Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh post in Part V of the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North series edited by Isabelle Gapp and guest edited by Sarah Pickman.

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Visual cultures of the Arctic can include everything from scientific images, contemporary Indigenous art, and archival photos, to nineteenth-century panoramas, history museum exhibitions—and, probably most importantly for me, TV shows.

For five years now, I have been the lead organizer and director of Terror Camp, a virtual conference celebrating polar history and enthusiasm. Our fifth conference is happening this weekend, featuring keynotes from polar archivists, curators, scholars, and filmmakers, as well as two dozen diverse presentations by members of the wider polar enthusiast community. 

This project has had a much longer life than I ever expected it to. I tend to have a lot of big ideas which go nowhere: I throw things at the wall without a lot of sustained effort and then have the temerity to be disappointed when nothing comes of them. 

But Terror Camp was different from the start. During the height of the pandemic, I had fallen in love with The Terror, a ten-episode miniseries about the 1845 lost Franklin expedition to the Arctic, and discovered a thriving and passionate creative community revolving around the show online, which was my lifeline through the stasis of lockdown. 

Having grown up attending conventions and concerts, and with experience curating the interplay between fans and creatives thanks to my time working in the music industry, I was saddened by the thought that the pandemic was preventing the show’s fans from interfacing directly with the incredible people behind the show. The cast, crew, and producers probably didn’t even know how deeply people were obsessed with their hard work!  

Simultaneously, I also had come to realize that there was something utterly unique about the Terror fandom, something I’d never seen before in my years of fangirling. Terror fans were taking the incredible way the show treated the real history of the Franklin expedition—with deep attention, respect, and transformative creativity—and applying it to their own endeavors. Once at least a few repeats deep into the ten episodes of the show, fans inevitably began broadening their horizons with polar books, documentaries, and even delving deep into primary sources online and in archives. Their independent research was forming the basis for blog posts, historically-grounded novel-length fanfiction, and even graduate school applications and academic papers. Something amazing was happening, and I wanted to make sure that it was recognized. 

The idea for Terror Camp arose from a discussion that took place on Twitter in 2021 about this phenomenon of fan-generated historical research. The discussion might have remained just that—a discussion—but it was the perfect impetus I needed to press go on the idea that had been quietly simmering in my head since the previous year. 

What if there was an event—online, like all events still were at that point—that combined the best elements of an academic conference and a fan convention? This event would feature presentations from fans on their research, plus a Q&A or panel with someone from the television show: a simple formula that I had the feeling would make for a fantastic event. 

But it would’ve all been a pie-in-the-sky idea if not for one of our organizers that first year having success in reaching out to David Kajganich, the showrunner of The Terror. His immediate interest in the idea and continued support of the project throughout its evolution has been the golden ticket, the buoyant cloud lifting us up to reach new heights each year as we have expanded and developed Terror Camp’s offerings. That first year, Dave was our keynote speaker after a full day of presentations. The second year and beyond, he has been our reliable road to reaching out to the show’s cast and crew and recruiting them for Terror Camp appearances. When people say, “How on earth did you make this happen?” about any given Terror Camp guest appearance, the answer is reliably Dave. 

For a showrunner to be so generous with his time and efforts, and so genuinely interested in interfacing with a fan community, is a rare thing indeed. For a fandom history scholar like myself, it brings to mind “The Great Bird of the Galaxy” himself, Gene Roddenberry, whose tolerant embrace of Star Trek’s creative and vibrant fandom was the spark that generated modern transformative fandom as we know it today. 

In my opinion, The Terror presents a chance to think about media fandom in a new way. It’s a good TV show, yes, based on an okay book (in my opinion!), but it’s also proven itself over and over as a portal: a magical gateway to an obsession with history, the development of hands-on research skills, and in uncountable cases the instigation to pursue academic careers in history, literature, archives and library science, and polar studies. This kind of impact is not unknown in fan history. “The Scully Effect” was the name given to the impact of The X-Files protagonist’s Dana Scully on a generation of young women choosing to pursue careers in STEM. 

So I’m proposing “The Terror Effect” as the name for the powerful reaction that happens when someone gets sucked into the vibrant world of interdisciplinary polar studies via the show, and emerges an expert in Victorian culture, Inuit language and art, Royal Navy history, Arctic flora and fauna, or nineteenth-century genealogy. 

Or—as it happened to me—as an experienced event producer, speaker and writer on a variety of polar topics, and passionate enthusiast for the power of fandom to change your life. 

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This year, Terror Camp runs from December 5-7, 2025. You can view the program and register here.