“In 1845, two Royal Navy ships left England in an attempt to finally discover a navigable path through the Arctic. They were the most technologically advanced ships of their day. They were last seen by European whalers in Baffin Bay awaiting good conditions to enter the Arctic labyrinth. Both ships then vanished.”

So begins the premiere episode of AMC’s The Terror, the highly anticipated new series based on the novel of the same name by Dan Simmons. The story is structured around the true story of Sir John Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition, which is a completely true and tragic tale of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, wherein 129 men were lost and never heard from again. The Terror will fill the gaps in the narrative with tales of madness and monsters.

“Go For Broke” opens a couple of years after the ships disappeared with two Royal Navy officers questioning an indigenous man about the fate of the expedition. The man explains to the officers that he met one of the captains, whom he referred to as Aglooka. When shown pictures of the three captains that led the expedition, Sir John Franklin (Ciarán Hinds), James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) and Frances Crozier (Jared Harris), the Inuit man identified Frances as the person he met on the ice. He was leading the remains of the crew across the frozen tundra, hungry and dying. Crozier relayed a message to the man, asking him to tell whomever came after to not stay, that the crew are being pursued by something called Tuunbaq and that they are “dead and gone”. He then gives the Inuit man the buttons off of his uniform to show to the officers.

“You love your men more than God loves them, Sir John”- James Fitzjames

“For all your sakes, let’s hope you’re wrong.”- Sir John Franklin

With that ominous warning, we are taken four years into the past. We see the two ships in all of their glory, plowing through the ice littered waters of the Arctic. Sir Jon stands at the helm of the lead ship, the Erebus, and surveys what he commands. A religious man by nature, Sir John looks upon the frozen wastes and sees something that God has destined him to conquer. That’s if he can keep his second and third in command, Crozier and Fitzjames, respectively, from biting each others heads off. Fitzjames is a bit of a braggart (I mean, he is pretty handsome), and Crozier seems to have lost all sense of joy for his life and tries his best to find it at the bottom of a bottle. The expedition is going well so far, they are making good time, so the only real problems they have involve which spirit to serve at dinner.

As the officers dine in their lavish quarters, the rest of the crew eats down below. They are a jovial bunch, happy with the adventure they are embarking on and ready to do their part to fight through the cold to the warmer climate of the Pacific Ocean. As they eat their dinner, one of the men falls ill. “Falls ill” may have been a bit tame. The young adventurer convulses on his bench, spewing blood and bile everywhere as the others fearfully try to calm him down.

All of this happens before we even get to the opening credits (which are absolutely gorgeous, by the way). This sets the stage for the dangers that are to come. After the sick young man has calmed down, he is taken to see Doctor Stanley (Alistair Petrie) and Surgeon Goodsir (Paul Ready) on the Erebus. Stanley is a gruff, unloving man who scold the young sailer for not telling anyone that he was feeling ill. When the sailor tells him that it’s because he didn’t want to disappoint Sir John, Stanley tells him that Sir John will assuredly praise his loyalty at the funeral. Pretty rough, dude. Goodsir, on the other hand, tries to help the young man stay calm and find a way to accept his upcoming death. In one of the most powerful sequences in the entire episode, we see Goodsir try his hardest to comfort the young man as death approaches. He lies to him, telling him that he will see a light a his family will be waiting for him to take him into heaven. When the young man mentions that he was an orphan and has no family, Goodsir tells him that it will be the angels, then, that take him to the entrance of the promised land. You can tell that he is trying anything and everything to comfort the poor boy, but nothing works. The young man, in his final moments, sees a vision of an Inuit man standing at the foot of his bed, wearing a terrifying mask. The boy screams that “He wants us to Run”, then dies in the throws of absolute terror.

“This place wants us dead.”- Frances Crozier

This feeling of doom permeates the entirety of the first two episodes of the series. We know by now that The Terror is a show about a monster stalking the expedition, but what we are shown right away is just how dangerous everything is on this expedition. Literally everything is trying to kill you. The cold, the food (already rancid after only a year), the ice and the ships themselves seem to be hell bent on making sure that these men do not survive. The main conflict of the series happens early on, as Sir John and Crozier argue about the best route to take for the rapidly approaching winter. Sir John wants to continue to the west like they planned, but Crozier sees that winter is coming fast and advises that they take an easterly route to safer waters. He fears being stuck in the pack ice throughout the winter, which not only holds them captive but also drifts and takes them wherever it sees fit. Against all protestations, Sir John is the commanding officer and makes the decision to plow on as planned.

Guess what? Yep. They get stuck. For the second episode of the night, “Gore”, we fast-forward 8 months to the next spring. If the first episode dealt with the dangers of hubris, this next episode had everything to do with pressure. Not just the pressure placed on the boats by the ice, but also the pressure building inside each of these sailors as they await their fate. The ships have been stuck in the ice all winter and the men have started to get a little antsy. They play soccer on the ice and have romps with each other in the dark storerooms, but you can tell that they need too get moving and they need to get moving soon. Sir John and Crozier have not been speaking to each other, leading Sir John to finally admit that he was wrong about the path they took and to try and make amends with his second in command. To help determine their next move, they send our lead parties to try and find out which direction the ice is retreating.

How can put this delicately… These lead parties did not, go well. One group had to turn back after they found their provisions to be spoiled and rancid. They got off pretty easily, compared to the other group. This one, with Goodsir in tow, found their way to the shore of Prince William Island and an impassable wall of ice. This forces them to abandon their boat of goods and trek along on foot. As they return to the boat later that day, however, they see that their boat and been upturned and their camp has been ransacked. This wasn’t some little tiny canoe, either. This gigantic, 10-man lifeboat was thrown about by some gigantic beast that they say “must be a bear”.

“If we don’t leave now, we’re going to disappear”- Frances Crozier

As night descends on the camp, they are pelted by astonishingly large hail and hear a loud menacing roar in the distance. They have been followed by the “bear” and arm themselves in anticipation for the attack. As they all load and cock their weapons, one scared young sailor takes a shot in the dark, thinking he has felled the beast. What he has done, instead, is shoot an Inuit man in the chest, leaving him mortally wounded in the snow as his daughter tries to save him. Goodsir is called to the scene, and as he turns to face the group, he sees it. The beast. Tuunbaq. Almost as retribution for the wounding of the Inuit man, it attacks one of the sailors, leaving enough blood on the ice to guarantee his death.

As they return the ship, it is clear that neither Sir John nor Dr. Stanley want anything to do with helping the indigenous man. They turn their nose up in the air and won’t even come near enough to touch him. Goodsir begs for the opportunity to try and save his life, which Sir John reluctantly agrees to. Unfortunately, the man’s gunshot is too deep, and he will die. As he is dying, his daughter tries to get him out of the belly of the ship, screaming that he must die under the sky, that he must die on the ice. She is held back by Crozier, who is able to communicate well with her due to his prior expeditions in the area. To her father, she begs him not to leave her. She claims that she cannot do this alone. That she isn’t ready.

That Tuunbaq will not obey her.

Here ends the first two episodes of The Terror. To say that a lot happened would be an understatement, but we must remember that this is a one-season show. We have just watched 20% of the entire series, so the amount of exposition is warranted. If I had to say anything about this show, its that AMC has an absolutely stunning hit on their hands. This show is gorgeous, form the ship’s interiors to the soaring bird’s-eye shots of the icy wasteland. The mystery is definitely there (What, exactly, is Tuunbaq and how can an Inuit man control it?), and the interpersonal drama between the Captains is exquisitely written and performed. In two short hours we have ben given completely fleshed out characters with backstories and motivations. Some television series cannot offer than in an entire season. We genuinely care about these men, even though we know what their final fate will be.

As a young sailer is about to be lowered into the water to dislodge some ice from the propeller of the Erebus, Sir John comforts him by saying “God lies in all realms”. He doesn’t know how right he is. It is not his idea of God that surrounds them, however. In The Terror, ice and death are the gods in charge. And yes, Sir John, they do lie in all realms.

The Terror airs every Monday night on AMC, and I implore you to set your DVR for this one. This is one of the best looking, acted, and most horrific television shows that cable has given us in a long time. It is also the best two hours of television that AMC has aired since the first season of The Walking Dead. After you check out the two-hour premiere, head over to our official Facebook Group, Horror Fiends of Nightmare on Film Street, and let us know what you think. I will be writing recaps of each episode for Nightmare on Film Street, so be sure to bookmark that home page.