Terra Nova Reviews

Ostensibly, a show is never truly about what the quick script makes it out to be. For example, The Simpsons is about a satirical look at a lower middle class family of five in brief summation, when in reality it’s a Dadaist examination of modern American life encompassing everything from family dynamics, politics, religion and pop culture. I bring this up because I’m not quite sure what Terra Nova was aiming for at a deeper level. It brings up subplots and possibly takes shape in various directions, but they all lead to nothing and go nowhere.

Terra Nova was a show in search of a deeper identity, and that’s just one of a menagerie of problems it comes loaded up with.

It already takes a large leap of faith and suppression of logic to try and buy into the premise – in the future the earth has been left so polluted and desolate that our only course of action is go back into the past and try again. But here’s the overarching problem with that concept: by going back in time to the prehistoric age, the colony has to manage to live through the comet that destroyed the dinosaurs and that ecosystem, the ice age and somehow find a way not to get involved with the natural course of evolution and human history. This is to say nothing of the fact that the prehistoric age had an atmosphere that wasn’t breathable or livable for humans.

All of that could have been forgiven if I had been given some characters to root for and care about, but Terra Nova is also fairly brainless in that regard. The first episode spends more time trying to put the emphasis on the budget and doesn’t bother to populate the various locations with characters of interest. Any changes in their behavior are abrupt and quickly reverted back to how they were at the beginning. The conflict between father and son, over an issue that is worth exploring and honest, is smoothed over very quickly and we’re soon back to the happy nuclear family we met in the beginning of episode one. There’s a distinct lack of dramatic tension or believable character archs at play here, nothing is at stake at any given moment.

The only characters of any worth or interest are side-lined for much of the series, only coming to the center towards the last few entries in the series. Commander Nathaniel Taylor, Lt. “Wash” Washington and Taylor’s estranged son are far more engaging as characters than the ones we spend a significant amount of time with. It’s almost unfair that the characters with dark secrets, hidden motivations and tension between each other are left in small supporting roles.

But not knowing what to focus in on is a reoccurring problem with Terra Nova. Much is made of how unsafe it is to leave the colony, yet every chance the characters get they go on random excursions into the wilderness. A fishing trip here, a group of youths deciding to make moonshine there, and so it continually goes as the show writes rules that it never bothers to follow through on cutting itself off at the knee for any sense of conflict or emotional stakes at play. We know for certain that anyone going out into the wilderness will only encounter PG-rated violence and danger, despite it being up against various carnivorous dinosaurs.

The worst offense here is the rebel group now as Sixers, who despite being of limited ammunition and medical supplies and numbers continually find ways to break into the colony and fire off obscene amounts of rounds in any given fight. If they truly had limited numbers and weapons/supplies – how could they be so wasteful or have such a large base in the middle of the jungle if things were as dire as they say?

No, maybe it was the fact that the dinosaurs were magically bulletproof. That may have been the worst and stupidest decision in the show. I’ll grant that it would take A LOT of bullets to take down a Carnotaurus, but they’re not bullet-proof. Nor would they probably be impervious to the sonic blasters and other weapons the characters possess.

I know, I know, it’s just a TV show – why can’t I just turn my brain off and enjoy? Well, I’d happily have gone along with it if it had given me some reason to care about anything. One episode is a who-done-it while another is a medical mystery and a third episode is something entirely different. Not to mention that the characters make some horrendously poor decisions – the central family has a third child which is against the law in a dystopian future in which most vegetation and water is in limited supply or died off, decide to hide her existence instead of paying a fee, get caught by the authorities and the father lands in jail, this makes them stupid in my eyes and they never failed to live up to this first series of poor decision-making.

I couldn’t find myself able to turn off the “logic” part of my brain and just watch the mindless, hollow spectacle on display. The offenses kept piling up higher and higher, and if there wasn’t a parade of attractive men (who were pretty liberal with the shirtless scenes in the first half of the series) and the occasionally cool and thrilling dinosaur-centric action center piece I would’ve stopped after the first two episodes.

Well, does Terra Nova do anything right? Sure. The production values are top-notch, the special effects are pretty fantastic for television, the sets are nice and the locations are gorgeous. It’s wonderful to look at, but it’s the things that make or break a TV series like well-developed characters, satisfying dramatic storytelling, conflict and good dialog that sank the thing so quickly. I somehow made it through the entire run, but it took me a very long time and I frequently had to busy myself with other tasks to get through it. Somewhere, buried within the rubble of poor execution, there was a kernel of a great idea.

In my opinion Terra Nova is a great series, you can have several meanings. I think the environment we live in 2149 unfortunately if we do not change our consumer society (disposable) and that everything revolves around oil can trigger disastrous consequences and immersed ourselves in a similar situation or worse. Regarding the colony, I think this is pretty well set and quite entertaining plots. The special effects are spectacular, no one had seen him since like Jurassic Park, whose director, is now executive producer of the series, so I think they are well invested 4 million dollars per episode and 14 of the pilot episode are point due to the need to have a futuristic city, various places like the place where they embark on the tunnel of time and time and average duration of the episode.

I think every series is a great opportunity for players to entondes unknown to the vast majority and that through it are now internationally recognized as George or Jennifer Coonney Aliston and now turn to players like Jason O'Mara or other as "the colonel Avatar "Stephen Lang, and others are beginning his film career as Naomi Scott and Landon Liboiron and although they have already made a season, it's a chore to cancel the series characters.

Picture it: in the future, Earth is almost close to inhabitable from pollution and over population. The human race is doomed. All hope seems lost until a wormhole ("time fracture") opens up to the distant past when the earth was still brand spanking new, the air was clean, and the world unpolluted. In desperation, the government decides to start sending people out through the time portal to a colony called Terra Nova, where the human race can start fresh. There's just one catch-- they have to co-exist with dinosaurs, because the portal takes them back to prehistoric times.

This is a great, interesting premise for a TV series. Too bad that the pilot chose to play it out in the most derivative, unimaginative way possible. In all fairness to Terra Nova, whenever any sci-fi involves modern day human beings interacting with dinosaurs, it's bound to beg comparison with other shows and movies. However, in this case the grumblings about Terra Nova being derivative are warranted. This is because rather than try to develop an identity to shake off any accusations of being derivative, Terra Nova merely goes by the play book of so many shows and movies that came before it. It's two parts "Earth 2", three parts "Jurassic Park", one part "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs" and three parts "Land of the Lost" with a pinch of "Dinotopia" and a dash of "Lost". Maybe to people who've never seen these shows Terra Nova will feel fresh, new, and different, but to the very sci-fi fans to whom this show is targeted, it's the same old, same old.

Another big problem with the pilot were the clichéd characters and predictable situations. How many times have we had the "angry, rebellious teen" or the "wise, intelligent wife" who is constantly frustrated by the impulsiveness of her "gung ho husband?" Anyone really blown over by the fact that there's a "break away faction" of Terra Nova or that in spite of being presented as the "bad guys" they're probably "not what they seem?" Anyone really shocked that when Jim's son goes scampering out into the wilderness after a major fight, that he gets "rescued" later so that father and son could get over their differences? Of course not. Because this has been time and time again.

As if the clichéd characters and "saw this coming a mile away" situations weren't enough, the writers consistently showed a willing to sacrifice their characters for the sake of plot. In fact, most of the time the characters on Terra Nova were reduced to little more than catalysts to move a plot along. As a result, there was barely a moment when their actions didn't seem illogical, unnatural or heavily contrived. Examples:

1) A couple just decides (as opposed to accidentally conceiving) a 3rd child, even though it's against the law and the child would be born to a miserable world, anyway.

2) The father assaults a police officer when the illegal child is discovered, even though the worst the family would've endured was a fine.

3) Jim's son eagerly sneaks out of Terra Nova into wild territory where giant, man-eating dinosaurs randomly appear and kill people without warning.

4) A girl trapped in an armored vehicle thinks it's safer to leave it and run back towards Terra Nova with a gun, even though scene after scene before showed that weapons have no affect on the dinosaurs at all.

If the writers are showing this level of unsophistication so early, there's very little hope for the writing in the rest of the series.

Then there's the kiddie factor. In spite of the dramatic trailers with dark music, action-based scenes of fighting, and an edgy feel, the pilot revealed that Terra Nova isn't a show targeted towards adults, but towards children and young adults. Not only were the young characters the main focus in the pilot, the action scenes seemed to be catered to their benefit. Adults were easily dispatched by "slasher" dinosaurs, but go figure-- in spite of several of the teen characters getting brutally attacked (including one whose leg actually gets snacked on!), they miraculously survive intact. Incidentally, did you know that dinosaurs are "bullet proof?" Yes, that's right-- apparently, the impressive looking guns that all the characters wave around are for show because no matter how many rounds of ammo you hit the dinos with, they barely get so much as a scratch. Wouldn't want to upset the kiddies watching the show if you killed a T-Rex off, boo hoo hoo!

Okay, okay! "Enough!" you are probably saying. It's the first show. There are flaws, of course, but there's so much promise, right? "What about the rock markings and the Sixers and the blah blah blah?" What about all that cool setup? Well, here's where I really became depressed. Yes, there's a lot of intriguing stuff that was set up in the premise. But it's precisely because so much was set up in the pilot that I have no hope about the future of this series. Basically, by revealing so much in the first episode, Terra Nova shot its wad way too soon. Everything-- from the existence of the Sixers to the mysterious rock inscriptions-- could've gradually been unveiled over the course of a few episodes. But nope, the writers literally blurted out a season's worth of story arcs and mysteries in the first night alone. With so much of the most interesting "stuff" unveiled so soon, what else is there that's left to tell? Not much, I imagine!

So that's my review in a nutshell. Terra Nova seems to be nothing more than a kiddified, derivative sci-fi show with poor writing and clichéd characters. People convincing themselves that this is bound to be the best show on television are only kidding themselves and setting themselves up for disappointment in hoping this will be *the* Next Best Thing. Trust me-- it won't.

I finally watched the first episode of this show, after hearing some good things about it, and I wasn't disappointed. Terra Nova - so far - has a good story, good writing, and a solid cast, and is a show that draws you in, and leaves you wanting to see more.

I love science fiction that is well done, and Terra Nova basically fills the hole that was left when Battlestar Galactica finished up. Not sure it is as good, but it might just turn out to be, as time goes by.