Terra Nova - "Genesis"

Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2

“Together, we’re at the dawn of

a new civilization. No pressure.”

-Taylor

I’m not going to pretend that I went into Terra Nova with the highest of hopes. As a sci-fi series on FOX that’s produced by Steven Spielberg, I knew more or less what I was getting into, and it wasn’t going to be The Next Great Sci-Fi Series, for sure. Then why did I jump in to a series that I knew might not be that good, as well as commit myself to writing about the thirteen-episode first season?

Because dinosaurs are fucking awesome. The only problem is that the show knows it all too well, and it feels like that’s the reason the show doesn’t work as well as it should.

If you've read any of the advanced press on the show, you’ll undoubtedly be aware that the producers tried to sell critics on the idea of Terra Nova being a family drama first, and a sci-fi adventure second, to the point where they were convinced that it would be the family that would have viewers sticking around. When this aspect of the show failed to live up to such standards, critics were quick to jump on it, claiming it to be the weakest part of the series and, since it was meant to be the heart of the show, the reason while it will most likely fail. Yet even though the family drama is the weakest part of the show, and the part that I find most alienating, I can’t say that I’m that surprised, or that it even bothers me all that much.

Call me a cynic, but I never really took the producers claims of this show being a family drama all that seriously. It’s not that I believe they were being disingenuous, but it’s just how these things tend to work. The commonly held belief in today’s age of entertainment is that if you have a high concept piece of entertainment, you have to back it up with some real emotion, or else people won’t take it seriously enough. That’s why your standard action movies are bogged down with silly romantic subplots that tend to serve as distractions to the stuff that people actually like – you know, the action. (Or, for a more specific example, it’s also why the season three finale and season four premiere of Castle were so bad. When the show loses its sense of goofy humor, it becomes far less enjoyable.)

It’s a message that Hollywood still hasn’t seemed to entirely get: there’s nothing inherently wrong with fluff, so long as you put real effort into keeping the story light, swift, logical, and entertaining. Now, I get that given its premise, Terra Nova can’t exactly be a fluff piece of television. Dinosaurs may be fucking awesome, but they are also fucking serious about biting your face off. If the characters don’t treat the environment they’re in with the seriousness it deserves, then it just becomes really easy for the show to lose its grip on whatever reality it’s depicting. Science fictions tends to demand a certain level of seriousness, and few creative types are willing to try and buck that trend, less they end up creating a sub-par piece of entertainment.

The real problem, somehow, is that the show wants it both ways, and both parts to seem to suffer for it. The dino action chase sequences, arguably the show’s biggest strength, are loud, fast, and fun set pieces that viewers can’t help but be drawn in by. The only problem is that the scenes with the dinosaurs seem to happen only after there’s some scene featuring overwrought family drama. It’s almost as if the show is using the dinosaurs as some sort of patch or excuse, as if showing us these prehistoric creatures will somehow make up for the lesser quality stuff.

And what makes this family stuff so horrid? Maybe it’s the fact that the show is trying to draw an over-obvious parallel of this family starting over while humanity is starting over. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re supposed to buy that a two year prison sentence can tear a family apart. (Look, I get that two years is a long time, but Hollywood generally depicts these such sentences as going on for much longer, so relatively, it’s kind of ridiculous.) But mostly it’s the fact that the main source of conflict comes from Josh’s petulant teenager. It’s not just that he’s a blatant caricature with no deeper motivations, or that he clearly only exists in the pilot so that there can be a scene where people get into trouble. It’s the fact that he doesn’t make sense as a character; as others have pointed out, Josh goes from caring about his dad to hating him in about two scenes, and coupled with the low level of motivation (it’s been two years, get over it) means that he, and by extension the family drama, feels false.

Are there some good things about the pilot? Sure. There is the introduction of a group of renegade settlers, The Sixers, which seem to point to some interesting inter-human conflict in the future. And as a larger whole, the series does seem primed to deal with themes about the evolution of society, the role of martial law, and the question of how crime comes about in a world so calculatedly perfect. And if themes aren’t your things, there also appears to be a larger mystery at play involving Taylor, his son, and some strange symbols/hieroglyphs that he doesn’t want anybody to know about. Sure, some of these elements do appear to be indebted to Lost, and feel included for the same reasons as the show’s insistence on this being a family drama, but they at least point a way forward, and signal that the show has some sort of plan outside of the family drama.

But how long is it going to take for that plant to be implemented? Sixers and mysterious hieroglyphs are the sort of long-con arcs that a show such as this builds up slowly, in order to keep viewers hooked without the writers having to reveal (or in some cases, figure out) what it all means. That means for the foreseeable future, the focus will be on the show’s worst element, the family drama, and I’m not sure if Terra Nova has the time to deal with things that aren’t all that compelling.

Other Thoughts:

Speaking of viewer turnoff, only 9 million or so peopletuned in last night to see the premiere. By comparison, Spielberg’s other new show, Falling Skies, which is on cable, average half that over the season, and its premiere got close to 6 million. Sure, 9 million isn’t a terrible number, but FOX did throw a lot of time and money at it, so I’m betting they were expecting the blockbuster numbers that usually come from such dino-fare. Don’t expect the show to stay around too long.

I suppose I could complain about the crummy CGI quality of the dinosaurs, considering they’re part of the reason for one of the shows productions delays, and the fact that Falling Skies’ CGI was much better, but this is television, so I’m not surprised. Besides, if CGI dinosaurs are your biggest complaint, then both the producers and myself would argue you’re watching the show for the wrong reasons.

I’m not sure if this is because the dinosaurs are unknown species or what, but it feels as if the show might be trying to develop its own Whedon-esque lingo in regards to them and the other peculiarities of the time. It should stop that. Like right now.

Some people might think of China, but that whole “2 kid limit” in the 22^nd century totally reminded me of Ender’s Game. Seriously, if I wasn’t so busy with grad work, I’d probably already have started reading it by now.

Timey-Wimey Thing(s) of the Week: Each week, as appropriate, I will be pointing out/discussing any bits of time-travel-related ephemera that I think doesn’t quite add up.

·         This week, the show tells us that Terra Nova exists in a different time-stream, so that it doesn’t affect the future that they come from. But does that mean that Terra Nova actually exists in a parallel universe? Or is that what they mean by “a fracture in time and space”?

·         Moreover, doesn’t this still mean that humans are going to evolve on what looks to be a ecologically similar planet. Won’t their presence destroy this planet’s future?

·         As to that whole “control the past, control the future” line the episode closed on: How does that work exactly, considering there in a different time stream? Or does the show not understand what that phrase means?