Terra Nova: Win Or Fail?

xerrofoot wrote:

Well, I like it.


OK, having Zoe was stupid. Punching out the Population Control grunt was stupid. You have to bear in mind, though, that people generally get married because of this weird phenomenon called Love. Elizabeth made arrangements for Jim to be sprung out of jail because she wants her husband back and for her kids to not be in Terra Nova without their dad, which in my mind is totally reasonable. The Sixers' and Taylor's motives for doing the things they do are just one of the mysteries that will no doubt be solved in later episodes.

I agree with kleine_kat about Josh, though, he needs a punch in the head, followed by a kick up the arse and finished off with a dinosaur nibbling on one of his limbs for good measure.

I can wholly understand that people in love want to have babies. I'd have accepted an accident. I don't get an answer like 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.' I'm sure later on in the series we will be presented with the reason for getting an extra child, like leukemia in one of the other kids, or something, but that answer, at that moment, was just so...not cool And it raises the question: If people get two kids, then why isn't the father or, even better, the mother sterilized? That would ensure a maximum of two kids. I mean, this is a 'Woe, the world is dying!' environment--at least so far as I understood it.

Xerrofoot, you're right that Elizabeth wanted her WHOLE family to come along to Terra Nova, and that it is an entirely reasonable wish. But wow, that was easy! Packing the guns, getting him out, etc.

I'm sure that most of the great mysteries in the pilot will be explained later. Unfortunately, the show completely failed to hook me.

That whole thing with those kids trapped outside the perimeter. They ditch class, or at least Josh does, go outside, which is illegal, steal a vehicle, which is illegal, go to a place Taylor says is forbidden to go to, get into serious trouble, get a few of them hurt and a whole bunch of rescuers into very real danger...and no one is punished. Not one. No angry words at all. No grounding, or heck, physical punishment. I was really hoping one of them would get a good punch in the face for endangering so many people but...Nothing. Just that creepy exchange between the old-looking girl and Taylor, and then a sickening family moment between Jim, Elizabeth and their kids.

Ok, I'll shut up now, made my point. Maybe if one of you guys thinks the pilot was meh but decide to give it a chance and it becomes awesome, it will show up in Antidotes and I'll give it another try.

Actually, there was some punishment. Wash did make Josh "muck out the latrines", which I interpreted to mean "make every toilet in the colony sparkle".

When I see a show concept this screwed up I have to distance myself from the 'logic' of the storyline and look at it from the standpoint of the TV Business. This show was produced during the height of the Tea Party movement. Ergo the Suits (television executives) were trying to appeal to them because it was assumed they represented a huge number of people. Therefore papa can't be in favor of birth control and will heroically fight for his family's civil right to breed. And of course the right of the wife to totally control her own reproductive destiny? God forbid! In production notes somewhere I read that Zoe's situation was supposed to be somewhat similar to Anne Frank with the Population Control Nazis tracking her down. Because The Tea Party ideologues reject global warming and green technology and believe in 'clean coal' the special effects of a brown poisonous atmosphere could not be explained in detail. If there was an explanation it was scrubbed out of the final draft so as not to upset anybody.

For people on the other side the original premise was respect for the Jurassic wildlife. The non lethal sonic cannons which did not kill the dinosaurs were a remainder of the original script. But once again the suits must have felt that 'Animal Rights' for man eating carnosaurs was too alienating towards the target audience so real guns with bullets were reintroduced. Killing the wildlife is still pretty much done off screen.

That tells me we are seeing a battle for creative control between Fox Network executives, Stephen Spielberg, and the writers.

Allronix wrote:

Yeah, that's what hit me. If it's to the point of a "head count Gestapo," then tubes tied/vasectomy is NOT out of line. We did worse in the name of "eugenics" in the past. It'd be another matter if there was some fluke with the sterilization (which can happen) and decided to risk it rather than report to the government abortion center. (Because even someone like me, who funnels a couple hundred bucks a year to NARAL and PP thinks coerced abortion is as bad as coerced birth)

Between the logic bomb regarding the tyke and the fact that the world itself is a writeoff like every other SF show since the Nineties, forget it.

That's what I find really interesting about this show; I think in a lot of ways it plays on specific hot-button cultural issues in the US, eg abortion. Apparently we're supposed to find the prospect of foregoing reproduction so horrifying that any good, decent person would defy the law and damn the well-being of the planet and their neighbors, because procreation is just that important. Giving any hint to the parents' thought process is unnecessary, because dear God it's a child and how could you not want a child

kleine_kat wrote:

The characters. I all hate them.

You know a show is bad when all of your alternate personalities can agree that it's bad.

kleine_kat wrote:

Related question: Why don't they shoot the child? or the father? If having too many people is a serious problem and getting a third child an offence, why not just shoot one of the two? Just wondering...

Mary Sue/Gary Stu-ism. When a writer has created a situation where logic dictates that their character should die, but *magic happens* or canon turns out to be bendable enough to spare them, you've got Sues.

ETA: Because I was just whining about this in the Things I learned from television thread, the third child is necessary to round out the formulaic family set-up...

zootie wrote:

When I see a show concept this screwed up I have to distance myself from the 'logic' of the storyline and look at it from the standpoint of the TV Business. This show was produced during the height of the Tea Party movement. Ergo the Suits (television executives) were trying to appeal to them because it was assumed they represented a huge number of people. Therefore papa can't be in favor of birth control and will heroically fight for his family's civil right to breed. And of course the right of the wife to totally control her own reproductive destiny? God forbid! In production notes somewhere I read that Zoe's situation was supposed to be somewhat similar to Anne Frank with the Population Control Nazis tracking her down. Because The Tea Party ideologues reject global warming and green technology and believe in 'clean coal' the special effects of a brown poisonous atmosphere could not be explained in detail. If there was an explanation it was scrubbed out of the final draft so as not to upset anybody.

That's a really big stretch, especially since that'd be "Studio execs attempting to cater to the Tea Party as viewed through a left-wing lens" which... actually, you know, makes a whole lot of sense if you buy into the whole "liberal media" thing.

Terra Nova will actually run for its full season. However that season is only 13 episodes, which is unusual for a series on a non-cable US network that didn't begin as a mid season replacement. I would assume that's because of the cost per episode.

Wouldn't be anything usual down under, Sea Patrol had a similar format.

OK, full disclosure. I didn't actually watch the show, but I saw the TV spots and I read this thread, and this has honestly been bugging me all afternoon: why?

I mean, seriously, what is the point of mounting the Terra Nova expedition? I realize they dodged the [Nash]WORLD-ENDING TIME PARADOX[/Nash] problem by establishing that time travel creates alternate timelines, but that just highlights the pointlessness of the experiment. They obviously can't go back and fix the past, since time travel doesn't work that way. If they've reached the [Architect]there are levels of survival we are willing to accept[/Architect] stage, the expedition is still largely futile- establishing the existence of alternate timelines virtually guarantees that humanity will still exist in an alternate series of events. So Terra Nova project is a huge waste of time and money for explicitly no benefit for the rest of the world.

Honestly, this would've made a lot more sense if they were abusing the temporal mechanics of the setting to set up a prison colony with dinosaurs to ease crowding- the past as the new Australia.

OMG it he's alive. o.O

gaijinguy wrote:

OK, full disclosure. I didn't actually watch the show, but I saw the TV spots and I read this thread, and this has honestly been bugging me all afternoon: why?

I mean, seriously, what is the point of mounting the Terra Nova expedition? I realize they dodged the [Nash]WORLD-ENDING TIME PARADOX[/Nash] problem by establishing that time travel creates alternate timelines, but that just highlights the pointlessness of the experiment. They obviously can't go back and fix the past, since time travel doesn't work that way. If they've reached the [Architect]there are levels of survival we are willing to accept[/Architect] stage, the expedition is still largely futile- establishing the existence of alternate timelines virtually guarantees that humanity will still exist in an alternate series of events. So Terra Nova project is a huge waste of time and money for explicitly no benefit for the rest of the world.

And this would be solved by a throw-away line of: "Hey, yeah, we're sending this expedition to the past because we're eventually hoping to establish two-way traffic, which would mean we could mine the past for resources." Or whatever. Something. That is, of course, assuming this was a clever show and not some messed-up family-centric show that somehow managed to make a show about dinosaurs boring.

Seriously. Don't watch. Revenge is where it's at.

gaijinguy wrote:

the past as the new Australia.

ZING

Well, they axed it. Goddamn it, Fox, why do you have to be like that? IT WAS A GOOD SHOW. First you pulled this shit on Firefly, now you do it to Terra Nova.

Fox executives are brainless shitstains.