Hacker Cinema
The Terror
2018 · TV series · 44 min episodes · 2 seasons
Created by David Kajganich, Max Borenstein, Alexander Woo
MysteryDramaScience FictionFantasy
A chilling anthology series featuring stories of people in terrifying situations inspired by true historical events.
14 positive1 negative1 mixed2 neutralfrom 18 commenters
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18 comments on Hacker News
I've had this internet handle since the last century. Most people in here are talking about Hyperion but Simmons was a fantastic cross-genre author. My favorites were his historical fiction that contained a fantastical bent:
Drood: Has Wilkie Collins as an unreliable narrator, depicting the last five or so years of Charles Dickens' life.
Crook Factory: An FBI agent is sent to Cuba to keep an eye on Ernest Hemingway, hijinks ensue.
The Fifth Heart: Henry James and Sherlock Holmes team up to solve a mystery.
The Terror: Tells the story of what happened to the HMS Terror that attempted to make the northwest passage. The Arctic is a character in itself in this amazing story. I thought the TV mini-series was fine.
Abominable and Black Hills: I haven't read these yet but look forward to doing so.
Honestly, I think Dan Simmons is my favorite author. I know his politics became unpalatable but I could never find it in myself to care. My heart sank when I saw this post.
Yeah, I never got pulled into Hyperion but The Terror was.. something else. Just a masterpiece, and the TV series came nowhere near.
I see everyone talking about Hyperion, so I will play up The Terror as one of my favorites. The TV series did NOT do it justice.
The first one, the one based on the book, was great and did fly a good deal under the radar. But definitely one of those ones with a core fanbase that evangelized for it and good critical notices. Elsewhere in this discussion Jared Harris's role in Foundation has been mentioned; he's a major, consistent, and excellent fixture in The Terror.
Since they used the book's story already, they made a turn for the series to be an anthology of loosely thematically-similar stories (think American Horror Story). The basic setting of season 2 is Japanese internment during World War II in America, and it's from different writers than the first, and of course isn't adapting the novel anymore. It was much less popular both in terms of viewers and critics.
I'm a little surprised they think the brand still carries enough power to put another original story in there under its name for a season 3. It's also a bit of a double-edged sword: you do get name recognition and some built-in initial audience, but you're also taking on expectations and baggage from the original. This is a factor in season 2's tepid reception, and there have been other similar attempts to slide something unrelated in under an existing banner that backfired: True Detective Night Country comes to mind.
Frozen in time is a great book about this for those that like arctic survival. See also The Terror, both the book and tv series based on it.
Fascinating to be a bit closer to a complete story, given that this is one of the greatest mysteries of the age of exploration.
Are you taking about this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_(TV_series)
Follow up question, why is it that in season 2 everyone is Japanese?
I wasn't directly affected by this, but have recently learned a some about natives in the far northern regions through some popular media. I appreciate having some more context for these types of relations and the meaning of the Navy's apology.
Check out The Terror (2018), a 10-episode suspense-horror set in the 1800s telling a fictional story with similar themes, but with the tables turned on the colonizers. I recommend it for anyone who found this topic interesting.
There is also an antagonist in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992) who came to mind, Raven. This character is an Aleutean Native, an ethnicity that falls under both Alaska and Russia territory. The history described in this article also reminds me of his story.
Did they ever finish the AMC series? I read The Terror when it came out, years ago, and always thought it would be an amazing miniseries / TV show, but nobody I knew had read it. Then I heard rumblings that a show was in the works and I couldn't believe it! But it took years to get to release, and then I never followed up on whether it was successful or not. Great book, though.
I liked the books and television shows of both but I personally thought The Terror was in another league entirely.
Which is to say people should still watch/read them both.
Although I could've done without the gratuitous and seemingly unnessecary sex in The Terror (novel), but that seems typical of Dan Simmons.
> Its pretty and fun to watch. But it moves at a glacial pace and could just be compressed into one season.
I feel this captures most streaming series. 10 years ago a season could consist of 24 separate stories with one continuous background plot. Now you have one story spanning 10 episodes and ending on a cliffhanger. I'm not against the format. Parts of Terror was great. But most are excruciating slow with next to no character development and detours that doesn't matter.
I'd also recommend watching The Terror (season 1) and play Return of the Obra Dinn. Though both contain fantasy elements, there's lots of nautical lore to be found.
Very much agree. Lately, I’ve been watching The X-Files as back in the nineties, I’d only ever seen the odd episode here and there and never saw them in order. It turns out that many of the monster-of-the-week episodes are quite superfluous and not really worth watching – though you don’t know until after you’ve watched it). Likewise, I’d be reluctant to (re)watch old Star Trek, Stargate or other shows that don’t focus on a well-developed story arc.
Some of my favourite shows of recent years have been stories that get wrapped up in one season: True Detective, The Terror, Shining Girls.
Season 1 of The Terror TV show is fairly faithful to the book too. It's a pretty fascinating read.
While Chernobyl is absolutely a masterpiece, Jared Harris’ performance in The Terror season 1 remains his finest by an incredible margin. Every muscle he exercised in Chernobyl is on display in TERROR S1, and about a thousand more. Highly highly recommend for anyone who appreciates mature, emotionally complex drama. It’s a crime how few people seem to be aware of it!
If you wanna talk about baffling movies (or just a fun story) check out The Terror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Qo-bntEZc
Among other services, I'm subscribed to Prime, and really enjoy some shows on there like The Terror.
But for whatever reason, the release schedule for new episodes on season 2 is all messed up in my Amazon region. Sometimes there will be 6 days between them, then 9 days, right now the last episode it offers is the fifth one, released there on September the 9th, that was 10 days ago.
It ended with a massive cliffhanger, and I'm sitting over here looking for something to watch, but Amazon Germany simply doesn't want to deliver. So earlier I looked up the scene release, which was back on the 15th, and pirated that episode.
The pirated version also has the added benefit of not throwing double the amount of subtitles (German and English) at me for any foreign language scene. One would think such localization subtitles should be easily disabled, yet Amazon Germany doesn't offer an option for it and still displays them even when English dub and subs are selected.
Of all the shows you mentioned the only ones I have watched is, OITB (left it at after watching S04 I think), Master of None (both the seasons), I realise that its a drama that leans toward being a rom-com but I do not watch rom-coms at all. Kudos to Mindhunter, indeed that was entertaining and right in my ballpark. Liked House of cards till the time Spacey was there, S06 disappointed me. Season 1 of Making a Murderer was outstanding, season 2 didn't catch my interest. Also the last comedy I watched end-to-end I think was Entourage (which was produced by HBO), The Office (US) and Parks And Recreation, not surprisingly Netflix doesn't stream any of these in my region, Prime Video does the last two and Hotstar streams Entourage.
These are good shows not great ones like The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, BB, Six Feet Under you know about the stuff that critics rave about etc. I don't care if Birdbox was watched by all of Netflix's subscribers, thats precisely the sort of thing that I don't watch the majority of the time, you watch that thing once and you forget that you ever watched it again. I'm now on probably my sixth or seventh rewatch of The Wire, that should tell you something about my viewing habits and why Netflix's content just doesn't work for me. I don't expect a network to consistenly churn out shows like that but at least some of the shows should be somewhere close to that level which HBO continues to do with The Deuce, Succession, True Detective(I know they fucked the dog on S02) etc.
Also you have the time to watch ALL of that, I don't. I work in tech too, I have an hour on weekdays and maybe 2-3 on weekends for leisure, so its only natural that I would be picky about what I watch, the absolute best, currently that would mean shows like The Americans, Escape from Dannemora and shows from the past like Halt and Catch Fire(from AMC), Six feet under, Deadwood which not surpisingly were also made by HBO. Netflix doesn't stream any of that.
I also don't understand how you think AMC won't exist, are they going to be insolvent ? Doesn't look like it, they have a cash-cow in The Walking Dead(I only watched till S06 then got bored) They got two of the best TV shows I liked BB and BCS, BCS is gonna kill it in the next season. They also produced The Terror, a brilliant mini-series which Netflix didn't stream as well and again Prime Video did. As a viewer I don't care about Netflix's subscriber numbers or HBO's lack thereof, I want to watch content I like which sadly Netflix doesn't produce on a consistent basis, this is entirely subjective and I realise that I might be one of the edge-cases in all the millenials when I say Netflix don't tickly my fancy.
I'm not biased towards HBO, hell HBO doesn't even stream in my country, I'm incredibly picky about what I watch since I'm short on time, Netflix churns out a LOT of shows, its only natural that some of them turn out to be brilliant and some of them indeed are, but the rest, like 90% of the shows are just average, they don't work for me, I simply do not have the time to watch them.
In that sense, Netflix is like the Y-Combinator of producing original content. You produce(invest in) hundreds of TV shows(startups) and hope one of them makes it big (becomes a unicorn) and the rest of them, well they would be probably cease to exist after some time.
Amazingly dark and atmospheric series about the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, really worth watching:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2708480/