Terra Nova

[DMZ]

Terra Nova is a new series that comes out in like 24 days. It looks and sounds cool, I just hope they dont end it like BBC HAD to do Outcasts! BAD BBC!

It centers an ordinary family from 2149 when the planet is dying who are transported back 85 million years to prehistoric Earth where they join Terra Nova, a colony of humans with a second chance to build a civilization.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1641349/

[Bugg]

I've no doubt I'll give it a go. There's a trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6aNEIZwPFc

[Snowdog]

I'll give it a try though I don't like the way the BBC (and British TV in general) is going with drama these days, very much a trend toward style over substance.

[thaddeus6th]

Sounds interesting, but I don't have Sky.

I agree with Snowdog's assessment. On Outcasts: the premise was fine but there were shocking storylines (a virus transmitted by the air and that dies automatically when the sound stops? Really?)

[fate_catcher]

I'm getting sky soon and can't wait to watch it!

[BookStop]

I watched the series premier last night, and although I was only mildly interested -I thought, how can this be good? - it wasn't bad. The acting, special effects, storyline...all good and I am definitely curious about some of the mystery they've introduced already.

Anyone else watch it yet?

[J-Sun]

Yeah. I was thoroughly prepared to dislike this and it still feels like a Jurassic Park/Lost collision. I never actually watched Lost, so I'm not sure, but I could do without what feels like the Lost part, myself. And even the Jurassic Part stuff if that gets overused (which, given financial reality, it probably won't be).

But it moved well, has at least a passable cast (I wonder if O'Mara (right name?) feels type-typecast? I've only seen him in two things and he was a SF/F cop both times) and was definitely worth at least a second try.

BTW, I missed the first ten minutes. I assume it just shows how horrible the present was and introduced us to at least some of the main family? I came in when the family was on the conveyor belt, so to speak.

[Moonbat]

Just watched the trailer, that looks cool. Reminds me of the Golden torc trilogy by Julian May. Unfortunately I don't have sky so I suppose I wont be able to watch it. It is going to come to terrestrial TV?

[ctg]

Of the two series Mister Spilberg has produced this year, this one has more of feeling of his fingerprints in the play, and it's very interesting to see how he uses same people in both shows. The pilot felt as if it was a crossover between Jurassic Park and Avatar. And as a writer I could see couple obvious points on where they are going to start building the stories when as in the Falling Skies that isn't so obvious.

I'll have to see more to really say what I think about this but I'm going to say now that I'm going to keep watching, and I'm not going to start separate threads on this one.

[TylerKendal124]

I enjoyed it and willing to keep watching. Read that it didn't get huge ratings but fox will give it go due to the shear scope of the show. It's one of those shows that will keep growing in popularity.

[Perpetual Man]

I rather enjoyed it.

I was pleased that they did not seem to overdo the dinosaurs, or throw in the obligatory T-Rex. I guess the biggest recommendation from my point of view was that we only intended to watch half the show in one go, but ended up sitting through the entire thing.

Obviously it kept us entertained.

[SJAB]

Felt a little like Avatar mark two to me. A lot of similar themes. Not sure if I will watch any more.

[Snowdog]

Well I watched it. Very glossy as you'd expect from the reputed $60m thrown at it, presumably on all the CGI dinosaurs.

Clearly, they are trying for another Lost. I can't comment on the Avatar comparisons because I haven't seen Avatar.

I found some of the characterisations and plotting to be poor, not to say quite unbelievable in some instances. Apparently there were many re-writes and writers getting fired so I can only wonder how bad the original scripts were.

The opening was pretty bad. If they were intending to set up this heroic family for us to follow, they missed the mark, because what they actually gave us was a group of selfish people who break the law for their own convenience while expecting others to obey it. And the behaviour of the son on entering this fantastic - but clearly dangerous - new world simply beggars belief.

All that aside, I can foresee problems with the show going forward.The money spent on special effects means that what we'll undoubtedly get is a dinosaur-of-the week. While this kind of thing works in a film I think it will rapidly pall in a series. I do intend to watch the next episode but, since another Lost is the aim, and since I didn't like that show at all, my expectations are now pretty low.

[J-Sun]

I did it myself (Jurassic Park/Lost) but one thing people could keep in mind is that Jurassic Park and Avatar (which I don't see as that was about sentient aliens) are films that have come and gone and Lost (and apparently Outcasts) are TV shows that are over and done with. From the restricted perspective of American network television, there's nothing remotely like it on now. We have a truckload of crappy cop shows and a handful of ghost/witch/fairy tale stories. A Person of Interest strikes me as a typical CBS cop show with a magical computer program and Fringe is basically occult weirdness like the X-Files was (comparing by type; not derivative-ness). What Terra Nova basically is, is an SF story (yes, in the TV nonsense style, but in its own terms it is) of colonizing what is essentially an alien world with alien critters, despite it being "our" world with "our" dinosaurs. (And, depending on the timeline interpretation, maybe it isn't even our world.) IOW, it's one of the purer SF themes around. I find the "Dinos ate my baby!" (or are trying to) theme of both the first eps to be tiresome already and, as I said, I dread the bottomless conspiracy they may bring on, but I'm still fully tuned in for our colonizing story and I hope SF fans everywhere do so.

Is it great? No. Is it passable. Definitely, so far. Is it SF? For TV, certainly. Is there anything else like it on now? Nope. Do we want to see more SF? Yep. So let's watch it and encourage this sort of thing. If we were to ever get more options, then we could get pickier. As is, the networks keep bringing on one SF show at a time (after phases with nothing at all) and then everyone attacks it and it gets cancelled before the season's out.[1] It'll never get better that way. We need to have a hit SF show so the other networks can go into clone mode, saying, "We need our own SF show!"

-- One thing that makes me vaguely optimistic is that final US Nielsen rating for both episodes look to be 3.1 (even with FOX's idiotic idea of scheduling it opposite Monday Night Football). That's fine in the abstract, but not enough for a show reputed to be this expensive. But it is 100% retention, which is remarkable. If it could actually trend upward (which it could do by just putting it on Tuesday or something!) that would be great. All (or almost all) other shows this season have lost something on the order of 4% to 33% of their audience each week.

[1] V, ludicrous and miserable as it was, lasted two half seasons which equals one and doesn't really refute the point.

[Bugg]

Well I didn't fall asleep during it. That's not meant to be disparaging - I was feeling very tired when I watched it and was fully expecting not to make it through to the end, but I stayed awake, so it must've held my attention on some level. It wasn't great, but it wasn't awful. The Slashers sequence was fun, although I was hoping they might rip more of the annoying teen cast members to bits

It was more fun than Ringer, at least - although that's a bit of a back-handed compliment