Terra Nova 1x01&02 - Genesis Parts 1&2 (Grade/Discuss) SPOILERS

[Sindatur]

I don't really see having the 3rd child as a character "Flaw". I mean, if you get pregnant accidentally, you're just supposed to abort and accept that? I can't see how an inability to accept that could be a flaw. There are many folks today, who can't bear having an abortion, even if they don't feel they can afford a(nother) kid. It seems obvious, in an environment like this that putting the kid up for adoption wouldn't an option

 

[Silent_Bob]

Watched it and i wasn't very impressed by it. The performances by most of the cast were pretty good (with the exception of the Commander) i'll give them that but the rest of the show didn't do much to make me want to continue watching.

Firstly there was far too much effort to shove "mystery" into the premise. The idea of setting up a colony 85 million years ago has enough mileage to keep it going without shoving mysterious markings, unknown agenda of the colonys leader and unknown origin or motives for a renegade group of settlers into the mix.

Given Commander Taylor(?) displayed all the charisma and leadership skills of a damp sponge you don't really need a secret agenda for the splinter group; i'd be heading off myself after ten minutes being "led" by him.

The biggest criticism i have with what i've seen so far though is the way they handled the Dinosaurs. As i feared when i heard about the show, they have been reduced to being used as monsters.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

As i feared when i heard about the show, they have been reduced to being used as monsters.

I heard originally they wanted the dinos to be an opposing team of competitive rugby players, but the network shot that down.

(I don't understand what else they could be? Plant eaters are the scenery, carnivores are the monsters. That's pretty much a given.)

 

[Trekker4747]

If future Earth is worried about over population and is serious about the (generous) "two child policy." You'd think they'd make sterilization mandatory after a couple has a second child.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

If future Earth is worried about over population and is serious about the (generous) "two child policy." You'd think they'd make sterilization mandatory after a couple has a second child.

Huh. That actually makes sense.
Unless the records were fudged to make it look like their first wasn't their first? Or something?
With technology, anything can be hacked and faked.

But yes, overall, that makes sense. Then you wouldn't need a security force going around checking on this stuff as well. Save you some money.

Then again, how does China handle the situation? From what I read, not that well. It could be close to the same thing.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If future Earth is worried about over population and is serious about the (generous) "two child policy." You'd think they'd make sterilization mandatory after a couple has a second child.

China hasn't gone that far, so why would Future Earth? Maybe there are serious disagreements about how draconian the authorities should be, which results in a schizo policy of not really paying attention to women's pregnancies (how do you hide a pregnancy when you're working as a doctor?) but then making examples of a few people by kicking down doors and locking up Dad (but not Mom, who is needed in her job at the hospital) and not letting the parents take their third daughter to Dino-Land, but instead presumably keeping her to become a welfare case and a drain on society when they could just be rid of her by letting her go.

That strikes me as a hit or miss strategy where the authorities are just hoping intimidation might keep people in line but they're not willing to go all out with a police-state approach. They might not even have the resources for that approach.

 

[Silent_Bob]

As i feared when i heard about the show, they have been reduced to being used as monsters.

I heard originally they wanted the dinos to be an opposing team of competitive rugby players, but the network shot that down.

(I don't understand what else they could be? Plant eaters are the scenery, carnivores are the monsters. That's pretty much a given.)

You can have carnivorous dinosaurs as a threat,have them attack people by all means but they should behave like animals.

Instead Terra Nova so far has given us monsters that jump out at people, scratch them a bit then get back in the shadows ready to jump out again.

It's the difference between 'Jurassic Park' and 'Jurassic Park 3'. One makes a decent attempt at portraying realistic behavior, the other scraps it in favour of talking Raptors.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Well it's true that that one guy should have lost his leg or at least foot.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

You can have carnivorous dinosaurs as a threat,have them attack people by all means but they should behave like animals.

Instead Terra Nova so far has given us monsters that jump out at people, scratch them a bit then get back in the shadows ready to jump out again.

It's the difference between 'Jurassic Park' and 'Jurassic Park 3'. One makes a decent attempt at portraying realistic behavior, the other scraps it in favour of talking Raptors.

Part of that could be budget. Keep them hidden when possible to keep price of effects down?

 

[Trekker4747]

China hasn't gone that far, so why would Future Earth?

China's "one child" policy wasn't put in place to prevent China from annihilation but simply to keep the population in check so the densely populated country could support the population.

In this particular vision of the future, however, people are being out-right told that over-population will lead to extinction. The world is so horrendously over-populated it seems to be fairly violently illegal to have more than two kids. In China all it meant was that your kid wouldn't be registered -thus making it impossible for them to function in society- and I don't think it ever resorted to checks of homes.

The future shown in the pilot is shown to be very, very grim where very desperate measures were being taken to curb the population growth. So allowing people even the very option of having more than the generous amount of two kids should not be even considered.

 

[John O.]

If anybody was intensely confused by this pilot and thought it had too much "mystery" shoved into it, you need to watch Lost, and you'll have pretty much the entire first season of Terra Nova worked out

No but in all seriousness I've only just caught onto this thread. I've heard some people throw around "Avatar rip off" comments. Aside from a setting in a jungle (and generalizing Pandora as a jungle is a stretch), a shared actor in a position of military authority (but with an ENTIRELY different personality and if you can't tell that you're horribly imperceptive), and a split second scene where we saw someone drag an image with their finger from a display to a PDA / tablet device. That's about it.

Despite its many accolades, and I loved it, Avatar's plot can largely be described as "Fern Gully with giant smirfs". It's an environmentalist bent on something like Dances with Wolves or Last of the Mohicans. That's not to knock it, I loved Last of the Mohicans and I'm not one of these self-obsessed purists who calls it sacrilege to ever recycle a single literary idea. The point is that, thus far, Terra Nova has nothing to do with environmentalism.

It operates on the premise that the world became uninhabitable, and there are some veiled comments to how "we blew it", but even that is not generalized to be 'the opinion of the show', it's specifically one guy making that comment. In essence this isn't anything like Avatar. There are just familiar visual cues giving people that impression.

The biggest criticism i have with what i've seen so far though is the way they handled the Dinosaurs. As i feared when i heard about the show, they have been reduced to being used as monsters.

They're an extension of "the Wilderness", which I would imagine the writers are going to attempt to personify into almost its own character like in Lost. Often times that's going to mean being a monster. I have a hard time seeing what other function they could possibly serve - unless you were hoping the Dinos would turn out to be sentient Hadrosaurs preparing to take off in starships for the Delta Quadrant because the planet's facing (another) extinction level event.

 

[Shurik]

If anybody was intensely confused by this pilot and thought it had too much "mystery" shoved into it, you need to watch Lost, and you'll have pretty much the entire first season of Terra Nova worked ou

I remember two "mysteries" - the equations scribbled on the rocks near the waterfall and There's Something The Authority Isn't Telling Us. The first mystery was answered, or at least heavily implied, by the end of the second hour (it's Avatar guy son's work) and the second probably has something to do with the first.

There's definitely something the people behind this operation not telling and the Avatar guy's son figured it out and somehow shared it with the rebels. As to what exactly he figured out - there aren't many possibilities. Since they all believe they are in parallel universe, the truth is probably they are in their own past and they are responsible for all the shit that happens on Earth in the future. Or there's some 85 million years long time loop where people go through the rift, fuck up the building of a new and improved human civilization, get to the same future, discover the rift and go to yet another parallel universe.
It's either that or Lovecraftian creatures. I dare them to bring Elder Things and Shoggoths to the series.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

In this particular vision of the future, however, people are being out-right told that over-population will lead to extinction.

Isn't extinction (of the poorer and less adaptable portions of the population) the antidote to overpopulation? And the society we were shown is not an Orwellian system because it's far too loosey-goosey for that. Otherwise they would have known about the pregnancy and forced the wife to abort the pregnancy, or at the very least, locked up both the parents when the third child was discovered.

Face it, the plausibility of the 22nd C scenario wasn't rigorously thought out, or if it was, not enough time was devoted to it, to allow us to be impressed by its cogency. There's no way to tell if the inconsistencies were bad writing or a reflection of a society at war with itself. The latter actually sounds like it could be an interesting show, but I guess we'll have to settle for dinos.

Since they all believe they are in parallel universe, the truth is probably they are in their own past and they are responsible for all the shit that happens on Earth in the future.

I think that's too complicated for this show. They dispensed with time-loop possibilities with dialogue that told the audience in effect to stop thinking about time travel. To then rescind that instruction would be too confusing and frustrating for the audience. This show has to live or die based on the time where they are now.

 

[Chris_Johnston]

The world is so horrendously over-populated it seems to be fairly violently illegal to have more than two kids.

Yeah, the vigor with which the cops were tossing the apartment made it seem like an extra kid in a household is just as bad as having bomb-making materials today.

 

[Shurik]

I think that's too complicated for this show. They dispensed with time-loop possibilities with dialogue that told the audience in effect to stop thinking about time travel. To then rescind that instruction would be too confusing and frustrating for the audience. This show has to live or die based on the time where they are now.

Well, that doesn't leave a lot of possibilities for a decent mystery then ...

 

[Trekker4747]

The world is so horrendously over-populated it seems to be fairly violently illegal to have more than two kids.

Yeah, the vigor with which the cops were tossing the apartment made it seem like an extra kid in a household is just as bad as having bomb-making materials today.

Indeed, it made me think of in other shows when the police storm homes to find evidence in a murder case or something. China's one child policy is certainly not quite that bad. What we see in this episode implied a much more violently enforced law.

Yet, the consequences seem to be not much more than a fine and the family going on living life as normal. -Dad was only jailed because he punched out the police.

 

[Sindatur]

The world is so horrendously over-populated it seems to be fairly violently illegal to have more than two kids.

Yeah, the vigor with which the cops were tossing the apartment made it seem like an extra kid in a household is just as bad as having bomb-making materials today.

I disagree. Sure, the cops were definitely over-zealous about the search, but, when the found the extra kid, all they wanted for a fine to paid, that's not nearly on the same level as bomb making materials. What got him stuck in jail was punching the cop, meaning that is a far, far, worse crime than having an extra child.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Time Traxx screwed up in the first episode, with respect to alternate timeline versus time loop paradoxes, and they still lasted three years. :P

I think nthey're trying to set up a Lost-esque scenario wherein people can COME to the past with all their plot-generating problems, but getting off the island (sic) is basically impossible here. In essence, anyone coming to Terra Nova comes from a Really Bad Place, and they'll deal with them amongst various flesh-eating dinosaurs. They then either resolve their issues and fade away into the local scenery, or be eaten. Rinse and repeat.

As sci-fi setups go, it's not bad. Lots of the less successful sci-fi shows are very closed in their setup and it limits their longevity. For example, Flash Forward, The Event, Heroes, and other recent series start with a very big and traumatic event that propels the world into the story. Thing is, that event never happens again, and the audience is hard-pressed to remember or care why it was that important.

Here, the major event is quickly established as something that will happen again. Everyone got to Terra Nova with a time machine (or whatever), but they won't be the only ones. There WILL be more people coming eventually. Similar to Stargate SG-1, there is a huge plot point in the setup that will remain relevant to everyone for the duration of the show. I think this creates a comfortable place for an audience to visit, and stay interested for the long run. For the sake of the 10 year-old inside me that likes seeing dinosaurs, I hope it will.

Also, the CGI here is as good as stuff on the Discovery Channel. I checked out a dino documentary in the past week (not tought to find, really) and the effects are on par. What creates the difference here is context - it's tough to call a Discovery dinosaur poor quality because you don't have a real human standing next to it. In general, it's no better or worse than what we see in Primeval, and UNLIKE Primeval there seems to be a workable story here.

Mark

 

[Relayer1]

Also, the CGI here is as good as stuff on the Discovery Channel. I checked out a dino documentary in the past week (not tought to find, really) and the effects are on par. What creates the difference here is context - it's tough to call a Discovery dinosaur poor quality because you don't have a real human standing next to it. In general, it's no better or worse than what we see in Primeval, and UNLIKE Primeval there seems to be a workable story here.
Mark

Just watched the first hour. Liked the cast and story more than I expected, but must admit that I thought the set looked poor in places and the CGI was awful - embarrassingly so. I am no flag waver for Primeval, but even that isn't this bad...

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Six of one, I suppose. My reasoning is that it's easy to gloss over the faults in the various documentary CGI dinos becasue there is so rarely any real people in the same shot to visually compare to.

As for Primeval, admittedly I haven't watched any full episodes since the second season. Perhaps things have improved, but IMO those early episodes feel just like Terra Nova in terms of the effects work, and the clips I've seen since then never struck me as outstanding.

Mark