AMC’s “The Terror” unleashes its monsters in “First Shot a Winner, Lads”

Darkness and monsters are the beating heart of AMC’s new series, The Terror, and Episode 5, “First Shot a Winner, Lads,” is neck-deep in both. After years of being trapped in the ice pack, the men and officers of the Franklin Expedition are beginning to break down: they’re losing fingers and toes to frostbite, suffering from food poisoning and showing signs of cabin fever. Their acting commander, Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris) is drinking himself to death. Hopelessness is slowly crushing the stiff British spirit just as surely as the ice is slowly crushing their ships.

Yet these men, northern explorers and members of the British Naval Discovery Service, are hardy creatures accustomed to hardship. They’re not going to give up without a fight.

BEWARE, MATEY — SPOILERS FOR “FIRST SHOT A WINNER, LADS,” LIE BELOW

“First Shot a Winner, Lads” opens in unrelenting gloom and cold as the sailors from the icebound ships Terror and Erebus, protected by a detachment of armed Marines, take weather and barometric measurements out on the freezing ice. The temperature holds at -52 degrees. In a bit of good news, the mysterious creature that’s been terrorizing them hasn’t been seen for months, and the men hope they have managed to scare it off.

Since the Terror is in danger of being obliterated by the ice, officers from that ship board the Erebus, where Captain Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies), plotting out an overland escape route, notes that Captain Crozier is once again absent from the officer’s meeting. Fitzjames is still the picture of well-attired discipline, and he’s obviously now the officer holding everything together since Crozier has retreated into the bottle in his cabin aboard the largely abandoned Terror.

Fitzjames, wanting to wash his hands of the responsibility of looking after the enigmatic Lady Silence (Nive Nielsen) and wanting to get her away from his superstitious crew, orders Terror representative officer Lt. Little (Edward McNulty) to take her back to the doomed ship. McNulty finds that assistant surgeon Harry Goodsir (Paul Ready) has gotten Lady Silence to speak, and is learning her language. She has refused to broach the subject of the monster thus far, however.

Goodsir wants to continue his studies and accompany Little and Lady Silence back to the Terror, so he asks permission of Dr. Stanley (Alistair Petrie), who is busy clipping off the frostbite-blackened toes of unfortunate sailors. During all this, Captain Fitzjames learns that Lt. Little arrived with a requisition order from Captain Crozier, and that the Terror party has taken 16 bottles from the spirit room.

As Lt. Little’s party returns to the Terror with Lady Silence in tow, a sailor named Hornby drops dead. They carry his body aboard the Terror, where caulker’s mate Cornelius Hickey (Adam Nagatis) eyes the Inuit woman with suspicion. Lt. Little reports Hornby’s death to First Mate Thomas Blanky (Ian Hart) and the drunken but still functioning Captain Crozier. Crozier is upset that the Terror party has brought rum and gin back from the Erebus, and orders them to return and take whiskey from the late Captain Franklin’s personal store.

Goodsir and the Erebus‘ competent surgeon, Dr. McDonald (Charles Edwards), discuss the many maladies of the crew, focusing on the fact that some of the men’s gums are turning black. They know the ships’ water storage systems are lined with lead, but they believe it to be harmless. Meanwhile, Hickey gifts a dead man’s silver ring to his former lover William Gibson (Edward Ashley), asking him to relate any information overheard among the officers in return.

Struck by fear and superstition, sailor Magnus Manson (Stephen Thompson) refuses to carry the wrapped body of Hornby down into the “dead room” in the bowels of the ship, the small compartment where the crew is stacking the frozen bodies of the deceased. Hickey manages to diffuse a confrontation between the terrified Manson and the pious Lt. John Irving (Ronin Raferty) and helps place the body himself.

Captain Crozier, Blanky, Little and Goodsir attempt to interview Lady Silence about the monster the Inuit call the tuunbaq, “a spirit that dresses as an animal,” in her Inuit language, but her responses are aggravatingly cryptic. Crozier grows frustrated and angry, threatening to end Lady Silence’s protection from the crew. Captain Fitzjames shows up at the worst moment, complaining about Crozier’s booze-stealing and abdication of command. Crozier punches Fitzjames, and when Blanky pulls him away, orders Blanky to go on deck and return with a full report on the situation.

While on the main deck, Blanky and his sentries are attacked by the the monster, which has suddenly reappeared soon after Lady Silence was threatened by Crozier. The experienced Blanky attempts to escape the monster in a perilous action sequence as he climbs high on the ice-coated spars and rigging.

We get our first good look at the monster here, which resembles a combination of a man and a polar bear. The monster rips away a big chunk of Blanky’s left leg. Blanky looks doomed, but the crew manage to fire their hand cannon and muskets and wound the monster. The rigging breaks away and both Blanky and the monster fall. Blanky survives, dangling from a rope, and the bleeding creature disappears into the icy mists. Crozier sees Lady Silence scrambling to escape the ship and raises no alarm, allowing her to go.

Surgeon McDonald is forced to amputate the remnants of Blanky’s leg. Goodsir enters Lady Silence’s compartment to find a carving she made on the planks, and a small, mysterious stack of black pellets. Later, the staggeringly drunk Crozier calls a meeting of his officers and asks them for their assistance; he intends to break himself of his alcoholic dependence. “I’m going to be unwell, gentlemen,” he says. “Quite unwell, I expect, and I don’t know for how long.” Crozier transfers command to Fitzjames until the time comes that he can function again.

In the final shot, we see Goodsir still investigating the crew’s illness. He opens a tin of provisions and feeds it to the ship’s mascot monkey, obviously wanting to observe how the animal will react to it.

“First Shot a Winner, Lads” ends with the expedition in dire straits, with its leader dead and one of its two captains incapacitated; the monster is back, Lady Silence has run off, and the dwindling crew is showing signs of psychological stress and disease. Darkness and monsters in all forms rear their heads.

I have to say I was initially disappointed with the appearance of the monster once we finally got a good look at it. Its appearance was underwhelming in a pure horror-movie sense, but it’s also true to the idea that this is some sort of mythical but smaller-scale man-beast rather than a super-fantastical creature like a kraken.

I like to compare The Terror to John Carpenter’s horror movie The Thing, and the monster in The Thing was also terrifying more for its vicious alien otherness than for being any kind of Godzilla-like behemoth. The Terror is running up that road as well, and I’ll expect the monster, already having proven its intelligence, will have some surprises in store for us in the back half of the season.

Overall, The Terror continues to maintain its highly entertaining standard. Although it’s a horror story, the production is never afraid to slow down and telescope in on developing its characters. That’s one of the the biggest strengths of the show, along with its excellent cinematography and atmospherics. Its also provided an opportunity for the superb cast to show off their acting chops. This week, it was Jared Harris’ agonized scene of acknowledgement and capitulation to his alcoholism that gripped viewers in the guts.

What did you guys think of Episode 5? Here’s AMC’s sneak peek for next week’s episode, “A Mercy”:

The Terror has been an extra treat because we get to see Game of Thrones veterans Ciaran Hinds (Mance Rayder), Menzies (Edmure Tully) and Clive Russell (The Blackfish) appear in fine form. The show airs on AMC every Monday night at 8 p.m. CST.

Next: The Terror doesn’t need monsters to make things scary in “A Mercy”

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