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

[Trekker4747]

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

On the baseball front--Playoff baseball games almost always last longer than regular games. They have longer commercial breaks between innings and team slow things down by overthinking between pitches and finding creative ways to use every single relief pitcher in one inning. I hate to see what would happen if someone didn't like baseball and tried to watch a playoff game.

Well, it's frustrating not that the game went over into prime time it went over by several hours. I tuned in to watch the news which was supposed to start at 6:00 (Central) after the game and the game was only in the 7th inning!

It's a good thing that I do, sort-of, like baseball and could watch the last four innings of the game otherwise I would be pretty upset. The problem largely is that it's a situation most DVRs cannot compensate for so they're not going to record right. I had to set my DVR to "over-record" Terra Nova and House by an hour and it freaked out saying that it'd interrupt other recordings. A more dynamic system for dealing with these types of situations would be nice.

Further we live in a much more digital and dynamic age. You'd think TV stations could set something up where people who want to watch regular local, or network, program could take that option and people who want to keep watching the game can keep doing that. I'm sure it'd be possible for a local TV station in the digital world to have a "shadow station" to operate like that during times like this. (It wouldn't have to be active all of the time, just during games.)

Further situations like these discourage viewers of a new series and really mess things up. Joe Blow out there would have had no idea what was going on when he first tuned in (and if he didn't stay through a commercial where the announcers gave the updated schedule when they came back.) To it's credit, House did send out the change of schedule through it's Facebook feed.

It just makes things a little more complicated to have games like this run over and muck up a nights schedule and can't be any picnic for local news stations vying for viewers to lose not only their 5:00/6:00 news cast but also their 6:00/7:00 news cast (and in Fox's case their 9:00/10:00 local topics/magazine segment.)

Yellow Sub:

I agree. (Although this wasn't exactly a DNA re-writing pathogen just a memory mucking up one) The bigger problem that is going to stem from this is probably the same thing that largely hurt Voyager and Enterprise and TNG wrestled with for it's entire run and DS9 for part of it's early season. Episodic television, which in this day and age is foolish to do.

Voyager was made to be very episodic, one episode's events didn't lead into another's; the argument being that in syndication the episodes would make more sense seen out of order than they would if they were serialized. In today's market that's old-school thinking as syndication isn't as big as it once was and DVD sales are where it's more at. There's no reason to not make the show more arc-heavy. (And having the occasional wink-wink or nod to a under all theme or story line doesn't entirely count.)

Next week we'll never hear about this virus, the nickel-eating raptors again. We've never heard of the "slashers" from the first episode, or the effects of those events and so on. (What became of the two injured teenage red shirts?)

This show is being to episodic. Not everything needs to be as serialized as most other dramas are or have been, but it needs to take its own premise and theme a touch more seriously. What happened in this episode should have real impact on the characters, who they are and what they do. Next week it'll probably be like none of this ever happened.

 

[Chris_Johnston]

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

Okay, so, in the Pilot, it was made very clear that one doesn't venture OTG (Outside The Gates) after dark, because that's when the Slashers do their hunting.

There hasn't been a single mention of the Slashers since then, even though people have gone OTG after dark and promptly gone missing in both subsequent episodes. In both cases, the only suspicion anybody had was "Maybe the Sixers got 'em!"
As I recall, the Sixers had just as much reason to fear the Slashers as the Terra Novans did, but now even they have secret meetings in the dark jungle with their "inside man", without worrying about Slasher attack.

What gives? Shouldn't they kinda remain consistent with the threat levels they set up?

EDIT: Ahhhh, Trekker4747 must've been posting while I was composing. Nice to finally see that somebody else noticed the sansSlasher issue!

 

[Trekker4747]

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

Yeah, the "slashers" have all but been forgotten as suspect these things will be too. Unless we need a sudden threat again to create a barrier or situation to ensure the plot doesn't get rendered null. The "slashers" will pretty much become the "transporters don't work here" plot device to make it so the characters have to do something a certain way.

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.

This show could have been cool but it's not quite pulling it off as it's not taking things very seriously. These people could be living on a remote island with some exotic wild-life and it'd pretty much be exactly the same.

And was anyone else screaming at their TV that the cold was the reason why Cop Dad wasn't getting sick with the memory virus?

 

[RJDiogenes]

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

It's sort of like a cross between The Waltons and Jurassic Park. Not really my cup of tea in terms of family drama, but there were some nice moments. I especially liked "Lieutenant! You shot me! Good job!" No, actually, the best moment was when Taylor realized that his wife was dead and tried to take his own life-- that was pretty rough.

 

[sojourner]

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!"

Um, the proper name for a hyena is Crocuta crocuta. I have no problem with people using slang for the names of dinosaurs. It's actually more natural than someone saying "watch out for that PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS!"

 

[Sindatur]

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!"

Um, the proper name for a hyena is Crocuta crocuta. I have no problem with people using slang for the names of dinosaurs. It's actually more natural than someone saying "watch out for that PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS!"

Heh, yea, by the time you spit out all that, it's too late to tell to them watch out, they're already mince meat.

 

[Trekker4747]

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!"

Um, the proper name for a hyena is Crocuta crocuta. I have no problem with people using slang for the names of dinosaurs. It's actually more natural than someone saying "watch out for that PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS!"

Look at Jurassic Park where the animals were called things like "Trike" (Triceratops), "T-Rex" or "Rex" for Tyrannosaurs Rex, "Raptor" for Velociraptor, and if we'd seen more of the other dinosaurs we'd likely had probably heard shortened names for them too. I doubt the folks at Jurassic Park called the dilophosaurus a "spitter", much the same reason why we don't call bos primigenius "milkers", rather we call them "cows", "bulls" or "cattle."

 

[AviTrek]

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

On the baseball front--Playoff baseball games almost always last longer than regular games. They have longer commercial breaks between innings and team slow things down by overthinking between pitches and finding creative ways to use every single relief pitcher in one inning. I hate to see what would happen if someone didn't like baseball and tried to watch a playoff game.

Well, it's frustrating not that the game went over into prime time it went over by several hours. I tuned in to watch the news which was supposed to start at 6:00 (Central) after the game and the game was only in the 7th inning!

It's a good thing that I do, sort-of, like baseball and could watch the last four innings of the game otherwise I would be pretty upset. The problem largely is that it's a situation most DVRs cannot compensate for so they're not going to record right. I had to set my DVR to "over-record" Terra Nova and House by an hour and it freaked out saying that it'd interrupt other recordings. A more dynamic system for dealing with these types of situations would be nice.

Further we live in a much more digital and dynamic age. You'd think TV stations could set something up where people who want to watch regular local, or network, program could take that option and people who want to keep watching the game can keep doing that. I'm sure it'd be possible for a local TV station in the digital world to have a "shadow station" to operate like that during times like this. (It wouldn't have to be active all of the time, just during games.)

Further situations like these discourage viewers of a new series and really mess things up. Joe Blow out there would have had no idea what was going on when he first tuned in (and if he didn't stay through a commercial where the announcers gave the updated schedule when they came back.) To it's credit, House did send out the change of schedule through it's Facebook feed.

It just makes things a little more complicated to have games like this run over and muck up a nights schedule and can't be any picnic for local news stations vying for viewers to lose not only their 5:00/6:00 news cast but also their 6:00/7:00 news cast (and in Fox's case their 9:00/10:00 local topics/magazine segment.)

Yellow Sub:

I agree. (Although this wasn't exactly a DNA re-writing pathogen just a memory mucking up one) The bigger problem that is going to stem from this is probably the same thing that largely hurt Voyager and Enterprise and TNG wrestled with for it's entire run and DS9 for part of it's early season. Episodic television, which in this day and age is foolish to do.

Voyager was made to be very episodic, one episode's events didn't lead into another's; the argument being that in syndication the episodes would make more sense seen out of order than they would if they were serialized. In today's market that's old-school thinking as syndication isn't as big as it once was and DVD sales are where it's more at. There's no reason to not make the show more arc-heavy. (And having the occasional wink-wink or nod to a under all theme or story line doesn't entirely count.)

Next week we'll never hear about this virus, the nickel-eating raptors again. We've never heard of the "slashers" from the first episode, or the effects of those events and so on. (What became of the two injured teenage red shirts?)

This show is being to episodic. Not everything needs to be as serialized as most other dramas are or have been, but it needs to take its own premise and theme a touch more seriously. What happened in this episode should have real impact on the characters, who they are and what they do. Next week it'll probably be like none of this ever happened.

You'd have to push out instantaneous schedule updates to cover extra-inning games. It's not like Fox new the schedule would be delayed an hour, the schedule was delayed by a TBD time which wasn't determined until the game ended. And in terms of subchannels, you could do it, but it would require degrading the quality of each channel(broadcast stations don't have the bandwidth for 2 HD feeds). And you'd still have the problem of pushing schedule updates for DVRs to handle it.

Not to mention Fox would be competing against itself for viewers. Why would Fox want to do that? Better to keep everyone on the channel and run late.

I'm surprised you've never seen this before. It happens all the time on Sundays with football during the day and then network programming at night

 

[AviTrek]

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

In related news, Terra Nova came in at 7m viewers, which was higher than the ALCS overrun and House. I'd say that's a positive sign, even if the raw number is down from the previous week.

 

[sojourner]

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

Look at Jurassic Park where the animals were called things like "Trike" (Triceratops), "T-Rex" or "Rex" for Tyrannosaurs Rex, "Raptor" for Velociraptor, and if we'd seen more of the other dinosaurs we'd likely had probably heard shortened names for them too. I doubt the folks at Jurassic Park called the dilophosaurus a "spitter", much the same reason why we don't call bos primigenius "milkers", rather we call them "cows", "bulls" or "cattle."

none of which sounds anything like a shortened form of bos primigenius. Just goes to show that some kind of slang name would take precedence in day to day speech whether it's a shortened form of the actual name or something made up on the spot.

 

[MichaelDornFan]

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

Below average.

I'm sick of the kids.

 

[Trekker4747]

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.

As for the ratings, they're not likely to be reliable simply because of the skewed time-schedule. Terra Nova may have had high numbers due to the large number of people still watching for possible post-game coverage or wanting to tune into House. (I really am not sure how they monitor the ratings, I do know that when shows span over an hour both hours are rated separately so I assume it's simply checked at the beginning of each hour but doesn't really track if anyone sticks around for the entire hour.) House's lower numbers could be due to people not expecting it to be on, or just confusion over the mixed up schedule. Games running over like this messes things up.

And, no, of course it's not the first time I've ever encountered this, I get it quite frequently and it's endlessly frustrating. There used to be a show I'd DVR on Sunday nights but watching it was next to impossible because of long football games and I simply couldn't schedule the DVR to record for it properly so I stopped watching the show.

In this day and age I would expect either more dynamic/"smart" DVRs capable of compensating for sudden schedule changes due to long games or, as I said above, some sort of system that gives people who want to watch regular programing a way to do so without having to guess or plan for when a game might end and for regular programming to start.

If someone at Fox or for House can get on Facebook and tell people on the fan-feed that the schedule was changing certainly someone could've sent a signal out to cable companies and then to the DVRs to make the change. There must be a way for such a dynamic system to work/exist it's just a matter of it being set up and executed.

That or, as I said, when games run long a "secondary channel" pops up with regular programing for those who want to watch it and not the game. And, again, it's certainly something that can be done with no noticeable dip in quality for either programming. If people tuned in last not at 7:00 to watch "Terra Nova" and they saw a tied baseball game going into extra innings they're either going to watch the game (requiring the person to have interest in baseball) until it ends or they're going to change the channel to something else.

I probably would've changed the channel or put in a DVD myself if I didn't want to ensure that the DVR reprogramming I had to improvise worked or didn't trust it.

Which is something else that could be done when a game goes long, the system automatically extends the DVR recording to compensate. Naturally it'd take some sort of simple AI, system, co-operation between networks and the DVR/cable companies or at the very least a human being at a computer console but it could all be done.

It's just frustrating is all, you tune in to watch something specific but then your whole night of TV gets shifted an hour out of whack. At least it was a good set of extra innings.

 

[sojourner]

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

Hey Trekker, do you work in IT or broadcasting?

 

[darthraidr]

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

i'm still not liking the show... it's not awful. but it certainly manages to miss the mark every time.

this episode really forced me to have to shut off my brain... but it was still really predictable. the biggest twists were avatar guy trying to off himself and injured soldier getting left behind for the dino. "He's alive, see?"... whoops...

i did have a few wrong guesses early on. i though the guy that went crazy was going to tie into the crazy son and his cave paintings...

really though, the show is a mess. dump the sixers, dump the cave paintings crazy son... the show should be able to stand with the premise of "future people living in prehistoric times" why the producers think they need more than that is really the biggest mystery of the show.

 

[Ryan]

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

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 .

In this week's episode Jim gets jealous over his wife, Maddy acts insecure around a boy, and Josh is mopey about girls. There also might be a dinosaurs or something.

 

[O'Dib]

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

The set up was cliche, but contrary to Star Trek, the element of meaningful personal relationships between characters (other than on a professional level) gave the familiar storyline a lot more impact. I liked it. Teared up a bit. I'm not opposed to outrageous, lighthearted sci-fi. Doctor Who anyone?

 

[Mach5]

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

Doctor Who anyone?

No, thank you, I'm not 12 any more...

BTW, the ratings dropped quite a bit this week. From last week's 3.1/8 to 2.5/6.

 

[O'Dib]

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

Niko nije savršen.

 

[Mach5]

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

Niko nije savršen.

Kovač ili Kranjčar?

 

[O'Dib]

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

Partizan.