The Last Place on Earth

Let me start out by agreeing with everyone who has previously written: it is the best drama about polar adventure ever made.

The viewer should be very skeptical about the Scott defenders because it is evident their homework is shallowly researched and based on a very limited interpretation of Scott's polar problem: that bad luck and bad weather caused his downfall.

I've read Huntford's book 3 times, read the weather article and seen the PBS episode where the young scientist tried to resurrect Scott as a noble, if unfortunate hero. Also, Huntford and his fellow professionals have posted excellent rebuttals regarding these spurious claims about Scott and the weather.

The questions that should put an end to the argument is this: who would get you through safely and who exhibited a breadth of polar knowledge sufficient to AVOID the problems of travel in the brutal Antarctic?

If you said Scott, then you probably thought the Charge of the Light Brigade was a wonderful jaunt through Russian cannon fire just to show how noble and brave you were. Above all else, don't let these half-informed reviewers go without a serious look into the counter-points made to their weak arguments.

Still, the series is a breath-taking look at the human struggle to survive and to seek glory and the dreadful price it takes in lives and in the judgment of history.

So, here we go again - Scott had it harder than Amundsen, Amundsen was simply doing a "stunt", and so Scott was the more "noble".

If you compare their diaries (and you can now, as Huntford did), Scott stayed in his tent on days when Amundsen and his crew did their fifteen miles (they did fifteen miles a day unless they were completely blizzard-bound - some days in their fur underwear and nothing else). And they had the same weather on nearly the same days. Scott started later, since his teams couldn't travel when it was really cold, so he was out on the land-mass later than Amundsen by nearly a month (which is why he encountered colder temperatures). Scott assumed that changing his headcount from four to five men at the last minute would make no difference in the food supply when they'd very carefully planned exactly how much food they'd need for a four-man team, with no contingency for delays. Amundsen ensured that he'd have at least double the amount of food and fuel he'd need for the whole trip.

As to dogs and ponies - Scott didn't like dogs, because he didn't understand them, either how to work with them, nor how to drive them. The first time he saw dogs being driven properly was on the barrier by Cecil Meares. The scenes where Meares drives past them, and is later found relaxing, waiting for the rest of the teams to arrive are taken verbatim from Scott's and Meares' diaries. Ponies are NOT appropriate for the Antarctic environment, since they have to pull their own food for every mile they're going to walk. Dogs could eat seal and penguin, both of which are native to the Antarctic; they could also eat each other, if necessary.

Amundsen had to trail-blaze an entirely new route, through and over some of the most difficult terrain the Antarctic has to offer. Scott had a map of his route up to the last ninety-seven miles. The Beardmore glacier (Scott's route) is a nice, long, slow climb to the Pole. The Axel Heiberg glacier requires planes flying over it to use their maximum rate of climb; Amundsen and his crew pioneered a route through the ice falls of the Heiberg in less than a week.

And yes, there was a conspiracy to tart up Scott's diaries for public consumption. Scott's widow, Kathleen, worked with J.M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) to edit his diaries, making him more of a heroic figure, and cutting out the more disparaging comments Scott made about his companions.

Planning is everything: Scott and his companions died of starvation and scurvy; Amundsen and his crew gained weight on their trip.

I'm not saying that Scott wasn't a brave fellow or that his journey was less than that of Amundsen. I can't imagine man-hauling a 300 lb sledge for hundreds of miles. The tragedy of Scott is that, had he done his research (as Amundsen had), he wouldn't have had to, and he might have beat Amundsen to the pole.

This is a fabulous mini-series - a docudrama - about the South Pole expeditions of Norwegian R Amundsen and the British Robert Falcon Scott. The acting and photography are superb, an excellent period piece (although the quality of the DVD itself is a bit grainy).

Unless you've slept under a rock for 100 years, or never read a history book, you know that Amundsen reached the Pole first, and successfully returned, whereas Scott and 4 of his men perished miserably on the return trip. Why? It's all about project management. This DVD is all about properly managing a complicated project dealing with the wilds of nature. Amundsen has 'it' - Scott doesn't.

The Norwegians are highly-skilled at traveling in frozen wastelands. They are in fine physical condition, they know how to ski and handle dog-teams. Amundsen recruits a small team of specialists. He doesn't get too high or low about anything, nor does he get too close to the team--he remains aloof. He makes meticulous preparations.

The British are operated like a Navy Ship under military command: Scott gives orders and doesn't want them questioned. He has a group of favorites, but takes a colossal team of guys, mostly military, but some civilians, who find Scott pompous, arrogant and misguided. He breaks promises and plays the men against each other, while they hope to be in the final group to make the final trek. He sends the wrong guy to purchase Siberian ponies, to save a few bucks, plus he fails to include a couple of key players, including a properly-trained team to tend to the motor sledges. Since there wasn't a Walmart Auto (or Canadian Tire) in the Antarctic, you might wonder what he was thinking. But his biggest problem is the notion of man-hauling the enormous loads all the way to the Pole. you see: no one walks when they can ride. and the Eskimos always rode dog-teams. Scott had experienced some difficulties with dogs in the past, but that's no excuse.

I might direct your attention to a couple of fabulous scenes featuring Bill Nighy, who plays Meares, one of the dog-team drivers. Meares says he'd rather swim back to New Zealand than spend another season under Scott's command. He later tells Scott, in so many words, that he finds it highly unlikely that Scott will live to criticize Meares' choices. Nighy is terrific.

In case you missed it, this screenplay is based on a historical non-fiction piece created after it was discovered that many unflattering portions of Scott's diary were excised from the publication released to the public. There has been quite the resistance from many quarters to a revised viewpoint of a man considered to be a great British hero. Apparently, some recent discovery that the weather was particularly cold when Scott tried to return from the Pole is cited as startling scientific evidence that this presentation of Scott as a peevish incompetent should be set aside. well, whose decision was it to try walking there and back anyway? As Meares says (in this dramatization): 'any man who sits in the Antarctic and whines about the weather is unfit to lead'.

I'll close with a quote, not from this film, but from the 1948 'Scott of the Antarctic' with John Mills. The Scott character (Mills) tells Nansen (the elder statesman of Arctic exploration) that he is going to the South Pole with motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. Nansen replies that Scott should take dogs, dogs and more dogs.

Amundsen did - Scott didn't. Case closed.

Enjoy this excellent re-creation of events. It's insightful.

This series was a great revelation to me: I'd heard of "Scott of the Antarctic" but never of Roald Amundsen, the man who beat Scott to the South Pole. It is a fine adaptation of the book by Roland Huntford, and does a great job of poking a hole in the romantic illusion that this adventure was some landmark episode of English heroism. It is instead an illustration of a truth that no one at the time could admit: that by 1912 "Britain was forgetting how to think", and too long a period at the top as the world's pre-eminent power had bred arrogance, inflexibility and an inability to learn. The contrast between the pompous incompetence of the British and the intelligence and adaptability of the underdog Norwegians is highlighted throughout the series. As Amundsen says in the first episode, "Experience teaches them only one thing: that they are British, and therefore pre-eminent. But Nature is deaf to such things; she cannot hear the tunes of glory." Even to a person who does not already know the historical outcome of this story, the British from the beginning seem to be marching to their doom. The whole expedition, despite the money and materiel lavished upon it, is a story of shoddiness, second-rate decision-making, and slovenly improvisation. The blame for most of this is laid squarely upon Scott himself, who is shown as a thoroughly mediocre leader. Martin Shaw gives a wonderful performance as Scott, and even manages the considerable feat of creating some sympathy for this stupid man, pushed out of his depth and driven by ambition to attempt something he is incapable of achieving. There was some outrage, especially in Britain, both at the book and the series, which were seen as unfairly kicking Scott, who had at least paid with his life for any mistakes he might have made. The makers of this series are to be complimented for not yielding to such sentimentality. They never let us forget that 4 other men died with Scott as a result of his stupidity, and the horror of their slow death by starvation, scurvy, exposure and infection is presented unflinchingly. The end of the series gives us a cynical scene with Scott's widow and the responsible officers of the Admiralty busy concocting the myth of "Scott of the Antarctic" which was to beguile the public until Huntford's book came along to shine the light of truth into this corner of history. Hopefully, as a result of the book and the series, there can be no going back to the comfortable lies of the past.

Still splendid TV but the debate on Scott has moved on. After the glorifying of the early years to buoy up a country stunned by the losses of the Boer War came the debunking by Huntford. Since then there have been many novels questioning his motives, principally by Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Susan Solomon. I have just read David Crane's excellent book which, at last, seems to provide a balanced account of a remarkable man, rooted in Victorian values but with an enquiring and open mind ahead of his time. If your interest is piqued by this film there are books galore on Scott for you to read to explore the debate for yourselves. You can even try to find The Race by Kare Holt "a writer as determined to rubbish Amundsen's reputation as Huntford was to rubbish Scott's". All in all good entertainment, especially for those who love a good anti-English polemic a la Braveheart, but don't confuse this with the truth.