Okay, so I’m sitting here watching that new TV show Terra Nova, because, I admit it, science fiction has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, even bad science fiction (and a half-hour in, it’s already clear that Terra Nova qualifies as bad), and I hate to be a wet blanket or anything, but what is it with these dystopian fantasies where we somehow manage to develop an amazing technology like sending people eighty-some million years back in time, yet we can’t figure out how to create clean, renewable energy, or use effective birth control?

Soylent Green, I get. It’s a 1973 film set in not-to-distant 2022, so it’s perfectly reasonable to anticipate the super-advanced food processing technology necessary to transform a stringy old Edward G. Robinson into a tasty snack cracker, co-existing at the same time mankind stupidly plunges itself into an ecological disaster. I mean, I could imagine a scenario like that a decade from now. Couldn’t you?

And Blade Runner? Yeah, that Android technology is way too advanced for 2019, but there’s all those great noodle shops all over the place, so it’s hard to describe the setting as exactly a dystopia. I love noodles. So Blade Runner doesn’t count.

But Terra Nova, honestly, 140 years from now we can send people through a fucking crack in time but we’re still spewing shit into the atmosphere like in Al Gore’s worst nightmare? Really? Sorry, I’m just having a little trouble suspending disbelief.

Okay, so it’s just TV, and it’s FOX at that, but it’s still disappointing, especially considering the initial similarities to Julian May’s The Many Colored Land, the first in a series of four science fiction books I distantly remember kinda loving. That story too has the protagonists stepping back in time millions of years through a one-way portal, but instead of escaping a dystopic future, they’re fleeing a rather idyllic, if boring, one. In The Many Colored Land, the future is a sorta Epcot Center vision of peace and abundance, whereas the past is a place for adventurers, outcasts, and societal misfits itching for a taste of the real thing. (Not to mention a race of dimorphic, telepathic aliens… but I wouldn’t want to give too much away). In other words, no CGI dinosaurs, but a ton more nuance.

So, um, yeah, as far as it goes, that’s my instant review: Don’t watch Terra Nova. Read this book instead.

25 replies on “Instant Review: Terra-ble Nova”

  2. I was thinking….yeah, and Pan Am is supposed to be a rip-off of Mad Men – the fascination with those times, the fashion. I have to tell you that I miss the time when riding in an airplane was an extraordinary experience and flight attendants were sort of glamourous. But I digress.

    Since writers in TV Land have had a rough few years with all the so-called unscripted shows, I was hoping that they’d really make an effort with this one – even if its genesis was quite predictable. Then again, how often is something as original as Mad Men on TV?

    Well, I was disappointed on two levels. I was disappointed that those writers/castaways didn’t put very much effort is creating something that would show us why reality TV needs to die its overdue death. And I was disappointed that not only was Pan Am not Mad Men – worse than that – it was The Love Boat with wings. Too bad.

    Maybe they do need to hire some of those older writers who have been bitching for years about being squeezed out for youth – people who know there’s way more to life than chasing tail.

  3. Good call on the Julian May books, though I’d recommend starting with Intervention, then the Galactic Milieu trilogy, and finally the Pliocene Exile series. Granted that doesn’t get you the Terra Nova-like time travel fix until you’ve already read 5 books, but it sets up the back story and helps you understand why people chose to leave their idyllic-on-the-surface society for a “new frontier” in the past.

    Oh, and I didn’t think Terra Nova was that bad. The story was cheesy, the CGI dinosaurs were worse than the original Jurassic Park of twenty years ago, and the new world was very teal and orange for a place that’s supposed to be green jungle, but it was a fun little romp. I expect I’ll keep recording it, if I don’t get bored of it after a couple of episodes. At the very least, it’ll tide me over until House starts up again next week.

  4. So is it true what they say that people from Seattle don’t enjoy anything that doesn’t involve cross dressing or random crap glued together and dubbed art?

  5. You’re right. Was a bit boring. Will try to watch again, but may give up. I loved the Lost and was hoping for something similar (but better).

  6. > 140 years from now we can send people through
    > a fucking crack in time but we’re still spewing
    > shit into the atmosphere

    What, did the Koch brothers win?

  8. Wow, I’d forgotten all about The Many-Colored Land, it must have been 15 years since I read it. Thanks for the reminder. I wonder if my library system has the series…

  9. jeez goldy, that’s awfully optimistic of you. you think human nature is going to change over 140 years? we have the technology now to stop making the very air we breathe into a poisonous fume, but not the collective will to change our lifestyles and make it happen.

  10. Have you not noticed that right now we’ve all got hand-sized devices that allow us to access the entire span of recorded human history, but there’s still homeless people everywhere? Technology doesn’t solve human inequality, it just sits on top of it like a coat of fresh paint.

  12. I love noodles. So Blade Runner doesn’t count.

    Dibs on this title for my Hump! video. Don’t run out and name your band I love noodles. So Blade Runner doesn’t count before I’m done, either.

  13. What annoyed me about Terra Nova was how it was basically exactly the same as Falling Skies, in terms of the types of characters and relationships, but with a shake of Avatar and Jurasic Park. I mean, there is a budding love interest between the handsome white male lead who has just been put into a military role and a pretty doctor who is a woman of color. Both shows have two many annoying kids and teens, too. They had some disjunctive shirtless scenes to appeal to the women-and-gay-men demographic for good measure, too. That guy from Avatar is just doing is same role again in Terra Nova, too.

    I will say Falling Skies grew on me, and I ended up rather liking it, even though it’s not that original either. But Terra Nova seems way too rehashed, and shirtless hunks won’t save it.

    The Walking Dead is also similar, but with good writing.

  14. One stupid thing Goldy doesn’t mention: the cracks through time they use are one way.

    You go through, you’re not coming back. Nobody can come back and say, “Hey, yeah, this colony rocks.” It’s an alternate timeline you can’t return from, so there’s no way to communicate. They could all be dead as far as anyone in the future knows, but that basic and obvious fact is never addressed.

  15. Very disappointing. I sat through it half-heartedly, mostly playing Angry Birds. All the sci-fi aspects deserve the geek-debate treatment, but above all it was slow-moving and dull, with cliched characters, cliched dialogue, cliched props, and over-wrought acting more suited to a teen soap.

  18. Goldy, wasn’t the point that they accidentally stumbled across the hole in time, and were incapable technologically by that point of stopping the coming environmental disaster?

  19. “But Terra Nova, honestly, 140 years from now we can send people through a fucking crack in time but we’re still spewing shit into the atmosphere like in Al Gore’s worst nightmare?”

    In Terra Nova’s defense, the show’s assuming that Republicans controlled environmental policies.

  20. I haven’t watched it yet. But it seems like the main complaint here is that the technology to send people back in time is incompatible with the idea of a dying, decaying Earth.

    But isn’t that like saying that the iPhone is incompatible with a world where millions of people are starving and dying of diseases? That surely, a world that can put the Internet and thousands of songs and movies in your hand would have solved pesky issues like war and starvation, and wouldn’t allow something like AIDS to destroy the population of an entire continent?

    Now, Terra Nova may have presented the idea stupidly – that wouldn’t shock me, given modern television writing – but the idea that a small, focused group of well-funded physicists might come up with a technical breakthrough when the rest of society, including most of the people making most of the money worldwide, would be trashing the planet doesn’t strike me as unbelievable.

    It strikes me almost as a given, these days.

  22. So different question…what about the so-called “butterfly effect,” and how many paradoxes are being created by these people going back into the history of their own existence? If they kill an antelope (or whatever beast they’re dining on back then), and two of them just happen to vanish from existence like nothing happened, does anyone notice, or are they all vegetarian to prevent such an occurrence? I guess it’s a good way to weed out actors who are getting too pushy during contract negotiations.

  23. @22, I haven’t even seen the show yet – but I I know just from the preview that it is a separate timeline. No Back to the Future/Terminator continuity issues or paradoxes.

  24. We had high hopes for a good sci fi series but were painfully let down. single demention characters we have seen in every family drama since family drama was invented.

    also, for dogs sakes, if you are doing a show that takes place outdoors as much as this one does, watch where you put the lights so we can tell what way the sun is supposed to be shining. that drove me crazy… from the fact that the dinasaurs didnt have shadows AT ALL. to the weird lighting effects on all the humans, its a sign of real lack af attention to details. and for me to nitice it makes it even worse, as this is not something I would take note of.

  25. As some have said, too much cliche family drama. There’s the annoying teenage son who “rebels” against his father. The cop father who doesn’t get it (at first) that his son has found a girl to follow. And if everyone is there to start a new life and all then why do they have a military leader person running the show with guns when that is the whole reason why many left real earth was to escape all that. There’s that screaming girl who decides to leave the armoured car. Too much cliche stuff to mention. Oh, and they talk about painting the houses. What?

    I understand that they have a military thing going on what with man eating dinosaurs. But they don’t need a leader with a gun who makes final decisions on a persons life.

    I will keep watching but I don’t have much hope. I’ll watch Outcasts again for better last of humanity left stranded on a new world sci-fi show http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcasts_(T…)

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