The Terror
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:03 am
New AMC series - not sure if its available on streaming services here yet, but the usual places have the whole 10-part series. Highly recommended. Historical horror based on the 1840s Franklin expedition to find the fabled North West Passage in the Arctic.
The expedition was two ships, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus. They got stuck in pack ice for two years, abandoned the ships to walk to safety and disappeared. More than a century later, bodies of expedition members were discovered in some marked graves (like John Torrington - https://owlcation.com/humanities/johntorrington), incredibly well-preserved in the cold conditions. Autopsies determined that lead poisoning was a key factor in their deaths. This expedition was one of the first to use the new technology of canning food. A mixture of incomplete cooking, poor canning and the lead solder used to seal the tins doomed the men. They would have had terrible hallucinations and health breakdowns.
Over the next decades more evidence turned up, including bones showing evidence of cannibalism, eyewitness reports from Eskimos and then the finding of the ships which had been smashed by the ice. There's barely any written evidence of the fate of the expedition, so its a real mystery.
The series is beautiful and an authentic period piece but, based on a book by Dan Simmons called The Terror, adds a mysterious bear-like beast that stalks the expedition. Its really good - check it out.
http://www.amc.com/shows/the-terror
smiss
The expedition was two ships, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus. They got stuck in pack ice for two years, abandoned the ships to walk to safety and disappeared. More than a century later, bodies of expedition members were discovered in some marked graves (like John Torrington - https://owlcation.com/humanities/johntorrington), incredibly well-preserved in the cold conditions. Autopsies determined that lead poisoning was a key factor in their deaths. This expedition was one of the first to use the new technology of canning food. A mixture of incomplete cooking, poor canning and the lead solder used to seal the tins doomed the men. They would have had terrible hallucinations and health breakdowns.
Over the next decades more evidence turned up, including bones showing evidence of cannibalism, eyewitness reports from Eskimos and then the finding of the ships which had been smashed by the ice. There's barely any written evidence of the fate of the expedition, so its a real mystery.
The series is beautiful and an authentic period piece but, based on a book by Dan Simmons called The Terror, adds a mysterious bear-like beast that stalks the expedition. Its really good - check it out.
http://www.amc.com/shows/the-terror
smiss