S01.E10: We Are Gone

[proserpina65]

17 hours ago, Earlwoode said:

I don’t see it like that. He could have just killed him. Picked up gun and shot him.  I’m sure HIckey wouldn’t have suspected the mild mannered doctor would do something like that.  After all, he wasn’t tied up like Crozier or chained.  Nope, I see it as murder, pure and simple..

I get that you don't see it that way, although I don't understand your point of view or affection for Hickey at all.  And the men who followed Hickey willingly are not much better than he was, and were perfectly willing to kill others.  Goodsir's actions were far more honorable than theirs.  We will have to agree to disagree on this one, as, indeed, we will have to disagree on much of what we've discussed here.

Edited to note that no, Goodsir couldn't just pick up a gun and shoot Hickey because the guns weren't left lying around.  Hickey's loyalist followers had the guns.  And you can be sure that Hickey had not doubt that the doctor couldn't be trusted, not after Goodsir tried refusing to butcher Gibson's body. 

Edited May 23, 2018 by proserpina65

[jnymph]

12 minutes ago, slothgirl said:

I LOVE the fact that Goodsir does not envision humans in his last minutes, but rather the natural world and his innate love and curiosity for it. As he says to Crozier, the place is still beautiful to him even now. Humans on the other hand are no longer beautiful to him. They have destroyed his soul, and the only peace he can see would be a world without humans. Goodsir's character arc was a little slow to get moving in the series, but it's one of the most fascinating ones by the end. For me, his return to a love of the perfection found in nature (as depicted by the perfect spiral of a shell, a flower, and crystalline structure - which also bring to mind earth, air, and sea) ... that redemption is what turns his tragic corporeal end into something beautiful and true to character. Had he imagined Silence or any other human (and really, who else could he have seen at the end? We never knew anything about his family or friends prior to the voyage) for me, that would have been too cheesy. His death visions were sublime and perfect, IMO.

I don't believe Silna was condemned to die. She was cast out of the group and condemned to solitude... no longer with Tuunbaq or other humans as companions. She managed to survive on her own quite a bit up to that point, and probably would survive physically for quite awhile, perhaps even a normal lifespan. But like Crozier, she could no longer be part of the human culture she always knew. I liked the symmetry of their parallel destinies. I also like it far better that they have these destinies apart from one another. But then I hate the trope of pairing up as a wrap-up to stories and would have groaned if it had happened here with LS and Crozier or Goodsir. IRL, people don't live happily ever after.

 

AHH! See?!  This is why I come to this forum.  You guys make me think more.  
I like this POV Slothgirl.  Especially, the part about Goodsir not seeing humans beautiful anymore but the place is still beautiful.    *sniff* Farewell, my Goodsir.  *sniff*

Point taken on Silna as well.  

[Earlwoode]

12 minutes ago, slothgirl said:

I think we have to agree to disagree on this whole idea of rescue being something they should have considered possible.

Unlikely but possible.  But that's not the point - the point is Goodsir took that opportunity (as unlikely as it was) away from them by poisoning already very sick men.   As I said, I'm glad he turned out not to be the insipid saint he seemed throughout the whole series.  He was much more believable in the end than that hand-wringing namby-pamby guy.   Sorry but I never fell for him as they obviously wanted us all to do as he was cast as the saintly "good guy".  He just irritated me, lol.

 

15 minutes ago, slothgirl said:

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect they could have survived at least a month if not 2.

I have some medical experience and believe me, that stump did not have a "month or two".   But we'll leave it at that.  You thought everything was plausible, I saw plot holes and lazy writing.  Still was a very good series (except for the ending for me).  Cheers.

[Earlwoode]

13 minutes ago, proserpina65 said:

I get that you don't see it that way, although I don't understand your point of view or affection for Hickey at all.

Lol, I thought he was a great character.  I think the actor did a great job with him and was really surprised he turned out to be such an important character in the end.  Who would have thought?  WTF, he was much more important and had a much meatier role than either Tobias Menzies or Ciaran Hinds who were the two actors who drew me to this series (I'd never heard of either Adam Nagaitis  or Jared Harris).  I also truly enjoyed his total and complete slide into insanity at the end - it was fun to watch.  Though it would have been so much better if the stupid bear had just turned out to be a normal hungry polar bear made more monstrous by their sick, starving and delusional minds.

As for Goodsir, he was very clever and the men he was with didn't seem very intelligent and were quite sick as well.  I think grabbing a gun in those circumstances would have been quite easy.  But whatever - that's not the way they wrote it because they needed their grand finale with the bear gobbling him up.  Fair enough.

[peeayebee]

35 minutes ago, slothgirl said:

the place is still beautiful to him even now. Humans on the other hand are no longer beautiful to him.

I love your whole post, but these words in particular struck me. It's a perfect explanation for his final visions.

 

11 hours ago, slothgirl said:

and gets the seal out, how? Cause the hole is the size of a seal snout, not the size of a seal body!

The hole in front of him is surrounded by a mound of snow. Maybe the technique is cutting a large enuf hole for a seal's body to come thru, then mounding some snow around it in order to make the seal less cautious about predators. You spear it then, holding onto the spear, push away the breakable ice and snow in order to pull the seal out.

[Captanne]

Interesting point -- I think the idea that, having practiced cannibalism, Goodsir couldn't go back to England also played a part in Crozier's decision.  Of course, he also has to contemplate his answer as to how he lost all the men.  He would be returning, at that point, as the only survivor and Terror's captain, to boot.  He would have a whole passel of questions with very difficult answers.  "It was this really, really big polar bear, sort of, thing.  It ate us.  Like, whole.  Lots of tearing and ripping and......did I mention it was big?  And this lady cut her tongue out for it.....The who?  Yeah, there was an Esquimaux lady, did I mention her?  Oh, and I ate the surgeon's foot."

Edited May 23, 2018 by Captanne

[Sighed I]

I really enjoyed the last episode, though admittedly, I watched it a second time right away as I was a little thrown off. I felt there was a slight shift in tone compared to the previous nine. Given that we start with 130-odd men and end with one, for this last one to be slightly askew from the rest seems strangely appropriate.

I'm not ashamed to admit I let out a little cheer when Tuunbaq chomped off Hickey's arm, followed by tearing him in half. I may be philosophically optimistic about humanity's potentials and capabilities at times, but I'm not above some well-deserved karmic justice. LOL ;)

In any case, it was nice to have the last half hour belong to Crozier, and Silna (what a pretty name! :). I'm very sorry she was exiled. She must have known it was coming, which makes her rescuing Francis and bringing him to her people that much more poignant. Despite everything they put her through, I think she grew to care about many, or at least some, of these men and was not immune to their suffering, but her ability to do much of anything was extremely limited. At best, she could have helped a tiny handful of them, and if I were her, it would not include a group with the likes of Hickey among them, short of anyone she didn't already have a relationship with, like Goodsir.

I thought she was shocked and devastated when she saw Harry's body. Personal romance fantasies aside ;)--and truthfully, their relationship seemed more akin to that of siblings than of star-crossed lovers)--it wouldn't have been in character for her to be wailing over him, so her standing there frozen seemed perfectly fitting to me.

I hated Harry's death, of course, but if he had to die I'm glad it was of his own choosing and not from being victimized by Hickey, as I feared might happen. I loved that his last thoughts reflected his wonder and intellect. It was beautiful in its simplicity and an interesting contrast to the understandable chaos of Franklin's final moments. Like others here, I found Jopson's end perhaps the most devastating of all. I hate the thought of him dying believing Crozier broke his promise. :`( I cried when Francis found him and stroked his head.

As mentioned upthread, Edward's gruesome self-piercings were a shout-out to real life events. I read (elsewhere, I believe) this was something some sailors/pirates did when they knew they were doomed, in hopes of bribing the discoverer to bury their corpse. It's sad that Crozier was right--Edward did intend to stage a rescue (but was overruled)--and Edward was right as well--they needed the Captain's expertise.

Hickey knocked out Tozer because as the best shot and the one who broached the topic of returning to the ship, he would have been a threat to Hickey's plan. That's also why he chained Hodgson and Crozier to the boat as well. Did anyone notice he called Armitage, who's not a Marine, "Private"? Not unlike his rescuing Manson from Dead Room duty, he used the man's weakness (in this case a physical disability preventing him from becoming a soldier) as a means of controlling him. It got to where I hated Hickey and was glad to see him gone--I was positively dreading the thought of the last few minutes being a showdown between him and Francis--but I have to say I did enjoy his last monologue. Crozier's "You could have just joined up" and the rest of the men gawking at him like WTF (shoot him already!!) when he went completely off the rails were highlights, and the former made me chuckle. XOXO, Francis.

I thought the last shot was haunting, and gorgeous, and agree with those who interpreted it as Crozier seal hunting, and a callback to his conversation with Goodsir about how long and difficult a skill it is to develop. I personally thought it took place years after Ross and the interpreter showed up at the Netsilik camp, but I'm not sure it matters.

When I first started watching this show, I got so into it I read as much as I could about the real expedition, so I knew at least some men were spotted years later, suggesting a few may have survived long(er) term. I remember wondering if any of them did survive, but at the time I brushed it off, thinking why would anyone who wasn't born there want to stay in that wasteland? Of course now it makes perfect sense. After everything he's lost, why would Crozier go back? No one could possibly understand what they went through there, even other survivors of previous expeditions. He would have to spend the rest of his life being interrogated and judged by the ignorant and the foolish, and it would've just spurred men like Barrow to send even more men to their deaths. At least in the Arctic, he could find some semblance of peace, such as it is.

That scene between Ross and (presumably) Barrow's son said so much with so little. Even the loss of 129 men wasn't enough to quell hubris and greed, though it does mark the slide of an empire in decline. Pride goeth before the fall. It's a cautionary tale, even today, though given the cycle of history keeps repeating itself, a lesson which remains unlearned.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Sighed I

[slothgirl]

1 hour ago, Earlwoode said:

Unlikely but possible.  But that's not the point - the point is Goodsir took that opportunity (as unlikely as it was) away from them by poisoning already very sick men.   As I said, I'm glad he turned out not to be the insipid saint he seemed throughout the whole series.  He was much more believable in the end than that hand-wringing namby-pamby guy.   Sorry but I never fell for him as they obviously wanted us all to do as he was cast as the saintly "good guy".  He just irritated me, lol.

I have some medical experience and believe me, that stump did not have a "month or two".   But we'll leave it at that.  You thought everything was plausible, I saw plot holes and lazy writing.  Still was a very good series (except for the ending for me).  Cheers.

You think it's plausible that they might have expected rescue. I think the rescue itself would be totally implausible and also that they would expect it. 

So we just differ on what we think it plausible.

I didn't get a good look at his stump to know how healed it was. I only know the impression I got of time passing, and it wasn't a few days.

By poisoning himself, Goodsir poisons anyone who eats him, leaving anyone who doesn't unaffected. Their own actions play a part in their death or illness. By shooting some or all of them, they do not share any responsibility for their fate. So it'snot at all the same thing.

I agree that Goodsir was irritating in the beginning. That's why I loved the arc for his character in the last few episodes.

1 hour ago, Earlwoode said:

Lol, I thought he was a great character.  I think the actor did a great job with him and was really surprised he turned out to be such an important character in the end.  Who would have thought?

As for Goodsir, he was very clever and the men he was with didn't seem very intelligent and were quite sick as well.  I think grabbing a gun in those circumstances would have been quite easy.  But whatever - that's not the way they wrote it because they needed their grand finale with the bear gobbling him up.  Fair enough.

I never felt like the actor was doing a stellar job, and once I read what he said about the Hickey character, I really felt like he fell short in delivering on it.

55 minutes ago, Captanne said:

Interesting point -- I think the idea that, having practiced cannibalism, Goodsir couldn't go back to England also played a part in Crozier's decision.  Of course, he also has to contemplate his answer as to how he lost all the men.  He would be returning, at that point, as the only survivor and Terror's captain, to boot.  He would have a whole passel of questions with very difficult answers.  "It was this really, really big polar bear, sort of, thing.  It ate us.  Like, whole.  Lots of tearing and ripping and......did I mention it was big?  And this lady cut her tongue out for it.....The who?  Yeah, there was an Esquimaux lady, did I mention her?  Oh, and I ate the surgeon's foot."

I think the primary motivation for Crozier to stay was not the cannibalism or the potential questions or shame... it was that he came to realize the level of arrogance and hubris in his culture's exploration as well as what it was capable of driving men to, and he preferred the Netsilik way. His only reason to return would have been his duty to get any of his men back home, but once they were all gone, he had no motivation because he no longer thought of it as home himself. It would have felt like a farce to be back in "society", and he'd probably want to strangle people every time they spoke!

[Captanne]

Huh.  I never got the impression from the moments we saw at the very, very end that Crozier was ever very happy.  I never got the impression he went native because he denounced his English-ness but because it was really all he had left.  Harris' performance struck me as rather more resigned than exuberant.

[backgroundnoise]

If he was seal hunting in the last shot, wouldn't you want your spear ready to strike better than the way he was holding it?  I'll buy that that was what he was doing and I too thought I saw the child move, but I wish they had made it clearer, because I thought he was frozen to death.  There could have been a better way to show he assimilated.

Edited May 23, 2018 by backgroundnoise

[true north]

23 minutes ago, Captanne said:

Huh.  I never got the impression from the moments we saw at the very, very end that Crozier was ever very happy.  I never got the impression he went native because he denounced his English-ness but because it was really all he had left.  Harris' performance struck me as rather more resigned than exuberant.

I wouldn't describe him as happy, but to me he seemed content, in the best possible way. Based on what we've been told and shown about him as a person hunting seal and babysitting suits him much better than social climbing. 

[Captanne]

LOLOL  [spit take]  Fabulous image that you struck out, true north.  I do so hope Crozier died with some sense of happiness or at least contentment.  

My impression by the image at the end is that he died in some sort of sense of stasis.  Does that make sense?  He couldn't go home (he knew that) but staying meant living with these people who were not his.  After all, he was still a man of his times -- an Englishman who ended up on a on a mission to find the Northwest Passage that went viciously wrong.  (According to all accounts I've read, he loved his life at sea and in the Discovery Service.)    

I feel sorry for him -- and not a little bit based on the last few minutes of this final episode.  It was the best of a bad deal all the way around.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Captanne

[true north]

28 minutes ago, Captanne said:

My impression by the image at the end is that he died in some sort of sense of stasis.  Does that make sense?  He couldn't go home (he knew that) but staying meant living with these people who were not his.  After all, he was still a man of his times -- an Englishman who ended up on a on a mission to find the Northwest Passage that went viciously wrong.  (According to all accounts I've read, he loved his life at sea and in the Discovery Service.)    

I feel sorry for him -- and not a little bit based on the last few minutes of this final episode.  It was the best of a bad deal all the way around.

Seriously, that last shot is an absolute genius move on the part of the showrunners. I've read in an interview that they did mean it as Crozier hunting seal the way Simmons described it in the book, but they also didn't want to explain it in any way, leaving viewers to come to their own conclusions. And it's amazing how different those conclusions are, even if you only look at this particular discussion. This shot is almost like a Rorschach test, in that we all process what's going on differently based on our own experiences.

[Captanne]

I couldn't agree with you more, true north, it was an absolutely exquisite ending scene.  I loved it.

 

 

ETA: Oh, oh, oh, also, I don't mean to say he was dead in that scene when I say "that he died in some sort of stasis"!  No! -- I mean to say that he went on and led a good life with the Inuit but that ~emotionally~ he was at peace with his decision to stay.  That's what I mean by "died in some sort of stasis."  Some kind of balance and reconciliation in his own mind.  (I can't think of a better word than stasis because he doesn't seem happy, like, ever, at the end.  He's not over the moon that he's stayed -- in fact he makes someone lie to cover his tracks -- but it's his only choice, in his view.)

Edited May 23, 2018 by Captanne

[iMonrey]

I really didn't understand what was happening during the final bear attack. Some of the men had guns yet nobody ever seemed to try to shoot him. 

Overall I felt like the series suffered a bit directorally. In any given episode I could name maybe four or five characters. Not an episode went buy when I didn't ask myself "Who is that?" That was my main problem with it.  

[slothgirl]

42 minutes ago, true north said:

I wouldn't describe him as happy, but to me he seemed content, in the best possible way. Based on what we've been told and shown about him as a person hunting seal and babysitting suits him much better than social climbing. 

Yes. Not exuberant, but accepting. As the Netsilik said to him: "this is something you just have to accept". It went far beyond Silna's fate. He accepts that this is "home" now. He also probably has enough sense of duty left that he accepts that if his men don't get to go home, neither does he. Add to that the loathing he probably feels for the british explorere minset now, and the knowledge that if he returns, it will only encourage future expeditions to a land that "wants them gone" and that they have no appreciation for, then I really can't think of a reason he WOULD return. Part of his "duty" now, in his mind, is to discourage others from embarking on another fool's errand for the glory of something "unobtainable".

4 minutes ago, true north said:

Seriously, that last shot is an absolute genius move on the part of the showrunners. I've read in an interview that they did mean it as Crozier hunting seal the way Simmons described it in the book, but they also didn't want to explain it in any way, leaving viewers to come to their own conclusions. And it's amazing how different those conclusions are, even if you only look at this particular discussion. This shot is almost like a Rorschach test, in that we all process what's going on differently based on our own experiences.

I absolutely love the psychology of this series... of the characters, of the show, and of the people creating the show through acting, directing, writing, composing, designing... This is what you get when TV is elevated to Art.

[SimoneS]

On 5/22/2018 at 1:19 PM, Earlwoode said:

How do you know that?  Did anyone suggest he was killing himself so that Crozier and others wouldn't be eaten?  It must have been obvious to all that Hickey was stark raving mad at that point - though of course, most of the men were going crazy themselves. 

It was pretty obvious from Goodsir's last conversation with Francis. However, the writers' did confirm this in their after-finale interview.

16 hours ago, slothgirl said:

Found this interview which clarifies that it is a boy and we were supposed to know that it is NOT Crozier's child.

Seems to me they failed on both counts.

http://collider.com/the-terror-ending-explained/#crozier

They put a note that it was two years later so the child couldn't have been Francis'.  I presumed it was a boy, but with all the furs the confusion was understandable.

6 hours ago, Earlwoode said:

Unlikely but possible.  But that's not the point - the point is Goodsir took that opportunity (as unlikely as it was) away from them by poisoning already very sick men. 

Yep, he killed men who were murdering other people and eating them to save good men like Francis and the cook so good for Goodsir. Their evil destroyed his soul and in return he poisoned them to save the lives of people worth saving and got a measure of justice for the innocent Inuits, Irving, and the other man who Hickey butchered.

Edited May 23, 2018 by SimoneS

[slothgirl]

4 minutes ago, SimoneS said:

They put a note that it was two years later so the child couldn't have been Francis'.  I presumed it was a boy, but with all the furs the confused was understandable.

wasn't the "2 years later" note for when Ross and Co showed up to rescue? I don't remember there being a note for the last scene which I assumed could be any number of years after that. I haven't had the heart to rewatch yet.

Edited May 23, 2018 by slothgirl

[SimoneS]

2 minutes ago, slothgirl said:

wasn't the "2 years later" note for when Ross and Co showed up to rescue? I don't remember there being a note for the last scene which I assumed could be any number of years after that.

 

Yes, it was after Ross and Co showed up, then immediately after they showed Francis with the family and the child which indicated a flow of events in the same time period. If more time had passed between those two events, they would have put another time card after the scene with Ross and Company.

Edited May 23, 2018 by SimoneS

[Christi]

So since they exiled SL because its "the way", then does this mean that there will be, or was, a new Tuunbaq? Does he come back to life or something?  If there was only one Tuunbaq, and he died, then they wouldnt have had a plan in place for what happens if/when he died.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Christi

[SimoneS]

6 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

I get that you don't see it that way, although I don't understand your point of view or affection for Hickey at all.  And the men who followed Hickey willingly are not much better than he was, and were perfectly willing to kill others.  Goodsir's actions were far more honorable than theirs.  We will have to agree to disagree on this one, as, indeed, we will have to disagree on much of what we've discussed here.

Edited to note that no, Goodsir couldn't just pick up a gun and shoot Hickey because the guns weren't left lying around.  Hickey's loyalist followers had the guns.  And you can be sure that Hickey had not doubt that the doctor couldn't be trusted, not after Goodsir tried refusing to butcher Gibson's body. 

 

I am with you. I don't understand the defense of the murderous Hickey or his followers. As far as I am concerned Goodsir was an honorable man to his last breath. 

 

2 hours ago, Christi said:

So since they exiled SL because its "the way", then does this mean that there will be, or was, a new Tuunbaq? Does he come back to life or something?  If there was only one Tuunbaq, and he died, then they wouldnt have had a plan in place for what happens if/when he died.

 

I think that they didn't clearly wrap up the story of Tuunbaq because it is different in the book to what is in the show and they didn't want to go into the author's created mysticism. However, it does seem like he is done on the show.

Edited May 23, 2018 by SimoneS

[Christi]

But it also seems like ther must be some sort of replacement if they have a ritual to follow if he dies.  Since "It Is THE Way...".

Edited May 23, 2018 by Christi

[Earlwoode]

2 hours ago, slothgirl said:

never felt like the actor was doing a stellar job, and once I read what he said about the Hickey character, I really felt like he fell short in delivering on it

I never read that so I have no idea what he said. I thought he was great, anyway.  We all have different perspectives; for instance, I thought Silence was wooden and unexpressive.  She didn’t impress me at all as an actress and neither did I even consider her pretty let alone beautiful, while others thought she was marvelous. We all see different things and have different tastes.

I found this interview with the producers who explain several things including why Crozier stayed (though that I believe is a fantasy from the book because the real Crozier died along with his men) and they also confirm he is seal hunting in the end:

The Terror wrapped up its first season slightly different from the book, which concluded with a happier ending for Francis Crozier (Jared Harris). In the show the last survivor of the expedition went to live among the Inuit people,

In the final shot, Crozier is seen on the ice, with a young Inuit boy beside him, hunting seals.

Apparently, they also changed the ending from the book where he stays with Silna and they have kids together.

We knew it was the right ending and it would leave Crozier in his own different ending from the book, which is that he decides not to go back to Britain, but instead he's chosen what's going to be a very difficult life, but at least it's a life with people who are more honest about their motivations and have more of a sense of community than he'd go back to if he went back to London.

Possibly, he could have been court-martialed or put in prison for losing his ships.

http://www.tvguide.com/news/the-terror-season-1-finale-review-ending-tuunbaq/

[Earlwoode]

44 minutes ago, SimoneS said:

I am with you. I don't understand the defense of the murderous Hickey or his followers. As far as I am concerned Goodsir was an honorable man to his last breath

I’m not defending him - I just thought he was much more interesting and fun character than the boring, bland Goodsir.  Hey people, this is a TV show, lighten up. The real men of the expedition died of starvation and cold and some probably killed each other over the last can of beans - who knows.  But it happened to them and it happened to hundreds of thousands of other people who were explorers or pioneers.  I knew everyone was doomed from the beginning so I was not particularly affected by anyone’s death - it was pretty much expected.  What I didn’t expect was for Crozier to survive though good luck to him having to live the rest of his life in a brutal environment where the cold was constant, bathing probably non-existent and he probably never saw another book or heard a piece of music again in his life *shudder*.  I think I would have preferred death to eating seal meat for the rest of my life, lol.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Earlwoode

[Sighed I]

22 hours ago, tiredofwork said:

Does anyone recall in one of the last few episodes when one of the officers saw a seagull or some bird flying and asked if anyone else saw it?  I never saw a followup to that.  I thought it might be foretelling of some sort of open water or vegetation?

I interpreted it similarly, as a sign of life (and therefore, hope) and possibly open water ahead. Mostly, though, I interpreted it as dinner. ;)

[true north]

31 minutes ago, Sighed I said:

I interpreted it similarly, as a sign of life (and therefore, hope) and possibly open water ahead. Mostly, though, I interpreted it as dinner. ;)

Yes, me too. It was Jopson, wasn't it? After Peglar collapsed and was put in a boat, Jopson looks away and asks the others whether they see a bird. Not that it would've helped them much: they had neither proper hunting rifles nor skilled hunters among them. 

[Sighed I]

2 minutes ago, true north said:

Yes, me too. It was Jopson, wasn't it?

Indeed, it was Jopson.

[Fellaway]

1 hour ago, true north said:

I've read in an interview that they did mean it as Crozier hunting seal the way Simmons described it in the book, but they also didn't want to explain it in any way, leaving viewers to come to their own conclusions.

This is one of the things I love best about this series, that they didn't tie everything up in a gift bow, that they trusted in the intelligence and insight of the viewers.  I just hope, with new writers coming on board for Season 2, that we get the same next time.

[Sighed I]

1 minute ago, Fellaway said:

This is one of the things I love best about this series, that they didn't tie everything up in a gift bow, that they trusted in the intelligence and insight of the viewers.  I just hope, with new writers coming on board for Season 2, that we get the same next time.

Amen. I was really disappointed the writers have chosen not to return, should we get another season. Hopefully, though, TPTB can see there's an audience hungry for intelligent, high quality storytelling and bring on writers of similar caliber. Whatever they do, they've set a very high bar. Don't let us down, AMC!!

[slothgirl]

1 hour ago, Christi said:

But it also seems like ther must be some sort of replacement if they have a ritual to follow if he dies.  Since "It Is THE Way...".

 

I always figured there was more than 1 Tuunbaq. They called in another Shaman to help when LS lost control of Tuunbaq. How would another shaman know what to do or be any better at it unless there were multiple Tuunbaq / shaman pairs? I also have a vague memory from something I read in the 10 weeks of being obsessed with this show (has it really been that long?) about the real mythology Tuunbaq is based on (not just from the book, or what the book itself used as a basis)

Edited May 23, 2018 by slothgirl

[slothgirl]

1 hour ago, SimoneS said:

Yes, it was after Ross and Co showed up, then immediately after they showed Francis with the family and the child which indicated a flow of events in the same time period. If more time had passed between those two events, they would have put another time card after the scene with Ross and Company.

They weren't particularly obvious about the passage of time all through the series, so I can handwave that more time had passed between Ross coming and the final shot. One of the things I bitched about in an episode thread at some point was that I was only getting a clear impression of how much time was giong by because I knew from reading wikipedia how much time was involved. Perhaps with my closed captioning on, I missed some "x months later" show cards. But not having one right before the very last shot to me does not automatically mean it was immediately after he evaded Ross and the rescuers.

1 hour ago, Earlwoode said:

though that I believe is a fantasy from the book because the real Crozier died along with his men) and they also confirm he is seal hunting in the end:

Do we know that Crozier died with his men? Did they ever find his body? I thought part of the history given by the Inuit that were interviewed was that there were tales of Corzier outliving most of the others. Possible sightings and that sort of thing.

1 hour ago, Sighed I said:

I interpreted it similarly, as a sign of life (and therefore, hope) and possibly open water ahead. Mostly, though, I interpreted it as dinner. ;)

That's how I saw it as well. A bird would mean thaw ahead and possible game or open water

[raven]

On 5/22/2018 at 12:07 AM, Christi said:

Im probably alone in thus, but I did not want Tuunbaq to die!

We invaded their lifestyle, and killed his Shaman.

You're not alone, I didn't want him to die either; the Inuit leader even says "We cried for many days".  I think he was a metaphor for the death of a certain way of life.  Silna could not bring him back; maybe because she had spent too much time with the men from the ship and it tainted her shamanistic abilities or something.  OK, I'm making that up.  I don't think we really needed Tuunbaq on the show, but since he was here, he needed a bit more explanation - he was smart enough to put two different body halves together or was he really just a big bear creature with a human-looking face?  I like creature features and don't need their evolution explained but Tuunbaq was neither one thing or another.  Maybe that was the point.

I don't think Silna was exiled by the others in the group, I think she left on her own; she was told another shaman was being brought in and she was to help him.  Once she found the dead Tuunbaq, her shaman days were over.  The group leader said "she cannot be with us, that is the way.  Everyone accepts this."   It seemed to me that she felt she could not be with them.

I watched the last two eps in a row and was struck by a lot of the imagery; it really flows together well (so, apologies, my thoughts are a combination of both eps).  Badass Mr. Blanky got the best death, trying to take Tuunbaq with him.  I loved his goodbye scene with Crozier, the affection and friendship.  Bridgens wandering off to die alone with his lover's notebook was also very affecting and beautifully shot.

I felt the worst for Jopson, abandoned by his shipmates and thinking his Captain abandoned him :(((  When Crozier is in Hickey's camp and keeps saying "Little will show up with the men any time now" and we know Little and the other men are long gone in the other direction, having abandoned those too weak to get to the boats, I couldn't help thinking of all the what-ifs.

I also felt badly for Goodsir, who lost his faith in himself and in humanity.  Remember that he says he still finds this place beautiful and his last images are of the natural world.  I think he was broken and had given up; Crozier tries to tell him that they will get away, rescue is coming, and Goodsir is not listening.  I didn't consider Goodsir saintly; he was just a decent person who broke under a tremendous strain.   Whether he was trying to kill the others or just make them violently ill doesn't matter to me; I think he wanted Crozier to get away and he wasn't of sound mind.  Maybe revenge played a part and I can't really blame him for that either.

I do wish the show hadn't gone over the top psycho with Hickey, it made him much less interesting.  All I can think of when we get this type of character is WHY would anyone follow him??  It was obvious that for all his bluster, Hickey nabbed Crozier so that he could show he was the alpha male.  Why else tell his group not to call Crozier "Captain"?  It was kind of the same thing as forcing Goodsir to butcher the first guy; a task Hickey could have done, but he had to be a bully about it.  Not the most interesting character to me, which was too bad, because he started out interesting.   Adam Nagaitis did make the guy very watchable.  I can't fault any of the performances.

Crozier didn't want any man left alone (to die) and several were; ultimately Crozier himself is left alone, the last of the group.  However, he chooses to live on.  I LOVED the final shot of him seal hunting and I didn't think the child was his.  I think the child was part of the shot to show how he was a trusted part of the group; so viewers wouldn't think it was a death/after death shot and to show how much he had become a part of the Inuit way of life; seal hunting like that takes tremendous patience,  you have to wait by the hole sometimes for hours.  Crozier chose to leave his previous life behind and use his second chance for a second life.  I think that was a good end for him.

[Earlwoode]

1 hour ago, slothgirl said:

Do we know that Crozier died with his men? Did they ever find his body?

Did they find everyone's body?  Were they all accounted for?  Don't know enough about this expedition (which I'd never heard of before) to answer those questions.  But, since they found the ships, perhaps they will be able to answer a lot more questions.  I find it fascinating that the ships were found just a couple of years ago.  If must have been longer than that since they started planning this series so it must be interesting to know the ships finally surfaced (so to speak).  Part of the mystery solved but a lot more to discover still.

PS- Did you see the mummified bodies of the sailors whose graves they did find?  Gross!  I think it's on a Youtube video somewhere.  I think I remember that the three bodies were of sailors who died and were buried en route before the ships got stuck in the Arctic.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Earlwoode

[slothgirl]

1 hour ago, Earlwoode said:

 

PS- Did you see the mummified bodies of the sailors whose graves they did find?  Gross!  I think it's on a Youtube video somewhere.  I think I remember that the three bodies were of sailors who died and were buried en route before the ships got stuck in the Arctic.

the 3 who were found (the mummies) were buried on Beechey Island. The ships reached and left Beechey before the start of this narrative on being stuck in the ice. There are several allusions to the fallen sailors buried on Beechey. I don't think Crozier's body was ever found, and I'm not sure if any others besides those 3 were found AND identified. That's why I was surprised when you said we know he died. I didn't think that history knew what happened to him specifically, although the assumption would be that he did die trying to reach "civilization"

[tennisgurl]

7 hours ago, Captanne said:

Huh.  I never got the impression from the moments we saw at the very, very end that Crozier was ever very happy.  I never got the impression he went native because he denounced his English-ness but because it was really all he had left.  Harris' performance struck me as rather more resigned than exuberant.

I think that there was resignation, but not really despair. What I got was him leaving behind the Empire (one that always had it out for him anyway given his Irish heritage) after having lost his entire crew, many of whom he cared for and very deeply, and finding a new place in the world. Not one he was thrilled about, but not a horrible fate either. He had no place in England anymore, after everything he experienced and saw. He wasn't the same man as before. But, I didnt read it as him just sitting around waiting to die either. He found some peace, but was still heartbroken by everything that happened. He got a chance at a second life, but is still haunted by the end of his past one.

[Sighed I]

14 hours ago, jnymph said:

I noticed the music shift as well.  It was beautiful, and how sad that the composer Marcus died !! (saw the tribute at the end too )  He must have composed that haunting music when Collins did the dive.   I loved that.
 

Marcus Fjellström did indeed compose the music for Collins' dive scene. I believe he composed most, if not all, the original music for the show. It had a very distinctive sound, haunting and slightly discordant. I really loved it; the story wouldn't have been the same without it.

Quote

My thoughts on the finale:

I was very disappointed in what was otherwise an incredible series.    I just did not care for the whole Tuunbaq aspect.   Supernatural monster-ish creatures are just not my thing.   Despite that fact, I watched because the story was intensely compelling and the acting was OFF THE CHARTS phenomenal.     I was actually holding out hope that Tuunbaq was part of their lead poisoning hallucinations; that would have made much more sense to me !    Sorry, but the whole final Tuunbaq death scene was laughable to me. ) 

I'm sorry you were disappointed in the finale. I know how much you've enjoyed the series, so for it to end on a low note must be a real let down. Maybe in time, upon rewatch, you might like it a bit more. I really like your idea of Tuunbaq being a mass hallucination. I believe it was @slothgirl who suggested it might have been cool if he'd been non-corporeal. Perhaps some combination of the two could have worked. I like the idea of their fear temporarily giving him corporeal form, just long enough to take them out before disappearing into the wind. Too bad the writers didn't consult with us here on the forum when they were writing this thing; there are a lot of smart cookies here with good ideas. ;)

ETA: Just a general comment. The little ship Silna carved for Crozier was yet another shout-out to real life. One of the artifacts found from the actual expedition was, you guessed it, a little ship someone had carved. I thought that was a neat touch. :)

Edited May 24, 2018 by Sighed I

[jnymph]

9 hours ago, Sighed I said:

Marcus Fjellström did indeed compose the music for Collins' dive scene. I believe he composed most, if not all, the original music for the show. It had a very distinctive sound, haunting and slightly discordant. I really loved it; the story wouldn't have been the same without it.

I'm sorry you were disappointed in the finale. I know how much you've enjoyed the series, so for it to end on a low note must be a real let down. Maybe in time, upon rewatch, you might like it a bit more. I really like your idea of Tuunbaq being a mass hallucination. I believe it was @slothgirl who suggested it might have been cool if he'd been non-corporeal. Perhaps some combination of the two could have worked. I like the idea of their fear temporarily giving him corporeal form, just long enough to take them out before disappearing into the wind. Too bad the writers didn't consult with us here on the forum when they were writing this thing; there are a lot of smart cookies here with good ideas. ;)

ETA: Just a general comment. The little ship Silna carved for Crozier was yet another shout-out to real life. One of the artifacts found from the actual expedition was, you guessed it, a little ship someone had carved. I thought that was a neat touch. :)

Thanks Sighed I : )  I've appreciated your comments and thoughts here (along with all the other "smart cookies" as you say, LOL )  it really helped add to the enjoyment of the series.

I'm fairly certain I will do a back to back rewatch........maybe this weekend........... I live in the Southeast and we're supposed to get tons of rain from tropical depression.   Which is so fitting.  I love watching this show when it's stormy, ugly weather, it adds to the ambiance.        Like you said, maybe it might make me like finale a bit more.

Love your ETA comment.   That's so cool they incorporated that into the show !   Your first paragraph makes me want to watch that dive scene again.   That was one of my favorite scenes.  It was so tension filled and as we mentioned, the music was PERFECTION !

[peeayebee]

20 hours ago, Sighed I said:

As mentioned upthread, Edward's gruesome self-piercings were a shout-out to real life events. I read (elsewhere, I believe) this was something some sailors/pirates did when they knew they were doomed, in hopes of bribing the discoverer to bury their corpse.

Very interesting. Thanks for the tidbit.

 

17 hours ago, slothgirl said:

Yes. Not exuberant, but accepting. As the Netsilik said to him: "this is something you just have to accept". It went far beyond Silna's fate. He accepts that this is "home" now. He also probably has enough sense of duty left that he accepts that if his men don't get to go home, neither does he. Add to that the loathing he probably feels for the british explorere minset now, and the knowledge that if he returns, it will only encourage future expeditions to a land that "wants them gone" and that they have no appreciation for, then I really can't think of a reason he WOULD return. Part of his "duty" now, in his mind, is to discourage others from embarking on another fool's errand for the glory of something "unobtainable".

Excellent observation. I don't see him as considering that returning to England would mean having to answer for losing all his men and being shamed or punished. In a sense, he was punishing himself for, as you said, failing to get his men home. 

Thru most of the beginning of the series, I enjoyed Hickey as a character. I didn't like him, but I thought he was interesting. However, by the last couple of eps, I found he had turned into a mustache-twirling villain, as others of you have posted. He had lost his mind by the end, but still I wish he had shown some signs of weakness, even physical, like sores or bleeding. I think even when Tuunbaq grabbed his arm, he didn't scream in pain. Of course, he didn't scream when he was whipped either. Anyway, I'm sorry I ended up disliking the character for how it was portrayed and presented.

I think somewhere here was a link to an interview with Jared Harris. Maybe I saw it elsewhere. I'm sure I can google, but was this linked here? Also, it bears repeating: Harris deserves an Emmy. What an amazing, enthralling, and complete performance. Heck, it didn't even seem like a "performance." I also watched Trust and fear that Donald Sutherland will win over him.

[Earlwoode]

14 hours ago, slothgirl said:

That's why I was surprised when you said we know he died. I didn't think that history knew what happened to him specifically, although the assumption would be that he did die trying to reach "civilization"

I assumed they all died because no one ever came back. I’ve seen some theories that Goodsir actually died quite early on in the expedition.  There is a series of YouTube videos (4) from a guy who seems to know a hell of a lot about the real event.  It’s quite interesting because he talks about all of the characters we’ve just seen on the series. He seems to think Crozier died too but there conflicting theories as to when. What is interesting and we don’t have that in the show, is how very many small groups of the crew seemed to be strung out all over the area, trying to make it south.  There are accounts from Inuit, message cairns etc.  There definitely seems to have been quite a lot of cannibalism in different instances.   It’s quite interesting to watch if anyone is interested: 

[Fellaway]

I decided to do a rewatch of the entire series and started with Episode 1 tonight.  Right before that first dinner on the Terror with Crozier, Franklin, et. al., Crozier and Edward have this conversation:

Edward:  But is there anything special you require, sir?

Crozier:  More open water, clear to the Pacific.  And then we can go home.

Edward:  We're close, sir.

Crozier:  Careful how you use that word, "close."  This is the Discovery Service. "Close" is nothing.  It's worse than nothing.  It's worse than anything in the world.

For anyone, like me, who was wondering what Edward meant by "Close" in this ep.  

Finding this conversation made me admire this series even more.  The attention to meaningful detail in this series is so astonishingly wonderful.  It's such a rare commodity in TV these days.  I wonder what else I shall find...

Edited May 25, 2018 by Fellaway

[Sighed I]

6 hours ago, Fellaway said:

I decided to do a rewatch of the entire series and started with Episode 1 tonight.  Right before that first dinner on the Terror with Crozier, Franklin, et. al., Crozier and Edward have this conversation:

Edward:  But is there anything special you require, sir?

Crozier:  More open water, clear to the Pacific.  And then we can go home.

Edward:  We're close, sir.

Crozier:  Careful how you use that word, "close."  This is the Discovery Service. "Close" is nothing.  It's worse than nothing.  It's worse than anything in the world.

For anyone, like me, who was wondering what Edward meant by "Close" in this ep.  

Finding this conversation made me admire this series even more.  The attention to meaningful detail in this series is so astonishingly wonderful.  It's such a rare commodity in TV these days.  I wonder what else I shall find...

That conversation in the first episode was actually between Jopson and Crozier, not Edward and Crozier. Nevertheless, I agree it was a callback to that conversation, for the audience at least. It really is wonderful how much care they put into pretty much every aspect of the show. It's incredibly multilayered and eminently rewatchable. It's a fanboy/fangirl's dream. LOL

[Fellaway]

4 hours ago, Sighed I said:

That conversation in the first episode was actually between Jopson and Crozier, not Edward and Crozier. Nevertheless, I agree it was a callback to that conversation, for the audience at least. It really is wonderful how much care they put into pretty much every aspect of the show. It's incredibly multilayered and eminently rewatchable. It's a fanboy/fangirl's dream. LOL

Ooh, thanks for that correction.  I admit, even by Episode 10, I was still unable to tell a lot of the secondary characters apart.  One reason for my rewatch!

[true north]

26 minutes ago, Fellaway said:

Ooh, thanks for that correction.  I admit, even by Episode 10, I was still unable to tell a lot of the secondary characters apart.  One reason for my rewatch!

I pretty much thought that Little and Jopson was the same person until probably episode 6. No idea why, they don't even look alike, save for dark hair. Although thinking of it, it was probably that scene where Crozier makes Little steal whisky for him that confused me. Logically, it is something I would expect a captain to ask from his steward rather than from his 1st lieutenant. 

[peeayebee]

2 hours ago, true north said:

I pretty much thought that Little and Jopson was the same person until probably episode 6. No idea why, they don't even look alike, save for dark hair.

You're not the only one. I'm looking forward to a rewatch, too, not just to enjoy it all over again, but to keep the characters straight.

[Fellaway]

4 hours ago, true north said:

I pretty much thought that Little and Jopson was the same person until probably episode 6. No idea why, they don't even look alike, save for dark hair. Although thinking of it, it was probably that scene where Crozier makes Little steal whisky for him that confused me. Logically, it is something I would expect a captain to ask from his steward rather than from his 1st lieutenant. 

Yes!  By the second half of the series, the secondary characters were starting to sort themselves out for me, except these two.  If they were in a scene together, I knew which was which, but when each was on his own...  Ugh.  It didn't help that the first half, when a show is usually establishing who characters are, the scenes were so dark.  (One of my two quibbles with this show.  The other being the CGI.  Admittedly, I generally find CGI special effects flat and fake-y, but that Tuunbaq was particularly poorly rendered.)  It doesn't help that I'm not well-versed in Navy ranks and positions.

Ah, well, I shall watch this series as many times as it takes to sort them all out!  ::raises fist to the heavens, a la Scarlett O'Hara::

Re-watching the first ep on the heels of the finale was jolting, though.  All those still relatively hale and hearty men, and what they came to...

[jnymph]

14 minutes ago, Fellaway said:

Yes!  By the second half of the series, the secondary characters were starting to sort themselves out for me, except these two.  If they were in a scene together, I knew which was which, but when each was on his own...  Ugh.  It didn't help that the first half, when a show is usually establishing who characters are, the scenes were so dark.  (One of my two quibbles with this show.  The other being the CGI.  Admittedly, I generally find CGI special effects flat and fake-y, but that Tuunbaq was particularly poorly rendered.)  It doesn't help that I'm not well-versed in Navy ranks and positions.

Ah, well, I shall watch this series as many times as it takes to sort them all out!  ::raises fist to the heavens, a la Scarlett O'Hara::

Re-watching the first ep on the heels of the finale was jolting, though.  All those still relatively hale and hearty men, and what they came to...

Heh.   I could tell Little and Jopson apart, only because Jopson was Crozier's very handsome valet.   It's all about the hottness factor with me. ; )   

As for the bolded;   YES !   It's as if going back to the "good ol' days".    I recently re-watched 1 thru 3.   Going to do the rest this weekend and ponder it all.  : ) 

[lidarose9]

It has taken me some time to process this finale and this show. It is rare that a TV show has such an effect on me emotionally. I was in a kind of daze for several days after the final episode, sad, but thoughtful, sorting out my reactions. I appreciate so much the comments here. So here are some thoughts: 

Although I loved the Tuunbaq, when I think back on this show, I won't remember the monster. To me it was the least important part of the story and although it functioned as a handy device, this show still would have been absolutely spellbinding without it. There was PLENTY of horror and monstrousness in this story without a monster.

I think they did the right thing not letting us (or anyone) get a good look at the creature until very late in the game. When they did, well, it really did not work for me, I'm sorry to say. I'm not going to hold this against the show. It was a very challenging task. I think they failed, not just in the quality of the cgi but in the design of the animal. They worked too hard to give it a human-looking face. When I visualize it, I see Gollum's face superimposed on a polar bear's face. 

Also, I prefer to not see the creature as anything supernatural. To me, it was the last of its kind, a species on the brink of extinction. The people living there had had a relationship with these animals in the same way they did with the caribou, seals, walruses, and the woolly mammoth, if you go back far enough. They'd created rituals around it. It's what they did. The British explorers  happened to bumble onto the scene just as one of the last creatures was spending its last days on earth. Thinking of the last white Rhino that just died. 

(Also, someone asked about caribou in an earlier post. The Inuit of that region definitely hunted caribou. That's where they got the skins for their dwellings and clothes.  The caribou have annual migrations north and south from above and below the tree line. The Inuit knew where and when they could travel south to intersect with the herds. It was an annual ritual.)

Most of the super powers attributed to the creature could have been a misunderstanding, in the same way you'd freak out upon seeing a crocodile if you'd never heard of one or seen pictures before. Or seeing a flying fox, believing no mammal could fly.

The Inuit must have thought those people were all insane or maybe possessed by demons. I imagine they pitied them. I have no trouble understanding why Silence helped Crozier. She'd been hanging out with these people for a long time. She knew who the good guys were. 

As LS took Crozier back from Hickey's camp, I was so grateful they did not show us the deterioration and last death throes at the other camps. Seeing the aftermath was bad enough. You knew what happened.  

I have to admit the whole sequence from Cozier's arrival at Hickey's camp up to the death of the monster, that whole section seemed kind of a mess to me -- with the exception of the business about Goodsir. I see him as the secondary hero in this story (Crozier being primary). He knew they would all die a lingering, painful death anyhow, so it could be looked at as a mercy killing. But also they had gone beyond the point of no return morally, and the only thing to do was end it if he could, possibly arranging Crozier's survival. To the end, a good heart. Call him goody-goody if you will but I contend Goodsir was the most "civilized" man on that expedition. 

I'm reading the book and what may not have been as evident in the TV show: by the time the men left the ships, they were already dying -- not just sick, but dying of scurvy, lead poisoning, and starvation. Part of that was losing their fucking minds. Nobody was thinking straight. Many were moving through hallucinations in a dream-like state, like poor Jopson. A man may have been holding a shotgun in his hands but simply forgot to shoot. 

That is where we see that being pushed to their absolute extreme revealed their true character. With Hickey, Tozer, some of the others, they descend into brutality, cruelty, selfishness and, in Hickey's case, utter madness. With Crozier, Goodsir, some others, their innate goodness takes over. Crozier spent that whole last couple episodes just trying to make people feel better. That really was the only thing he could do. I loved that about him. The moments of kindness and human feeling in this show were what completely broke me down. 

I love how nobody was who they seemed to be, and all pretense, all layers of personality were stripped away by the relentless misery and hopelessness. Hickey of course actually is an imposter, but it took time for his essential character became clear: a man who would literally do anything to survive... Crozier is the respected captain but also a lifelong drunk.... Fitzjames starts out looking like kind of a dick, but turns out to be a good guy... Franklin pretends to be a great leader, a wise man, an Arctic legend in his own mind, but really he's a fucking dumbass. Even minor characters have their secret stories, like Peglar and Bridgens. (I absolutely love how the show gives us no actual backstory for their relationship, but it is evident from Peglar's death that they loved each other very much.) 

Someone asked why they were dragging those huge heavy boats: they were headed for a river, where they could travel by boat many times faster, plus it would put them in better position to bump into potential rescuers, and also take them where there was more game. If they'd been smart, they would have ditched the boats and built canoes when they got far enough south to find trees, but these people were not thinking straight, obviously.

Closing shot: agree, he is seal-hunting, with great patience. He may not be happy but now has a kind of inner peace: the man who was drunk most of his life, now clear-headed and sure-handed enough to sit motionless for hours. The hole in the ice isn't really a hole, it's more like a thin spot, where the seal can easily poke up its nose. They don't poke up their whole heads, so the actual opening may be crusted over with thin ice covered with snow -- so it's hard to see. The spear has a hook on it so they can drag the seal up onto the ice and kill it. And he does it with one hand, this guy. I agree, this final tableaux was several years in the future. I think his hair and beard was longer. 

I have no trouble understanding why Crozier remained with the Inuit. Some things, you just don't recover from. Crozier had utterly and thoroughly lost his faith in "western" civilization. He stayed there where people were sane. 

The thing that grabs me most is the juxtaposition of the sense of extreme isolation, countless miles of empty nothing, in this hostile environment where humans have no business being at all. They could have been on Mars! VERSUS the feeling of claustrophobia, not just the men crowded inside the ships, but also the danger of being even out on the deck, creating even more psychological tension, of needing to crowd together to protect themselves. The ships on the ice were like forts, where the men could defend themselves, but were also prisons. It reminds me of how in lab experiments, when rats are crowded into small spaces they turn on each other and kill each other.   

I was relieved the final episode didn't attempt to cover the rescuers or more Lady Franklin shit. Seriously, who cares? Especially in contrast to what was going on for the men of the expedition. I am slightly horrified by talk of a second season. WTF? Unless it's an anthology series and they take up another expedition somewhere else (Shackleton?), what on earth is there left to tell about this story? The hardest thing for most writers to do (imho) is write a good ending. This show had a good ending. I would urge TPTB to leave well enough alone. 

I want to say this is one of the most intelligent, well done series I've seen in years, maybe ever. Masterful script, masterful acting, especially Jared Harris, holy cow that guy was great. And the look of this show was absolutely gorgeous, so vivid, so stark. It is visually so memorable, emotionally so moving. I have been fascinated by the Arctic all my life, thanks to having read a children's book called "Two For The North" by Farley Mowat (called "Lost in the Barrens" in Canada) in 6th grade. And there is something about those 19th century explorers that fascinates me. So for me this show was a bonanza all the way around. 

Also thank you to all of you who wrote here. It enriched my viewing pleasure to read your thoughts and reactions. 
 

Edited May 31, 2018 by lidarose9

[Captanne]

Lidarose9, that is a beautiful post. I’m just back from a short vacation where I finished Frozen in Time and some Expedition relic porn. Also, Crozier’s biography.  I’m so glad to see we all seem to be close in agreement. 

The finale was a thing of beauty.

Lady Franklin actually went on to become quite a hero and paid for an expedition to find their bodies herself. 

[lidarose9]

17 hours ago, Captanne said:

Lidarose9, that is a beautiful post. I’m just back from a short vacation where I finished Frozen in Time and some Expedition relic porn. Also, Crozier’s biography.  I’m so glad to see we all seem to be close in agreement. 

The finale was a thing of beauty.

Lady Franklin actually went on to become quite a hero and paid for an expedition to find their bodies herself. 

Thank you! 

One last thought: This concerns the 1972 incident where the plane carrying the soccer team from Uruguay crashed in the Andes. I read a book about it in the 1970s, and there was a movie made about their ordeal called "Alive" in the early 90s. They survived by eating the dead.

A few years ago, I saw another film about it called "Stranded: I Have Come From A Plane That Has Crashed On The Mountains." Somebody found the survivors now, years later, and brought some of them back to the site of the plane crash. Some of them brought along their now-adult kids. These people had not just been part of a soccer team together -- they'd been lifelong friends, many of them growing up in the same neighborhood, some married into each others' families.

Obviously, the experience devastated the survivors. Generally, they have not remained in touch in the years since their ordeal. But each of them echoed the same sentiment, looking back on the experience: that to them, surviving by eating the flesh of their dead friends was an intimate, almost spiritual experience. It was done, in many cases, with the permission or even with orders from the dying. Those who were dying very much wanted the others to survive. The survivors all spoke of this with great love and gratitude. They were all horrified by the media circus upon their return. Their own (adult) children knew they owed their own lives to the dead, and so also the lives of their own children. It was very touching. It was the opposite end of the spectrum of the cannibalism we saw in this show. 

Edited May 31, 2018 by lidarose9
typos

[jnymph]

1 hour ago, lidarose9 said:

 

Obviously, the experience devastated the survivors. Generally, they have not remained in touch in the years since their ordeal. But each of them echoed the same sentiment, looking back on the experience: that to them, surviving by eating the flesh of their dead friends was an intimate, almost spiritual experience. It was done, in many cases, with the permission or even with orders from the dying. Those who were dying very much wanted the others to survive. The survivors all spoke of this with great love and gratitude. They were all horrified by the media circus upon their return. Their own (adult) children knew they owed their own lives to the dead, and so also the lives of their own children. It was very touching. It was the opposite end of the spectrum of the cannibalism we saw in this show. 

That's such a profound story.  It's heartbreaking, yet so very hauntingly beautiful.  Really the epitome of love.