Terra Nova

Finally got around to watching the pilot.

I think this show would be right up my alley except for two things:

I hate the central family so much.

And I'm constantly getting hung up on silly little details. If information only flows one way through the fracture, how do they know anything about what's on the other side, let alone that it's 85 million years in the past in an unrelated time stream? That's a pretty big fucking gap to leap - which leads me to wonder if the powers that be aren't just tossing unwanteds in the fracture and if they come out the other side okay, well... at least they're not around here anymore. Or maybe information flows both ways and they just aren't telling people about it - but then there's the question of why no one in 2149 (really? metroplitan landscapes are going to change that drastically in 38 years?) is raising that same question.

And the biosphere of Terra Nova seems awfully modern for 85 million years ago. I was under the impression that the atmosphere was significantly different then and for an untapped, humanity-free wilderness there's a suspicious lack of fauna - and the flora, for that matter, seems awfully thin. I know that TN's had 18 years to do some logging and what not, but you'd think the kids wouldn't be able to go so far out of the camp without a machete or something.

Some of these questions, at least, seem to be genuine mysteries. The daughter's problem with star placement to me indicates that there's something else going on here than time travel. The problem is it's hard to tell which are the genuine mysteries and which are the writer's just not thinking things through all the way.

Well, it is a Fox show, so boulders of salt all around. I'm sort of enjoying it in the way that every week I'm pleasantly surprised it doesn't entirely suck. But that is a pretty damn big plot hole--I couldn't figure out what was bothering me, and that was it. I do applaud them for picking kid actors who legit look like they could be the offspring of the two parents, because that ALWAYS bothers me.

I think that it's supposed to be 138 years ahead of now. Unless I'm adding wrong, which is totally possible.

Nope, you're totally right. I wasn't paying attention to the first two digits.

I gave up on the show sometime in episode two? Three? The one where sexy time was interrupted by a noisy bird who tried to eat them. The show seems to think people would watch because of OMG DINOSAURS and WE HAVE A MYSTERIOUS BAND OF OUTSIDERS AFTER US JUST LIKE LOST, THAT OTHER SHOW YOU LIKED. They were so busy with the bells and whistles, they forgot they needed to tell emotionally true stories for the characters. Nobody care about attacks from an OMG DINOSAUR or A MYSTERIOUS BAND OF OUTSIDERS if they don't care about the characters. So I quit.

I haven't decided if I like it or not, and I am still watching.
1) they are trying too many mysteries at once ie like curryvalley said I have to connect to the characters before all the other noise starts.
2) curryvalley last weeks episode was better it started talking more about the sixes and their motives.

I didn't realize a show about dinosaurs and time travel could be so boring. It's like they were aiming for Lost but ended up with Land of the Lost, minus the cheese.

I was a little excited about it in the beginning. I should have taken it as a more ominous sign that the parts I was more excited about were the future dystopia parts, which, you know, are not in the regular part of the show.

I said something to this effect on the other board before it disappeared. But the disappointment I feel boils down to this: they have a fabulous, far-out sci-fi concept, and their storylines are the usual boring TV crap. In the third episode they literally had a plot about whether the daughter would follow in her mom's footsteps and be a doctor. YOU'RE IN FUCKING DINOSAUR TIMES. STOP HAVING PLOTS ABOUT TEEN CAREER CHOICES.

It strikes me as very similar to Falling Skies, which makes sense because they're both Spielberg: crazy concept, somewhat exciting setup, and then an immediate settling into boring family stories/cutesy teenager crap, with all the the conflict coming from the most cliched possible things (that mysterious band of outsiders -- HOW ABOUT SOME DINOSAURS MAYBE, or you know, unfathomable poisonous plants, or any of the other dangers that they could face since it's BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO) and with all the "action" just involving people shooting at each other in souped-up, manufactured encounters. ZERO sense of worldbuilding, no sense of wonder at all. So, SO many possibilities and they just don't seem to be using any of it. Granted, I've only seen two episodes. But I felt such a sense of weariness watching the second one (which was actually the third episode as I missed one) that I decided pretty fast not to bother anymore. Disappointing.

I really enjoyed the double episode, and it made me wish they'd brought up a lot of these things earlier on. The show seemed more intertesting having the future involved so closely. I'm guessingthey were just wanting to build up how GREAT Terra Nova is as a place to live to know that this Phoenix Group are bad naughty people making things BAD.

Hopefully the rest of the season, with the colony fending for themselves, will stay interesting, and won't revert back to the regular family-drama from any family show on tv.

Too bad the rest of the season was not like the double finale episode! I loved it, it got me very interested in Terra Nova again - love the badlands idea and the idea there is some time rip - just waiting for The Doctor to come.