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

[Sindatur]

Whatever, the show sucked, I turned it off after 30 minutes. The writing is awful, at the start of the show the cops searching for the third kid seemed threatening and looking at the family's reaction I assumed the kid would be fed to the dogs or something, but then we find out the dad went to prison for attacking the cops and the punishment for having a third kid is ... A FINE! That's it? Why were they even trying to hide her? I would have just gone to the authorities, paid the fine upfront and raised her without my apartment being trashed.

Yeah the future part was very rushed. But this series is about the prehistoric past.

And why weren't they allowed to bring the third child to Terra Nova? Shouldn't the future be happy to get rid of another mouth to feed? I get that they can't allow everyone to bring their extended families, but their own child? Mom was allowed to bring two stupid teenagers, but a five year old girl is too much of a burden for the colony?

They explained it in the movie. The government don't want to reward people for breaking the law.

and feeding dinosaurs. That scene was so stupid, why would the dinosaurs even care that a child is waving a twig with a few leaves when an entire tree is right in front of them? It's like me ignoring dinner and crawling under the table to eat a single pea out of the hands of a mouse. At least I have the excuse that a mouse offering a pea is really cute, but I doubt peanut brained dinosaurs said "Oh my god, that little ape is so adorable, just look at it Martha, it wants to feed us!!!"

Yeah, that scene was strange when I watch it. I was wondering the same exact thing as you, as many people I'm sure.

Heh, I figured that scene was intended to take her arm off

 

[Noname Given]

Whatever, the show sucked, I turned it off after 30 minutes. The writing is awful, at the start of the show the cops searching for the third kid seemed threatening and looking at the family's reaction I assumed the kid would be fed to the dogs or something, but then we find out the dad went to prison for attacking the cops and the punishment for having a third kid is ... A FINE! That's it? Why were they even trying to hide her? I would have just gone to the authorities, paid the fine upfront and raised her without my apartment being trashed.

Yeah the future part was very rushed. But this series is about the prehistoric past.

They explained it in the movie. The government don't want to reward people for breaking the law.

and feeding dinosaurs. That scene was so stupid, why would the dinosaurs even care that a child is waving a twig with a few leaves when an entire tree is right in front of them? It's like me ignoring dinner and crawling under the table to eat a single pea out of the hands of a mouse. At least I have the excuse that a mouse offering a pea is really cute, but I doubt peanut brained dinosaurs said "Oh my god, that little ape is so adorable, just look at it Martha, it wants to feed us!!!"

Yeah, that scene was strange when I watch it. I was wondering the same exact thing as you, as many people I'm sure.

Heh, I figured that scene was intended to take her arm off

That scene was "the Speilberg influence" as I'm pretty sure that was on of his signature must have scenes - "See kids, dinosaurs can be our friends..."

And if the producers need to make money, they acn always sell the oprning planet Earth shot to the japanese to be used in "Space Battleship Yamato II".

Overall, it was okay. I don't think it's long for TV screens though as the budget must be enormous.

 

[sojourner]

^Was enormous. Now they have all the sets built and no need to show the CGI future anymore. The most expensive part left is the dino's, and if Primeval can afford cgi dino's on a weekly basis, I am guessing this can.

 

[arch101]

Wait till the colonists discover you CAN travel two ways but the oppressive Government tells everyone it's a one-way trip so it can get rid of the malcontents through the gate. (speculation)
Just wait until Oro shows up to meddle and goes back through the gate at the end of the hour.
Sounds like we need Doc Brown's chalkboard explanation of alternate timelines to make some kind of appearance and set everyone straight.

 

[PsychoPere]

Well the kids thought the markings looked "ancient", but the sixers state at the end of the episode that Lang's missing son is behind the markings.

Supposedly that's a change due to the revamped/expanded pilot (or so I read on another board). The version shown at Comic-Con ended after the Sixers got inside the camp and had their standoff with Lang. I don't know if that means the writers/producers changed their minds about the markings, or if they only pushed the explanation up sooner. (I'm inclined to think the former, since the first time wee see the symbols, they look etched into the rock with great precision and appear to be glowing gold. The secodn time, they're clrearly scratches scrawled into the surface.)

Or it could be both. The markings shown on screen when Josh and Skye were at that area are ancient, while the ones that Mira was looking at were carved more recently by Taylor's son. Maybe he's continuing whatever those glyphs are intended to represent. She did say he was carving "answers" into the rocks as he got them.

 

[McDuff]

One of the real mystery that is already included in the show, I think, is why was there such a time fracture (rift?) and why was it pointed directly at that time period.

Maybe some people for some reason really wanted them (people from the dystopian future) there in the prehistoric earth for some reason. So they created a rift for them to travel back in time. Maybe the Sixers knows more about it.

 

[Cmdr_Blop]

Why do they go to the dinosaur time to start over, why can't they go to after the dinosaurs died and mammoths and things are around, that way the dinosaurs won't ever kill them.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Wait till the colonists discover you CAN travel two ways but the oppressive Government tells everyone it's a one-way trip so it can get rid of the malcontents through the gate. (speculation)
Just wait until Oro shows up to meddle and goes back through the gate at the end of the hour.
Sounds like we need Doc Brown's chalkboard explanation of alternate timelines to make some kind of appearance and set everyone straight.

It is two way.

They can send radio signal messages back to the future to not tell the powers that be about the Sixers.

What they can't probably do at the moment is build a supercolider and atomic powerstation and thousand other superpostindustrialized endeavours needed to send "stuff" and people back to the future.

 

[PsychoPere]

Why do they go to the dinosaur time to start over, why can't they go to after the dinosaurs died and mammoths and things are around, that way the dinosaurs won't ever kill them.

Because the time fracture that they are harnessing goes to 85 million years into the past. They didn't build a time machine, per se; they built a machine that allows them to use this "time fracture," which has a (presumably?) fixed time destination.

 

[EnsignRicky]

The time dynamic is a bit confusing too. It seems that overall the same amount of time passes in the past as in the future. meaning that a person who goes through ten years after the first expidition will meet people who have been there for ten years instead of people who just arrived themselves. I wonder if there's a plot reason for that or it's just to avoid the countless problems and paradoxes that would go along with such a scenario. Then you have Stephen Lang's character arriving months before the rest of his team which if not a plot point, just makes things even more confusing.

 

[Noname Given]

The time dynamic is a bit confusing too. It seems that overall the same amount of time passes in the past as in the future. meaning that a person who goes through ten years after the first expidition will meet people who have been there for ten years instead of people who just arrived themselves. I wonder if there's a plot reason for that or it's just to avoid the countless problems and paradoxes that would go along with such a scenario. Then you have Stephen Lang's character arriving months before the rest of his team which if not a plot point, just makes things even more confusing.

The whole 6 month bettween him and hiis team p[robably was because they hadn't know that much about the Rift or how to better stabalize it, etc. It could also explain why they are sending people (and definitely supplies and equipment) through more often - it could be very difficult to control and make the passage through the Rift safe on a regular basis.

 

[EnsignRicky]

Also, was anybody else expecting a payoff at the end where the son would start puking his brains out for ignoring the liquid diet regimen and foolishly going right for the local food, drink and anything else he could stuff into his mouth?

 

[AJ86]

Does anyone know how far they are into filming the series?

 

[Dream]

Does anyone know how far they are into filming the series?

I heard they are already done with filming the first season.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Wait till the colonists discover you CAN travel two ways but the oppressive Government tells everyone it's a one-way trip so it can get rid of the malcontents through the gate. (speculation)

Philip K. Dick would agree with you...

Spoiler: PKD

that's pretty much the plot of The Unteleported Man/Lies, Inc.

 

[Trubinator]

I watched most of the pilot on Hulu. The premise seemed midly interesting but I doubt they'll explore any of the relevant science fiction concepts. They mostly seem intent on developing the "family" elements of the show, so I decided to stop watching toward the end. I have absolutely no interest in the insipid teen relationships or father/son/daughter dynamics that the average viewer gets off on. But I doubt any of this will matter anyway. A Sci-Fi show on network TV that's filmed at $4 million an episode can't last that long. I predict swift cancelation after the first season. Good riddance ...

 

[McDuff]

I watched most of the pilot on Hulu. The premise seemed midly interesting but I doubt they'll explore any of the relevant science fiction concepts. They mostly seem intent on developing the "family" elements of the show, so I decided to stop watching toward the end. I have absolutely no interest in the insipid teen relationships or father/son/daughter dynamics that the average viewer gets off on. But I doubt any of this will matter anyway. A Sci-Fi show on network TV that's filmed at $4 million an episode can't last that long. I predict swift cancelation after the first season. Good riddance ...

I also think it will got into that direction considering the pilot. And if it does, I think it sucks too. I'm fukking tired of all the serialized soap opera crap served as Sci-fi lately. But I don't wish it to be cancelled. If it turns out as bad as it seems it will go, I will simply stop watching and hope for better Sci-fi shows on TV (more sci-fi, better story every week, more episodic, faster paced plots for serialized ones and more plots developments than character developments, more originality and escapism every week, more adventure, etc).

 

[Agent Richard07]

What I understood was that they set up the basic idea that if you travel to the past, you create a new timeline from there.

They never actually said that.

Maybe not, but that's what clicked with me when the situation was being explained. It seemed like they were going with the general idea that if you go into the past, your presence and influence creates a new timeline. I never got the sense that they were "establishing rules" or developing anything complicated.

Either a new timeline was created, or they just went to an already existing one, where the past might be different as well.

Unless they go with something else, I'd argue that a new timeline was indeed created from the same past. And like I said, I don't see the point in putting them in some alternate timeline's past. If it's another past then they may as well have just set the show on an alien planet or something. Why bother with the dinosaur age if it wasn't our dinosaur age?

..or maybe is a predestination paradox and along the way all humans and eveidence of there existance there gets wiped out, probe and all.

I think they were trying to establish that there is no predestination paradox and that they can set a different future for themselves.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Saying that it is another timestream, just means "mirror universe" and there's no reason to suspect that they never diverged and were always separate since during the big bang.

Here's the pickle.

What all that science graffiti by the falls is all about, is suggesting that that assumption was unfortunately wrong.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'm fukking tired of all the serialized soap opera crap served as Sci-fi lately.

Watch Warehouse 13 already!!!

However, you're probably SOL by virtue of having tastes too specific for TV to serve in any great variety. Sci fi can't survive well or maybe at all on broadcast. But cable audiences expect dramas to be serialized. Therefore most of whatever sf/f we see in the future will be serialized. SyFy would be the exception since they seem to do well with the Warehouse 13 X-of-the-week style.

I also have tastes too specific for TV to serve in any great variety or even at all nowadays. I like space opera. Prefer serialized, will take episodic, but other than The Clone Wars, I'm SOL too.

And like I said, I don't see the point in putting them in some alternate timeline's past.

It's useful if they want to go for a plot twist where the planet's past is different from what we know as Earth's past (intelligent dino civilization for instance). That would be a surprise since I'd imagine most people are making the same assumption you are about "how time travel works," but the writers haven't ruled out the past-is-different-too possibility.