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What's it about?
Follows an ordinary family on an incredible journey back in time to prehistoric Earth as a small part of a daring experiment to save the human race. In the year 2149, the world is dying. The planet is overdeveloped and overcrowded, with the majority of plant and animal life extinct. The future of mankind is in jeopardy, and its only hope for survival is in the distant past. When scientists unexpectedly discovered a fracture in time that made it possible to construct a portal into primeval history, the bold notion was born to resettle humanity in the past - a second chance to rebuilt civilization and get it right this time.
So, how was it?
Not nearly as good as I'd hoped. The budget for the two-hour pilot alone was a staggering $20 million (twice that of the two-hour LOST pilot which was, at the time, the most expensive pilot ever filmed). Supposedly a full half of that 20mil was spent before even a single frame had been shot, as preproduction was plagued by setbacks, departing showrunners and untold numbers of rewrites (reportedly the highest-level writers were paid $200,000 a week to significantly retool the show). If you're wondering what $20 million can pay for, here's a short list: two-thirds of the GDP of the nation of Tuvalu; seven Super Bowl commercials; or Kim Kardashian's second wedding. For a much-hyped, mega-funded, Steven Spielberg-produced, long-delayed show, the end result was terribly underwhelming.
It takes eight or nine days to shoot an episode of TERRA NOVA, which is par for the course for television. But each episode of this show takes a whopping six weeks in postproduction before it can be aired, which is twice the average for TV. Each episode after the pilot will reportedly cost an average of $4 million. In fact, this show is so expensive that FOX executives made the unheard-of decision to forgo ordering just a pilot and instead immediately gave the greenlight to a full 13-episode run. Go big or go home, right?
Even after all these setbacks and overspending before the show started filming, its premiere date was still pushed back by four months. FOX was originally planning to air the two-hour pilot in May as a teaser of the actual series starting in September (much like they did with the first season of GLEE). It was decided at the last minute to push the premiere back to September as well to give the effects team more time to make the show look convincing. So now here we are -- $20 million and four months later. And the results are disappointingly mediocre.
The plot seems like a hodgepodge of ideas and the editing is all over the place -- a consequence, I'm assuming, of those numerous rewrites and approximately 3,497 writers. The original script started with a scene about 20 minutes into the show. Everything that we see before that point was added much later, presumably because the producers thought we would be too dumb to piece a backstory together without actually seeing it happen. Personally, I would have preferred more mysterious backgrounds for our characters and finding out everything as we went. It would have drawn me into the story more to not know everything right off the bat, since I would've had to keep paying attention to get the answers. But whatever.
We're introduced to our hero, Jim Shannon, a family man -- too much of a family man since he has three kids, and apparently you're only allowed to have two due to overpopulation. This creates much drama when he's thrown in jail and his wife is recruited to go to Terra Nova, a new colony that requires colonists to walk through a glowing blue portal that is actually a rip in the fabric of space and time. This requires Jim to break out of prison (something we don't even get a glimpse of -- we just have to assume a tiny laser is a get-out-of-maximum-security-prison-free card) and then goes to pick up his stowaway third child in a backpack. THIS is where the pilot was originally supposed to start, which would have been infinitely more interesting. Why is this man running from the cops? What's in his backpack? Why isn't he allowed to go with his family? All of these would have been unknowns and made for a much more dramatic opening.
We finally get to Terra Nova and are introduced to the rest of the cast, all of whom are decidedly two-dimensional. The head of the colony is Nathaniel Taylor (AVATAR's Stephen Lang), a typical hardass military-type. He's backed up by a couple of uniformed cronies whose names I can't remember and whose characters had no defining traits other than standing around holding guns. There's Skye, the rebellious teenager who tempts Jim's son Josh, The Fresh (slang for new colonists), to go OTG (Outside the Gates) to drink moonshine made from Fruts (fruit-nuts). This show is trying way too hard to be cool and appealing to teenagers with the overly slang-happy Skye. Then there's Mira, the beautiful but deadly leader of the Sixers, a group of colonists that split off from Terra Nova and have been living in the wild and siphoning the colony's resources. Mira? Skye? Even though they supposedly came from the same place as our main characters Jim, Josh and Elizabeth, they have these vaguely-ethnic-or-tribal-sounding names, I guess because we have to distinguish that they've been there longer. Strange.
A few mysteries are thrown in for good measure, because what's a sci-fi show without mythology? So far we have: Who sent the Sixers? What do they want? Why did Taylor's son go missing three years ago? Where's he been? What are the weird geometric gold carvings on the rocks around the waterfall? (That one, at least, got part of an answer by the end of the pilot -- apparently they were left by Taylor's missing son.) But the most pressing question I have is the one totally ignored and glossed over -- if the portal to Terra Nova is a one-way trip, as is quickly established, how did anyone in the future ever find out what was on the other side of the portal, and how have the colonists been communicating with the other side? This seems a pretty important point but is never even addressed. I guess that the audience is just supposed to assume that communication is possible without ever establishing how. I understand that this is science-fiction, but that doesn't give you free reign. Even within a sci-fi story, you have to establish ground rules or your story will spiral out of control quickly into utter nonsense.
Oh, and there's dinosaurs. We saw three main types: friendly long-neck plant eaters, ferocious Carnotaurs and the smaller but even more vicious Slashers who have razor-sharp tails they use to whip their prey. I'm not a dinosaur expert, but I don't remember ever reading about that last one. Anyway, even with the four-month delay, these dinosaurs were extremely fake-looking. Granted, by TV standards, they were impressive, but after such a delay and heaps of money thrown at the project, I expected them to be more realistic.
That was probably my biggest problem with the pilot: my expectations. I expected, with the involvement of Steven Spielberg and $20 million, to get something better than average. Instead I was treated to two-dimensional characters, some of the clunkiest exposition I've ever witnessed, and countless LOST ripoffs (a small group of people who can't get back to their previous lives, nefarious Others who live in the wild and terrorize the main characters, loud roars coming from unseen Howlers, mysterious artifacts found in the jungle, etc). Perhaps I set my sights too high, but everything about this was underwhelming. I was especially disappointed to see the entire climax of the pilot center on the "rebellious, angst-ridden teenage son angry at his absentee father who wanders off and finds himself in danger, resulting in his concerned father and mother striking out to find him and save him from the evil, evil dinos." Cliché much?
In the same way that THE PLAYBOY CLUB was trying to be like MAD MEN, I feel like TERRA NOVA was trying to be like LOST. And just like THE PLAYBOY CLUB, it went about it all the wrong ways. Instead of being inspired by a great idea, they tried to copy a great idea and fell remarkably short. What made the LOST pilot so captivating was its complete lack of explanations and its focus on characters. TERRA NOVA was the exact opposite. It was focused on spectacle at the expense of its characters, and was too eager to make sure we understood everything that was happening to maintain any sense of real mystery. The "mysteries" that were presented felt shoehorned in and not actually organic to the plot, something I found insulting rather than captivating. TV shows trying to capitalize on the LOST phenomenon have a notorious reputation of failing miserably. Just look at what happened to both FLASHFORWARD and THE EVENT. It unfortunately seems like TERRA NOVA is following more in their footsteps than in LOST's. I will be shocked to see it last past its first season.
Rating:
** Okay. I may give it another episode or two to see if it gets better.
As is probably apparent, I felt incredibly let-down by this pilot. But FOX ordering a full thirteen-episode run before the show had even aired makes me think that there must be something in the show they're confident in. Pilots are notoriously rocky with all the character introductions, exposition and plot setup they have to do, so maybe this one just suffered even more from the countless rewrites and massive expectations. With how long I've been waiting to see this show, I will give it at least one more episode to see if it improves or remains the same underwhelming, cliché-ridden mess. Fingers crossed. This show will need to draw in a massive audience to justify its equally massive budget, or it will be faced with a quick extinction (pun intended).
What do you think, Fellow Addicts? Were you underwhelmed or thrilled by the pilot? Would you go OTG with the Fresh to drink Frut moonshine? Do you think it'll be the first LOST-inspired show to last past its first season, or do you think it'll get canned? Vote in the poll below and then hit the comments!
(For a quick glance at the other pilots coming out, check out my Fall TV Preview.)
What did you think of TERRA NOVA?
