'The Terror' Episode 5: The Tuunbaq Attacks

The situation aboard Terror and Erebus grows ever more desperate, especially because Captain Crozier (Jared Harris), in charge of the entire expedition since the untimely death of Sir John Franklin, is down to his final two bottles of whiskey. "That's your clock, see it doesn't run out," he says, ordering his men to pilfer more booze from the Erebus stock. But while the shortage of alcohol preoccupies Crozier, it's the shipboard attack of the Tuunbaq that separates The Terror Episode 5 "First Shot a Winner, Lads" from previous episodes. The danger is out in the open, fully revealed for the first time.

The Terror experienced an awkward transition in its fourth episode, "Punished, as a Boy," as the show transitioned from the mounting dread and plot-establishing action of the first three episodes, culminating in Franklin's death, into a more serial television format, establishing shipboard drama and the subplots that will sustain The Terror through its full ten-episode run. So when "First Shot a Winner, Lads" put so much focus on the tiny dramas of Crozier's command and Mr. Goodsir's ongoing attempts to communicate with captive Inuit Lady Silence (Nive Nielsen), it feels in line with the slower pacing the previous episode told us to expect.

Then the Tuunbaq arrives and everything changes. Though it still has polar bear features, the Tuunbaq has a furious, almost human face, with long, individually articulable fingers. AMC released a video about the creation of the creature:

While we've seen glimpses of the monster killing off the Terror and Erebus crews —it looks like a giant polar bear—"First Shot a Winner, Lads" is an all-out assault. After leaping to the deck of Terror , the monster chases Terror's Ice Master, Thomas Blanky (Ian Hart), into the rigging, chasing him up the mast. The terrifying climb, punctuated by Marcus Fjellström's jagged score, puts the Tuunbaq in a vulnerable position for the first time, exposing it to the deck's six-pounder guns.

Even without the harrowing Tuunbaq attack that ends the episode, "First Shot a Winner, Lads" is gripping. There are many more dangers onboard than just the monster. Hickey (Adam Nagaitis) is plotting, bribing a steward to the officers with a dead man's ring for intel on Lady Silence, who he believes controls the monster. And when Mr. Goodsir isn't busy on his Inuktitut dictionary, he's investigating the lead-contaminated canned goods, which might explain the "line of ash in the tissue, in the gums," he keeps finding in sailors aboard Erebus.

But the most important throughline in "First Shot a Winner, Lads" is Crozier's alcoholism. Though he still has expert command over the operations of the ship, he's begun to lose touch with his men, indulging a swaggering anger and slurring as he yells at Captain Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies). His callous reaction to the death of a sailor, whose heart failed dragging gin and rum across the ice, spirits Crozier refuses to drink, doesn't help.

Just before the Tuunbaq attacks Terror, Crozier presses Lady Silence about her relationship to the monster. "What is hunting us?" he asks. At first the men don't recognize her response, but her name, Tuunbaq, reminds Blanky of a Yupik word.

"A spirit that dresses as an animal," Blanky says.

"It's bound to no one now," Lady Silence explains, though it leaves the men bewildered. When the men killed Lady Silence's father, they unleashed the Tuunbaq. It's no longer under the shaman's control. And Lady Silence doesn't feel inclined to help, especially since she can detect Crozier's desire to die—a death-drive that will leave him powerless against the monster.

The scene between Lady Silence and Captain Crozier enriches the Tuunbaq attack, turning it into a confrontation with death as much as a monster attack. Crozier, who spends the episode sinking toward a final surrender, discovers in the confrontation that he doesn't much like what he sees waiting for him.