Terra Nova - Fox *Spoilers*

humanji

I watched it last night and feel pretty much the same as everyone else. It's not great, but oddly watchable. It's a bit too obvious at times, with regards to plot. From the moment you're introduced to the 6er's, you kind of already know they're the good guys. And I'm assuming the plucky love interest of the angst-ridden son is the spy the 6er's have on the site. It's the type of thing you'd expect to happen to force conflict between the characters (ie lazy writing).

As for the whole time thing, I'm assuming that they're not in another time stream. The dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite, so the settlement will be too. Which would kind of make you wonder why nobody seems to worried about that. I think the daughter explaining about the probe felt too forced for it to be anything other than a future plot device.

human repellent

Do you people watch shows but not actually listen?

For startes, it's been widely agreed upon that MANY dinosours including raptors ate / eat their prey alive, this was stated in jurassic park 20 years ago, those slashers looked like a close relative to a raptor, it would make sense they would munch away on their prey without kiling it.

As for the timeline, it's a seperate timeline, this was explained in the show, IN DETAIL when the girl explains the probe scenario. Not to mention the distinct reference to the 'butterfly effect'

She says this probe was sent tru, and we couldn't find it when we looked in our timeline, fair enough it's numerous years later but it's an explanation none the less, also as a probe was sent through I'm fairly confident two-way communication was evident.

Absolute horribly cliched show by the way, soooooo family orientated could only imagine what a show like this would be like on a network like hbo or showtime, ah if only.

FutureGuy

Saw the pilot last night. If it wasn't for the fact that its getting very good reviews stateside, I'm not sure I'd give the series a second chance but will persevere.

At times, I felt the acting was pretty bad and it's pretty clear that by the end of the series well be spending more time with the good guy sixers. The son will defect because lovergirl is the mole at terranova, but it turns out that the sixers were good guys all along.

But what annoyed me the most was that they spend alot of time building up little mysteries. Where is the commanders son and what happened to him? What are those mysterious equations and who could have put them there? And what do they do? Explain it all in the final 2 minutes ffs! Come on!!!

But then I realized, with the very "Lost" feel to the program, maybe they decided to show the audience that "we're not going to feed you 5 years of hints only to feck up the ending of THIS show...THIS show will be different."

Anyways, I'll watch next weeks episode just to see where it's going.

Richard Dower

I liked ep. 3 also, twas good family fun!...best part was poor little Zoe and that horrid raptor-type-birdie-thingy!!!...omg!, he almost got the little girl!, twas a good tense scene.
Zero plot/arc/mythology development...some crap about a former flame tryna take the hot doctor wan, yup...i've not learned the character names yet.

I thought the CGI looked a bit better in this ep. too, listen...it's not high art, plotholes aplenty, cliche after cliche....but, it's light family entertainment....you could easily sit the kids down and drink a cold one and come out of the other end entertained.

Can't say fairer then that can you?

humanji

Is that not episode 3? Episodes 1 and 2 were on Sky last night. Or was that one episode split into two?

Richard Dower

humanji wrote: »

Is that not episode 3? Episodes 1 and 2 were on Sky last night. Or was that one episode split into two?

Ep. 3...i just called it #2.

readyletsgo

Eh, has Ep3 aired in the states yet?

People use spoilers if describing it!!!!!

Richard Dower

readyletsgo wrote: »

Eh, has Ep3 aired in the states yet?

People use spoilers if describing it!!!!!

Ep. 3 did air, the little girl Zoe was killed by a Raptor in horrific style

human repellent

Richard Dower wrote: »

Ep. 3 did air, the little girl Zoe was killed by a Raptor in horrific style

One can only hope, might add another demension to an extremly for want of a better word '****' show.

pew pew

nix

Thats what pissed me off about it (besides the **** cgi/acting), the dinosaurs were ****, where are the raptors/t rex's? Did those dinosaurs we saw even exist?

How accurate are they going with the historical knowledge we know of from fossils etc? Or are they gonna make up dinosaurs as they go??

Was ep3 an improvement from the first 2? As i was left underwhelmed.

readyletsgo

Ok I just watched ep3 there, my god... terrible follow up story. really really bad.

NOTHING HAPPENS, couple of little birds attacking them over the whole ep, no expansion on the story or anything. giving up on this show already, wonder what the ratings will be like for the next ep.

Goldstein

Good God, quite possibly the stupidest, most idiotic, trope filled, cliché of a tv show ever made by humans. This is imbecilic even for low-attention span fox.

Brannon Braga hang your head in shame.

Conor108

I haven't watched episode 3 yet but just about the asteroid thing. Theres still 20 million years between when they arrive in Terra Nova (85 million years ago) and when the dino killing asteroid hit (65 million years ago). So it'll be grand plenty of time for them to build nukes and space ships and what not:)

pixelburp

You know how sometimes you might be watching a TV show, it's a long episode, and you simply have to take a fag/tea/bathroom break? Well I think Terra Nova's first episode has gone and created a new artificial breaktime for me - the cheese break.

Too. Much. Cheese. Too much for one 45 minute sitting, I'm simply not strong enough.

I knew it would be rough early on though; as soon as I saw the teenage son, I quickly realised that awful trope of the "rebellious, surly teen boy" would be the vanguard for some godawful cliché ridden TV. Boy I hate being right sometimes. The family unit is a pit of clichés, and if you're insisting on flooding your show with teens & younger, then for gods sake make them likeable. I think it's a major mistep to make them the focus of the show. I like audience surrogates as much as the next person, but they're an insufferable bunch.

I wouldn't mind but we've already seen this lazy, sloppy characterisation only too recently in another Spielberg backed sci-fi series - Falling Skies. In fact some of the character beats are being played almost note for note. The cocky, dad-resenting teenage son? Check. A military-type getting all authoritarian on our makeshift community? Check. Lead character struggling to connect with his family? Check.

ejmaztec

Conor108 wrote: »

I haven't watched episode 3 yet but just about the asteroid thing. Theres still 20 million years between when they arrive in Terra Nova (85 million years ago) and when the dino killing asteroid hit (65 million years ago). So it'll be grand plenty of time for them to build nukes and space ships and what not:)

I think the series will be extinct very soon, and it won't be a meteorite putting it of its misery, but some network guy with a chequebook.

They'll probably say that Episode 3 was a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"

Also Starring LeVar Burton

Meh. Episode 3 was all very meh. With the cancellation of the Playboy Club and Ringer being sh*t, i've no other new dramas to be watching until January, so I may very well stick this out a bit longer.

Kirby

I've watched the first three episodes. Its complete fluff. This is going to be an expensive mistake.

When will people learn? You can't have your cake and eat it too. You make a tween show or you make an adults show. If you try to do both, you will fail and thats exactly whats happening.

People wouldn't watch Game of Thrones without the T&A and the visceral deaths....and the writing on Game of Thrones is excellent. Terra Nova has no sex, no violence and the writing is sub-par. It won't last.

You can't have a show with dinosaurs without people being killed by the dino's. Lots of people. It wont work otherwise as the "danger" is removed.

They are saving the hallmark dino's like raptors and T-rex for season finale's and later in the show and its a mistake. If your show gets cancelled than what the point in holding things back for an event that might not happen?

This is a missed opportunity and it's a shame they are wasting the budget.

human repellent

It's pretty much a joke of a show.

Stopped watching now, won't be downloading watching 4.

iMax

Wasn't totally sold on the first two episodes.

There's potential in it, I think some of the storyline would have made a great story for Jurassic Park IV, but the CGI wasn't great (esp the moon bit at the end) & the guy in charge just reminds me of Scorpio from The Simpsons.

Richard Dower

iMax wrote: »

Wasn't totally sold on the first two episodes.

There's potential in it, I think some of the storyline would have made a great story for Jurassic Park IV, but the CGI wasn't great (esp the moon bit at the end) & the guy in charge just reminds me of Scorpio from The Simpsons.

Hank Scorpio?....haha!

TerrorFirmer

Didn't like this show.

It's a lot of the small details that annoy me. Terra Nova itself, for example, doesn't even look remotely secure. Jurassic Parks boundaries in that movie looked genuinely formidable, the compound in this show looks like it's made of wooden logs that any dinosaur could tear down. They even focused on this by showing the kid feeding the herbivore which leaned over the fence with ease. I'd find it much more credible if they had a towering, electrified perimeter like they do in JP.

It's also gone a bit Starship Troopers for my liking, in that they have this focus on lightly armored soldiers with guns in a flimsy, equally lightly armoured fort fighting these prehistoric beasts. The whole thing just....just doesn't gel for me at all. Terra Nova looks like it could be overrun by a few dinosaurs effortlessly. Hell, even a handful of 6'ers almost compromised the entire place. Don't buy it at all.

Characters are annoying. Son's a total cliche, and an unlikable douche to boot. And as strange as this may sound, I just dislike the physical appearance of most the characters as well. Particularly the son. Everyone seems to hate that character, they could do worse then sacrifice him to the dinosaurs to sate the lust for meatier interactions with the dinosaurs.

A lot of people are praising the special effects, but to be honest I wasn't overly impressed. The opening was good, but the dinosaurs themselves have a very distinctive 'I'm CGI' look to them. I don't expect film quality effects, but I have most definitely seen better effects in other shows and having see the effects in Jurassic Park remastered (1993) in the cinema recently, they look better then this.

Meh. Don't think I'll bother with it after the first 3 episodes. I realized after it ended that I was actually relieved, hardly a good sign.

Venom

Having the show focus so much on just one family and a rather annoying and uninteresting one at that was a huge mistake from the start imho. A Battlestar Galatica sized cast of characters would of been a much better idea due to the simple fact characters could be killed off as is fitting with a show that's dealing with humans living with dinosaurs.

The writing is lazy on so many different levels that scream the writers didn't think very much about the shows premise. The lack of a roof on the settlement is a pretty big blunder when living in an era with giant flying man-eating creatures along with a serious lack of ground defences to prevent a stampead of giant 30 ton herbivores :rolleyes:

Worst tho is due to being locked into the harmless adventure of the week + happy ending every episode gig, is that zero tension will ever come about any members of the family every being in danger.

Spielberg name being attached to such rubbish such as Falling Skies and now Terra Nova is not far from the groan and avoid that M Night Shyamalan's name bring with it.

ejmaztec

It's a cross between The Waltons and Jurassic Park.

They should move the Flintstones into the compound to inject some life into it.

SVG

Just watched the first episode- Terra-bull Nova more like.:P

The writers seem to be trying hard to run away from the fantastic possibilities afforded to them by the premise and are instead concentrating on the most generic elements. It's a show about building a civilization in the age of dinosaurs and yet they have managed to focus on teen angst and crime solving!

The cgi, music and production design are at Syfy movie level. It boggles the mind to read about the amount of time, money and effort put into this show because there is little evidence of it in the finished programme.

If you read it that Stephen Lang's character is gay and has a major crush on Jason O'Mara, the events of first episode do become slightly more enjoyable, not to mention, plausible (why else would he allow an escaped convict to live a consequence-free life in this relative paradise?!) but, really, there's nothing here to keep me watching.

There's so much that could have been interesting about this- a wasted opportunity.

Richard Dower

Yup....this thread has turned into Falling Skies 2.0....great reading!

AlmightyCushion

SVG wrote: »

Just watched the first episode- Terra-bull Nova more like.:P

It's kinda fitting that this pun is better than anything the Terra Nova writers have come up with so far. The premise is good and has great potential but so far it's been pretty meh. Hopefully it gets good though.

KerranJast

Goldstein wrote: »

Good God, quite possibly the stupidest, most idiotic, trope filled, cliché of a tv show ever made by humans. This is imbecilic even for low-attention span fox.

Brannon Braga hang your head in shame.

He's just getting started. He's got a whole back catalogue of dodgy ST Voyager and Enterprise episodes to "homage" yet.

FutureGuy

KerranJast wrote: »

He's just getting started. He's got a whole back catalogue of dodgy ST Voyager and Enterprise episodes to "homage" yet.

It's funny that dinosaurs from 85m years ago actually pose a threat to humans from 150 years in the future.

Yes, let's send back weapons that need a hundred bullets to take down a medium sized dino. How about some armoured cars that can be ripped to shreds! That's also a good idea.

Silly silly silly.

Conor108

Ive only watched the first 2 (Or the pilot episode whatever) but is it me or is the CGI about as good as it was in 1993? When Zoe was feeding the dinosaurs over the fence they looked really cgi-ish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-RPO10aPY

Mindkiller

South Park made fun of this today. 'It's like LOST and Jurassic Park in the same TV show!'. Only funny part of the episode

Richard Dower

^ an insult to both shows tbh Mindkiller.

adox

Well settled down to watch the two part pilot with the Mrs and we gave up after the first part.

Calling it awful really does a disservice to awful shows.

missingtime

3rd episode was awful, terrible CGI, terrible writing and it was all so predictable. Very disappointed in this series

don ramo

so should people expect 3 pages of bitchiness every week till this is canceled, :rolleyes:

Richard Dower

don ramo wrote: »

so should people expect 3 pages of bitchiness every week till this is canceled, :rolleyes:

Snark...pages of snark, worth the price of admission alone!

the culture of deference

Awful waste of money.

A family escapes to paradise from an earth thats about to die.


15 mins later they are in their new house bitching at each other

episode 3 was terrible, this show will go on and on like lost did.
no answers and more stupid plots, and pointless character actions than you could shake a stick at.

pixelburp

Huh, forgot about this show - I posted a while back that I paused half way through the first episode (the combined 1st / 2nd episode) I never actually bothered watching the rest of the debut in the end, and reading the rest of this thread I don't think I'm inclined to either!

bnt

I'm part way through Ep1, but I'm so dismayed by what I've seen that I knew there'd be a thread on it here. I didn't know it was a Fox show, but that explains a few things. It's for a Fox audience: white, right-wing, socially conservative, "family values voters".

It starts in a future police state, where a 2-child policy is brutally-enforced ... but our heroes defy the law and have a third child, of course. Real Americans have large families, only "liberal intellectuals" worry about overpopulation. Then, when our police officer hero picks up the rucksack after escaping, it's full of $1000 bills: there must be over $1m in there. The suggestion is that there has been rampant inflation in the previous years. Guess whose face is on the money? That's right: President Obama, instead of the old Presidents. The implication is that he turned the future USA in to a banana republic, with hyperinflation, and put his own face on the money like some African dictator.

So I think the comparison to The Waltons is a good one ... it's a throwback to a more "white" era in US history. :rolleyes:

BopNiblets

Can people shut up about T-rexes in this thread? T-rex lived 65 million years ago, Terra Nova is 85 million years ago, GAWD!
You all fail palaeontology.
(I saw in the credits ether have a dino advisor guy)

ThisRegard

Watched the first episode of this, super cheesy, cliched and awfulness. Is the first episode the highpoint and does it go down hill from there ?

JerryHandbag

Watched ep1 last night, started well I thought but faded off badly and not very impressed with the CGI. For me I think this is going to go the same way as "V", where I have to stop watching after a couple of episodes due to the annoying teenage son!

Richard Dower

It's dead Jim........ :eek:

FOX will cap the freshman run of "Terra Nova" with a two-hour season finale on Monday, December 19 at 8:00/7:00c, network sources have confirmed. Terra Nova will air every Monday until then except October 24 and December 5th. FOX has also confirmed there will be no back 9 order.

http://www.thefutoncritic.com/

Mr E

Crap.... it wasn't a stellar show, but it was fun.
Bah.

Basq

Shame, I watched the first two-part episode and didn't think it was "terrible"..

.. but as I've said elsewhere, not one new network drama has grabbed me this year.

Richard Dower

BopNiblets wrote: »

Can people shut up about T-rexes in this thread? T-rex lived 65 million years ago, Terra Nova is 85 million years ago, GAWD!
You all fail palaeontology.
(I saw in the credits ether have a dino advisor guy)

SpoilerTV have an awesome Dino refrence guide...incl. human kills count!

http://www.spoilertv.com/2011/09/terra-nova-season-1-dinosaur-reference.html

stevenmu

+1, I've enjoyed it. I know it's crappy saturday-afternoon family drama, but I wasn't expecting anything more from it. I suppose though it was way to expensive to survive as that type of show.

It really annoys me that they take on relatively unique and original concepts for shows, but then ruin them by scripting them with the same old tired cliches and tropes that have been hashed out countless times in every other show.

Mr E

Guys, from reading that post, the show isn't dead.

FOX entertainment president Kevin Reilly told reporters at the TCA Summer Press Tour the network could only commitment to 13 installments for its first season. "Even in success there's no scenario that 'Terra Nova' comes back this year for timing reasons," he said at the time. "Whether it's 22 next year, contractually it's 22. Whether that's something we can ultimately do we're going to have to see.

Mr.Nice Guy

I found the recent episode disappointing and the show has come across a bit too Stargate-esque for my liking whereas I was hoping for something a bit more challenging and Lost-like (but with a more logical plot). It's a bit too family-oriented and typical Spielberg (son with daddy issues, eldest girl experiencing her first love etc.)

I wouldn't like to see it canned as I think it could be good but right now the dinosaurs seem like background scenery for an emotional drama rather than a significant part of the show. I think perhaps it would be better if their home gets destroyed fairly sharpish and they must then fend for themselves in the wild to give it more of a Jurassic Park feel.

smellslikeshoes

The whole kids thing is absolutely mind numbing, the son should do us all a favour and get himself eaten.

expectationlost

yerone seems a bit too keen on him whats her agenda?