Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoilers

[AviTrek]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

Not to mention Fox would be competing against itself for viewers.

Would it?

Say I turn on the TV to watch a show and it's not on due to a long game, I don't know when my show will be on so I make some adjustments to the DVR/recording and I turn to another station and watch something else. However, if there was a sub-channel available (that was still a Fox channel) then I'd tune into that and watch what I originally wanted to. Fox wouldn't be competing against itself it'd be satisfying to different audiences and probably see more viewers.

And what about someone that wants to watch both? They then have to choose between watching the game and the show. As annoying as it is, delaying the schedule is probably the best option for Fox. And it terms of your problem on Sunday nights, why not just extend the recording of the show by 30-60 min? That's what I do with Simpsons/Family guy and I've never had an issue with it.

 

[Kytee]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

I would rate this episode as average, with the very last scene getting an above average rating from me. I went into this expecting a 'Network TV' quality dino show and thats what I feel Im getting. The family elements are growing on my and I didn't expect that. I am worried though that overall, the show will not have broad enough appeal to keep running.

As much as the A plot was predictable this episode did a good job of fleshing out the world durin the in between scenes. Learning that it is possible to communicate with the portal closed was a neat reveal but learning that Taylor knows this but lies about it was huge imo.

I would like to see Josh genuinely cross his father and start working with the bartender towards the goals of the sixers.

I was trying to remember last night, did they say every single person who came on the 6th pilgramage left to form the sixers? or is it possible some are still at Terra Nova, either as sixer spies, or because they were not part of the sixer plot?

I recall the leader fo the sixers mentioning they had people inside Taylors camp but I would think any remaining folks from the 6th pilgramage would be watched like a hawk and find it hard to be a spy.

-Kytee

 

[davejames]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

Well it was an improvement over the second episode, but still disappointingly formulaic. I did appreciate the extra dose of humor, and I do find the husband and wife to be surprisingly charming and likeable... but all the other family stuff feels like it was ripped out of an episode of 7th Heaven or something. Just too cheesy for words.

And why is it the smaller, more contained episodes of Lost still managed to feel vast and expensive in scope, but when THIS show goes small it suddenly feels like a cheap Syfy Channel series?

 

[Hyperspace05]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

This was better than I expected. Which wasn't much, I admit. But the cast is charming, even if the writing is not.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

It's also interesting how real dinosaurs weren't interesting enough to use in this series so we had to make-up our own, and that the characters don't refer to these things by their "real names" but by a common name. I'm sure people who live near an African jungle don't call hyenas by their name but rather "Fiercers!"

Give me a break.

The producers said that they consulted paleontologists who estimated that we've discovered less than 10% of the Cretaceous-era dinosaur species, so they made a decision to introduce new dinosaurs that fit the era but were still new and unfamiliar to audiences. Plus, it lets them give them new traits and appearances which might be contradicted by later discoveries if they used only real dinosaurs.

Animals have numerous regional and behavioral nicknames that differ from their common and scientific names. Why should dinosaurs be any different? Especially ones you don't get extensive time to study up close because you're usually running for your life at the time. And hyenas have literally dozens of different names across Africa.

 

[Ethros]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

Glad to see I didn't make the wrong move by giving up on this show... 45 minutes into the first episode.

God, Falling Skies was bad enough for the OTT schmaltzy family crap, I really can't stomach another show doing it

 

[davejames]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

Glad to see I didn't make the wrong move by giving up on this show... 45 minutes into the first episode.

God, Falling Skies was bad enough for the OTT schmaltzy family crap, I really can't stomach another show doing it

Well the premiere had so much scale and was so action-packed that I didn't really have a problem putting up with the sappier family moments (the Jurassic Park movies certainly had their fair share of that).

But obviously they didn't have the budget to maintain that big movie scale, so now we're stuck with nothing but family crap and a lot of hacky, formulaic storytelling.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

Where's the poll, I wanted to give this piece of crap a big fat F, and now my fingers are shaking in frustration.

Is this show written for four year olds? Even VOY at its worst wouldn't have stooped to such a clunky and obvious plotline. Do creaky old formulas like this work even on broadcast anymore? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that killed ENT?

Okay, the writers on this show suck so far, but I KNOW Rene Echevarria can do better work. When is one of his episodes scheduled to air? Because my patience is wearing thin very quickly. Only my trusty fast-forward button is keeping me watching this BS show.

I whittled this stinker ep down to about ten minutes worth watching, basically any scene with Stephen Lang and/or dinosaurs. PLEASE will the dinos eat everyone in the colony except Stephen Lang and then we can have the story be about him, dinos and the Sixers.

It's painful to think of how much money they're wasting on the expensive CGI eye candy and shooting halfway around the world, yet they blow it on the "easy" stuff that more cheaply produced shows do much better: casting good actors and hiring good writers.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

So are they all going to be 'saved' by the dreaded common cold which somehow destroys the memory virus?

I glanced at this comment before I watched the show. I honestly thought you were being sarcastic.

I really want to love this show, I really do. Love dinos, the junglely atmosphere and most of the production design, I just seem to have no more patience for episodic tv. Every plot element and every character is so predictable that I'm just bored out of my skull .

There must be episodic plotlines that we haven't all seen ten thousand times. But these writers don't know about them. So this show needs to be serialized just so that the "duh of course" conclusions will happen once every five or six episodes rather than every frakkin week.

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

So are they all going to be 'saved' by the dreaded common cold which somehow destroys the memory virus?

I glanced at this comment before I watched the show. I honestly thought you were being sarcastic.

At the time he was, as he posted that comment before the end of the episode.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

Yeah the foreshadowing was a bit ham-handed, wasn't it? Jason O'Meara needs to learn to fake-sneeze more convincingly.

 

[AJ86]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

They did the 'common cold makes you immune' thing on Atlantis, it was crap then too. The rest of the story is basically just Tabula Rasa, again from Atlantis, right down to the tablet PC's with recordings of the characters on. Deary me.

 

[The Wormhole]

Re: Terra Nova: 1x04 - Unknown Pathogen Plot 4223(A) - Discussion/Spoi

They did the 'common cold makes you immune' thing on Atlantis, it was crap then too. The rest of the story is basically just Tabula Rasa, again from Atlantis, right down to the tablet PC's with recordings of the characters on. Deary me.

To be honest, Irresistable had a lot more problems than just the cold makes you immune.

And Tabula Rasa was already a copy of TNG's Conundrum, among other similar episodes done in practically every sci-fi series.