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So did anyone else watch the premiere of TERRA NOVA?
I have to admit I stuck through the full two hours, but didn't find much to recommend the show after all the initial hoopla in the media about it.
The visuals were extraordinary (in my mind more so the future dystopia vision than with the dinosaur stuff of the "new beginning"), but the story really plods. And some of it makes no sense.
For instance: Why oh why would the Shannons choose to disobey the law and have a third child in a world where bringing any children at all is questionable? I mean this apparently wasn't any sort of "accident" (which wouldn't make sense anyhow since the wife of the couple is a lauded medical doctor). What did the couple see as the positives of having that third child in the environmentally poisonous world in which they lived?
I understand that in the original pilot the couple were having serious marital issues and the third child was their desperate attempt to solve them. (Like that ever works? And like any couple as well-educated as these two would think it would?) But that premise was removed from the pilot that wound up airing last night. The couple were quite happily married in the aired version, so the decision to have a law-breaking third kid really makes you go "Huh?"
The whole thing about the Terra Nova colony being a "new start" for Earth's future seems very jaded when the inhabitants of that colony are using so much modern technology, from fancy guns to armored terrain vehicles. They live in resort-like dwellings; they work with very modern tools; they have very modern amenities including electricity and antibiotics and fertilizers; they are protected from the nastier side of the environment by an electronically-gated and fancy weaponry-enabled fortress. So "new start"? Uh, not exactly.
And the "Sixers", e.g., the break-off rival colony: Haven't we seen before this idea of the strong-willed beautiful black woman (with the fight of an Amazonian warrior) as the leader of such a group? I mean talk about old tropes...
Then there are the pictograms at a particular waterfall, the possible meaning of which are so uniquely special that the Commandant of Terra Nova is keeping them hidden from all by declaring the area out-of-bounds. Do we really need another exercise in LOST-style obstuseness (which wound up thrown away in that series in the end anyhow)? Are the producers/writers that desperate for a ploy to intrigue the viewer?
Finally there are the dinosaurs themselves. They are well-done cinematically, but I was turned off by the fact what is being used are not "known" dinosaur species. We have carnosaurus, which isn't a scientifically recognized genus. We have "slashers", which are what exactly? Who the hell knows. Even the large sauropods used have some name that is not readily reference-able. Hey, I realize much that we "know" about dinosaurs is really just educated speculation, but the creatures in this series seem to take the "educated" part of that equation completely out of the mix.
So I won't be watching this show again and I have a gut feeling this very expensive fare is going to wind up rather quickly as just more television refuse.
The visuals were extraordinary (in my mind more so the future dystopia vision than with the dinosaur stuff of the "new beginning"), but the story really plods. And some of it makes no sense.
For instance: Why oh why would the Shannons choose to disobey the law and have a third child in a world where bringing any children at all is questionable? I mean this apparently wasn't any sort of "accident" (which wouldn't make sense anyhow since the wife of the couple is a lauded medical doctor). What did the couple see as the positives of having that third child in the environmentally poisonous world in which they lived?
I understand that in the original pilot the couple were having serious marital issues and the third child was their desperate attempt to solve them. (Like that ever works? And like any couple as well-educated as these two would think it would?) But that premise was removed from the pilot that wound up airing last night. The couple were quite happily married in the aired version, so the decision to have a law-breaking third kid really makes you go "Huh?"
The whole thing about the Terra Nova colony being a "new start" for Earth's future seems very jaded when the inhabitants of that colony are using so much modern technology, from fancy guns to armored terrain vehicles. They live in resort-like dwellings; they work with very modern tools; they have very modern amenities including electricity and antibiotics and fertilizers; they are protected from the nastier side of the environment by an electronically-gated and fancy weaponry-enabled fortress. So "new start"? Uh, not exactly.
And the "Sixers", e.g., the break-off rival colony: Haven't we seen before this idea of the strong-willed beautiful black woman (with the fight of an Amazonian warrior) as the leader of such a group? I mean talk about old tropes...
Then there are the pictograms at a particular waterfall, the possible meaning of which are so uniquely special that the Commandant of Terra Nova is keeping them hidden from all by declaring the area out-of-bounds. Do we really need another exercise in LOST-style obstuseness (which wound up thrown away in that series in the end anyhow)? Are the producers/writers that desperate for a ploy to intrigue the viewer?
Finally there are the dinosaurs themselves. They are well-done cinematically, but I was turned off by the fact what is being used are not "known" dinosaur species. We have carnosaurus, which isn't a scientifically recognized genus. We have "slashers", which are what exactly? Who the hell knows. Even the large sauropods used have some name that is not readily reference-able. Hey, I realize much that we "know" about dinosaurs is really just educated speculation, but the creatures in this series seem to take the "educated" part of that equation completely out of the mix.
So I won't be watching this show again and I have a gut feeling this very expensive fare is going to wind up rather quickly as just more television refuse.