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Subscribe to RSSA preview from Fox's "Terra Nova" touches upon the TV show's themes ... and the dinosaurs.
When viewers tune in to Fox's "Terra Nova" time-travel TV series, premiering tonight on Fox, they'll see an 85 million-year-old world that's pretty much "terra incognita" for dinosaur experts. And that's just fine with world-famous paleontologist Jack Horner.
"I suggested 85 million, because it's a time that we know the least about, and it's kind of in the middle of the Cretaceous period, which means we could bring some older dinosaurs forward and take some younger dinosaurs back without getting in too much trouble," Horner told me.
So even though the long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur known as Brachiosaurus died out long before Tyrannosaurus rex came onto the scene, their cousins can mix it up in the computer-generated landscape created for "Terra Nova."
"We just cannot use a T. rex, but there are tyrannosaurs, so we can certainly create an animal that looks very similar to T. rex," Horner said.
Tonight's premiere raises the curtain on a series that some critics have characterized as a cross between "The Lost World" and "Lost," with a flashy "Stargate" time portal and an extra dash of "Swiss Family Robinson" thrown in. There are family dramas, shadowy conspiracies and seemingly indecipherable rock markings to stir the pot, but the success of the mega-expensive series arguably depends on the dinosaurs — just as it did for the "Jurassic Park" movie series.
Horner is familiar with the terrain — not only because of his roles as curator of paleontology at Montana's Museum of the Rockies, professor at Montana State University and one of the world's foremost fossil-hunters, but also because he was a consultant for "Jurassic Park" and a model for the movie's alpha-scientist character.
Steven Spielberg, co-executive producer for "Terra Nova," was the one who brought in Horner as a consultant for the "Jurassic Park" movies. "I guess he liked what I did there, so [the TV show's producers] called and asked if I could do it" for "Terra Nova" as well, Horner recalled.
Horner works with the artists and the writers on the dino concepts. "My job really is to make sure the dinosaurs are as accurate as they can be, even if we invent them," he said. "If they're going to be raptorlike dinosaurs, they have to have the characteristics of a raptorial dinosaur ... but when it comes to headgear, we can do a lot of things."
Slasher movie
That last comment relates to the first dinosaur invented for the series: a nasty critter referred to as the "Acceraptor" and nicknamed the "Slasher."
"He's got some characteristics that are new, but still within the realm of possibility," Horner said. "The only detail I can tell you is, it's going to be a scary dinosaur. Let's put it this way: I wouldn't want to be in the forest with a Slasher, especially at night."
Further details have seeped out through the dinosaur blogs: The Slasher sports some gaudy headgear that Brian Switek, who blogs about paleontology for Smithsonian magazine and Wired, has criticized as a "horribly lame" look (see below for more). It has some fearsome-looking claws, but its deadliest weapons are the sharp barbs that whip around at the end of its yards-long tail. "As far as I know, that's totally made up," Bob Strauss, who manages About.com's guide to dinosaurs, told me.
Horner said he's willing to give the writers and artists wide latitude when it comes to dreaming up dinosaurs. "If we know something for sure, then we'll keep it within the bounds of science," but if there are blank spaces in the scientific picture, a little (or a lot of) imagination is allowed. This is Hollywood, after all.
"Just like the people in the movie, the dinosaurs are actors. They will go faster than we think dinosaurs can go," Horner admitted.
Food for thought for dino fans
That was the case for "Jurassic Park," and Horner is hoping that "Terra Nova" will offer even greater dramatic possibilities, for the dinosaurs as well as for the human actors.
"It's one thing to make a movie. Movies are two hours of a single story," Horner said. "The really cool thing about 'Terra Nova' is that it is a series, so we have the capability of building and building and building on it, each time seeing new animal and plant characters and still being able to follow the family that the story is about. In many ways, it's a lot better than a movie, just on a smaller screen."
And if dinosaur fans want to argue over the finer points of the dinosaur depictions, that's just fine with Horner, too. "If people are watching and paying attention like that, that would be great," he told me.
Here are some of the reviews from experts who are paying attention:
• University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas Holtz, who wrote the official "Jurassic Park" dinosaur guide and has consulted on many dinosaur documentaries, including the Discovery Channel's "Dinosaur Revolution":
The main reason why the "Terra Nova" colonists go through a rupture in space-time is because the world has become an environmental wasteland by the year 2149. People have to wear "re-breathers" on their faces to cope with the polluted air. But Holtz noted that the world of 85 million B.C. wasn't exactly a breath of fresh air, either.
"If you're trying to escape climate change by going back to the past, you wouldn't want to go back to 85 million years ago, where CO2 is almost 1,000 parts per million, as opposed to 392 at present," he observed. Holtz acknowledged, however, that an elevated carbon dioxide level isn't the only environmental problem facing the smoggy, run-down world of 2149.
As for the dinosaurs, Holtz had a couple of pieces of advice for the writers. First, don't get too specific about the dinosaur names. Instead of referring to Brachiosaurus (the long-necked plant-eater that makes an early appearance on tonight's show) or Carnotaurus (the toothy, horned dinosaur that almost runs down Terra Nova's patriarch in the episode), use more generic names (brachiosaurs or abelisaurs, respectively). There's no evidence that either Brachiosaurus or Carnotaurus was around 85 million years ago, but it's plausible to claim that their distant cousins were.
"Saying it more generically is safer," Holtz said.
Also, as the series goes on, Holtz hopes the writers get the locale right. For example, no Carnotaurus fossils have been found in North America, so if the series claims that the "Terra Nova" colonists are settling in Cretaceous Chicago, coming upon Carnotaurus' older cousins there would be "as unlikely as encountering a koala in Montana," Holtz said.
Most of the TV audience might not care that much about the terminology, but it's better to have the dino-geeks for you than against you. "They get mad enough with the dinosaur documentaries," said Holtz, speaking from experience.
• Science writer Brian Switek, author of Smithsonian's Dinosaur Tracking blog and the book "Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record and Our Place in Nature." Here's Switek's pithy email critique of the "Terra Nova" dinos:
"All I have seen of the 'slasher' is the promotional artwork, but, yes, I'm sorry to say that the creature design for the dinosaur is horribly lame. The poor creature looks as if the special effects artists took one of the Jurassic Park raptors, stuck a crest from an oviraptorid dinosaur on its head, and then gave it a bad toupee. So many fantastic and terrifying dinosaurs have been found — dromaeosaurs with double sickle-claws (Balaur), Allosaurus-cousins with sail backs (Concavenator), crocodile-snouted hunters (Baryonyx), and others — that the I think the show's creators would have done better to draw inspiration from actual dinosaurs rather than trying to dress up a Deinonychus.
"Then there's the scientific issue. Thanks to multiple discoveries of feathered dinosaurs during the past 15 years, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that many coelurosaurs — the group to which raptors, tyrannosaurs, oviraptorids and others belong — were at least partly covered in feathers. Even Velociraptor arm bones have been found with quill knobs for the attachment of feathers! (The significance of this is that we can now detect the presence of feathers on some dinosaurs even if the feathers themselves are not preserved.) Therefore, the 'slasher' should be a feathery beast and look less like a dinosaur with a comb-over. Every year more feathered coelurosaurs are found, and it's time that television shows and movies featuring these dinosaurs restore the animals with their full plumage. ...
"It is true that our knowledge of dinosaur life around 85 million years ago (the beginning of the Santonian age) is relatively limited. Compared to what we know about the later Campanian (83 million to 70 million years ago) and Maastrichtian (70 million to 65 million years ago) ages, the world of dinosaurs during the Santonian is still fuzzy and waiting to be fleshed out by new discoveries. That said, I don't have a problem with a show creating new dinosaurs or even bringing in dinosaurs from slightly older or younger time periods. (If I recall correctly, Carnotaurus — a Campanian dinosaur from prehistoric Argentina — is in the show.) Sometimes scientific accuracy needs to be bent a little to make compelling television. That's just the way it goes when you want to tell a story.
"Nevertheless, I don't think any imaginary dinosaur can really compare to the real animals we're finding. Spielberg and the show's co-creators can dream up as many dinosaurs as they want, but, to me, speculative creatures like the slasher are always going to pale in comparison to the bizarre array of wonderful dinosaurs paleontologists have uncovered."
Science writer Bob Strauss, dinosaur guide for About.com, who saw an advance screening of "Terra Nova" and discusses it in a review:
Strauss said "Jurassic Park" stirred up a lot of controversy on the subject of dinosaur verisimilitude. For example, real Velociraptors were nowhere near smart enough or agile enough to turn a doorknob, and pterosaurs weren't strong enough to carry off a kid.
"Terra Nova" could well do the same, and not just because of slasher's barb-whipping tail. Did brachiosaurs really eat small lizards, or were they strictly herbivores? Shouldn't the TV series' Carnotaurus have arms as wimpy as the real thing? Where's the slasher's hind-foot claw?
But judging by the first show, Strauss thinks dino-geeks will stick with the series, if for no other reason than to get their weekly Cretaceous fix and debate how the Hollywood monsters compare with the real things. "They're just so happy to have dinosaurs on TV," he told me.
More about dinosaurs in fact and fiction:
- 'Dinochicken' scheme puts evolution in reverse
- Fox sees family, not sci-fi, at heart of 'Terra Nova'
- Spielberg: 'Jurassic Park 4' coming in a few years
- Search for Cretaceous dinosaurs on msnbc.com
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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oh, gee - another show where science fiction is supposed to be the idea, when in reality it's nothing but another in a long list of phonied up drama's set in impossible conditions.
Let's see - we can't go back to fix anything, so we'll create a time machine that sends up so far back into the past that all we can do is put ourselves into the position of creating mankind ourselves - or should we say causing the entire timeline to change.
Wow. Let's ignore the major problems with cause and effect looping back on itself. Going back in time before manking creates a 'new' mankind, potentially wiping out the original starts of mankind - which causes your history to not exist, which means you don't exist to be able to go back in time, which means that you didn't go back in time to change things, which means that the world is still ending, so you have to go back in time to save mankind, but that means repeating the never ending loop. (I call it 'the shampoo problem - lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat forever...)
It's a basic time travel paradox and these clowns are ignoring it. Which is normal for most 'science fiction' shows on mainstream TV. Written by idiots who know nothing about science fact - they just spew out all kinds of seemingly 'science' things and people gobble it up.
well theres probably bigger fish to fry than that... i mean they can always argue that they arent going back in time in their dimension... theres theories out there that time travel back in time wouldnt take you to your world in the past, but a duplicate... or an unrealized reality.
FormerMarineSgt- Unless, of course, these people genetically modify the monkeys that eventually lead to the rise of the human race. Imagine that- we actually 'created' ourselves! LOL And in the intervening millions of years, their civilization evolved to the point that they left our planet to allow 'us' to evolve naturally, and the UFO's people claim to see are actually other humans coming back to check up on us.
I don't watch prime-time TV so I can debate the time-travel paradox. I watch it to be entertained. If the show turns out to be good(typically about 10-20% chance for me), then I'll watch. If the first couple episodes don't work and I'm bored, the DVR will record something else.
The best thing about all the shows, the DVR handles them, and I never have to watch a commercial.
Whether it's on an island/world dreamed-up by the disembodied spirits of a bunch of airplane casualties or some prehistoric "lost world", what it comes down to is another reality show full of squabbling, snippy, alpha personalities in yet another exotic locale. I'm just getting tired of watching people argue and snipe at each other over petty crap. I'd like to see a show where they work together for once, but apparently that's isn't what the paying demographic gets off on these days. How sad. I'll give it a look, but if it's just another Lost/Survivor clone, you can have it.
The premiere episode appears to answer the time-travel question by showing a huge, clunky probe that was sent back to the Cretaceous world, and quoting the know-it-all teen daughter as saying it was sent back as a test to see if the probe remained in the same place in 2149. It didn't, which supposedly led the scientists to conclude that the cosmos split off and followed a different track. (This is the "many-worlds" hypothesis, which suggests that changing the past creates a new version of the universe in which events unfold in a different way.) However ... who's to say that the probe wasn't *actually* discovered and moved or destroyed, perhaps by a nefarious conspiracy aimed at controlling the future by changing the past? (This raises the famous "shoot-your-father" paradox.) No inside information here. I'm just sayin' ...
For more on time travel in the movies, check out these archived stories:
-- 'Timeline' updates time-travel tales
-- Can anyone dodge the arrow of time?
That latter story focuses on cosmologist Sean Carroll's view of time, and Sean will be my guest on Wednesday, Oct. 5, on "Virtually Speaking Science." You can bet that time travel will be one of the discussion topics, so stay tuned for details on how you can tune in.
I watched that show last night. I was let down by it. I don't know if I can deal with what seem to be bulletproof dinosaurs. Additionally, the acting was not very good, and there were too many predictable moments. I suspect the show will not see a season two. I really would have liked the show to succeed, but I don't see it happening. It was so bad in my opinion, I had to change the channel. Unfortunately there was nothing else on tv last night so my wife and I ended up returning to the show to experience further disappointment. I don't know if I can suffer a 2nd episode.
I also watched the premiere last night, sadly I missed the first 20 minutes or so but I watched the rest and would offer these insights and opinions.
1. It's a Hollywood sci-fi show set in an "alternate earth" time-travel world. So gimme a break on the whole, "that dinosaur never existed", "that head-gear is so unrealistic", blah-blah-blah. It's science-FICTION folks. It's meant to entertain and, if done properly, examine some real-life issues like pollution, geo-politics and man's seemingly overly competitive, chauvinistic view of our place in the universe. (making bunny ears) It's not meant to be historically accurate.
2. Bullet-proof dinosaurs? Once again, gimme a break. As a child, one of my least proud, least evolved, most brutal episodes in my life was when we would go down to the creek behind my house and shoot frogs with B-B guns. Totally unnecessary and cruel. I remember those little outings with shame and share them reluctantly but they have a point. It would take 20 or 30 (yes, 20 or 30) well-placed B-B's to kill a good sized bullfrog. Proportionately those B-B's were much larger when compared to the size of the frog than even a .50 caliber bullet would be to the size of the carnotsaurs or whatever they called them. Sorry to get all ballistical on you and I apologize to all you animal lovers and the frogs for my past behavior, but it's like the line from Blazing Saddles regarding "Mongo". Gene Wilder advises the late Cleavon Little, "No, no, don't shoot him, you'll only make him mad." Those bullets are too puny to hurt an animal that big and with a brain that small. Now a bazooka, that would leave a permanent mark.
Either you enjoy the fantasy and the soap opera or you don't. I, for one, enjoyed it and look forward to next week's episode. I am violating my own personal rule, to NEVER watch anything on FOX. That's how much I enjoyed the premiere.
Just my 2 cents worth kids. Have a nice day.
It's TV People, entertainment, if you cant be entertained by this, don't watch it. The idea of any show (with the exception of documentaries, and even they are subject to the film makers agenda) need one to let go a level of belief, that is what entertains.
They addressed your point. different time line ,DIFFERENT REALITY. Their new time line is not the time line that lead to THEIR previous time-line/history. no paradox's.
FormerMarineSgt,
Wow! As a fan of Science Fiction I can only say who appointed you king of what is a valid genre for fiction. I watched the program in question and it was FANTASTIC! As to time paradoxes no one truly knows and that's the point. In the program they are relying on the premise that they are in entirely different time stream (or are they). You know maybe you like Cottage Cheese (I don't) and maybe you hate Monterey Jack Cheese (I do) so what's your point? One, it is apparent you didn't watch the program - two, you obviously don't like Science Fiction and three why would you have an opinion one way or another?
lol ya know I'm not to familiar with the show Swamp people, but the few episodes I've seen they put that rifle right up against the gator, also if memory serves and if any of you can correct me great because like I said haven't seen it that often, but the shot the thing on the underside rather then the top of the head. Scales can get rather think and reptile hide can dissipate energy a lot better then any other hide out there. Also you have to understand based on the dinosaurs design the size of they're teeth and claws etc. As well as what the believed bite forces they had they're hides must have been able to with stand a great deal. So unless they were using some pretty heavy fire power I don't think they were going to penetrate the dino hides. As for the time line paradox eh....I'm sure we will learn more about that as the show developes. Oh and as for the acting, just an FYI the longest running Sci-fi's Stargate, all of the Star-trek, and battlestar galatica series have had pretty crappy acting in the first 1 or 2 seasons. Even with the help of some rather experienced Actors and Actresses. Let the actors and actresses get a feel for they're characters as well as the writers get a feel for how the actor and actresses play out they're characters then make the call on that. This is a TV series they get 1 to 2 weeks to throw together an episode for a premier usually a month or two but still most movies take a year or longer to make. Thats a whole heck of a lot of time.
They got around the whole time paradox problem by stating early on that they are in a parallel time stream, not the one they came from.
One issue with time travel that is always ignored is that it makes an inherent flat earth and earth centered universe assumption. This is because you would only emerge on the surface of the earth after traveling 85 million years only if earth is flat and stationary and the rest of the universe revolved around it.
Since the sun (and the earth with it) orbit the center of the galaxy about once every 100 million years, going back in time would mean that coming out in exactly the same cosmic location would mean that earth would be thousands of light years away. And that isn't even considering that our galaxy as a whole is moving through the cosmos. So go back in time even a short period and you come out in interstellar space. Go back far enough and you will be in intergalactic space. So multiple time lines and grandfather paradoxes are the least of any time travelers worries.
But of course this is fiction and you can assume that the terminus of the "time slip" is tied somehow to a place on the surface of the earth and dragged around with it as earth spins and orbits around an orbiting star in a moving galaxy. Still it is interesting that a stationary earth seems to be an unspoken assumption in all time travel yarns.
It makes me laugh when they make the big lizards sound like a lion.
Did you notice the liberal 'overpopulation = extinction' sign. Another ploy to justify killing babies.
Why is it that all the city kids think the planet is overpopulated? Ever been to Kansas? Texas? Canada? Australia?
The entire worlds population, every man woman and child from every country on every continent would fit in the CITY LIMITS of Jacksonville Florida.... TWICE. If the world seems overpopulated where you are, move. Grow a garden ffs.
I think you might want to check your math on that. Based on the size of Jacksonville (874.3 sq. miles) and worlds population (7 billion +) you would only get a square foot of space. If you try to double that (according to you), that leaves you a half square foot of space to STAND in. So while you might be able to cram everyone into the city limits if you tried, you aren't even beginning to consider the impact of actually supporting those people. We humans ARE overpopulating the world, there's no doubt about it.
"Did you notice the liberal 'overpopulation = extinction' sign. Another ploy to justify killing babies."
Now that's a stretch. Precious few women do this with overpopulation in mind. Don't take my word. Ask some.
"The entire worlds population, every man woman and child from every country on every continent would fit in the CITY LIMITS of Jacksonville Florida...."
Possible, yes. Is that your idea of a way to live? An area doesn't have to be shoulder-to-shoulder to be considered too full, and it's a question of the demands we put on this planet (animals can out-graze/out-hunt a slow-growing/slow-reproducing food supply without being a packed mob, as well)....and yes, I know those human demands are not distributed evenly, either.
Anyway, all this with Terra Nova reminds me of Robert Silverberg's SF novel 'Hawksbill Station,' about a penal colony set even farther back in the pre-Cambrian. It contains only men, so there can be no reproduction and the effects that might have on the future (female prisoners were believed to have been sent to a similar facility in a different location and several hundred thousand years earlier or later than the men) The time travel was one-way, Once sent there, you're stuck. No need for guards, only supplies (and occasional new prisoners) were sent back.
My first thought with Terra Nova is that they may not be able to maintain their tech without future support, either. What happens when they run out of bullets and truck parts?
We are the most populous multi-celled organism that walks on legs and has warm blood. We might even outnumber the cold-blooded ones too.
By my arithmetic, if the entire 7 billion people were in Jacksonville, Florida, they would each have just 3 square feet to stand on. (787 square miles of land x 5,280 squared / 7,000,000,000) So villian157 is correct, we would all fit. Live, that is another thing entirely.
Based on what is on the internet, it appears that for everyone on the planet to enjoy the food that Americans take for granted, the earth's population would have to be reduced to 1/3 what it is today. In contrast, if we accept near starvation, the earth can support 40 or 50 billion people. We get to decide.
Just use any completely unrealated article to bring in your fanatical theocratical stupidity .moron!
I think I actually felt parts of my brain dying as I read that pathetic post.
If you go that far back in time wouldn't you become extinct about the same time as the dinosaurs, you know the big asteroid and all, duh???
They're going back 20 million years before that event, so they have time to figure that out. I doubt the series will last that long though... ;)
My problem is it's going to be just another exotic locale to put a bunch of squabbling, sniping, fornicating, demographic cross-sectioners into so the disenfranchised middle-class can voyeuristically identify with them enough to sit through the commercials. Same-ol'-same-'ol.
Now listen up! None of you should have any fun watching this little tv show. If you do you will be fed to the dinos. That's right. No fun for anyone. None at all, I say.
Hey Grump, you're a riot, ROTFL!!! :)
My 4-year-old son has been watching Dinosaur Train for two years now, and Switek will be happy to know that this show has feathers on 'raptors. It seems to me this children's cartoon tries to play it very accurately, based on current info we have about dinos.
As an aside, there was another glaring controversy about Jurassic Park's Velociraptors that wasn't mentioned in this article: they're nearly twice as large in the movie as they were in real life. However, during movie production, someone discovered the existence of the Utah Raptor, which was about the same size as the movie's Velociraptor. But the discovery came too late for a name change, and besides..."velociraptor" sounds so much more menacing than "utah raptor". Kinda like the reason the book and movie wasn't titled "Cretaceous Park", it just sounds weak.
Yeah, I was wondering where the feathers went, then I remembered..."alternate earth"...not the same timeline. Ohhhh,yeah.
Well actually it could work because if they go back before the extiction event, big astreroid, then their human presence there would be wiped clean and therefore not have an effect on the modern world.
Oh, humans could do plenty of environmental damage that would carry-over to the Tertiary Period, especially given 20 million years in which to do it. But don't worry, this is television! There will be some Deus-ex-machina to put everything right. Bleh.
My issue is more with the idea that the dino you kill today may not rot and turn into oil for the car you used to get to the facility to go back in time. The fact that they just seem to ignore the paradox and all it implies just kills any interest I had in the series.
Not to mention the fact that modern humans would appear in the fossil record when they didn't before and knowing that it is coming might human society might survive the extinction event. Yes it is unlikely but still possible that a) humans could catch up to our prehistoric selves, and 2) modern humans could prevent the interbreeding that scientists seem to think took place way back when to make the modern human race.
Oil as a byproduct of dead dinosaurs is a myth - probably started from the Sinclair Dino logo. Oil comes from dead sea life. Everywhere on earth where oil is found was once under the oceans.
And what were those dead sea creatures? Hmmmm? Aquatic DINOSAURS!
Ha!
No, single celled marine organisms much like the oil rich algae that we are trying to grow today so we can skip a few million years and go right to the source.
Whether it's on an island/world dreamed-up by the disembodied spirits of a bunch of airplane casualties or some prehistoric "lost world", what it comes down to is another reality show full of squabbling, snippy, alpha personalities in yet another exotic locale. I'm just getting tired of watching people argue and snipe at each other over petty crap (I can watch C-SPAN for that!). I'd like to see a show where they work together for once, but apparently that's isn't what the paying demographic gets off on these days. How sad. I'll give it a look, but if it's just another Lost/Survivor clone full of adolescent adults yelling "shut up!" at each other, you can have it.
Uh... it's a TV show, not a documentary...?
Exactly, and I actually liked it after watching last night, has enough little mysteries to keep me intrigued.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea to give Branon Braga another TV show? He's a corporate tool that nearly destroyed Star Trek Voyager until he started stealing ideas from the writers of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
Just saw the two hour premiere episode. Good special effects, not enough of the dinosaurs, too much "family schmaltz", and too little discipline in the compound. Maybe it will get better next week. After all "House" starts its new season and it's ultimately more enjoyable than Lost meets Jurassic Park meets Swiss Family Robinson meets Lost World. (I expect where the Terra Novans reside is a bit warmer than today. Why doesn't anyone break into a sweat like they did in Jurassic Park? Now that was real!
Just be grateful for some decent programming for a change and enjoy an hour of good television. Most of the time there's not really much on television to watch anyway, so it's good to have something on to watch.
They'll probably save the Sleestak's and Cha-ka for the second or third season when ratings drop..
Hey, if they bring in Zarn, I'll continue to watch!
Well, on the whole I think I'd be more interested in returning to Cameron's Pandora.
It's always a shame when a good idea is trashed because some Hollywood exec. thinks that audiences are too dumb to care about details. This is why "Lost" was fantastic - it made you think. And, it's why this show won't make it into a second season.
This show is cuts all the corners it wants in order to get to the plot point it wants to get to:
Extremely technilogical society on the brink of extinction has found a way to exploit a rift in space/time, but they can't implement a security system to prevent a prisoner from escaping from prison, entering the "secure" time machine area and then rushing to the portal...all in about 4 hours time. Frankly, I belive more in the time machine than I do that any person could pull off that!
Then, we're 85 million years in the past and we learn that the people from the future were never able to locate the probe they sent through the portal, so the just figured that this meant that the portal transports you to a different past timeline. But, without knowing that for sure (maybe the portal drops you off in the middle of a star) they just start sending people back through the portal.
And, casting the same actor that was the bad army dude in Avatar as the chief army dude here, is so cliche it wreaks!
Oh, and with all that technology from the future, we can't send back better materials for a perimeter wall?
Geeze! Didn't these people see Jurassic Park?
I blame it on the fact that it's being done by a standard tv network vs something like HBO, STARZ or SHO. LOST was a real anomaly as far as the writing and story went.
With Terra Nova, they already seem to be shoe horning as much into each scene as they can...yet somehow they spent all sorts of time on the absurd moonshine setup out in the jungle and the awkward family scenes.
I don't even want to get started on how dumb it seems in regards to what they have and haven't brought back with them from the future...
In last nights episode, a band of intrepid teenage explorers decided to go swimming. They found some strange glyphs written all over several rock faces. It looks like Slartibartfast was busy carving his initials in the rocks again. Magrathea has performed its duties for a group of hyper-intelligent pan dimensional beings so they could start finding the answer to the ultimate question.
I enjoyed the first episode but... Why are dinosaurs unkillable? Come on, the ones depicted didn't have a lot more mass than an elephant. Automatic wepons fire at close range would drop em like flies. Kind of spoiled things for me. Just saying.
Good Effects
Thin story line.
Not impressed.
I gathered the fam and decided to give it a shot last night. I agree with your assessment. Not entirely sure if I will continue to watch. Maybe I will watch one more episode in an effort to give it a chance. I think the whole "Sixer" idea was thrown at me too fast so it became a cliche plot.
Didn't hate it, but didn't love it either.
Tony, Like you, I am hyper critical of all science fiction on TV or in the movies. Why? Because I have been reading science fiction all my life. Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny may be my favorites. This show did not catch my imagination as it could have and it certainly wasn't as good as the first two hours of Lost. It is too early for me to say it is dead in the water and I will have to watch a little more. Nice set, nice cinematography, some eye candy and, sadly, without a compelling story. If the teenaged son is as flaming idiotic as the teenaged son in "V" or the teenaged daughter in "24" it is over for me.
Same here Grump. I have always been a fan of sci fi. But it has to be something that takes my imagination away, and makes me think and wonder. This show was predictable, and became too TV like.
Tony, you and I could have come up with a better story line, come to think of it.
I'm sure we could. I've always been tempted to take writing classes and create a story. Since I was younger and read Arthur C. Clark novels, I was blown away and wanted to write my own. Maybe I will soon.
"If you're trying to escape climate change by going back to the past, you wouldn't want to go back to 85 million years ago, where CO2 is almost 1,000 parts per million, as opposed to 392 at present," he observed.
So it was higher in the past and the Earth did just fine. And Al Gore and James Hansen are worried why? Oh, that's right. There is money to be made.
It was explained that they're not in the past of the same earth via the time capsule theory.
The only problem with higher CO2 is that it shifts the climate, it doesn't sterilize the planet. A 1000 ppm CO2 means happy plants and plant eaters and eaters of plant eaters. Life on this planet would be just fine like it has been in the past when natural phenomena lead to higher CO2 values.
The trouble is that it would suck for our current society. A high fraction of people live within a couple hundred feet of the current sea level. So as sea levels rise, cities are either flooded or become like the Dutch and forced to live below sea level behind mammoth sea walls. With a 50 foot sea rise Miami would basically become this walled city living on what would otherwise be new sea floor several hundred miles off the new coast of America (think how far north you have to go before you get even 50 feet above sea level). The same would be true for all the US east coast cities. The cost of constructing sea walls to protect all the US coastal cities, many of which would have to be able to withstand hurricanes, would run in the trillions. The cost to protect the rest of the worlds coastal cities would be many time higher
So no it isn't about Gore making money, it trying to avoid the ruinous expense to our human societies. The truth of a proposition doesn't depend on whether people make money off of it or not!
First off, I don't know how anyone could've possibly watched that entire 2 hour premier without the aid of a DVR as it felt like there was a lot of commercials even though I didn't watch any of them.
The premise is interesting even if we've already seen a number of Jurassic park movies, but I feel like the fact that it's being done by a network channel is what will ruin this show more than anything else. The writing and story progression is pretty much crap so far, hopefully it improves.
- The effects were okay in that they were not great, but were better than the movies that go 'right to dvd release'.
- Apparently dinosaurs can't kill humans,...seriously, how did those kids manage to live after being attacked by those aggressive dinosaurs after being stuck in the truck?
- Apparently humans can't kill dinosaurs and even though they can transport human beings through time & space; no one in the future has figured out how to improve existing munitions for heavier impact & penetration. I'm not really sure what those pewpewpew sonic weapons and green lasers were, but i'm sensing a complete lack of visual violence is to blame.
- The father character is apparently Sam Fischer,...to say his escape from prison was convenient and generous would be an understatement.
- Did they really just spend 30 minutes on themoonshine setup in the middle of Dinosaur infested jungle?
It's sad to see someone with Horners background so ill used to let some fictional dinos exist. That one there must be the Dollarsaurus.
skip Nicholson earlier pointed out pretty clearly.....
Wasn't it explained that Terra Nova isn't actually our past Earth, but rather a parallel earthy type place? That gives a more free reign to modify the animals and lessens concerns about how the colonists affect the future of the place (the shooting of the grandfather effect.).
I'm purchasing some xmas presents for my 7½ grandson. As it happens some are dino fossils, both actual and replica. In the process I'm learning that raptors ranged in size from chickens to about ostriches and were proto feathered and maybe even warm blooded and, yes, nasty....and I can vouch from personal experience both large Leghorn roosters and ostriches can also indeed be nasty.
But I will just enjoy the show, taking into account
Good comment Paul. I was hoping for a show that highlighted human ingenuity and intelligence to explore and survive in a foreign environment, not a overly dramatic show with hostility and violence as its basis. Too much to hope for I guess. At least some of the scenery was nice. I probably will watch for a couple of weeks, but I doubt it will be a mainstay for me based on the first episode.
I watched the first 1/2 hour, and turned the channel. This show is not for me.