Some history: In 1845, real-life Captain Sir John Franklin led the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror on a joint expedition to the Arctic in order to find the Northwest Passage -- a direct trade route between Great Britain and China and India. The men on these ships were never seen alive again, and while the exact details of what happened were lost to nature and time, American author Dan Simmons filled in some of the blanks in 2007 through his historical fiction/thriller aptly named The Terror. Eleven years later the novel has been brought to life with such a faithful level of adherence to the details of the period that it’s hard to believe one isn’t watching exactly what happened.
We mostly follow the captain of the HMS Terror Sir Francis Crozier, which is fine, because who doesn’t want to watch Jared Harris act? Sir John Franklin, Crozier’s friend and hubris-driven superior, and Captain James Fitzjames, Franklin’s second in command, are also expertly brought to life by Ciarán Hinds and Tobias Menzies, respectively. These three gentlemen have the responsibility of guiding hundreds of souls through a section of the world that seems intent on killing them -- a premise with which Ridley Scott is extremely familiar. (Harris, Hinds and Menzies are pictured below, left to right.)
Line this show up with many of Scott’s claims to fame and it’s hard to see a real difference. In Alien, Aliens, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant(just to name a few) the characters’ situation is essentially the same -- they’re in a ship on a doomed expedition that falls victim to an unforgiving environment while they contend with a ferocious threat they don’t truly understand.
In all of those films the characters’ fates are accelerated by Scott’s favorite narrative tool: shitty decision-making. The actions that lead to nearly everyone’s demise are almost always born of stupid or illogically selfish decisions. Forget the fact that we know these ships (the Erebus and Terror) and their crews will be lost before we get even three minutes into the pilot -- the perilous outcome of their voyage was made clear to them by Crozier himself almost right away. Though the existence of his own personal demons is apparent, he seems the most logical of the three men in charge, yet he is ignored again and again until it’s too late. A similar situation happens with my favorite character, the pure-hearted Dr. Harry Goodsir (Paul Ready), in which he discovers and speaks up about yet another threat to the crew, and his pleas initially end up falling on deaf ears, as well.
The best parts of this show come from the character work. Yes, there’s a monster or whatever, but with Scott taking the less-is-more page right out of the horror story playbook, it’s more effective when it’s not being seen. That said, the only reason I even care about who the monster kills is because if removed, one is left with a story about what is essentially a group of boys being marched towards death by the hubris of this Manifest Destiny-type of thinking their leaders subscribe to. The idea that God is behind your country and its efforts to achieve glory and dominion through it’s economic accomplishments can be a powerful one, and when combined with a general air of superiority and the inability to earnestly consider the advice of one’s council it makes embarking on a trip like that a veritable death sentence. But hey, everybody needs a job.