thing you don’t see much of outside of HBO. A real cast of thousands. 10 episodes is a lot of time from the right perspective. This is another ingredient to the secret sauce. It’s a movie not a series. These are 5 acts in 10 parts. This was originally planned as a multiple season series and it shows. Every episode makes significant changes to the status quo. There almost never is a “status quo.” Instead there is faltering leadership, starvation, madness, and mutinous designs.

Should I keep going? Spoil the breakout stars, the mid season twists, and the tuunbaq’s song? I kinda want to. But seeing everything and everyone in it fresh is one of the best viewing experiences I’ve ever had. Just know that there is a through line for every story from the first episode to the last. I’ve looked for them. The Terror is so dense that there are some characters I forgot about the first go round that I made a point to focus on the second time.

Everybody gets a beginning, middle, and end. Some certainly more than others, but everyone gets at least a little spotlight. Even the guy who becomes comatose after being mauled by a demon bear. Know that Henry Goodsir is the BEST sir. You can’t finish it without loving that sonofabitch. Paul Ready knows how to perfect the goody two shoes character so that you not only like him but actively root for him. That’s as spoilery as I feel like getting. 

The Terror got effing robbed at the emmys. A year out and it seems everyone forgot about it. There’s a new series in the works set in the California Japanese internment camps which sounds neat. But this season was a miracle of horror film making and more people need to see it. I bet it pops up on nexflix or something before the new season but the $25 I paid is more than enough for a show that captures an absolutely brutal feeling of dread and sustains it effortlessly over 10 hours.


$17 at wal-mart. Just. sayin’.

The world didn't deserve you Mr/Dr. Goodsir.