The Terror
David Kajganich, Soo Hugh
Initial release: March 21, 2018-May 21, 2018 (First season, 10 episodes)
Network: AMC
Of
all the possible things to get made into a TV show, Dan Simmons’
sometimes-gripping, sometimes-turgid historical horror novel about the failed Franklin expedition, The Terror,
is not something I would have expected, and yet not only did it happen,
but it’s outshined the novel in every way. It ditches the unnecessary sex scenes, most of the fake magical Inuit stuff, and gives Lady Silence actual agency as a character. It also
changed a lot of stuff around, mostly for the better, had a much better
ending, and much better pacing. What more could you ask for?It’s obvious that the success of The Walking Dead had AMC thinking they needed more horror; while your mileage may vary as far as that show goes, The Terror is a different thing altogether, being a sharp and smart condensation of the original doorstopper into ten episodes. It’s a tense, paranoid drama, shot through with moments of terror and madness, that much more effectively weaves together its various character arcs. It’s a visually stunning show that goes out of its way to show how utterly alien and hostile the Arctic Circle really is. The showrunners definitely seemed aware of how gorgeous a scene where a character uses a diving suit was, given that they used it in the title sequence. The soundtrack is also sublime, making heavy use of subtle synth drones amidst more traditional instrumentation that evoke nothing so much as the soundtrack to John Carpenter’s legendary body horror outing The Thing.
Amidst a number of major improvements to pacing and character development (giving a lot more screentime to the villainous character of Hickey, developing him much earlier on as a particularly dangerous figure) are complete rewrites or overhauls of major scenes. A big one would be the notorious carnivale scene, which plays out very differently from the book, but preserves the hallucinatory, almost lunatic quality of the scene before it all goes to hell.
There’s also how the show handles the Inuit stuff; where Simmons built a rather offensive faux-mythology off the back of Inuit culture, the show tries to do right by the Inuit. The very first scene builds a framing device, an Inuit hunter talking a pair of white men seeking to learn the fate of the Franklin expedition. It reframes the whole thing in terms of the Inuit experience — which mirrors how the discussion of the Franklin expedition has changed over the years. The expedition is often mythologized as doomed heroes seeking the mythical Northwest Passage, the discovery of which was the dream of many a sea captain (at least until the Panama canal was built.) But to the Inuit, it was an invasion, and while this show is not specifically about the Inuit, it acknowledges this fact. As the HMS Terror’s physician Dr. Goodsir sheepishly puts it (to a woman who does not understand English) the whole impetus for finding the Northwest Passage is “for our economy… for trade.” In other words, capitalism, keeping the British Empire alive on the backs of the indigenous people it crushed beneath its tread.
This
is a marked change from how the book handled the Inuit. While the Thing
on the ice is still here, and still heavily linked to Lady Silence and a
sort of shamanistic class of Inuit in general, the show does what the
book does not, and leaves out unnecessary details that only serve to
stereotype. Lady Silence herself is more than just a prop for the others
to react to. She has her own scenes, and even speaks for her first few
appearances. It’s an important change, and the role is played
brilliantly by Greenland-Inuk actress Nive Nielsen. (Plus, she and
Crozier don’t bang.) The showrunners made good use of the expertise of
the Inuit who live in the area, particularly the late Louie Kamookak, who was probably the
expert historian on the Franklin expedition. It was Kamookak’s research
that led to the long-lost ships being discovered some years back.
It’s fair to say that the show (and book) might almost be just as interesting without
the horror aspect. Most of what we’ve learned about the expedition has
only been in recent years once we started listening to the Inuit. But
still, who doesn’t love a good horror show? I wasn’t sure what to expect
from the AMC series, after the novel had left a bad taste, but I can’t
help but feel like I should have skipped the book entirely, going into
this thing fresh. I might not have noticed all the little differences,
but not noticing them would have enabled me to absorb the show by
itself. If there’s one thing I’d change, it’s the monster itself. It’s
definitely not how I envisioned it at all, and it’s where the CGI fails
most. It’s kind of a shame because for four episodes the show plays
tricks, keeping the monster out of view, which really heightens the
tension; actually seeing it ruins the effect.
In all, if you’re trying to pick between a gripping historical drama and a thrilling horror show, you can’t go wrong with a show that does both, and far better than the source material at that.