The Terror: Recommended Viewing

By Péter MARTON

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The Terror is a TV series telling the unknown and creatively fictionalised story of Franklin's lost expedition (1845-1848). It is based on the novel of the same title by US author Dan Simmons. It is relevant for us here on the one hand due to where the expedition began... and for some more reasons I will reveal below.

Two British ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, set out from England to use Greenland as a springboard for the exploration of the Canadian Arctic. Their ultimate mission was to discover and chart the Northwest Passage. Ice doesn't help navigation - ice doesn't help life, either. They ended up stuck and starved. No one survived. See below the possible route they traveled. The wrecks of the two ships were found only as recently as 2014 (Erebus) and 2016 (Terror).

The possible route of the Franklin expedition - by Hans van der Maarel

As far as the genre is concerned, the TV series is a great mixture of drama, action and horror. It transports you into the Arctic environment and really lets you feel the isolation, living up to the expectations raised by the title. You're not questioning for a moment that the filming took place in the very location where the ships' crew had to suffer their terrible fate, all 129 of them. There is only doom and gloom on the horizon.

So you may be surprised to learn that The Terror was shot mostly in Hungary. Not in a natural environment, of course...

Come to Hungary! It's a cool place to be! (scene from the movie)

The other reason why the series is highly recommended viewing here is because ultimately there is some connection to science fiction, too. The search for the Northwest Passage was, after all, a key stage of globalisation. It was a search for a way around the Americas, the major geopolitical speed bump to European shipping in the Pacific, limiting the ability of European countries to project power there even as they were already the dominant maritime powers around the globe. The inconvenience of having to go around South Africa or Cape Horn in South America was very significant as long as there was no Panama Canal (built by and used from 1914 only), and no major shipyards or even ports along the Pacific coast of the Americas. The potential rewards were thus great, but, and I apologise for repeating myself, ice was in the way -- of shipping as well as human life up there, in the north. 

The Northwest Passage was fully completed by ship only in 1906, by Norwegian Roald Amundsen. A mere 112 years ago humanity was thus still figuring out how to work its way around the home planet. Members of the Franklin expedition themselves spent three (perhaps even four) Christmas Days out in the cold, trying the same thing, in vain.

A humbling perspective for Christmas Day, to appreciate the Christmas warmth a little more.