SPOILER ALERT!
It’s the Sliders/Earth2/Land of the Lost mash-up I think I’ve been waiting for all my life. The catch is, does Fox’s new scifi show Terra Nova have what it takes to survive Fox’s infamous promising-show hatchet *and* the inevitable scoffs to gain enough viewers?
Let’s begin at the beginning. We’ve really screwed up Earth. No surprises there. It’s the 22nd century, and Big Brother is full-steam ahead, regulating every part of our lives in an effort to keep us alive. In 2142, a rift was discovered which led to 85 million BC – but it’s okay, it’s not OUR past, it’s a different time stream entirely. No chaos effect backlash here. Just think of it like Sliders – they’re ruining someone else’s 2149. Four episodes in, there’s not a lot of science-splanation, but I’ll get to why I think that’s actually on purpose rather than to pointedly avoid alienating viewers with technobabble. (Though I suspect that’s a pleasant side-effect.) We join the show on the eve of the 10th Pilgrimage – the tenth group of people, some chosen by lottery, some directly recruited, and they’re all going to Terra Nova. What’s made clear is once you pass through the gateway (with a nice watery effect popularized by Stargate – no tornado-effects here, Sliders fans!), there’s no coming back. There’s a timing issue involved, and while some communication is possible, there’s no constant stream of information going back and forth between the two locations. I vastly prefer this over Stargate: SGU‘s, let’s face it, questionable body-swapping method. Even for this gung-ho promoter of “willful suspension of disbelief”, I’m glad they kept it simple.
Billed as a sci-fi drama, Terra Nova bundles a few speculative fiction favorites in the hopes of laying groundwork for a show which will last. First, it’s a family show. Centered around the Shannons, patriarch Jim (Jason O’Mara) is a former cop who escapes from the clink in the pilot, where he was thrown two years earlier when the government of a suffocating and war-torn Earth of 2149 discovers he and his family have violated America’s population quota. Seen in propaganda several times in the pilot is the phrase “A Family Is Four”. Jim saves his young daughter Zoe (the third child with wife Elisabeth) by being thrown in lockup. Matriarch Elisabeth Shannon (Shelley Conn) is an immunologist and a medical doctor, and three children, son Joshua, daughter Maddy and littlest daughter Zoe meet up with their escaped-con pater familias (yes, I watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? this weekend) just as they’re about to make the jump through the gateway, with illegal kidlet Zoe shoved in a rucksack. Good thing they were all packing for a long vacation.
Arriving on Terra Nova, where the colony has been thriving for seven years, there is a place for everyone. Children go to school, Elisabeth works in the hospital and main research center, and stowaway Jim gets put on agricultural duty until the leader of the colony, Commander Taylor (played fantastically by Stephen Lang, whom I’m sure everyone will know from Avatar, where he played, hey, the same character with a different name!) can figure out what to do with him. Family dynamics are laid out pretty quickly – Jim and Elisabeth have some catching up to do (having been apart for two years), daughter Zoe is quiet and young enough that she needs to get to know Poppa Shannon, daughter Maddy is just THRILLED to be on Terra Nova and is chock full of information (a friend compared her to Daisy on Fox’s lead drama Bones – mind running a mile a minute – I’d say it’s accurate, but I kind of love Daisy and I know that’s not true for everyone, so I’ll say she’s less annoying to placate the non-Daisy lovers), and son Josh is pissed off at Poppa Shannon for leaving them behind, and spends the first episode (a two-hour pilot) exercising his teen angst.
Beyond the family drama aspect of getting used to their new home, we’re also quickly introduced to what are the two major antagonists of the series: the planet itself (and all its fun dinosaur predators) and a group called the “Sixers”. The dinosaur part is pretty self-explanatory (I hope – they do still teach science in schools these days, right? I’m never sure.), and for the most part, there are behavior protocols in place which every colonist learns with regards to dealing with their new environment. No one is allowed outside the gates without permission from Taylor and his team, but there’s plenty of space to stretch one’s legs within the gates. The other primary antagonist is the Sixers. The Sixers are a rebel cell that have broken away from the colony, primarily consisting of those who came through on the 6th pilgrimage. Sense a set-up? Me too. Led by Mira (the fantastic Christine Adams), the Sixers have been introduced and there’s been groundwork laid for their future storylines, but we don’t know a whole heck of a lot about them yet. They have a tentative peace with Terra Nova and Commander Taylor, but Mira and Taylor in the few exchanges they share clearly have each other’s numbers – between the two of them, there is no mystery about why the Sixers broke away, even if Taylor is keeping closed mouth to Jim Shannon (our primary character to follow as the story unfolds) about the details.
Taylor is pushing the agenda of a “new start” – Terra Nova is his opportunity to usher mankind in a new beginning. By the third episode, we know Taylor has good reasons for needing Terra Nova to succeed. His wife dead, and his son missing (somewhere on Terra Nova), this is all he has. Worse, he was the first through the rift, and while they’ve worked out the kinks by now, Taylor was by himself for 118 days before the rest of the 1st pilgrimage came through, so he has a respect for Terra Nova and its capabilities and possibilities that the others understandably lack. He’s not entirely unapproachable, however. He’s taken under his wing a young girl named Skye who came with her parents seven years ago on the 1st pilgrimage, and both parents succumbed to a disease years ago. Skye, however, is trouble. I’m talking trouble with a capital T, right here in River City. She’s introduced to us via Josh’s Convenient Acting Out: after an argument about authority with Poppa Shannon in the pilot, he runs off with the first girl he finds, who introduces him to friends who are making moonshine outside the gates, and gets him trapped outside said gates at night and attacked by “Slicers”, vicious dinosaurs I’ve not heard of before (but Jack Horner is the consulting paleontologist here and he’s a childhood hero, so pretension aside, I’m just going to go with it) who hunt in packs and have tails which, hey, can be whipped around to do some serious slice-y damage. Skye appears several times, and though she competes with the memory of the girl Josh left behind, there’s no doubt she’s being set up as a love interest and general rabble-rouser.
On their journey outside the gates, we’re clued into the Smoke Monster of Terra Nova – etchings of geometric equations which are in a restricted area (which Skye, good girl that she is, lies to Taylor about having ever seen or shown to anyone else) which the lead of the Sixers, Mira, believes have been left behind by Taylor’s “missing” son, who is presumably playing Robinson Crusoe with either dinosaurs, natives we haven’t met, or an invisible friend of his own construction. I’m calling it now, it’s not someone else’s timeline these folks are tromping about in, it’s either actually a DIFFERENT planet or, more likely, it’s “our” timeline and since the moment folks arrived seven years ago, they’ve been screwing over the future in a hundred million different and interesting ways.
Let’s not leave out the other fun things happening back home: Maddy has a gentleman caller, a young soldier named Mark (who, despite my vicious dislike of Josh and Skye, make an adorable couple – the babbling genius girl and the quiet junior solider) and we discover that Elisabeth was recruited by an old university boyfriend, Malcolm, who is head of the science dept for Terra Nova and was really hoping husband Jim was going to stay in prison leaving him an opening with Elisabeth. I have to say that no one’s really secretive about ANYTHING with regards to these developing plots, but neither are they under any impression they’ve succeeded in their coup. Jim spends an appropriate amount of time shooing off Malcolm, who, let’s be honest, is more skeevy creeper than realistic competition for Elisabeth’s affections.
Quick Synopsis So Far:
- Episode 1 “Genesis” – We see the state of Earth, Jim breaks out of jail, the Shannons travel to 85 million BC and Terra Nova. Josh gets trapped outside the gates, the family grows together, we get a taste of both antagonists, reptilian and human, and are given a clue that somewhere on the island is a mentally deranged and intelligent young Taylor who has some ideas about what Terra Nova really is. The tentative peace with the Sixers is explored by the exchange of medical supplies and a Sixer prisoner for ore which the colony needs and the Sixers have access to.
- Episode 2 “Instinct” – A ten-year mating cycle of vicious little pterosaurs (those would be the flying kind sans feathers) leads to wide-scale destruction of the colony until the science team manufactures enough pheromones to alter the migration pattern away from the colony. (Conveniently, the reason that site was chosen was for the nutrient-rich soil left behind by the last hatching.) We learn that Malcolm recruited Elisabeth to be the Jane to his Tarzan. Position already filled. Sorry Malcolm. Taylor officially makes Jim the only cop in Terra Nova, removing him from weed-whacking duty and informing him they have a mole in the colony feeding info and potentially supplies to the Sixers.
- Episode 3 “What Remains” – Out at Outpost Three, a naughty scientist working with illegal genetic research creates a super-Alzheimer’s virus which is beat within 48 hours by judicious application of the common cold. Yep, they still haven’t cured the cold. There’s no hope for us. Malcolm feeds Jim a root with dino dung on it to combat his symptoms. More Malcom vs. Jim as Elisabeth loses her memory and stops recognizing her husband. Rightfully, Jim clocks Malcolm. There was much rejoicing. (I mean, really, Malcolm isn’t even approaching the level of Rodney McKay asshattery which made that character so lovable. Instead Malcolm is just a creeper.) Discover that the Sixers have a way of communicating with 2149 (they never say Earth, just the time period, even though it’s not supposed to be “their” Earth they’re traipsing about in) and there are plenty of potential culprits for the information leak Taylor mentioned in the last episode.
The Bottom Line: This show has got to have a heavy effects budget – though the dinosaurs aren’t in every shot, there’s a whole lot of jungle goin’ on. I worry that if the ratings don’t pick up, Fox will cry pricetag. I say give this show a try. It’s not trying to be anything epic or new. There are plenty of threads we’ve all seen before – but it’s trying to tell a story about secrets, family, and starting over. Sure, LOST is over, so maybe we’ve had enough of secrets for now, but I think the pointed lack of technobabble and the focus on the human element has the potential to be the saving grace. With the exception of Josh and his predictable acting out and presumable future defection to the Sixers with rad girlfriend Skye (yep, calling that too), this show is still growing into itself. We’re getting to know the characters, and getting to see that none of them have only one thing going for them. Everyone is on Terra Nova for a reason, most everyone has an agenda, but they all know there’s no going home, so they have to make the best of what they have. So far, there’s no indication that the Sixers are trying to get back to 2149 – everyone agrees that’s a bad idea. What the Sixer leader Mira is seen to imply, is that Taylor is keeping secrets in order to further his second-chance agenda. I think we’re in for a dash of disaster-of-the-week with an undercurrent of Sixers vs. Terra Nova, Mira vs. Taylor antics. Give it a try – it might be that show you wish existed fifteen years ago, which has finally been given the chance to grace your screen.
