Those are very good points about narrative structure, that Mr. Blankyâs scene does act sort of like a panel, as for modestyâs sake, to spare the audience and the story the reality of whatâs going on meanwhile, back at the ranch, where Goodsirâs having to cut up Hickeyâs ex. The whole business is inglorious, nasty, disgusting, dehumanizing, when one is close enough to see, as it were, how the sausage is made. Pulling out of focus for a moment to allow Mr. Blanky to find the Northwest Passage creates the kind of seasick reversal that The Terror does so well: for a second, weâre back in the adventure story. And, then, we realize, we never left the horror story*.
I think, though, that the futility of Mr. Blanky finding the thing theyâve all been looking for, by himself, as heâs waiting to die, doesnât take away its meaning. In that moment, itâs not about the empire, or the expedition; itâs discovery in its purest sense: new awareness; something appears to you where before, you were aware of nothing. Does it matter that heâs not going to live to tell anyone about it? If the discovery, itself, doesnât matter, then neither does his inability to communicate it; either all of it- the expedition; Mr. Blankyâs entire life- matters, or none of it does. In his final moments, meaning becomes so concentrated in those moments, that he loses his connection to time in a larger sense; Mr. Blanky slips out of the narrative, and takes the Northwest Passage with him. Thatâs the narrativeâs âfuck youâ to the British empire, to John Barrow: he doesnât get to know what Mr. Blanky knows; he dies with his quest incomplete. He canât have that knowledge, because he didnât go there. You canât cheat discovery.
That futility, that tragedy, remains in place, though. Whatever one thinks about the individual men on the expedition, the expedition as a whole, Victorian England, the men are still people who suffered and died. I think the various ideas can coexist: what they did was wrong, and they died horribly; it was all for nothing, but you live til you die; depending on their own lives back in England, they would have had more or less of a stake in the idea of the empire, and many of them would have just been doing a job- but, finally, fuck John Barrow.Â
* But, then, weâre back to adventure, with Mr. Blankyâs death, a foregone conclusion showdown, but one which occurs off-screen. It would have been redundant to show the actual death, Collinsâ death having shown us everything we needed about how Tuunbaq kills, but itâs also a service to the character. As to the question, who are we supposed to root for, Mr. Blanky or Tuunbaq, I donât think the show has an opinion. Itâs tempting to imagine that the show goes too easy on the British sailors, and some more than others, but I think that The Terror avoids the expected, comfortable answers. You have to ask yourself what youâre really seeing, and why youâre being shown it; what your actual reaction is, as opposed to the one you think the narrative wants you to have. Weâre never told âColonialism is badâ, because we donât have to be told that. The show doesnât draw extra attention to the hundred, plus dead bodies that pile up over ten episodes, because it doesnât have to. You canât miss them.
