Characters / The Terror

The character sheet for the miniseries adaptation of Dan Simmons' novel, The Terror.

Main

HMS Terror

Crozier

Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier

Captain

"Does one not bring one's habits to Terror?"

Portrayed By: Jared Harris

"Friend, mother, lover, all the things they say a ship is to a captain and they miss the only thing that matters. Confessor."

Captain of HMS Terror and second in command of the expedition, Francis Crozier is a peerless sailor, but also a lowborn Irishman who has reached his glass ceiling in Her Majesty's Royal Navy. He's had to accept his second-class status without internalizing it even as he sees his accomplishments again and again go unrecognized and his expert advice unheeded. When disaster strikes the expedition and he finally has a chance to prove himself, will he be able to face down his many demons and rise to the challenge of saving his men?

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• Adaptational Villainy: A very minor example, but in the book, Crozier never orders his men to raid the liquor store on Erebus.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: His marriage to Silna and thus his two children don’t carry over to the series.
• The Alcoholic: He has a crippling addiction to alcohol and he isn't particularly good at hiding it; most of the men know of his alcoholism and distrust him because of it. Come "First Shot's a Winner, Lads" he's starting fights with Fitzjames over stealing Erebus's whiskey, and after his latest drunken screw-up costs Blanky his leg, he forces himself to go cold turkey.
• An Arm and a Leg: Silna is forced to hack off his his left hand with an ulu to free him from being shackled to Hickey's corpse, which is lodged halfway down the Tuunbaq's gullet.
• The Atoner: One reason that he doesn't go back to England and remains in exile is that he feels intensely guilty for killing Tuunbaq, thus wrecking Silna's life and jeopardizing the lives of the local Inuit, and he's determined to pay that debt by any means.
  • Alternatively losing all the men under his command and two ships, as well as failing to keep Sir John Franklin alive, and with a gruesome I Am a Humanitarian end to the expedition, including for himself, means that he could never really face anyone who didn't live through it and expect them to understand. Doubly tragic, as it is clear that those in England desperately want to find someone, anyone, alive and that Sophia feels terrible for driving Crozier to the arctic.
• Brutal Honesty: He doesn't really mince words. He'll out and say what others are afraid to and doesn't give a damn what people think of him for it. It makes him a strong second-in-command, but causes him problems when he takes command, which is about people and not cold logic and hard facts.
• Byronic Hero: Male? Intelligent and capable? Moody and conflicted? Jaded with the society he lives in and disillusioned with rank, privilege, and authority despite having all of those things himself? Often broods over his own personal failings? Is melancholic but secretly quite passionate? Something of an outcast? Crozier fits the bill.
• The Captain: Of the titular Terror.
• The Cynic: He's a dour man who is predisposed to assuming the worst-case scenario in all of his advice and decisions as second-in-command of the expedition. Unfortunately, this is to his detriment: when the expedition finds itself genuinely in jeopardy and he tries to warn Franklin, the latter finally gets fed up with his pessimism and orders him to keep quiet about his predictions in order to not drag down the crew's morale.
• Deadpan Snarker: He really can't stomach hearing Fitzjames' stories for the hundredth time.
  Crozier: Why don't you tell us about Birdshit Island, James? That's a capital story...
• Did Not Get the Girl: In a departure from the book, he doesn’t marry Silna at the end and has no children. This was likely to make the ending more believable, as Silna had far more interaction and emotional connection with Goodsir, and descendants from a white man in the local Inuit population would probably have been noticed by someone who went looking for the Expedition (as they were, in real life, as a matter of fact).
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Ultimately, he ends up being the one to finish off the Tuunbaq, holding Hickey's corpse in place with his boot while pulling on the chain connecting himself to Tozer;s corpse to ensure that it chokes.
• Doomed Protagonist: Surprisingly averted considering the subject matter. In both book and show, he ends up the Sole Survivor of the expedition, and settles down with the Inuit, avoiding any white searchers as they come looking for him.
• The Drunken Sailor: A particularly sullen and moody example, until he kicks the habit altogether.
• The Eeyore: To the point he actually catches flak over it, since his miserable and melancholic nature doesn't do wonders for the morale of the crew.
• Excellent Judge of Character: Doesn't believe for a second Hickey's story about the Indigenous people killing the other men, and goes to check the scene himself.
• Final Boy: He is the sole survivor of the Franklin expedition, leaving behind his old life to live with the Inuit in the end.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Fitzjames. Almost literally, as they don't bond until after the Carnivale disaster.
• Historical Beauty Update: Inverted- the real Crozier had very delicate, even features, and while Jared Harris is more ruggedly handsome by modern standards, there’s quite a bit of Beauty Inversion going on- first to make him look like an exhausted, paunchy drunk, and then later as the deprivations of the expedition take their toll on him.
  • Notably, Harris lost weight to play Crozier, due to the out-of-order filming schedule meaning he would sometimes have to film early scenes back to back with later ones, where the men are starving, yet in those same early scenes his face often looks swollen and bloated without prosthetic makeup. It's startling to compare to his typical appearance.
• Hypocrite: He was brutally honest with Captain Franklin when he felt he had to be. But when Fitzjames and Blanky are the same thing to him, he takes it pretty poorly. Somewhat justified due to his drinking making him more and more irrational and irascible- once he kicks the habit, he becomes far more willing to accept criticism.
• Ignored Expert: He accurately predicts that if Erebus and Terror continue on their present course, they will be marooned in the ice indefinitely, hundreds of miles from the nearest western civilization. Sir John and Fitzjames ignore him. Ironically, he is by far the most experienced sailor and polar explorer of the three commanding officers, but unfortunately his general pessimism and grumpiness cause his warnings to come off as just yet more bitterness.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He is a good man, but that goodness is wrapped up in melancholy, alcoholism, insecurity and a general grumpiness.
• I Choose to Stay: When the rescue party eventually shows up, he has a chance to go back to England — but instead he fakes his death with the help of the Inuit band who've adopted him; he likely knows that there's nothing left for him as a captain who claims a monster killed his crew, and lost his ships and Franklin, the man he specifically came along to keep safe, meaning he has no chance with Sophia either.
• Kick the Dog: When Hickey disobeys orders and then argues against his punishment, Crozier orders him to be lashed thirty times as a boy, meaning he has his trousers pulled down and viciously whipped across his bare ass until it's scarred and bloody. By the standard of the times, this was actually considered a light punishment.
  • Sending Mister Blanky out into what is likely sub-zero temperatures with strong winds because Blanky wouldn't throw Lady Silence off the ship was pretty shitty. (Crozier was drunk at the time.)
• Knight in Sour Armor: Noble thought he is, Crozier certainly doesn't view himself as a hero.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Has this reaction when it hits him he sent Blanky outside the ship on an abortive errand just because he was pettily angry with him, which led to Blanky having a run in with the Tuunbaq, barely surviving the encounter, and ultimately having to have his leg amputated. Crozier decides to quit drinking totally after this.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • His ordering Hickey to be lashed in the most humiliating fashion possible turns much of Terror's crew against him, and also puts him firmly in Hickey's line of fire.
  • When he drunkenly lashes out at Blanky and orders him above deck, it puts Blanky in immediate proximity to the Tuunbaq, and it ends with his leg heavily mauled and needing to be amputated. And worse, the replacement peg leg breaking down and the gangrene that sets in contributes to Blanky's eventual demise.
• Not So Stoic: Crozier is usually introverted and melancholic, but he shows increasing passion when the expedition leaders convene to discuss their plan of action. He even thumps the table when Fitzjames accuses him of melodrama, though that may be because Fitzjames just inadvertently insulted the woman he loves.
• Sole Survivor: In universe, he survives the expedition, becoming part of a local Inuit tribe. He ignores an opportunity to go home too, since unlike the book, his tribe is met by a rescue party, but Crozier doesn’t identify himself. This has some historical accuracy as well. In reality, there were unverified Inuit reports that Crozier was spotted with one other person in the Baker Lake area. This sighting was around 1858, meaning if it was real, he survived up to a decade with one other person past the Expedition getting trapped. There was some physical evidence for this as well, as later search parties found a box made of wood with dovetail joints (impossible for the Inuit to create) stowed in a cairn in that area. However, the identity of the officer is unknown, and there's evidence that more of the crews might have survived, with a man who might have been Fitzjames and two others actually settling down to have children with the Inuit.
• Stealth Insult: When Hickey tells him that he had 'no equal' on the expedition save for Crozier, (and even then he pays Crozier this compliment rather backhandedly, clearly still thinking himself superior) Crozier tells him faux-sympathetically 'he must be a very lonely man.'
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Crozier and Fitzjames initially cannot stand one another. His relationship with Sir John seems better but actually is even worse.
• That Man Is Dead: He is presented the opportunity to go home, as a search party locates the tribe he’s living with at the end. He doesn’t make himself known and instructs the elder to tell them he died with the others.
• Tongue On The Flag Pole: At one point he accidentally brushes a telescope against his eyelid, almost tearing it off in the process due to how fast it freezes.
• You Are in Command Now: He finds himself in reluctant command after the monster brutally tears Sir John apart.

Blanky

Thomas Blanky

Ice Master

"And once it's past all hope, the mind goes unnatural with thoughts."

Portrayed By: Ian Hart

"What in the name of God took you so fucking long?"

Ice Master of Terror and longtime friend of Francis Crozier, Thomas Blanky has the experience to be a captain himself but prefers the thrill and challenge of battling the constant puzzle of the Arctic ice to the social demands and shallow politics of command. He is a resourceful, unflappable force on the expedition, who refuses to dignify any emergency with fear and trembling. When others retreat, Blanky stands his ground with a shrewd smile and twelve fantastic ideas about how to put any threat in its place.

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• Action Survivor: Blanky survives an extended encounter with the Tuunbaq by jumping from mast to mast, culminating in him actually managing to injure it.
• An Arm and a Leg: He loses a leg from his battle with the Tuunbaq, but takes it in stride. Unfortunately, all the constant walking wears down his false leg and without proper medical attention, the infection from the amputation spreads. It leads to him deciding to sacrifice himself..
• Cool Old Guy: Blanky's in his later years, but he's tough, no-nonsense and has a dark sense of humor. He pulls off some impressive moves despite also being half frozen and jumping around in a blizzard. He manages to keep up with the rest of the expedition during their march south, despite everything that happens to him prior.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: He successfully navigates the Tuunbaq into a position where the Marines can shoot it with a cannon, all while being chased by the thing and having to jump and swing around the ships’ masts. He does this while also taking a lantern apart and turning it into a signal flare to give the Marines their target. It doesn’t kill the thing, but Blanky comes to closest of anyone in the expedition to actually killing it.
• Defiant to the End: He literally has to sit down and let the Tuunbaq catch up to him. Up until that point he’d consistently outwitted and outmaneuvered it. It only manages to kill him because he’s decided he’s had enough. He spends his last moments fighting the Tuunbaq with a boat knife, and dressed in a dozen or so forks he tied to himself in hopes of giving the beast some indigestion. Furthermore, he discovers the Northwest Passage just before he dies, fulfilling the mission of the expedition despite not living to tell anyone. He dies laughing while trying to stab an Inuit spirit monster to death while adorned in forks. When it comes to being a badass to the end, none hold a candle to Ice Master Thomas Blanky.
• Die Laughing: He laughs uproariously when the Tuunbaq comes to kill him, knowing that he found Northwest Passage and that he's only dying because he's permitting it to kill him.
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Blanky shows zero fear of the Tuunbaq when it comes for him.
  "What in the name of God took you so fucking long?"
• Father Neptune: Complete with a Seadog Beard and Seadog Peg Leg.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: He ultimately just decides to let the Tuunbaq kill him. With his stump leg turning gangrenous, he realizes he will slow the expedition down. So he just sits down, and finally lets the Tuunbaq find him. Even then, he gives it a fight.
• Regret Eating Me: When the Tuunbaq comes for him in the end, he makes sure to tie a number of bent forks around his chest, to make the meal as unpleasant as possible.
• Sanity Slippage: Part of his backstory. During a previous expedition where the ships were frozen in and the crew had to walk to find rescue, Blanky came to deeply resent his commander, John Ross, for the way the crewmen suffered while the officers continued to enjoy their luxuries. It came to the point where he nearly murdered Ross before they were rescued. He's gotten over it by the time he's assigned to Terror.
• Seen It All: Blanky has been sailing all his life, has lived through the worst of conditions and knows how to handle just about any situation. Nothing that befalls the Franklin expedition much surprises him. Although the giant demonic polar bear does throw him slightly, as it would for (hopefully) all of us. He grows accustomed to it pretty fast, however.

Hickey

Cornelius Hickey

Caulker's Mate

"Survival is a nasty piece of business."

Portrayed By: Adam Nagaitis

"I'll give you some advice: don't indulge your morals over your practicals."

Caulker's Mate on Terror, Cornelius Hickey is a young petty officer whose rank on the ships should, by any standard, keep him invisible to the officers. But Hickey is not quite what he seems. With streetwise intelligence and intense social ambition, he attempts to ingratiate and triangulate his way up the social ladder. But when his early efforts fail, a newfound contempt for authority leads him to an even more dangerous agenda, threatening the expedition from within even as the men battle terrifying forces from without.

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• Accidental Murder: Whatever his other faults, the death of Dr. MacDonald cannot really be placed on his shoulders. He was trying to cut open a tent to save the lives of everyone inside, and barked several times to stand back. MacDonald didn't seem to hear, and when Hickey cuts the tent open, he cuts open MacDonald in the process. Unlike elsewhere when he does something negative, this time he feels genuinely guilty and upset.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the book, Hickey is repeatedly described as unusually short and ratlike, with only six teeth. Adam Nagaitis has none of these traits.
• Adaptational Heroism: A very small example, but he does not mutilate Goodsir as he does in the book.
• Adaptational Personality Change: At the beginning anyway. He’s given much more developed and understandable reasons to be so pissed at authority, having lived as a second class citizen due to his Irish heritage, and also being gay in the Victorian Era. Prior to being threatened by Irving and misinterpreting his interaction with Crozier, he seems far more compassionate and level headed. He feels sorry for Young and even takes the time to cover him when his coffin breaks open. In the books, Hickey starts out a completely unrepentant sociopath who immediately considers murdering an officer to cover up his act in the hold, and his lover is a mentally deficient man likely incapable of understanding what Hickey does to him. In the show, it’s made clear Hickey's romantic relationship is consensual and characterized by genuine caring, only souring after an ignominious breakup. More of his unstable behavior is implied to be a result of the Expedition’s tainted food and declining conditions than just being his typical personality. He doesn’t start losing it for real until he’s ingested lead for years like everyone else.
  • In the show it's revealed that the man we know as Hickey is actually a murderer who killed and replaced the actual Cornelius Hickey and went on the Expedition to escape London permanently in search of warmer climes. This may or may not put him back on the same level of sympathy as his book counterpart.
  • Notably, Nagaitis was told to avoid reading the book at all, whereas most of the other actors were asked to study it intensely, as the producers considered show!Hickey to be functionally a different person in the same role. Nagaitis drew most of his inspiration from the Villain Protagonists of the works of Jean Genet instead.
• All for Nothing: Hickey would have been better off doing nothing if all he wanted to do was just avoid going back to England. Instead, all his schemes and machinations made things worse for everyone including himself as his ultimate fate is being eaten like a slab of rotten meat in the middle of nowhere.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: One of his first victims is Neptune, the Expedition’s dog, which he butchers for meat. It’s a stupid move too, since the Tuunbaq predictably attacks only after it’s gone.
• Asshole Victim: After all the terrible things he did over the course of the series, to say that he had his fate coming to him would be putting it mildly.
• Ax-Crazy: After losing what little he had of his sanity by episode 7, he seems to consider himself godlike. He kills with ease and is clearly mad.
• Big Bad Ensemble: He ultimately shares the spotlight with the Tuunbaq as the biggest threat to the expedition's potential survival, and his actions doom all of them, save for Crozier.
• Blasphemous Boast: During his ill-fated attempt to take control of the Tuunbaq, he defiantly shouts "Bugger Jesus! Bugger Joseph and Mary! Bugger the Archbishop of Canterbury!" at the other mutineers while trying to psych them up for the confrontation.
• Brief Accent Imitation: He mocks Crozier's Irish accent during his "trial".
• Combat Pragmatist: Has no qualms with attacking when someone isn’t looking or isn’t expecting it.
• The Corrupter: As he says himself, he never places his morality before practicality. He is always the first to recommend a course of action that leads others down very dark paths.
• Dead Person Impersonation: This man is not Cornelius Hickey. He has no name; he murdered the real Cornelius Hickey, dumped the body in Regent Canal and stole his identity so he could get aboard the Terror and do a "year's worth of nothing" before deserting in Hawaii. This casts all his actions, even the most sympathetic ones, in a very harsh new light.
• Depraved Homosexual: Surprisingly averted. He’s gay, and he’s a nasty piece of work, but these qualities never intersect. Indeed, in the book his seemingly genuine affection for Manson is his sole redeeming trait.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Downplayed. He is killed by the Tuunbaq in both the novel and the series, but the specific manner of his death differs; in the novel, the Tuunbaq sucks out his soul and leaves his corpse to freeze, while in the series it bites off his arm and tears him in half.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Hickey tries to argue his way out of being punished for leaving the ship without orders to grab Lady Silence, which only further enrages Crozier; his punishment goes from twelve lashes across the back, extra duty until further notice, and reduction of his grog ration (all of which were bad enough) to thirty lashes "as a boy", an even harsher and more demeaning punishment.
• Dirty Coward: He's a schemer, but not a fighter and knows it which is why he relies on cowardly actions or having others do the dirty work. The one time he does grow a spine it's not because of bravery, but that he's half-insane from lead poisoning and he ends up getting torn to shreds by the Tuunbaaq. The look on his face is that of stunned terror.
• Evil Is Petty: He kills Irving for a slight Irving likely doesn't even remember, causes the death of an entire family of Inuit just to cover his tracks (and so that Crozier can't be proven right) and swans about wearing Irving's coat, which he specifically must have stolen from the camp, and Fitzjames' boots, which he would have had to raid his grave to get.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Hickey is often the brunt of jokes from other crew members. Early on, Tozer openly tells him he’ll gladly toss him to the Tuunbaq if the opportunity presents itself, and his own lover mocks him for his ignorance of Crozier’s drinking habits and the extent of his unwarranted self importance at getting to drink with him. After the mutiny, even those that joined in talk about killing him or betraying him.
• Groin Attack: Inflicts one on Irving, mutilating him after stabbing him dozens of times. It serves to further stoke the fears of the men.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The Tuunbaq rips him in half before choking on him. It’s every bit as satisfying as it should be after everything he’s done.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Little is known of the real-life Hickey besides his name and birthplace on the ship's register and his name carved into a knife, but it's safe to say that he probably didn't do any of the things depicted in the book or series. Subverted when we find out this character isn't the real Hickey.
• Karmic Death: After all the chaos and tragedy he causes, and all with that insufferable smirk on his face, it's highly vindicating to see his shock and horror when the Tuunbaq refuses him as a shaman, bites down on his arm, then seizes him and rips him apart.
• Kill and Replace: Whoever he is, he murdered the real Cornelius Hickey, dumped his body into Regent's Canal, and used his seaman's certificate to bluff his way onto the Terror.
• Laughing Mad: When he finally snaps for good and murders Irving and one other crewman, the camera spends some time lingering on him laughing hysterically while half naked and clutching himself in a very disturbing fashion.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: When it comes to looks, Hickey’s got the rest of the expedition beat. It does an excellent job making him appear more charming than he should. Eating fresh meat- dog, cat, rat, human, and otherwise- when everyone else is still suffering from lead poisoning and scurvy keeps him shiny-haired and rosy-cheeked as ever, even if the same deprivations have already taken a heavy toll on his mental state.
• Lower-Class Lout: Everyone can tell that he grew up in poverty due to his accent, and he's a bully and sadist to his core.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Downplayed. A flashback reveals that the "Hickey" we know looks and sounds nothing like the real Cornelius Hickey. He was able to successfully bluff Hodgson, the one person on Terror who had met the real Hickey, simply by claiming that he'd grown a beard since their last meeting.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Is the only one who who goes to the effort to reseal Young's coffin. Or so he claims. Hickey is completely out of sight during this act, only reappearing as the camera cuts to show him placing his hand into his coat pocket...
  • He does appear to show some sympathy for Magnus Manson and comes to his aid when he sees him being threatened by Irving for being too afraid to take a body into the Dead Room.
  • He tries to rescue the men trapped in the burning carnival tent, and succeeds... but accidentally kills Dr. MacDonald in the process.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Invoked, subverted and deconstructed, as despite Hickey's repeated insistence that those around him not 'put their morals above their practicals', all of his 'practical' solutions are, at best, short-sighted and, at worst, actively hazardous to the survival of the crew as a whole and often himself in particular, making his approach far less practical than other less short-term expedient solutions.
• Sanity Slippage: His degrading sanity coupled with a lust for power leads him to ruin the expedition’s defenses by killing Neptune the dog. He then sacrifices any real hope of the expedition’s survival by slaughtering a helpful Inuit family. He does this only because it would make Crozier right, and he wanted to undermine him and take over. Had he just let Crozier and Irving work with the natives, they all could’ve walked out of the Arctic with untainted food and survived. Then Hickey goes completely off the deep end once he stages his mutiny. It makes him even more dangerous, and much more unpredictable, culminating in a bizarre attempt to take control of the Tuunbaq. He never considers the possibility the Tuunbaq wasn’t interested in another shaman or at least a white one, nor does he ever consider it wouldn’t accept one that murdered a large number of the people that worship it.
• Slasher Smile: Hickey is frequently seen with a smile on his face. Even when he's killing people. Hell, especially when he's killing people.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Evolves into this after the mutiny. He thinks he's a Machiavellian schemer who's every bit the leader that Crozier is, when in reality he's just a lunatic who's convinced a small group of sick, starving men to go along with his doomed plan to save themselves. Him being a threat is less because of his standing a genuine chance of usurping leadership from Crozier, and more his insane attempts to do so putting the survivors in further jeopardy.
• Smug Snake: Definitely, especially after he starts to truly go off the deep end in the latter half of the series.
• The Sociopath: All of his more human moments in the first half are fake, he is this at his core. His arc is just the viewer slowly realizing that all the little ways he seems off are his real personality shining through. He’s one of the more realistically portrayed examples, as he can’t fool everyone and the longer people spend around him the more they sense he isn’t what he says.
• Start of Darkness: When he tries to take the admittedly misguided initiative and save the party by capturing Lady Silence and bringing her in for questioning, he's not lauded as he clearly expected, but instead is harshly punished for going against orders and humiliatingly beaten in front of everyone. You can see the mind inside him hardening and growing even more sour. It's eventually averted, when he's revealed to have been a murderous criminal from England all along.
• Stupid Evil: It's uncertain how much of this is Hickey himself and how much is the starvation/lead poisoning etc, but Hickey consistently dooms himself and everyone else with his spitefulness and pettiness. His last act seals the deal; he honestly believes the Tuunbaq would accept a white shaman who's already caused the death of several of its own people.
  • Hickey reveals that even before they set sail he murdered the real Cornelius Hickey to assume his identity and take his place on the voyage. Crozier tells him with no irony whatsoever that he could have easily just joined up.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: It isn’t made entirely clear if Hickey caused the Tuunbaq’s death due to the foulness of his soul, like in the book. The Tuunbaq's death seems to be a combination of several factors, but Hickey (or rather his body) certainly contributed.
• Violent Glaswegian: He's the most violent villain in the show, and he mentions that he grew up in poverty in Glasgow.
• Walking Spoiler: Oh, you think the Tuunbaq is the only villain?
• Worthy Opponent: Seems to think Crozier is this to him towards the end. Crozier thinks he's a homicidal maniac and treats him like a joke, but Hickey by then is too high off of himself to really notice.
• Would Hurt a Child: He slaughters an entire Inuit family, including a little girl no more than six.

HMS Erebus

Franklin

Sir John Franklin

Captain

"Educate this creature as to the dominion of the Empire, and the will of the Lord behind it."

Portrayed By: Ciarán Hinds

"It's going to be tight, but that's what we signed up for, an adventure for Queen and Country. An adventure of a lifetime. That's what you tell the men."

Captain of HMS Erebus and commander of the expedition, Sir John Franklin is an experienced leader with a blemished record in the Royal Navy, a man "everyone likes, but no one respects." He saw men die under his leadership on a previous polar expedition, and, nearing the end of his uneven career, would like to retire in full glory as the man who finally discovered the Northwest Passage. But despite his best efforts, his ambition puts his men in horrible danger and he must try to undo the damage caused by his Victorian hubris.

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• Adaptational Heroism: In the book, Sir John was depicted as outwardly affable on the surface, but embodied the worst aspects of his era, being a reactionary, a virulent racist, a xenophobe, a sexist and a snob. In addition to this, he was a self-righteous, hypocritical, petty, pompous coward who would never concede to his own mistakes, seemed envious of every other living creature and feared sex more than the Tuunbaq. Conversely, by downplaying these qualities, the show makes him worlds more sympathetic. He's still a pompous snob, but he's shown to be more of a product of his time than a truly bad person, and his affable nature seems to come from a genuinely sincere place. He cares for the crew of Erebus and Terror. He's also shown to desperately seek Crozier's friendship, and goes out of his way to avoid hurting other people's feelings. Sir John also admits to his own mistakes, his racism is downplayed (although strongly hinted at), he's more socially at ease with his men and his greatest flaw is his self-blinding ambition, which itself stems from a desire for redemption. Even his eulogy for Gore comes across as heartfelt, rather than the self-aggrandizing opportunity to sermonize it was in the books. At times he borders on Adaptational Personality Change.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Sir John Franklin an Upper-Class Twit full of Victorian hubris or an Officer and a Gentleman who projects confidence and optimism to be an inspiring example to keep them hopeful and not start a downward spiral? The show offers ample room for both interpretations.
  • On the one hand he considered but ultimately blows off Crozier's suggestion to sail a safer path in favour of a more direct route, using the fact that Crozier's idea is speculation (albeit WELL-FOUNDED speculation, and speculation that turns out to be right) as a thin cover for wanting to get the glory of conquering the passage as fast as possible. On the other hand when they are first frozen in his quote is as follows "Your demeanour should be all cheer, gentlemen. You understand? It's going to be tight, but that's what we signed up for, an adventure for Queen and Country. An adventure of a lifetime. That's what you tell the men." He knows their situation is bad, but he doesn't want to have the crew panicking over their dire situation and showed competent leadership prior to his appointment as expedition commander.
• The Captain: Of the Erebus.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Tuunbaq tears off his leg, drags him for some distance, then throws him down a hole bored in the ice. He lands headfirst in a fire bucket suspended in the hole, causing further injury. It’s not done with him.
  • In the book the monster ambushes the blind, grabs him, bites off both of his legs, and then throws him headfirst through a layer of ice into the sea. Somehow still alive, he almost makes his way back to the hole he made in the ice only for the Tuunbaq to appear in the water with him and bite off his face and the front part of his skull
• Deadpan Snarker: He has some wit.
  "I think that's all for now, then, Graham, since we don't appear to be sinking. Wake me if that should change."
  • Notably, this is in contrast to his book counterpart, who is described as having no sense of humor whatsoever.
• Death by Irony: One could argue it's his camaraderie with his men, which is his greatest strength as a leader, that seals his fate: If he hadn't left the ship to check on the men in the blind, and then stayed with them just to be sociable, the Tuunbaq might not have killed him— or a least not as quickly and easily as it did.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Refuses to allow Crozier to send an eight-man team hundreds of miles to go get help, fearing that they will be lost. Crozier tries to spell it out to him just how screwed they are and that if no help comes and the summer does not end up thawing them out, their rations may not last and they'll all either starve or freeze to death, or maybe worse.
• Driven by Envy: Franklin is clearly jealous of the respect and admiration that James Clark Ross and Crozier receive for their successful Antarctic expedition. His leading his ill-fated expedition to find the Holy Grail of polar exploration is his attempt to finally receive his deserved recognition. Notably, in keeping with his Nice Guy attitude, he doesn't hold anything against Ross or Crozier personally and is eager to be friends with them.
• Fatal Flaw: His desire for approbation and to be loved (particularly by his men) is what leads Franklin to carry on searching for the Passage even as the weather turns poor, and then to refuse to send a team to search for help on the off-chance that those men will die - decisions that both had very poor consequences. It's even what gets him killed, as remaining in the hunting blind after Tozer invites him to stick around and help kill the Tuunbaq leads to him being slaughtered by the beast instead.
• A Father to His Men:
  • The men love him, and generally he is very good to them. He can be inspirational in a way Crozier cannot. Even after Franklin's "Reason You Suck" Speech to Crozier, when Crozier reads the eulogy he had written for Lieutenant Gore, Crozier is moved to tears by the compassion and warmth Sir John had for those under his command.
  • On the other hand, Franklin is also a deconstruction of this trope, showing why it's possible to care for them too much. To wit, once the expedition becomes stranded, Franklin refuses to risk sending a small party south to get help, out of a desire to not lose any more men. But by refusing to risk a few men, he ultimately loses all of them. The Tuunbaaq kills the party Crozier eventually sends, but Franklin was still foolish not to realize the risk of refusing to send them in the first place.
• Genius Bonus: Doubles with Rewatch Bonus. When Fitzjames is regaling the officers' dinner with his Opium War story, Franklin has an uncharacteristically sour expression on his face listening to Fitzjames. Why? The real John Franklin was at the Battle of Trafalgar and was one of the few survivors of the battle from his ship, at a mere 18 years of age. He had hearing damage throughout his life from the battle. So he would not appreciate Fitzjames even indirectly comparing himself to Admiral Nelson, one of the greatest admirals in British and all naval history, who was killed at Trafalgar. when Franklin actually fought in the battle and saw mates die all around. Second, due to his wartime experiences, John Franklin was a pacifist (which was why he pursued a career going on expeditions of discovery rather than as a line officer in any of the various war zones where the Royal Navy was active at the time) so he doubly would not like the story because he hated anything that glorifies war and death. However he doesn't want to deflate Fitzjames and wants to encourage him, especially since he knows of Fitzjames' past.
• Hypocrite: He wishes Crozier would rise up to his position as the expedition's second-in-command more, and also wishes Francis would confide in him and not let his personal problems bleed into his professional work. When Crozier finally gives Sir John his candid thoughts about how serious their situation is and what he thinks they should do to solve it, Sir John gives him a withering "Reason You Suck" Speech that crosses into rather unprofessional lines, ignores his opinion, (again) tells him he is unfit for command altogether, and scoffs at Crozier's affirmation of their friendship. Given Crozier's avoidance of him, he has reason to doubt Crozier's declaration of friendship, but he had no need to be so abrasive and rough in his speech.
  • Averted somewhat in that his "Reason You Suck" Speech contains a lot of truths about Crozier and his tone is regretful rather than spiteful and he is clearly tired of Crozier's pessimism worrying it will badly affect the men if they see their commanding officers despairing.
• Historical Beauty Update: The real John Franklin was short, pudgy and mostly bald, though Hinds seems to have tried to mitigate it by giving Franklin a habitually undignified facial expression that makes him look a bit like a sturgeon. Hinds also appears to be wearing something to bulk himself up to make him appear more pudgy on the stomach area, as his belly does show quite a bit when we see him in profile.
  • To be fair, Franklin DOES have this expression in the only photograph of him because he was very ill when it was taken.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:Very much so in the book, where Franklin is a pompous buffoon and a coward who exhibits all the worst traits of his time, and is subsequently very different to the historical John Franklin. The show's interpretation is much closer to the real deal,though it is still off. The show only talks about his failed first expedition that had hints of I Am a Humanitarian. John Franklin learned the lessons from his first expedition, and his following two expeditions into the Arctic were successful. Before departing England, Franklin made a point of asking the Real Life John Ross to come and rescue him if Ross did not hear from his expedition in a few years, and Ross agreed. The real Franklin therefore was not obliviously optimistic. Franklin also worried extensively over ensuring that the expedition had a diverse set of provisions and did not rely too much on tinned food. Finally, the show only mentions that John Franklin failed as governor of the penal colony in Tasmania. The reason Franklin failed was due to his attempts at very modest reforms designed to improve the abysmal conditions in which the prisoners lived, but this rubbed certain interests the wrong way, resulting in his subordinate John Montagu playing politics against him and using his connections to get him fired. Multiple contemporary and modern sources regard Franklin as a competent governor and hold him in a higher regard in general versus the show and book's Franklin.
• I Reject Your Reality: He is kind of just hoping for the best, believing that the divine will see them through. When Crozier confronts him, he continues to refuse to face facts.
  • Arguably Averted - Ciaran Hinds shows in numerous scenes Sir John's growing doubt and even quiet desperation as he realises that he may have led his expedition to certain doom, and he is haunted by the near-failure of his first expedition to the Arctic. Demonstrated when Fitzjames tells him "Sometimes I think you love your men more than even God loves them, Sir John." His response "For all our sakes, let's hope you're wrong." He knows they're in a dangerous place. He's optimistic but not oblivious. Possibly the best example is just after the ships are first frozen in; he encourages his officers and tells them to keep up the men's spirits, but as soon as they walk away his smile disappears, replaced with a worried frown as he contemplates their predicament.
• Karmic Death: One interpretation of his demise at the paws of the Tuunbaq, which hasn't escaped either Fitzjames or Crozier; it throws him down the hole he ordered the body of 'Lady Silence's' father to be unceremoniously dumped in earlier.
• Kick the Dog: Makes crystal clear to Crozier just how highly he really thinks of him in episode three
  • Arguably averted in that Franklin is by that point mostly exasperated with Crozier spreading melancholy that is not helpful to morale in what Franklin had called a 'tight' situation.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When he realizes that what Crozier warned him about has come to pass and they are all now marooned in the Arctic, you can just see this reaction plastered all over his face.
• Never My Fault: Averted, he admits to Crozier that not following his advice was a mistake.
• Nice Guy: Sir John is considerate of others, and the closest he's come so far to chastising his men is when he thinks Fitzjames is being too hard on Crozier. Even his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Crozier is steeped in regret.
  • In a Rewatch Bonus when Fitzjames complains to Franklin that looking at Crozier's sour countenance towards him 'sometimes I have to remind myself I am not a fraud', Franklin doesn't comment on this this means that Fitzjames confided in Franklin that he is a bastard, but Franklin doesn't hold it against him and assures Fitzjames he is not a fraud.
• Noble Bigot: His prejudice isn't as blatant as in the book, but it seems clear that he considers the Arctic natives heathen savages. His expression when Lady Silence and her father are brought on board says it all, but he does still allow Dr. Goodsir to try to save the man his men accidentally shot. He later orders that the shaman's body be unceremoniously dumped down an ice hole with no thought whatsoever for the man's burial customs, even though he affords a Christian funeral for his own men. He also makes some more subtle allusions to Crozier's Irish origins.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Besides his disastrous stint at governorship, he's also infamous for the fallout of a similarly unfortunate expedition where he had to subsist on an unorthodox diet of local moss and the leather from his own boots to survive.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a needlessly brutal one to Crozier in The Ladder, though he’s right about several of Crozier’s failings.
  "You are the worst kind of second, Francis. You abuse your freedoms. You complain in the safety of speculation, you claim foresight in disasters that never happen, and you are weak in your vices because your rank affords you privacy and deference. You've made yourself miserable and distant, and hard to love, and you blame the world for it. I'm not the sailor you are, Francis, never will be. But you will never be fit for command. And, as your Captain, I take some responsibility for that. For the vanity of your outlook. I should have curbed these tendencies, rather than sympathized with them, because you seem to have confused my sympathy with tolerance, but there is a limit to how much I can tolerate, and that is where we are presently standing! There are some things we were never meant to be to one another. I see that now. Friends on my side. Relations on yours. So let us turn our energies back to being what the Admiralty, and life, have seen fit to make us. We should give that our best. There can be no argument between us there."
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: He’s attacked and mauled by a giant polar bear demon, which rips his leg off. Then he’s thrown down a hole barely large enough to fit him. He lands on a burning pot of red hot coals. THEN the pot falls into freezing cold arctic water. Adding insult to injury, his body can never be recovered since it's now under pack ice.
  • His death is turned up to 11 in the book, where the monster bites BOTH of his legs off and tosses him THROUGH the ice (not through a hole). Incredibly he doesn't die immediately, and almost drags himself out before the monster attacks again and bites his face off.

Fitzjames

James Fitzjames

Commander

"What else do you require? Respect? Well, earn it."

Portrayed By: Tobias Menzies

"I was quick to want the world rid of its fools an hour ago. I forget sometimes how much an exemplar I am among them."

Second in command of Erebus and third in command of the expedition, James Fitzjames is a rising star in the Royal Navy. He has secured John Franklin's confidence in spite of his never having sailed in the polar regions before, and develops an enmity toward Crozier. Fitzjames perceives Crozier as a joyless alcoholic bore, but he secretly knows that Crozier sees through his self-aggrandizing bluster. And Crozier is not wrong: When the expedition finds itself in desperate straits, the confident mask Fitzjames presents to the world begins to slip, revealing a man with crippling secrets.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Relative to the book, where Fitzjames, while not bad-looking, is a chubby, childish-looking man who ends up putting on weight while icebound... only to end up losing it quite dramatically when the situation turns dire. For the real man, see Historical Beauty Update below.
• Adaptational Personality Change: He’s largely a Flat Character in the book, and spends most of it handling matters not presented to the reader. He’s characterized as your typical officer, more polite and lacking the show version’s more annoying traits. He also has no enmity whatsoever with Crozier, and is never not friendly and cooperative with him. He’s even able to get Crozier to laugh at one point. In here, he's more of an outward Glory Hound and initially a bit of a yes-man to Sir John, prone to overtly complaining about Crozier's behavior and occasional bouts of frivolity. (This is also true relative to his historical counterpart, who was by all accounts a good-natured prankster.)
• Agent Peacock: Relatively speaking. He has a Custom Uniform and elaborately styled long hair, and also cross-dresses, but he's also a war hero with Nerves of Steel.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted, despite being presented as the handsomest of the commanding officers, and certainly the most aware of and proud of it, Fitzjames is badly disfigured by scurvy and sepsis and ultimately dies covered in sores, with bleeding gums and eyes and with his previously glossy, wavy hair going thin and brittle.
• Body Horror: Poor Fitzjames has a particularly agonizing death, as he succumbs to illness which causes his body to rot and his old wounds to re-open. It's horrifying to witness, and even if he had lived he would have probably been left paralyzed and with only one eye and one arm. In the book, Fitzjames succumbs to the then-unknown illness we call botulism after eating a spoiled food can. He spends several days in extreme pain and sheer terror as his body is slowly paralyzed, and finally dies, fully conscious of what's happening, completely unable to move or speak. Botulism paralyzes the lungs and respiratory system last, and even finally dying is eventful and scary.
• Custom Uniform: A mild example- while his dress uniforms are pretty much the same as the others’, he has an interesting collection of comparatively fashionable accessories and casual outfits assembled from pieces that ‘’technically’’ fall under uniform requirements, such as a white waistcoat-sweater combination, a fairly close-fitting blue wool overcoat, a full-length cape and a fur-trimmed slop coat with an attached capelet.
• The Dandy: See Custom Uniform above, and also his (initially) clearly prized and elaborately cared-for hair.
• Death by Adaptation: Possibly. Though it will likely never be proven, it's suspected that the real-life Fitzjames was one of the survivors that settled down among the Inuit. The man thought to be Fitzjames is reported to have lived to a grand old age and started a family.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Fitzjames needs badly to be liked by pretty much everybody he meets (due to his anxiety about his background) and spends the first few episodes alternating between trying a little too hard to be friendly and familiar with Crozier and ready to wring the other captain's neck for his gloominess and alcoholism.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, he dies of food-poisoning from one of the spoiled food-cans; in the show, his illness eventually leaves him bedridden, forcing Crozier to give him a Mercy Kill with poison so he won't suffer through the full torment of scurvy.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: He has done everything he claims to have done, but essentially cheated his way into the expedition by helping cover up a scandal involving an admiral's son. In fact, his foster family helped him cheat on being promoted to midshipman in the first place, meaning that his entire naval career and everything he has done as part of it is based on a careful web of lies, including concealing his illegitimacy and real parentage as well. This weighs increasingly heavily on him as things get worse and worse on the expedition, but by the time he confesses to Crozier that he's a fake, Crozier assures him that he's still acquitted himself bravely, which gives him the confidence to continue acting with Nerves of Steel even as he's Secretly Dying.
• Fire-Forged Friends: He grows into one of Crozier’s closest friends and staunchest allies rather quickly, as both men work through their issues to try and lead the Expedition home. Crozier is absolutely distraught at his death and does everything he can to comfort him. It’s clear by the end they’re the best of friends. Crozier even tells Blanky he can’t stand to lose another friend in the same day as Fitzjames which sadly does happen on the same day since Blanky also dies.
• First-Name Basis: Tries a little too hard to force this between himself and Crozier early on, addressing Crozier as Francis virtually every other sentence, much to Crozier's intense irritation. Crozier calls him out on this in First Shot's a Winner, Lads, though by this point he has fallen so far off the deep end that Fitzjames doesn't even take the moment to be offended. It sticks once they actually are friends, but by then Crozier is on the same page (albeit still less frequently).
• Glory Hound: Fitzjames is on the expedition for the sake of bolstering his own reputation, and doesn't understand why anyone else wouldn't do the same (and in fact seems to think it should go unquestioned in other officers as long as they do their jobs). Crozier is often irritated by his boastful nature. He’s a very tragic example, as he admits to Crozier he only ever pursued glory and recognition because the more of it he attained, the less likely it was that people would realize he was illegitimate.
• Heroic Bastard: Illegitimate, with a probably-Portuguese mother (in an era where that would have qualified as being mixed-race), and living most of his life in fear of being found out. He constantly performs dangerous and heroic deeds in an attempt to avoid giving anyone any ideas about his background.
  • The real Fitzjames was raised by a loving foster family, but his illegitimate birth and abandonment by his biological father weighed on him in spite of this. His father's identity is uncertain, but historians believe the most likely candidate is Sir James Gambier, a diplomat at the British consulate in Rio de Janeiro (where Fitzjames was born, though he was sent to England as an infant).
• Historical Beauty Update: A mild example that’s more a matter of taste. The real James Fitzjames was considered “the handsomest man in the Royal Navy”, and his portraits show that he certainly was not bad-looking by any means- but he and Menzies look nothing alike, even in the features they technically share (strong noses, hooded eyes, and uneven teeth). It more or less comes down to whether the beholder prefers a tall, round-faced man in his early thirties with shortish, curly auburn hair and a little scar on one cheek or a tall, square-jawed man with long dark hair and deep laugh lines.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: When he's dying from scurvy, he asks Crozier to poison him so that his suffering can end; Crozier has to physically help him swallow the poison so that his body won't reject it.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When he points out Crozier's blatant melancholy isn't doing the crew's already flagging morale any great favors.
  • He chews Crozier out for using booze to run away from the fact that he is now in command. Fitzjames is trying to keep order and discipline over the men, (who are growing increasingly afraid and restless) but Crozier just locks himself away all day and all but refuses to lead them, all while demanding respect and obedience he hasn't actually earned.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's pompous and a bit dismissive, but he has the expedition's (and the men's) best interests at heart.
  • Early on, when Gore is giving Franklin a report that Franklin breezily dismisses, Fitzjames, who is reading quietly off to one side, catches Gore's eye and winks in approval- hinting that his reasons for clinging so stubbornly to Franklin's judgment are mostly because he likes the old commander so much and aches for his approval, and that he actually does recognize when the other officers are trying their best, too.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Comes by default with being played by Tobias Menzies, but also very fitting of Fitzjames’s ultimate innate goodness and willingness to self-sacrifice.
• Naïve Newcomer: Not that he'd admit it, but this turns out to be the main reason he kowtows so much to Franklin. He's in way over his head and implicitly trusts Franklin, who is something of a Parental Substitute to him, rather than just sucking up to him.
• Nerves of Steel: He demonstrates this during the Tuunbaq's rampage of the camp in Episode 8, calmly gathering rockets from the armory while the beast is slaughtering the men outside, and then firing a rocket into the Tuunbaq's face while it's charging right at him, showing complete sang-froid the entire time.
  • He also walks as long as he can even as his body begins to literally rot while he’s still alive, due to not wanting to be like John Ross (who forced his crew to drag him in a sledge while they worked their asses off). When he can’t walk any longer, the men recognize that he tried his best and have no resentment toward pulling him.
• Noble Bigot: A mild case that gets better. After Franklin's death, he goes through a period of being all too quick to blame Lady Silence for it and generally accusing the Inuit as a whole of being "covetous, treacherous, and cruel", to the point of growing stammering, teary-eyed and distraught with anger any time he has to speak much of Lady Silence at all. He does, however, balk at the eventual removal of her protection, and by the time the crews have to abandon ship he seems to have gotten over this attitude altogether with the realization that she had nothing to do with it and he joins in Crozier's condemnation of Hickey for murdering an Inuit family. ^note He's a rather odd choice for this trope, as his historical counterpart was quite curious about the Inuit and recorded a few perfectly friendly and respectful interactions with them before he disappeared, and one anecdote indicates a possible Franklin survivor matching his description may have assimilated among them.
• Not So Above It All: Has as much of a blast at the Carnivale (before everything goes pear-shaped) as the men he's meant to be commanding, including dressing up as the Goddess Britannia◊ (the personification of Britain, along the lines of the American Uncle Sam) and being carried around on the shoulders of a small group of men, pumping his shield in the air and chanting "oi" with them. The look of disapproval on Crozier's face throws cold water on his experience almost immediately.
• Parental Abandonment: Never knew his probably Portuguese mother, and fobbed off on an adoptive family as quickly as possible by his father, leaving him with quite the complex.
• Pass Fail: Conceals being half-Portuguese, due to that being mixed race by Victorian standards, even if generally not by modern ones.
• Repetitive Name: Obviously. As it turns out, he’s rather ashamed of it, as it was made up mostly to have a name to put on his baptismal certificate, and his father chose a bad pun hinting at his illegitimacy- “fitz-“, meaning “son of”, was in earlier eras (long before the time in which Fitzjames was born) a way for a man to claim paternity of his illegitimate children, such as Henry VIII’s son Henry Fitzroy (“Henry Son-of-the-King”). Fitzjames’s father had no interest in raising or claiming him and gave him a name linked with illegitimacy anyway as a joke.
• The Storyteller: He’s a very bad one. All the stories he tells, he’s told many, many times to the same people he’s stuck with for months to years at a time. When he tries to tell one (again) during an officer’s dinner, everyone present is stone faced and silent. Except for Crozier, who looks ready to jump overboard to avoid hearing more of it, and Hodgson, who - in a Genius Bonus - was there for the incident in question and shares Fitzjames's delight in the retelling.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He's a good-looking man with dark, wavy hair and a jawline that can cut stone. The handsome part takes a rather heartbreaking dive almost immediately after he finally reveals his true insecurities to Crozier, and physically he's a mess when he dies.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Crozier and he don't get on. Sir John tries to mend the rift, but that doesn’t really happen until he’s gone.
• Verbal Tic: Addresses Crozier on a First-Name Basis far more often than is necessary and long before they have come to be friends. It starts off as a slightly forced attempt at verbal intimacy, becomes a dressing-down, and then ends up a genuine sign of close friendship.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He confronts Crozier when it's clear the captain's drinking has simply grown out of control.
• What You Are in the Dark: Despite considering himself a Fake Ultimate Hero and having only joined the expedition to begin with as part of his need to construct a “great, gilded life” for himself, as the going grows more and more hopeless, Fitzjames turns out to be far more genuinely brave than he thinks he is. On his deathbed, alone with Crozier he asks Crozier to butcher his body to feed the others so they have a little more of a chance at survival. Crozier refuses, but it shows that for all his posturing and swashbuckling bluster, Fitzjames is willing to do the right thing for the men, even at the cost of not having even so much as remains to bury.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: He is shown considering wearing a lovely dress to the Carnivale and admiring the effect it has held against his body in the mirror. While he doesn't wear that particular costume, he still ends up going as the Goddess Britannia. It counts as a Historical In-Joke, because the real Fitzjames is attested to have performed in amateur theatrical performances in drag.

Goodsir

Dr. Henry "Harry" D.S. Goodsir

Assistant Surgeon

"I don't know what's happening here. I truly don't. This is not how Englishmen act. I, I don't recognize this behavior."

Portrayed By: Paul Ready

"This place is beautiful to me, even now. To see it, with eyes as a child's. There is wonder here, Captain."

The most junior of the expedition's four doctors, Henry Goodsir is a gentle, moral soul who signs on with the Royal Navy’s Discovery Service as a surgeon and naturalist to explore the natural world of the Arctic. But his open-minded intellect and empathetic nature make him the first to realize something supernatural is also in play, and he sets about trying to understand the forces working to destroy the men even while he redoubles his efforts to try to connect with this vast and uncanny landscape and its indigenous people.

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• Action Survivor: He survives two encounters with the Tuunbaq.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In both book and show, he suffers under Hickeys treatment after being kidnapped, being tortured mentally and physically before committing suicide, and being eaten in the show. While the details of the real Goodsir’s final days are unknown, a skeleton later identified as him was found buried in a shallow grave bearing no signs of cannibalism, and with tests suggesting that he died from an infected tooth.
• Adaptation Expansion: Since Lieutenant Irving is more a secondary character in the series, Goodsir gets his role of interacting with Lady Silence and possibly developing a crush on her. Given the circumstances, though, nothing ever comes of it, making it a tragic case of "what might have been".
• Adaptational Heroism: Goodsir is much stronger and more resilient than his novel counterpart (although this is made clear to be a lack of experience).
• Adaptational Nationality: The real Harry Goodsir was Scottish, born in Anstruther and educated in Edinburgh. In-series, not only is he given an English accent, which could be explained as an affectation, but some of his dialogue seems to imply that he's an Englishman.
  • It's possible this is because of the Cultural Posturing of the time. It was considered better to be an Englishman than Scottish or Irish (hence Hickey's claim to have discarded his Irish accent and Crozier's general resentment toward English society), so Goodsir may simply be trying to fit in, by distancing himself from his origins.
• Beard of Sorrow: Although he's clean-shaven for most of the series, when he gets kidnapped by Hickey, he grows a beard while imprisoned in their camp and with his health deteriorating, culminating in his suicide.
• Break the Cutie: Being the most kindhearted and idealistic member of the crew, he has the farthest to fall over the course of the story. And boy, does he ever. His breakdown after Morfin's death is only the beginning.
• Character Development: He starts out as a meek figure who struggles to stand up for himself, but he grows more confident and outspoken as the story unfolds. Compare his early interactions with Dr. Stanley and Sir Franklin to his battle of wills with Hickey in episode 9 and his subsequent Taking You with Me plan.
• Driven to Suicide: He kills himself to avoid being of further use to Hickey’s crew, and to poison them with his tainted body.
• Good Counterpart: To the bitter, world-weary Dr. Jerk Dr. Stanley.
• Good Is Not Soft: As friendly, kind-hearted, sincere and sweet-natured as he is, Goodsir is no fool and no coward. He stands up to Hickey, only relenting when another man's life is threatened.
• The Heart: Goodsir does his best to comfort other people, and bonds with Lady Silence despite the entire ship's objections to her.
• Heroic BSoD: After he's forced to carve up Gibson's corpse to feed Hickey's group, he lies down and simply stares unblinkingly into space.
• The Load: Subdued compared to his novel counterpart, but still present. Goodsir is still a Naïve Newcomer to both the world of medicine and the Arctic, and has difficulty keeping up with the other men when hauling during Gore’s excursion. It’s far more noticeable in the book, where he struggles just to keep pace with the hauling crew, even when not hauling himself, and is clearly not built for the rough life of a sailor.
• Nice Guy: Goodsir is an inherently decent man, and it shows in his actions. He offers to do his part during the exploratory mission, and desperately tries to save Lady Silence's father after he's been shot.
• No-Sell: Early on, it's made clear that he's immune to Hickey's charm, which even Crozier was initially fooled by.
  Goodsir: Does that really work with anyone, Mr. Hickey?
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Played with. When Lt. Gore addresses him as "Doctor," Goodsir insists that he’s "just a surgeon, and more of a naturalist." Gore replies, "That’s good enough for me, Doctor."
• Oh, Crap!: Gets one when he analyzes photographs of David Bryant's body and realizes that to make the marks present, whatever attacked him had thumbs like a human. Then he gets another one when he works out the cause of the unusual sickness that's afflicting the crew.
• Regret Eating Me: He opts to commit suicide and poison himself in order to kill Hickey’s crew. Unlike the book, he doesn’t even give them a warning not to eat him, instead simply letting them dine away. It causes those that eat him substantial pain and would have killed them had the Tuunbaq not done it first.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: He tells Hickey in no uncertain terms that he will not be cutting up Gibson's body for food. Although he does relent to save Hodgson's life, Hickey's response is still enough of a weak, desperate threat that the power of Goodsir's words isn't removed.
• Taking You with Me: The intent behind his suicide. He warns Crozier only to eat his feet, but gives the rest of Hickey's team no such warning, so they eat him and become poisoned by his flesh.

Other Characters

Lady Silence

Lady Silence/Silna

"And who is going to stop you? You use the wind to carry you here. You use the forest to hide inside. You use all this and don't even want to be here. You don't want to live. Look at you. Even if I could help, you don't want it. Why do you want to die?"

Portrayed By: Nive Nielsen

A member of the region's Netsilik people and the daughter of a formidable shaman, "Lady Silence" as she is nicknamed by the men of the expedition, begins our story as a dutiful young woman at risk of being overwhelmed by the destabilizing presence of two ships full of Europeans upsetting the delicate balance of her homeland. But she must quickly learn to manage her fears and find a way to attempt to protect her own people as well as some of the men on the expedition for whom she has come to feel an unexpected friendship. She and she alone may hold the key to reversing the supernatural disaster taking place alongside the men's desperate race for survival.

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• Abled in the Adaptation: In the novel, Silence's tongue is long gone by the time she meets the expedition. In the show she still has it for the first several episodes, so she's able to communicate with Crozier, Goodsir, and Blanky.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: While in the book she was always calm, collected and had no fear of either the Franklin expedition or the monster, in the series she's often on edge and fearful, not at all confident that she can control the Tuunbaq. Indeed, the ferocity of the Tuunbaq also seems tied to her will to control it. When she cuts out her own tongue, the Tuunbaq does not attack for two episodes. When she leaves in disgust at the murder of an innocent family by mutinous sailors led by Big Bad Hickey in Episode 8, the Tuunbaq comes back with a vengeance. By the time she runs back to save what is left of the expedition, it is too late
• Adaptational Modesty: Along with the changes to her personality, the series excises book-Silence's penchant for going around topless whenever possible.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: The series eliminates her eventual marriage to Crozier, along with their children.
• Age Lift: Her age in the book is unclear, but she is indicated to be somewhere in her late teens. Nive Nielsen was thirty-eight/nine during filming.
• Blood from the Mouth: A non-fatal example, after she cuts out her tongue as an offering to the Tuunbaq.
• The Cast Showoff: Nive Nielsen is a singer-songwriter by trade; she gets a scene in which she sings to the Tuunbaq, allowing her to show off her vocal skills.
• The Exile: For being a shaman who lost the Tuunbaq, she's sentenced to exile from her tribe. Despite the two-year Time Skip, Crozier never learns whether she's survived.
• Late to the Tragedy: After abandoning the crew in light of their murder of an innocent Netsilik family, she turns around to try to help them in the third act, but only manages to save Crozier, the Sole Survivor.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Only in the last minutes of the finale does Crozier learn her real name: Silna.
• Tongue Trauma: After months of indecision, she finally takes on the role of shaman to the Tuunbaq, taking her father's place — and offering up her tongue after cutting it out.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She gives a pretty brutal one to Crozier (and by extension the expedition itself) in her native language, as seen in her character quote.
• You Are in Command Now: With her father's death, control over the Tuunbaq has fallen to her. The only problem is that she's as frightened of it as the white men are, and reluctant to interact with it.

Recurring

HMS Terror

Little

Edward Little

First Lieutenant

Portrayed By: Matthew McNulty

• Beleaguered Assistant: When Crozier's alcoholism is in full swing, he very unhappily carries out orders to commandeer alcohol from the stores on Erebus to feed Crozier's alcoholism. When Crozier decides to go cold turkey, Little has to take command as the senior officer on Terror.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, he is killed alongside Peglar and several others by the Tuunbaq while exploring a lead onto the ice. In the show, he winds up one of the last to die, being found be Crozier in his last moments.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He reluctantly suggests leaving the sick behind during the march south to ease the burden on the other surviving crew. Crozier shoots him down. Once Little is in command, the surviving crew elect to do exactly that and you can see the dawning horror on Little's face when he points out he is sick. In a twist of Irony, Little is the last to die.
• Riddle for the Ages: Why he had gold chains sewn into his face before he died. It's one of the most bizarre mysteries in a series full of them. And yes, this is based on evidence given by real life Inuit who found some of the Franklin expedition dead in this condition.
• Stiff Upper Lip: Though far from a stone-cold stoic, Little never breaks down in tears or fully expresses his dismay even though he has many reasons and occasions to do so.
• Undying Loyalty: After Crozier gets abducted by Hickey's group, Little tries to organize a rescue despite Crozier's order to continue marching south. It doesn't work as the men are too exhausted and fed up with the situation to agree.
• You Are in Command Now: Crozier's abduction leaves him the ranking officer, not that rank matters much at that point. His first command order is overridden by a simple majority vote, a vote that was held before the order was even given.

Irving

John Irving

Third Lieutenant

Portrayed By: Ronan Raftery

A lieutenant on Terror, Lieutenant Irving is a religious man who happens upon Hickey’s “relations” with a fellow crew member, earning him the ire of the caulker’s mate.

---

• Adaptational Personality Change: In the book, Irving is a rakish young man who has multiple romantic conquests in his past and may have left a pregnant girl behind when he sailed for the Arctic. He's also infatuated with Lady Silence. This version of Irving has no hint of these tendencies.
• Condescending Compassion: The closest he gets to sympathy for Hickey is this; he essentially tries to turn Hickey away from homosexuality and toward either God or hobbies. It comes across as very patronizing, although foolishly well-intentioned.
  • Possibly subverted, depending on how you feel about it, by the fact that he genuinely believes Hickey was sexually assaulting an unwilling Gibson. In light of that, his suggestions come off as rather lenient.
• Desecrating the Dead: After Hickey murders Irving, he scalps and castrates the lieutenant's corpse.
• Pet the Dog: He’s compassionate toward Lady Silence, providing her a meal from the crew’s rations when Franklin orders her removed from the expedition, despite not being ordered to. He doesn’t seem to blame her at all for Gore’s fate either.
• Noble Bigot: Unsurprisingly for the time period, he's very homophobic and the very idea of gay sex visibly disturbs and repulses him. Still, he keeps it to himself when he catches Hickey and another man in a homosexual encounter and makes no attempt to punish or humiliate them, instead opting to offer them both a chance at redemption. Certainly not PC, but not malicious, either.
• Real Men Love Jesus: He's very pleased to be a devout Christian.

Jopson

Thomas Jopson

"I got you, Captain. You can count on that, sir."

Captain's Steward

Acting Third Lieutenant

Portrayed By: Liam Garrigan

Captain Crozier's steward on Terror.

---

• Beauty Equals Goodness: His unfailingly kind, loyal, and sweet-natured personality goes hand in hand with his handsome looks. Along with Goodsir, he is the most fully compassionate, warm and decent all round human being on the expedition.
• Blood from the Mouth: More like blood from the gums, but the first sign nonetheless that he is sick with lead poisoning.
• Break the Cutie: In his dying state, Jopson fully believes that Captain Crozier is a member of the party that has just abandoned him, and this leads him to utter despair.
  • Kill the Cutie: And what came of this.
• The Caretaker: He looks after Crozier while he goes through alcohol withdrawl. He was previously this for his mother.
• Cutting Back to Reality: The final episode has Jopson, in the last moments before his death, hallucinating a feast with Crozier seated at the head to the table, completely oblivious to him. He proceeds to crawl onto the table, knocking everything off in a desperate attempt to get Crozier to notice him - but then the scene cuts away and we see that he was only crawling on sharp rocks a little ways from his tent, the recipient of Sanity Slippage and the belief that Crozier left him for dead.
• Despair Event Horizon: Only the discovery that he's being left to die can trigger this.
• Dying Alone: In a truly Tear Jerker scene, Jopson dies alone in the middle of nowhere, having watched the remaining crew walk away and leave him behind forever.
• Field Promotion: Is promoted from an enlisted yeoman to a third lieutenant by Crozier in the field in a touching scene. Crozier says he’s never seen it before, but notably every single officer welcomes him into their group with open arms.
• Hidden Depths: At first, he appears to be little more than Crozier's support, but develops his own character and has a heartbreaking backstory of caring for his ailing, drug-addicted mother.
• Ho Yay: He is very devoted to his beloved Captain.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Remains idealistic, hopeful, moral, and devoted—until he is abandoned in the last episode. And even then, the worst he does is hallucinate in disbelief.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: A really stunning pair, clear as glass.
• Irony: Despite being the first to go against Lieutenant Little's suggestion of leaving those too ill to walk behind, Jopson nonetheless finds himself in this same position he never supported in the first place.
• The Jeeves: As Crozier's personal steward who takes care of him, well-mannered Jopson is this—though a much kinder and gentler variation of the usual standard.
• Married to the Job: Even when bedridden and seriously ill with lead poisoning, when Crozier comes to visit him, the first thing Jopson does is try to make himself look presentable while asking if there is anything he can do for his Captain.
• Nice Guy: A calm, genial, patient, gentle man.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He captures Hickey, knife-wielding murderer, offscreen and holds him captive until his execution.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: A heartbreaking, soul-crushing scene in the final episode involves a dying Jopson crawling on the ground, pleading to not be left behind by the crew—-of which he thinks Captain Crozier is a part—due to his sickness clouding his mind, and making him susceptible to Sanity Slippage.
• Pretty Boy: Wide eyed with a very charming face. Some in the show's fandom have even compared his good looks to that of a Disney prince.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Black haired and pale, and one of the best-looking men on the expedition.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Ticks all the boxes: he's 5'11", black-haired, and very good-looking.
• Tear Jerker: His death is rightly considered by many to be the most heartbreaking in the entire series. And in the book he dies on his birthday, just 31; starving, ill, cold, alone—and thinking that Crozier has left him for the dead.
• Time-Passage Beard: Grows one due to both the passing time, but moreso, the terrible situation he and the rest of the crew find themselves in.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Of course one of the nicest, kindest men has one of the worst, if not the worst, deaths in the entire series.
• True Companions: With Captain Crozier, which just makes the misunderstanding in the final episode all the more painful.
• Underestimating Badassery: Hickey seems convinced that the newly promoted Lieutenant Jopson will be a complete pushover who's never used a gun before. Turns out Jopson has been hunting with guns since he a boy, and his aim is acute, and he apprehends Hickey without incident. Later, he teams up with Blanky to hunt the Tuunbaq without hesitation. They fail to kill it, but not for lack of trying.
• Undying Loyalty: To Crozier, who may be something of a father figure to him according to some viewers, though to others, the mileage swerves rather hard in another direction.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: If you don't ascribe to that other theory about his feelings for Crozier, he considers him a father figure and gets very excited whenever Crozier shows affection or concern for him. He's more upset about (incorrectly) believing Crozier has abandoned him than his imminent death.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: As viewers were rather quick to notice.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Becomes the recipient of this when he, along with a few other dying men, are abandoned by the remaining crew.

Gibson

William "Billy" Gibson

Subordinate Officers' Steward

Portrayed By: Edward Ashley

• Ascended Extra: Gibson has no lines and is barely mentioned in the novel being just another steward occasionally seen doing his job. Here, he is a major recurring character with a distinct arc.
• Co-Dragons: To Hickey, with Tozer.
• Decomposite Character: He carries over Manson's sexual relationship with Hickey, but it becomes consensual (albeit strained) to make Hickey less of a Depraved Homosexual.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: He dies while wrapped in both Hickey's and Goodsir's arms as they struggle over his body.
• Dirty Coward: Fearing punishment, he lies to Irving about the consensual nature of his relationship with Hickey, painting himself as an innocent led astray and Hickey as a devious seducer.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Hickey murders him after it becomes clear that scurvy and lead poisoning have rendered him too weak to pull a sledge. He then forces Goodsir to butcher his corpse for meat.

Hartnell

Tom Hartnell

Able Seaman

Portrayed By: Jack Colgrave Hirst

• Adaptational Villainy: A minor example, but in the book Hartnell is never part of Hickey's mutinous clique as he is early in the series.
• Ascended Extra: Hartnell didn't get much to do in the book aside from taking over as Goodsir's assistant after Bridgens dies. In the series, he gets a decent amount of dialogue and his own character arc.
• The Atoner: He takes his lashings and sees his punishment as a second chance, after which he's steadfastly loyal to Crozier.
• Death by Adaptation: At the end of the book, he's still alive, although it's still implied he'll die along with the rest of the expedition's survivors.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: He's shot by Des Voeux, and dies in Crozier's arms, who gently reassures him that Hartnell will get to see his brother again.
• Good Counterpart: To Hickey. Whereas Hickey wanted to kidnap Lady Silence to increase his own power and sway over the crew and demonstrate his intelligence and therefore dominance, Hartnell wanted to just take initiative to help his captain and crewmates. Hickey gets a true Start of Darkness when he is flogged. Hartnell does not take it personally and shows Undying Loyalty to Crozier. Hartnell is compassionate. Hickey is selfish.
• Good Is Not Soft: One of the nicest members of the crew. Hartnell is also physically and mentally tough enough to be one of the last men standing without any signs of sickness until Des Voeux shoots him, and is prepared to stand down the Tuunbaq to save his crewmates. He's also sharp enough to suss out Hickey's true nature after they kidnap Silna, and makes a point of telling Hickey he's not going to listen to him again.
• Nice Guy: After his punishment, which he sees a chance to start anew, he turns out to be very kind and compassionate with his fellow sailors. He is also kind to Silna: paying her condolences for her father's death and sneaking her food when she is being turned off the ship.
• Taking the Bullet: He steps in front of Crozier when Des Voeux threatens him with a gun and is promptly shot dead.

MacDonald

Dr. Alexander MacDonald

Ship's Surgeon

Portrayed By: Charles Edwards

• Accidental Murder: He is killed during the Carnivale fire when Hickey accidentally stabs him while cutting a hole in the tent to help everyone escape.
• Good Counterpart: To Dr. Stanley. Whereas Stanley is a callous, racist man who treats everyone (especially blameless Goodsir) with varying degrees of disdain, MacDonald is a friendly fellow who encourages Goodsir.
• Nice Guy: One of the nicest on the expedition. It makes his accidental death all the more heartbreaking.

Hodgson

George Hodgson

Second Lieutenant

Portrayed By: Christos Lawton

"I'm not a captain. I'm not made of that."

• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the novel, Hickey murders him and has his body cut up for food. In the series, the Tuunbaq kills him during Hickey's abortive attempt to take control of the beast.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: A weak man at his core, Hodgson ends up joining with Hickey out of fear and desperation. It's fairly clear that Hickey views him only as a future food source.
• Heel–Face Turn: Of a kind to Captain Crozier. Hodgson was never seditious or malicious, just frightened. He only joins with Hickey's mutineers because he got lost in the fog and they are the first group he comes across. After coming to understand the full extent of Hickey's brutality and duplicity, he wants to kill Hickey and sides with Captain Crozier. Tuunbaq and Hickey's madness robs Hodgson of any chance at redemption though.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His enabling of Hickey leads to a mutiny in which he becomes more victim than accomplice. He confesses his own terror to Goodsir in the dark of night, clearly distraught at where his weakness has led everyone.
• Nice Guy: Hodgson is nothing but courteous to his superiors and respectful to the men under his command. It is also his biggest problem. When desperation begins to set in, Hodgson is easily manipulated and persuaded by Hickey. He then follows Hickey out of fear and desperation, even though he tearfully confesses to Goodsir that he knows it is wrong.
• Officer and a Gentleman: Hodgson speaks with a RP accent and even in dire circumstances behaves like a gentleman. When the Tuunbaq storms Terror in Episode 5, Hodgson shows leadership and initiative in rallying the men to use the deck-mounted six-pounder gun to attack it.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky: At one point he gets so hungry that he starts eating the leather off his boots. Unfortunately, this leads to...
• The Tooth Hurts: His teeth start falling out as he succumbs to lead poisoning and scurvy.

Manson

Magnus Manson

Able Seaman

Portrayed By: Stephen Thompson

• Blood from the Mouth: He starts vomiting blood during Hickey's attempt to take control of Tuunbaq, indicating that the poison he ingested along with Goodsir's body is taking effect.
  • He suffers this in the book as well, though it is due to Crozier firing a pistol into his stomach at close range, and it remaining untreated by Goodsir.
• The Brute: To Cornelius Hickey. He's big, strong, and obeys him without question simply because it apparently never occurs to him that he has a choice.
• Decomposite Character: His (likely non-consensual) sexual relationship with Hickey is excised and given to Gibson, and he loses his position as Hickey's right-hand man to Tozer.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, he dies a lingering death after Crozier shoots him in the gut with a small-caliber pistol and Goodsir lies about the seriousness of the wound. In the show, he's on his last legs from being poisoned by Goodsir's flesh when the Tuunbaq finishes the job.
• Dumb Muscle: He's the strongest man on either ship, but has the mind of a child.
• Manchild: He can't even be called a Psychopathic Manchild, since he takes no pleasure in obeying Hickey's orders and barely has a mind of his own. Crozier even calls him a good boy.
• Nice Guy: Despite being one of Hickey's mutineers he makes a point of being polite to Crozier when he's captured and apologising for not being allowed to call him 'captain' anymore. It's made clear that he obeys Hickey not out of any real malice, but simply because he needs someone to tell him what to do.

Tozer

Solomon Tozer

Sergeant of Marines

Portrayed By: David Walmsley

• Adaptational Badass: He's much more formidable and cunning than his book counterpart.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the book, Tozer was an idiot, but a well-meaning one. He remained loyal to Crozier until he died when a crack opened in the ice and swallowed him and the other Terror Marines. In the series, he's much more of a bastard.
• Break the Haughty: He's very sure of himself throughout the season until he sees Tuunbaq devouring Collins' soul up close. After this, he's understandably a lot more shaken up.
• Co-Dragons: He's ostensibly the architect of the mutiny in the same capacity as Hickey, and the two men are almost hanged together as equal culprits. In reality, he's fairly subservient to the more domineering Hickey, putting him on the same level as Gibson until Gibson's death.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the novel, he drowned when a crevice opened in the ice beneath his tent. In the series, he's eaten by the Tuunbaq.
• Dude, Where's My Respect??: His frustrations at his men being consistently vulnerable to attack against the Tuunbaq (and, in his view, the Inuit natives), coupled with Crozier ordering him to keep the advance party's failure from the men, makes him vulnerable to Hickey's machinations.
• Eaten Alive: The last we see of him, he's approaching the Tuunbaq with gun in hand. As Crozier tries to free himself from his chains, he's yanked off his feet, and we see that the other end of the chain (that Tozer was shackled to) is in the Tuunbaq's mouth. A very nasty end for Tozer indeed.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Seems to have a bit of this going on.
• Heel–Face Turn: After losing faith in Hickey, who then knocks him out and chains him up, Tozer re-aligns with Captain Crozier.
• Jerkass: Tozer's just...kind of a prick.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's a bit of an asshole, but he does take his duty of care for his men incredibly seriously. With his mounting frustrations over the officers keeping secrets from the rest of the men, and his concerns of the Marines being (seemingly) used as fodder throughout the season, it's even arguable that it's his concern for his men that motivates him to join Hickey's mutiny.
  • He's also shown to be encouraging to others in the crew such as Morfin and Goodsir.
• Made of Iron:
  • When Tuunbaq attacks Terror Tozer helps aim the deck mounted six pound gun. Having the skin on the palm of his hand torn off due to handling the cold metal of the gun does not stop him from doing his duty.
  • Faces down Little while the former has a gun trained on him without even flinching.
  • By the time of Tuunbaq's final attack, Tozer is one of the few mutineers not to be crippled by Goodsir's poison or by terror, and keeps his head long enough to plan a defence against the creature. In general he's one of the few last members of the crew to remain generally fit against starvation, scurvy, and lead-poisoning.
    • Notably, out of the four men Hickey chains up to act as bait for Tuunbaq, Tozer is the only one he knocks out first.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His expression when it's revealed Hickey was the one to kill and castrate Lieutenant Irving suggests he genuinely thought the Netsilik were responsible for Irving's death. Of course, by then it's too late for Tozer to do anything but double down on his support for the mutiny.
  • Made worse by the implication that Tozer was probably on good terms with Irving at the start of the expedition, if him having the Lieutenant's eyeglass in "Go For Broke" is any indication.
• Pet the Dog: Despite everything else, Sergeant Tozer does appear to take his position among the Marines of the expedition seriously. Following the deaths of several crew mates, he is shown rallying his fellow Marines to hold fast and remain strong. He also notably takes care of the comatose Private Heather after the Tuunbaq scalps him, and tries desperately to save him (to no avail) during the Carnivale fire.
• Smug Snake: He's very confident and sure of himself; Tozer is fairly formidable, but for all his snide remarks, he isn't quite as clever or in-control as he thinks he is. He takes far too much pleasure in taunting Little when the former has a gun trained on him.
  • Early in the show, Tozer frequently belittles and bullies Hickey around for no real reason other than his own amusement. It makes Tozer’s eventual joining in the mutiny all the more ironic.
• The Ace: Amongst the Marines, at least: he's their Sergeant, and is noted to be the best shot amongst Hickey's mutineers.
• Too Dumb to Live: Despite knowing Hickey will stab anyone in the back if it means his survival, Tozer still allies with him...without realising the same fate will inevitably befall him. When Hickey (rather predictably) uses him as bait for Tuunbaq, Tozer is pissed.
• Villainous Breakdown: After witnessing the Tuunbaq devour Collins' soul, he loses his composure.

Peglar

Henry Peglar

Captain of the Foretop

Portrayed By: Kevin Guthrie

• Bookworm: Enjoys a good novel, especially when supplied by Bridgens.
• Demoted to Extra: In the novel, Peglar was a prominent secondary character who got several chapters from his POV. He receives much less screentime in the series.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the novel, he and several other characters are slaughtered by the Tuunbaq while exploring a lead in the ice. In the series, he just dies of lead poisoning.
• Kill the Cutie: Thanks a lot, lead poisoning.
• May–December Romance: With Bridgens, who is much older.
• Nice Guy: A sweet, loving man.
• Purple Prose: The poorly spelled poetry he writes.
• Straight Gay: Just like his lover, Bridgens.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Rather good looking!

Young

David Young

Ship's Boy

Portrayed By: Alfie Kingsnorth

• Blood from the Mouth: His terminal illness is revealed when he coughs up a huge gout of blood.
• Bring My Brown Pants: His hallucination is so terrifying that he pisses himself before dying.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Although dying from illness, his actual death seems to come about as the result of utter fear as hallucinations take him.
• Foreshadowing: The Inuit man he sees in his dying hallucination, warning him to run away, is Lady Silence’s father.
• Incurable Cough of Death: He's consumptive, resulting in some rather painful-looking coughs before he collapses and has to be carted off to the infirmary.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He's the second on-screen casualty and is dead before the end of the first episode.

HMS Erebus

Gore

Graham Gore

First Lieutenant

Portrayed By: Tom Weston-Jones

• Due to the Dead: After his death, there is still a place set for him at the dinner table in Erebus's wardroom.
• Nice Guy: He was kind to just about everyone, and his death devastates the crew.
• Sacrificial Lion: Gore is a competent, popular, and genuinely nice officer. He even volunteers to help pull the sledge with the rest of the party, despite the fact that, as an officer, this would be highly unusual. Naturally, he's the Tuunbaq's first victim.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He's dead before the end of the second episode.

Le Vesconte

Henry Thomas Dundas "Dundy" Le Vesconte

Second Lieutenant

Portrayed By: Declan Hannigan

Second Lieutenant of HMS Erebus.

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• Adaptational Personality Change: In the novel he mostly exists to take over Gore's responsibilities after his death and is otherwise a fair officer. He starts out similarly in the show but after walking out (and then after Fitzjames dies) becomes a good deal more conniving, which eventually devolves into...
  • Adaptational Villainy: After Hickey's far more violent mutiny, he organises a vote amongst Erebus' remaining crew after Crozier is kidnapped, deciding to leave the sick and dying behind.
• Agent Peacock: To a lesser extent than Fitzjames such that it's more clear after the crews leave the ships.
• Agony of the Feet: He's seen getting frostbitten toes amputated in Episode Five.
• Cold Equation: Le Vesconte is the one to float the idea of abandoning the sick to die.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: He goes from having meticulously-styled hair and sideburns when the crews are still on-board the ships to shaggy and frizzy hair with a scruffy beard as soon as they've marched out.
• In-Series Nickname: Dundy, which Fitzjames seems to be the only person to refer to him as.
• Killed Offscreen: Le Vesconte either dies somewhere on King William Island, walking out with the rest of the men who abandon the sick to die, or is the original owner of the leg that we see being cooked in a pot in Episode 10.
• Officer and a Gentleman: At least when we first meet him.
• Tragic Keepsake: Can be seen wearing Fitzjames' sweater after his death.

Collins

Henry Collins

Second Master

Portrayed By: Trystan Gravelle

The expedition’s diver, and the Second Master on HMS Erebus.

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• Ascended Extra: In the novel, Collins appears just long enough to get brutally mauled by the Tuunbaq during an attack on Erebus. Goodsir patches him up, but he dies shortly thereafter anyway. In the series, he gets a lot more to do, such as clearing the ice from Erebus's propeller, and then he gets brutally mauled and dies, though in very different circumstances.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: During its assault on Terror Camp, the Tuunbaq runs poor Collins down and savagely mauls him, tearing out and eating his guts before devouring his soul.
• Drowning My Sorrows: He eventually turns to wine of coca (a powerful painkiller combining wine and cocaine) to cope with his trauma, and is essentially incapacitated as a result.
• Inappropriate Hunger: Notably not played for laughs. In episode 7, poor Collins confesses to Goodsir that the smell of his mates burning to death at the Carnivale made his mouth water and his stomach rumble.
  Collins: My nose and my stomach, they don't know horrible from supper. But I do! (bursts into tears)
• Laughing Mad: During Hickey's trial and the subsequent Tuunbaq attack, Collins staggers through camp laughing loudly while high as a kite on coca wine and thoroughly out of his mind.
• No One Gets Left Behind: When a man falls overboard in the first episode, Collins tries to dive in to rescue him, and has to be physically restrained. Unfortunately, the water is so cold that any man not wearing a drysuit and heavy insulation will freeze to death inside a minute, and Collins would only get himself killed in the attempt.
• Sanity Slippage: The longer the crew are trapped, the more Collins' sanity suffers. Dr. Stanley is no help whatsoever.
• Trauma Conga Line: Somehow manages to suffer this even as a member of a crew who are all going through hell together. Collins is greeted with very personal trauma from his first scene onward and is one of the only characters for whom there is never even so much as a Hope Spot.

Stanley

Dr. Stephan S. Stanley

Ship's Surgeon

Portrayed By: Alistair Petrie

One of the two doctors on Erebus.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: He's taken aback when Goodsir finally throws one of Stanley's nasty barbs back in his face, but also seems faintly amused and even a little impressed.
• Ascended Extra: In the book, he had almost no scenes and very little dialogue, only appearing by proxy in Goodsir's journal and in a few of Sir John's POV chapters. Even his death is given after the fact, one of the numerous burn victims during the accidental fire at the Carnivale disaster.
• Break the Haughty: Episode 6. Having previously been remote and detached, Stanley goes completely insane with the realization that their food is compromised, that scurvy is running amok, and none of them are making it out alive.
• Deadpan Snarker: With heavy emphasis on deadpan. He has a rather sardonic sense of humor.
• Driven to Madness: He goes completely insane with the revelation that everyone is poisoned and potentially getting sicker by the minute.
• Dr. Jerk: In contrast to the kind and compassionate Goodsir, Stanley is a very bitter and world-weary man with an atrocious bedside manner. He also refuses to treat the Shaman even when the man's lying in front of him with a sucking chest wound, out of racism.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: "Evil" is a bit of a stretch when he's really just a negligent jerk, but he does have a daughter back home whom it's implied he misses fiercely.
• Fatal Family Photo: A variant. He's drawing a picture of his daughter minutes before he finds out the truth and dies by suicide.
• Gender Flip: Not him, but his supposed child. While in the show, he is said to have a daughter, the real Stanley's only known child is a step-son, whose mother he married only a few days before the expedition sailed.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Goodsir is sympathetic to Young’s wish not to be autopsied, Stanley rightly points out that they need to know if scurvy was the cause of death. He also isn’t wrong about Young’s decision to hold off on reporting his symptoms, since the kid might have lived had he just spoken up about being so ill earlier.
• Kill It with Fire: What he attempts to do.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Episode 6 'A Mercy' is a whole long one for Dr. Stanley. He has spent all of the series up this point being both Dr. Jerk and a Deadpan Snarker, and arguably even a Smug Snake. From the beginning of the episode, though, it is clear that his Mask of Sanity is slipping as his face shows the dawning realisation that their situation is truly dire, with their food stores compromised and running low as it is and that they will need to drag supplies 800 miles to even hope to reach safety with an Eldritch Abomination hunting them. When Mr Collins comes to complain about the beginnings of paranoia, Dr Stanley is uncommonly mellow, sympathetic and does not immediately dismiss Collins. Alistair Petrie's acting sells it with his calm demeanour yet haunted, even fearful expression in his eyes as he listens to Collins. He initially seems like he is going to dismiss Collins in his normal Dr. Jerk way but in a Bait-and-Switch he recommends the pending Carnivale festivities and says he supports cheering the men up. Later his expression becomes increasingly ashen as he learns that even the unspoiled food is fatally compromised. He knows they're not making it out alive. Then he sets fire to the Carnivale.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He’s such a monumental prick of a doctor he essentially gives one to a dying teenager. He openly insults and belittles Young for not reporting his symptoms earlier (a decision that leads directly to his death not much later), and does pretty much everything but spit on the kid, just for being too young to know any better and not wanting to be a burden to his Captain and crew. A kid who is terminally ill and hours from dying.
• Sanity Slippage: He goes insane and tries to kill everyone at the carnival by burning them alive. He succeeds in destroying a great deal of supplies, goodwill... and himself, when he self-immolates in front of everyone. It's all the more shocking for how stoic he usually is. The only hint given to his deteriorating mental state is when Collins glimpses a picture of his daughter that Stanley had been looking at, and even that could easily be explained away as missing his loved ones.
• Self-Immolation: How he is Driven to Suicide.

Bridgens

John Bridgens

Subordinate Officers' Steward

Portrayed By: John Lynch

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• Big Ol' Eyebrows: He has very prominent, dark eyebrows.
• Bookworm: Knows his books, and encourages Peglar to read them as well.
• Bridal Carry: Does this to Peglar, after the latter becomes too ill to move on his own.
• Despair Event Horizon: After Peglar's death, Bridgens wanders off into the wilderness to die, unable to go on.
• Driven to Suicide: Sees no point in living after Peglar dies.
• May–December Romance: With Henry Peglar, who is significantly younger than he is.
• The Medic: He becomes Goodsir's assistant after all the other medical professionals wind up dead.
• Nice Guy: He has a heart as big as his eyebrows.
• Straight Gay: It borders on ambiguous at times, but it gradually becomes very clear that (like in the source material) Bridgens is gay and in love with Henry Peglar. Neither of them can openly discuss their feelings and it's uncertain if they're actually lovers, but there's a deeply-felt longing between the two of them.
• Tragic Keepsake: Bridgens has Henry Peglar's notebook of personal poetry in his arms when he commits suicide after Peglar's death from scurvy.

Des Voeux

Charles Des Voeux

Third Mate

Portrayed By: Sebastian Armesto

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• Adaptational Villainy: Des Voeux joins Hickey's mutineers in the show, whereas in the book he remained loyal to the end and even assumed command of the expedition after Crozier disappeared.
• Deadpan Snarker: When Goodsir protests the unceremonious burial of the shaman by explaining the Inuit belief that human bodies retain sensation even after death, Des Voeux answers thus:
  Des Voeux: Having yourself handled his corpse, is it your opinion that he retains sensation?
• Demoted to Extra: Zigzagged. In the book, he made a lot of appearances and even got a POV chapter after Crozier was missing and presumed dead. In the show, he's Out of Focus most of the time, but gets more screentime as the series goes on, especially after joining Hickey's mutineers.
• Dying Alone: Des Voeux is the last survivor of Hickey's mutineers, and he's slowly dying from poison thanks to having eaten part of Goodsir's body. Lady Silence finds him crawling across the rocks, and despite his pleas for help, she keeps walking and leaves him behind.
• Jerkass: Is rude to Goodsir, dismissive of Inuit culture, threatening to Lady Silence, joins Hickey's mutineers, and shoots Hartnell...all in all, he's a bit of a jackass.

Morfin

John Morfin

Able Seaman

Portrayed By: Anthony Flanagan

• Ascended Extra: Morfin barely appeared in the novel, serving mainly as a Spear Carrier. Here he gets more lines and a distinct character arc. Unfortunately for him, that arc involves falling apart physically and mentally as lead poisoning takes its toll.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, he joins Hickey's mutineers and is eventually either murdered by Hickey or freezes to death; Hickey's deluded point of view leaves it unclear. In the show, he opts for Suicide by Cop after seeing the corpses of Lt. Fairholme's rescue party.
• Driven to Suicide: Morfin's been falling apart physically and mentally for most of the series, but he finally snaps when he and Tozer stumble across the remains of Lt. Fairholme's rescue party. That night, he grabs a musket and fires at Crozier and Fitzjames, provoking Sergeant Tozer into killing him.
• Foreshadowing: In Episode 3, Morfin starts to sing a sailor's lament in honor of Sir John, but stops near the end, having forgotten the words. This indicates the lead poisoning that is already beginning to spread among the crew, having been eating from tainted cans and drinking water from lead pipes for three years.

Other Characters

Sophia

Sophia Cracroft

Portrayed By: Siân Brooke

"I will never understand this—this mania for the Passage. To go thousands of miles to a place that wants you dead..."

Sir John's niece and the object of Crozier's affections.

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: In the book, she has black hair. Here, she's blonde.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the book she uses Crozier for sex and treats him fairly coldly afterward, turning down his proposal and informing him of her intention to pursue James Clark Ross, who is A: engaged and B: Crozier's best friend. Later on in the novel, Crozier foresees that she'll use her aunt's campaign for the Franklin expedition as a kind of widowhood-by-proxy, keeping potential suitors at bay while reveling in their attention. In the show she feels bad about having to refuse him, and later admits to Lady Jane that she's made a horrible mistake, referring either to turning down his proposals or asking him to go with Sir John.
• Adaptational Modesty: Book!Sophia gets a lengthy nude scene when she's seducing Crozier on his return visit to Van Diemen's Land. In the series, that encounter apparently never happened and she keeps her kit on the entire time.
• Age Lift: The real Sophia Cracroft was in her late twenties to early thirties during the timeframe that the book and series cover, whereas Siân Brooke was in her late thirties during filming.
• My God, What Have I Done?: At the very end of the series, she copies Lady Franklin and experiments with how long she can tolerate the cold with no jacket or shoes. The look on her face when she realizes just how brutal the Arctic is, and how she’s responsible for Crozier deciding to leave, clearly communicates this.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She asked Crozier to go with Sir John and ensure his judgment, which he took as a sacrosanct command. She eventually comes to realize what she's done, and is heartbroken by the thought.

Lady Jane

Lady Jane Franklin

Portrayed By: Greta Scacchi

"No one can convince me that optimism or confidence is warm enough."

Sir John's indomitable wife.

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• Adaptation Expansion: Jane only appeared in flashbacks in the novel; here she gets several scenes depicting the beginning of her long crusade to find Sir John and the rest of his expedition.
• Crusading Widow: She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already one. Her attempts to secure rescue for Sir John in "Punished, As a Boy" are already pointless as he himself is dead, but the real-life Lady Franklin spent the rest of her days trying to learn what happened to her husband, and spent years trying to rescue a man who’d died long before she ever started her efforts.
• Foregone Conclusion: Her attempts at a successful rescue won’t work out. Furthermore, when it comes to her husband specifically, they were doomed before they even started, because he was dead long before she first approached the Admiralty.
• Hero of Another Story: She spends decades organizing rescue parties and missions to the North to try and find out what happened to her husband. We only get to see the beginning of her crusade.
• Lady Macbeth: To Sir John; she encourages his ambition, though in a rather less toxic fashion than the trope namer.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: When she tells Sophia that she's comforted by the knowledge that Crozier is with Sir John, she unknowingly drives home to her niece that Crozier is only in the Arctic because she asked him to go and ensure Sir John's judgment.
• Pet the Dog: She is a snob to Crozier, but she admits to Sophia in "Punished, as a Boy" that she is comforted by the knowledge that he's with Sir John.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Or Shut Up, Hannibal!, depending on how one looks at it. Either way, she absolutely shreds Sir John Barrow and the rest of the Arctic Council when they try to patronizingly reassure her that they've got things in hand with regards to the expedition.
  Sir John Barrow: One's sense of cold is relative to one's experience. I would remind you, madam, that—
  Lady Jane: I suspect that therein lies the problem here. Most of you gentlemen have written your memoirs. I've read them. The past tense is a very sturdy thing; it's earned, but it does take for granted that one has survived. The present is a different case entirely. And so I've come here to ask you: what is your plan, and when will it begin?
• Women Are Wiser: She is much more levelheaded and rational than her husband. She herself is aware of this, describing John as “wonderful as he is fallible”, and is well aware he wasn’t the Admiralty’s first, second, or even third choice.^note  He was actually the sixth choice, after William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross, James Fitzjames, George Back, and Francis Crozier. Parry was tired of the Arctic, Ross had promised his wife he was done with polar exploration, Fitzjames was considered to be too young, Back too argumentative, and Crozier was a common-born Irishman. She still loves him, but between the two she’s certainly the more intelligent. Lady Franklin became famous in British culture for her continued efforts to bring the Franklin Expedition home, arguably becoming more renowned than the husband she was searching for.

The Shaman

The Shaman

Portrayed By: Apayata Kotierk

A nameless Inuit man who is traveling with Lady Silence. He is shot accidentally when he approaches the campsite of Gore’s excursion. He dies almost immediately after, abandoning Silence to the men of the Expedition.

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• Early-Bird Cameo: A hallucination of him appears before Young much earlier than his physical introduction. It’s likely, given his name, that it was actually him using some kind of power, trying to deliver a warning ahead of time.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He’s never given a name and is known only by his title. In the book, his name was Aja.
• Fate Worse than Death: Considering how real the Tuunbaq is, it’s entirely possible that the religious belief that Inuit have about continuing to feel physical sensation after death is true. If it is, that means the Expedition just doomed him to an extremely painful eternity trapped under the ice, in extremely cold water with nothing and no one around, except the blackness and complete silence of the water under the pack ice.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Granted, the Franklin Expedition was doomed either way, but his death unleashes the full wrath of the Tuunbaq.
• Tongue Trauma: His tongue is missing. It was cut with something sharp. Considering what we see Silence sharpening at the end of Episode 3, it doesn’t look like it was a pleasant or easy operation.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: It isn’t much of a spoiler that he dies, since he’s fatally shot the literal second he shows up. He does get one scene before this, but we don’t know who he is at that time, he says nothing, and it’s in a dreamlike sequence during what seems to be a hallucination. We never even learn his name.

The Monster

The Tuunbaq

In the show

In the book. Art by David Romero.

"A spirit that dresses as an animal."

Thomas Blanky

The beast that stalks the ice. Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t a normal polar bear. Far larger than any natural animal, and far more intelligent, the creature stalks the crews of Terror and Erebus.

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• Adapted Out: Almost all of its backstory is unexplained in the series. We get a very detailed description of what it is in the book (see spoilers below). Also its ability to walk on two legs, which in the book is said to be one of its most unnatural and creepy abilities.
• Adaptational Dumbass: A minor example. While the Tuunbaq of the book seemed to realize that eating Hickey's evil soul would be harmful, refusing to do so, the show version has no such qualms, leading to his death moments later.
• Adaptational Wimp: The Tuunbaq of Dan Simmons’ novel is infinitely more dangerous than the one we see in the show, for reasons outlined below. That said, in any iteration the Tuunbaq is nothing to scoff at. At its wimpiest, it's nigh-unstoppable.
• Adaptational Heroism: Not by much, but in the book, the monster was a literal monster, killing for the joy of killing. It was designed by the Inuit gods as a weapon to kill one of their own, and was only banished to Earth after a battle lasting ten thousand years. In the show it is more motivated by desire to get rid of the intruders in its home and the killers of its shaman than it is just killing For the Evulz. Showrunner David Kajganich confirmed that this version of the Tuunbaq is more of a representation of the Arctic itself rather than a wanton killer.
• Age Lift: In a Q&A released for the show’s 5th anniversary, creator Dave Kajganich suggests that the Tuunbaq of the show is a recent creation, made by the Shaman, unlike the book version which was created by the goddess Silna and has been around for thousands of years.
• Animalistic Abomination: It’s not a normal polar bear. It is roughly the size of a rhinoceros with long limbs, a short muzzle and blue eyes, making its head disturbingly human-looking. It is clearly modeled after the prehistoric short-faced bears that went extinct in North America 11,000 years ago. The book's version is massive, at over 6-7 feet tall at the shoulder and with an elongated neck. It is also bipedal.
• Big Bad Ensemble: It's the most active threat that's hunting Crozier and the crew. But Cornelius Hickey ends up being just as big a threat to the crew's survival as the monster, as his murderous delusions further doom their chances of rescue.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: It’s some kind of Inuit spirit, but the Inuit themselves are clearly terrified of it. It seemingly punishes those responsible for killing the shaman, but also seems to be skittish or uncomfortable around Silence, and even feeds her. What it wants and what exactly it even is has yet to be revealed. It remains enigmatic, although it's presented as a killable creature of flesh and blood and it does indeed eventually die.
• Death by Adaptation: In the book, Crozier had a vision that the Tuunbaq would eventually die from eating too many diseased white bodies and souls, but it's still last seen alive. In the miniseries, it dies in the last episode after eating Hickey's group.
• It Can Think: Quickly becomes apparent, as it begins going to lengths far greater than any bear ever would, not only making use of tactics and even sadism, but even posing two of its victims.
• It's Personal: The Tuunbaq willingly isolates itself in the region provided the Inuit keep the tradition of having a shaman to communicate with it, and no one ever trespasses into its territory. The expedition not only wanders in, but they get stuck there. So the Tuunbaq woke up one day and found a bunch of trespassers had parked their boats on its front yard. Then they accidentally kill its shaman. Then they dump said shaman under pack ice like it’s nothing. No wonder the thing is pissed off.
  • Tellingly, the first two people it seems to specifically target are Franklin himself, who gets an absolutely brutal death, and the Marine who shot the shaman, who is snatched up by the head and crushed in its hands, before getting his head ripped off and spat back down. Both of these people were also in the tent when it attacks the expedition at the ships for the first time.
  • Taken to the extreme after Hickey’s attack on the Inuit. The Tuunbaq hadn’t bothered the expedition since its little battle with Blanky. Once Hickey kills more natives, however, it becomes clearly enraged, showing up out of nowhere and attacking the crew directly, forgoing stealth for the first time. It rampages through the camp and kills over 30 people. Then it starts stalking the remainder once again.
• Nothing Is Scarier: While large enough to not have to rely on stealth, the Tuunbaq doesn’t like being seen. It remains unseen for the first half of the series, and it is not unveiled in its full horrible glory until the eighth episode, when it goes on a rampage through Terror Camp.
• Rasputinian Death: It gets shot at with muskets, cannons, and rockets, but still keeps chugging on. It only finally dies due to a combination of malnourishment, extreme food poisoning from eating sailors with poisoned flesh and tainted souls, and choking on the upper half of Hickey's body while Crozier pulls on a chain to ensure it can't swallow.
• Self-Disposing Villain: Eating so many disease-ridden sailors results in it giving itself lethally massive food poisoning.
• Soul Eating: Turns out the victims left comatose aren’t that way because of any injury. We see it consume Collins’ soul, ripping it from his still breathing body. Afterwards he’s left just like the Marine, described as a “book with all the pages made blank”.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The Tuunbaq will not stop under any circumstances and continues to murder crewmen even as they hide in their ships. It doesn’t even eat its prey, and even brings some of it back just to mess with the crew.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In a major departure from the book, it appears Hickey’s soul had become so unbelievably foul that trying to eat it (and the rest of him) poisoned the thing, and it dies almost immediately after tearing him in half. It’s also possible it just choked on his corpse, it isn’t really made clear. In the book, it never makes the attempt, as it’s so disgusted with the smell of Hickey's rotten soul it doesn’t even bother.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Just before it dies, we get a lovely shot of its puking up yellow bile.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Rifling through the supplies of the first sortie to the shoreline indirectly results in the death of its shaman and eventually itself.

James Clark Ross

Sir James Clark Ross

Portrayed By: Richard Sutton

A naval officer and Crozier's closest friend.

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• Ascended Extra: Sir James has no actual dialogue in the original novel, despite appearing in more than one scene. Here, he has several lines and establishes himself as a proper character.
• Best Friend: Historically, he was Crozier's best friend in the Admiralty, which is indicated with an early scene of them laughing together while watching a theatrical tableau. Later, he makes it clear that he will lead an expedition to rescue Crozier should the Admiralty allow it.
• False Reassurance: He tells Lady Jane that if they haven't heard from Franklin's men by 1850, he'll go looking for them himself. For those of you keeping track, that's two years after the expedition was forced to abandon the ships. Although in fairness, he couldn't have known they were forced to abandon ship and he knew from personal experience that it wasn't unusual for polar expeditions to go missing and turn up mostly fine years later.
• Hero of Another Story: He's an accomplished Arctic and Antarctic explorer in his own right, having previously commanded HMS Erebus on his Antarctic exploration. Quite a few landmarks in Antarctica owe their names to him, such as the Ross Ice Shelf and Mounts Erebus and Terror.
• Late to the Tragedy: The series opens with him trying to find the missing Franklin expedition. Of course, he's far too late.
• Retired Badass: He was one of the original choices to lead what would become the Franklin Expedition, but declined at the behest of his new wife, who made him promise to give up polar exploration. He came out of retirement to go looking for his missing friends.

John Ross

Sir John Ross

Portrayed By: Clive Russell

A gruff naval officer.

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• Dramatic Irony: Blanky claims John Ross never knew how close he came to his subordinates outright killing him. In Ross's speech to Franklin (for which Blanky isn't present), he specifically warns Franklin that those closest to him may turn on him in desperate straits, implying Ross did understand he was a hair's breadth from being murdered.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Moreso a Historical Jerkass Upgrade. Ross' warning to Franklin was much more affable in real life; the two were friends and prior to his leaving Franklin and Ross discussed multiple times plans in the event Franklin became trapped in the ice. Ross, upon finding out nobody was going to tail Franklin if he disappeared and look for him, told him that he would start a search by 1848 if the expedition was still not heard from; Franklin later stated, in his last interaction with Ross: "Ross, you are the only one who has volunteered to look for me: God bless you."
• Ignored Expert: His spotty career and his competence being eclipsed by that of his own nephew has made him a bit of a Black Sheep among his peers, but for all of Blanky's claims that he was an inept fop of a captain, he does his best to dissuade Sir John from going on the expedition at all unless he's prepared for the absolute worst comparable to what happened to him and his crew.
• Jerkass: According to Blanky John Ross saved better rations and shelter for the officers. At one point, Nice Guy and Undying Loyalty to his superiors Blanky seriously considered caving in his skull for how he treated enlisted personnel.
• Evil Counterpart: Not really evil, more of a Jerkass counterpart to Franklin. Whereas Sir John leads through love, inspiring Undying Loyalty in his men, John Ross led through fear and brutality. Unlike Franklin, Ross did eventually get his men home, but no one loved him or forgave him for it. And unlike Franklin, Ross got lucky. There were no convenient wrecks from earlier expeditions with lots of preserved supplies for Franklin's men during their death march south.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He may have been a ruthless driver of his men but he got them out of the Arctic alive and unlike the most superficially affable naval officers in the Admiralty, is one of the few to argue for an immediate search for Franklin's expedition showing that, beneath his Drill Sergeant Nasty exterior, he does genuinely care.