New Scientist - USA (2019-06-22)

(Antfer) #1

32 | New Scientist | 22 June 2019


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I AM not the kind of person who
likes to be scared. I wouldn’t
voluntarily go to a haunted house,
and when I watch horror movies,
I tend to scrunch up into a ball and
peer through my fingers like a
child. I have even been known to
scream in cinemas.
But, surprisingly, I haven’t been
able to tear myself away from two
completely terrifying recent TV
shows. The first is the aptly named
The Terror, a dramatisation of a
mysterious 19th-century Arctic
expedition led by naval officer
John Franklin.
On this ill-fated voyage, two
British ships and the 129 men
aboard them vanished while
seeking the fabled North-West
Passage, a stretch of water that
runs through the icy seas off the
northern coast of Canada, linking
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
It is full of executive producer
Ridley Scott’s signature style:
ominous music leading to jump
scares. These make me shrink
into the cushions on my couch.
It is a show that plays on our fear
of the dark and the unknown
terrors that it holds.

The vastness of the Arctic makes
for stunning aerial shots of the
frigid sea that evoke a feeling of
extreme isolation. Interior and
exterior shots are taken from
above, as if you are looking down
on history, but the show doesn’t
let the viewer off the hook – you
also get up close and personal with

the terror these men felt in the
face of a wilderness they had the
hubris to try to tame.
HBO’s Chernobyl, a docudrama
about the 1986 catastrophe at the
nuclear power plant of that name,
pulses with a different kind of
horror. For the viewer, of course, it
is very much a terror of the known.
The depiction of the head-in-
the-sand approach to the
infamous reactor meltdown in
what was then part of the USSR,
and the effects of vast amounts of
radiation spewing onto a nearby

Eyes wide shut Horror stalks the screen in different forms as the doomed Franklin
expedition to find the North-West Passage and the Chernobyl nuclear reactor
meltdown become terrifying docudramas. Chelsea Whyte feels the fear

“ These are stories that
are driven by stubborn
attitudes, by superiors
who insist on keeping
to a doomed path”

TV
The Terror
Prod. David Kajganich
AMC

Chernobyl
Dir. Johan Renck
HBO/ Sky TV

Chelsea also
recommends...
TV
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
Hulu/Channel 4 (UK)
This adaptation of Margaret
Atwood’s dystopian novel
continues, as resistance
builds. At least there is hope.

Good Omens
Terry Pratchett/
Neil Gaiman
Prime Video
An angel and a demon team
up to save the world.

town for days, is so frustrating that
I was screaming at my television
for entirely different reasons.
This time it was the gentle
cinematography and the quiet,
simple moments that horrified,
because I knew what the
characters didn’t.
In one scene, a few hours after
the explosion at the plant, a young
family joins their neighbours
outside to watch the glow of the
fire against the night sky as if
attending a fireworks display.
Flakes of ash begin to fall slowly
around them, touching their
cheeks and clothing and settling
on their baby’s skin. The children
of the neighbourhood look gleeful
to be hopping around on a sand
spit, playing in the falling “snow”.
They couldn’t know that they were
dancing to their doom. But I did,
and was sick with horror.
In both these dramatisations of
real stories, things start badly and
get worse. Both stories are driven
by a stubborn push through
insurmountable trouble – by
superiors who insist on keeping to
a doomed path. And for what? For
the sailors, it is a dream of glory.
For the politicians involved in
Chernobyl, it is blind patriotism.
The scariest part of both tales
is that these actions and motives
aren’t that difficult to empathise
with. I’d like to think that if I found
myself sailing into icy waters or
facing the heat and radiation of a
failed reactor, I would be smarter
than these people were. I hope I
would turn back, or call for help,
or at the very least try to put the
preservation of life before the
tantalising taste of victory.
But in reality, I don’t know if I
would. Maybe that is the scariest
part of all. ❚

AM

C

All crew on the Franklin
expedition died after
getting stuck in Arctic ice

The TV column


Chelsea Whyte is a reporter
for New Scientist, based in
Boston, Massachusetts.
Follow her on Twitter
@ chelswhyte
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