Yes, the actors are doing a great job in this. They had a clever concept for the casting process : what about hiring fine, classically trained British stage actors, making them wear 19th century military outfits and deliver lines emphatically. Success !
Great photography. Then again, boat in the middle of nowhere, barely lit narrow indoors, great outdoors of nothing for the last episodes - expertly done, yet formulaic. Comes in a package with spare batteries.
Passable direction, from beginning to end. Just bland. Then again, it fits the material. I'm not saying that because of the dreadfully dull scenario, no, the direction gives pride of place to the intensely theatrical, dramatically concerned performances.
In this review I will be talking about a handful of noticeable moments occurring in the ten ninety minute long episodes of the first season. As a result, I will reveal every single plot element of the story : spoiler warning.
Ready? This ain't no horror show in so many ways.
Why has the book been made (which I haven't read) and the series picked up? Because one of the two boats involved in the actual, historical expedition, was indeed called "TERROR". What a weird name for a boat, and a great opportunity to generate some intriguing spooky fantasy-oriented entertainment.
And who cares about missing all marks by miles, or even trying to hit any, this will be a success just because of the intriguing yet accurate title, the stylish
production pretentions, and quite importantly, the HUMANE factors.
Two humane factors, both very convenient, the first being the free disposal of historical figures nobody will defend the memory of, and the second one the availability of mysterious and mystical natives that will fuel any random crap you can think of.
As luck would have it, the poor departed even had funny names to make use of, such as Lt Goodsir (being a nice guy) and Mr Hickey (it's irish, pronounce "Icky").
But then, you need some horror elements. To make horror. That's what they settled on, given the name of one of the ships.
Horror here consists of : mutilation, an autopsy, self mutilation, gastric mishaps and mundane cannibalism. But wait, there is also a metaphorical beast roaming around! A big white bear of sorts, with sheep's eyes, weighting like two or three tons, with two feet long claws, yet trapeze artist extraordinaire.
Soon into the intrigue, you will probably realize that the beast isn't an actual animal. Acute viewers will quickly understand that it is, in fact, clever computer generated imagery - and a groundbreaking achievement all the same, as it is probably the less scary, less interesting, less suspenseful computer process ever created. I have been more frightened by the flying toasters I had for a screensaver back in the 90s.
I was threatening of revealing major plot elements, so here they are. A dying man sees a chubby native telling him they'd better leave the area (a nice initiative, but as the guy dies seconds later, pretty useless) then repeats the same thing with a funny mask on, for motivational purposes probably, alas, that was still ineffective, irrelevant, and pointless. And barely climatic.
A man at sea dies.
A man goes underwater to poke the ice out one of the sailboat's propeller (hey, don't get angry at me, I'm just reporting, you know) and has the dead at sea guy floating eerily towards him. in a spine chilling sequence. Yanks his rope twice to be pulled out of the water, gets pulled out of the water, nothing happens. Yet we learn that he's good at smashing humongous blocks of metaphorical ice with a stick.
The commandant dies. Thanks to glamour eyes bear. Nothing interesting ensues.
One crew member refuses to carry a corpse down the hold of the ship, where they keep the corpses. Because.... He heard the corpses talking to him! And others have too, he claims! His superior gets angry at him and menaces him but then a good sir shows up (Lt Goodsir), gives the guy a lantern, and the corpse is disposed in the hold of the ship, and it's done, no corpse ever talks, ever, nothing happens, and that's it. They don't go for cheap thrills. They go for no thrills at all.
The cook is confronted to the unsavory, unhealthy state of the food cans. Cook answers "Add more salt! Hahaha!"
As food resources anxiety arises, a monkey in blue shorts eats from a can, veal ribs in tomato sauce, during several minutes. Thanks to one of the flashbacks, we learn that in fact, the ape is a female. Character development via flashbacks is a trademark of the series, mostly to even lesser informative content. Monkey stays healthy.
Guy taking command in replacement of the commandant who died in a tragically laughable scene involving the daunting eyed bear-shaped computer process. Lengthy dialog had explained earlier how unpopular the man was with his fellow officers, but surprisingly, none of this matters in future developments.
New commandant gets terminally ill, probably due to food poisoning. Two episodes later he is completely cured, and ready to go. Which is nice.
An unruly sailor gets sentenced to flagellation "as a boy", meaning he will be whipped publicly on his bare ass. Another major event. No, really, the title of the episode is "punished as a boy". Most of the major events I covered here had their episode titled after them.
An impromptu carnival party is held. Order of the new commandant. The crew does a nice job setting it up. Some lucky guy had packed a full body, metallic, antique Roman soldier costume, as it would come in handy in case that kind of festivity were to happen. Boy was he right.
People are cold when they go on a march to run some errands, not that there is much to do in the vicinity anyway, so they come back a few hours later, being quite cold. The ones who feel like staying aboard don't suffer much of the cold, they have thick coats indeed, but scarves nor gloves were in fashion back then.
As episodes drag on, extreme cold becomes less and less of a concern. In the last one, they strike scenic musical-like ensemble poses in period underwear, but the fun stops as heavily rendered doe eyed plot device shows up, maiming some, and then brutally, suddenly dying of, you have guessed it right, indigestion.
All over, the score deserves some credit. I had to find something to care about.
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