Episode 11 - “The Magnetic North”

Summary

EP11's locales are all above the 50th parallel, and the opening narration sets the tone: “For the first time in history, the vacuum that is the top of the world is filled by major powers who meet there and clash… . As the earth shrinks in circumference, so do the routes that link Allies together, so do the avenues along which enemies attack.” This episode circles the globe west-to-east beginning in Alaska, next quickly covering the 1941–42 British and Canadian commando actions in Norway. Further east, we then follow imperiled Allied convoys sailing from Scotland to Murmansk via the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The program concludes with a return to the North Pacific, where the Aleutian Islands are both America's closest approach to its ally Russia and the site of Japan's 1942–43 invasion.

Musically, the EP11 score is often atmospheric, tense, and unmelodic, though there are several newsreel-type scenes that might have been agreeably accompanied by a new concert march. This episode has the most cold-weather footage in Victory, prompting stark, icy scoring from Bennett that is singular in the series. There's one new Rodgers theme, the lighthearted FIDDLE-GTR.

Though Bennett nearly always gives each Rodgers Victory theme a straightforward debut, he sometimes introduces his own tunes by a fragment—as seen in EPs 17, 28, 22, and 24—only later revealing the melody in complete form. His EP11 approach is still different, deriving a good deal of music from a dissonant three-note “cell” of a minor second interval atop a perfect fifth—see [C]. Bennett gives the “cell” a variety of harmonic and rhythmic-melodic identities from 4:07 through the string-tremolo chords at EP11's conclusion; the variations of the “cell” are marked with an X in this chapter's musical examples.

EP11 opens with an American B-17's takeoff and weather patrol in Alaska's desolation, paired with distinctive bleak and wintry scoring [A]. The NBC Symphony double reeds get several solo moments in EP11, first with [B], beginning at 1:33, as oboe, English horn, and bassoon are heard in turn.

After 1:55 is a cross-dissolve to an animation viewing the globe from above the North Pole. Highlighted are EP11's three upcoming Scandinavian locales. The first of these, at 2:22, is the Royal Navy's “Operation Claymore” raid of March 1941 on Norway's German-held Lofoten Islands.