Fox has pretty much been keeping their primetime schedule afloat with reality programming. and I have always had a dubious relationship with them ever since they cancelled Firefly. Fox has put out some great shows, but they are very quick to drop the axe on shows that are not performing in the ratings game. Specifically I have not felt that Fox has done a good job putting out genre shows. and I felt that the short-lived Terminator and Dollhouse both could have been handled better. However, they seem to be trying to fix that with Terra Nova, the new sci-fi show with Spielberg’s name attached. The show has been referred to as a mix of Lost, Jurassic Park, and Avatar and I feel that this is an accurate albeit overblown description.
In the not too distant future, the earth is plagued with environmental devastation and overpopulation. The inconvenient truth is that the planet we know and love is beyond saving and even stopgaps such as gas masks for outdoor use and population limits (a family is four) are just delaying the inevitable. Just when all hope is lost, scientists discover a portal to a long-forgotten past. The government immediately begins to send people through the portal to establish a new colony in the past where mankind can get a second chance: Terra Nova.
The exact rules behind this sci-fi phenomenon are handled beautifully. The rules are covered in a just a couple of lines of dialogue and left largely unexplained. The writers clearly understand that the exact workings of the time travel are not the focus of the show. The portal opens one way regularly and intermittently; communication with the past is still possible; and when people came into the past they altered the time stream creating a new universe (Back to the Future style). That’s it. That is all that is necessary because the point of the show is not getting to Terra Nova, it’s living in Terra Nova.
My major complaint about the show is the characters. We follow a family made up of stereotypes and easily forgettable characters. We have cop father, doctor mother, rebellious eldest son, super smart middle daughter, and toddler youngest daughter. The only important factor about the youngest daughter is simply her existence.
The week to week troubles have come from three different sources:
The first are the various dinosaurs native to this new time/place. The camp has great fortifications and everyone inside the settlement is safe, but when situations bring the characters out of the safety of camp, dinosaurs are a constant danger. My favorite part about these dinosaurs is that the writers have opted not to use the popular dinosaurs that everyone knows and loves. There are no stegosaurs, triceratops, or even T-rexes. Of the two different species that have we have seen a lot of one is some version of a pterodactyl that is the size of a bat, which may or may not be real, and a weird twist on a velociraptor, that the internet has assured me could not exist.
The second threat comes from a group of other humans referred to as the Sixers, named because most of them came in on the sixth pilgrimage (For an unstated reason the portal does not work constantly and so people must come in groups referred to as pilgrimages). The Sixers decided they wanted to break away from Terra Nova and form their own colony and are more then a little hostile towards the citizens of Terra Nova. The Sixers are what makes me compare the show to Lost. The Sixers feel like the early “others” back when the passengers of flight 815 knew there were other people on the island, but had no idea who they were or what they wanted, which is to say back when the show was fun. The writers have kept the Sixers shrouded in mystery and for now I like it that way. The show is not bogging itself down with mythology yet, but they are putting out some interesting teasers and questions that will keep fans coming back.
The last source of conflict is by far my favorite. I assumed that when our family traveled back to the past that they would have to leave all the comforts of technology behind for some stupid but logical reason. However, the writers chose to make Terra Nova a sci-fi haven with computers and all the advanced technology the future had to offer. The writers have also taken a note from the Eureka playbook and have shown that this future technology and past environment don’t always coexist nicely. In one of the early episodes a genetically modified virus gets free and infects several characters causing them to slowly lose their memories. The cop father must find a way to reverse the problem while also dodging the slashers trying to turn him into lunch so that he can get his wife (and the other characters, but mostly just the wife) back to where she remembers who he is. It’s a plotline that I am pretty certain is literally taken from Eureka, but it works and I like the fact that elements of the future are all their new land of the lost home.
Overall Terra Nova suffers from two-dimensional characters that have not yet developed very far, but there is substantial room for growth. The children still blame dad for getting put in jail and leaving them. Rebellious son has a girlfriend he left and desperately wants to get brought to Terra Nova. You’ll notice I don’t use any of the family members names. That’s because I don’t know them and while I could look them up I think it serves to show my point that at this time the characters have yet to leave the realm of stereotypes. The other facets of the show are great. The writing is fairly solid and the conflicts have been intriguing and kept me coming back for more. The special effects have been very impressive for a TV show, especially the dinosaurs. It is clear that Fox is putting a good deal of capital into making this show a success. If they use the rest of the season to really make me care about the characters and do not overuse the mysteries like Lost did then I think that Terra Nova could be a hit and bring Fox back into the fight for scripted drama supremacy.
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