Terra Nova

[on:]

Did anyone see this? It premiered in my time zone 8pm to 10 pm tonight (Monday). Was wondering if anyone saw it and what you thought of it...?

Graphically it was pleasing to watch, especially the opening. At first I thought the show was going to be set in the future, then I find out it is set in the past...it's like a mix of Jurassic Park, Stargate, and Lost...interesting combination. Not too bad, actually...I watched the whole two hour premiere.

[Reply #1 on:]

I wanted to, but I didn't get the channel, I only get a few terrible channels from the cable internet I put a splitter on

[Reply #2 on:]

Wasn't that show already on syfi or whatever?

[Reply #3 on:]

Wasn't that show already on syfi or whatever?

No it started tonight


I saw it in my TV guide for next week and I set the recorder for it as soon as possible

Yes it's coming to the UK one week after America..... UUH why not Futurama!!

[Reply #4 on:]

I liked the pilot, interesting mix of shows we've seen already as ff mentioned, it's got a very Pandora/Avatar feel to it also, and not just because of Taylor.
But damn, 2.6gb for the 720p edition? Oyy vey.

[Reply #5 on:]

I saw some of it when it was on last night, seemed kind of meh and I do agree it felt a lot like avatar.

[Reply #6 on:]

The second episode was good too. I despise the comparison to Avatar though.

Is it just me, or were the wife and daughters made to look...less ethnic the second episode around? They went from Ganesh Indian to Come to our Casino Indian...

[Reply #7 on:]

I'm tired of watching Avatar the animated series.

[Reply #8 on:]

Well, it's canceled already, fuppin hell. :/

[Reply #9 on:]

wow, that was fast, never had a chance to watch, the promos made the special effects look really bad, syfi cahnnel movie bad

[Reply #10 on:]

I haven't been able to find anything that definitively says Fox is dropping the ball on this series. It's got an ok viewership with the first few episodes airing, but it's also a rather expensive show to produce; so it could very well not be renewed based on this information.

That said, I haven't watched it.  The synopsis just doesn't yell must see tv at me... maybe it's interesting, I don't know.

[Reply #11 on:]

Source: http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2011/10/10/exclusive-terra-nova-set-for-two-hour-finale-on-monday-december-19-103523/9479/
Looks like they didn't order the remaining 9 episodes for the full 22 ep season.

[Reply #12 on:]

Whether it's 22 next year, contractually it's 22. Whether that's something we can ultimately do we're going to have to see."

What part of this means it's canceled?
They're just thinking of trying a 22 episode run next year if they get renewed

[Reply #13 on:]

Source: http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2011/10/10/exclusive-terra-nova-set-for-two-hour-finale-on-monday-december-19-103523/9479/
Looks like they didn't order the remaining 9 episodes for the full 22 ep season.

Yeah, they also didn't just order a pilot.  Because the sets were so expensive to build, dismantle, put back together they just ordered 13 episodes right off the bat.  Considering each episode costs ~$4,000,000 to produce, I'd say they're hedging their bets.  With a hovering 8-10 million viewership though, it might very well be the series finale rather than season.

[Reply #14 on:]

Honestly, I liked the show. It was wasn't too syfy. Yes, the premise of it was based on syfy but the actual show is/was pretty well grounded in a normal story telling style.

[Reply #15 on:]

THESE LAST TWO EPISODES WERE SO STUPID. You are living in a land of ferocious ancient creatures and new surroundings, why are you already detouring on C character storylines? ughhh. Not interested anymore.

[Reply #16 on:]

[Reply #17 on:]

I haven't watched a few episodes in this, well it happens to be on now. This show has gotten lame, but at least it had a Trek reference.

Guy approaches doctor chick to test a drop of blood dispersed in a cup of water:

"Jim, I'm a doctor not a chemist."

[Reply #18 on:]

Aww, dammit. Just as I was getting into it too. The last episode was damn good and had a neat plot reveal (the sixer spy).

The show missed a few tricks, but it wasn't entirely shabby for a family-show kinda thing. It was a speilberg effort, so sickly family nonsense was a given, but as long as you ignored those parts the rest was solid.

The CGI was a bit terrible though, I'm not quite sure what the effects budget was spent on since Primeval managed to get their dinosaurs looking way better on about a 1/50th of the budget.

Looks like the comments about "it's being made by Fox, it's expensive, they'll cancel it instantly" were right.

Edit: hang, on winna's right:

I haven't been able to find anything that definitively says Fox is dropping the ball on this series.

Me neither. Terra Nova has not been cancelled, it's all just internet rumours unless someone can link to something concrete.

[Reply #19 on:]

I'm a week behind (Two weeks including tonights one) and the CGI looks horrible especially in the one where they were fishing

[Reply #20 on:]

Holy crap the finale of the first season is actually good.

Some proper hard sci-fi with a reasonably convincing villain (who doesn't screw around...

Show spoiler

there is a scene where he gives a main character 3 seconds to tell him what he wants to know... 3 seconds later, that main character is not getting beaten up or thrown into the brig, she is lying on the ground with a bullet through her head).

And the reveal of "what they found" was damn freaky. The setting of this show is perfect and it could really go places as long as they stop trying to shoehorn a particularly sappy soap opera into it.

If it doesn't get cancelled, this show really needs to stick to the sci-fi, action and mystery elements and ditch the sappy plotlines.

So, 13 episodes in season 1... here's my review:

Episodes 1 and 2 - Really cool dystopian sci-fi intro set on a dying future earth with heavily polluted air and enforced population control. A

Episodes 3-8 - Boring sappy family drama and rehashes of dull sci-fi plotlines that I swear I already watched back in the 90's. D

Episodes 9-11 - Pace starts to pick up, ongoing plotline gets interesting. Nice and watchable, and I start feeling like less of an idiot for sitting through the previous 6 eps. B

Epsidoes 12-13 - Best sci-fi I have seen on TV since since SGU. A+

If anyone wants to watch this show, watch the pilot, then skip straight to ep 9, you won't miss anything.

Oh, and keep in mind - this show has absolutely nothing to do with dinosaurs, at all.

[Reply #21 on:]

Yeah it's a very misleading setting with the dinosaurs...
I didn't catch the finale unfortunately, but I did see last week's and thought it was really good. If the rerun them I may catch the ones I missed.

[Reply #22 on:]

Terra Nova is right fuckin' sick. I was camping out there the summer. Best part is driving up to Eastport, walking on the beaches, and getting a feed of Mary Brown's.

[Reply #23 on:]

Came into the show only after the first season ended, watched it on hulu and netflix. Naturally, fOX must've heard this, and has officially cancelled it.

Sorry, everyone. My bad. This wouldn't have happened if I'd just waited for the entire series to end before watching it.

They're supposedly trying to sell it to another network, but I dunno if anyone else can afford to do it justice. I'm not getting my hopes up, personally.

interesting note: it has set a new record for the most highly-rated show ever to be cancelled. Averaged 10 million viewers. Seriously, fox: Go fuck yourself. If you don't wanna make tv shows anymore, then don't. If you've got some idea that you can make more money by starting shows then selling them to soemone else to do the actual work of making it, then double fuck you.

[Reply #24 on:]

Oh well, can't say I'm surprised.

I only had a kinda "average" reaction to the show, so I'm not all that bothered. It had a few good eps and the finale was just plain brilliant, but a lot of them were utterly dire crap that looked like they had been written to appeal to what the writers thought an 8-year old would want to watch (bad idea, if my little pony can get away with having complex and intelligent themes and ditching the sappy crap, then a sci-fi action adventure show has no excuses).

That said, I'd have preferred it if Falling Skies got cancelled, and Terra Nova stayed. Out of the 2 sci-fi Spielberg shows, Falling Skies is an even worse brand of sappy stuck-in-the-early-90's crap.

Of course, it was on Fox, and got high ratings (constant 8-10 million viewers) and was profitable despite the high budget, but why pay $4 mil an ep for a sci-fi show, when you can pay $40k an ep for a crappy reality TV show that gets the same number of viewers?

Sci-fi as a genre is basically 100% dead on US TV right now. There is nothing. Even the new BSG prequel got canned by sci-fi mid-production. Except falling skies, which, tbh, I'd rather watch Andromeda or something. At least that had boobs and spaceship fights.

I guess there's Doctor Who... this winter. No more Amy and Rory though, which could go badly (I haven't liked any of the companions other than them since the show got rebooted). /:

[Reply #25 on:]

Of course, it was on Fox, and got high ratings (constant 8-10 million viewers) and was profitable despite the high budget, but why pay $4 mil an ep for a sci-fi show, when you can pay $40k an ep for a crappy reality TV show that gets the same number of viewers?

I'd get laughed out of the boardroom of any major network, not just fox, for this "naive" opinion, but... because you ought to want to make shit that is worth making. It's perfectly possible to get filthy rich making quality programming, and they all fucking know it, it's just faster and easier to get even filthier rich by making pandering excrement.

generalized to a nutshell, nothing wrong with wanting to get rich, so long as you also want to deserve to get rich. If you want to get rich without deserving it, you're just an aspiring thief, and all the money and respect from your industry doesn't differentiate you from a common street thug.

[Reply #26 on:]

The people and production studios who make the shows probably have that opinion, but networks are simply men in grey suits wondering where their next yacht is coming from. They're not creatives, they have zero personal talents in any of the fields related to the production of content. And even then, it's not quite as black and white as "the execs suck". As a publically-owned company, they are obliged to maximize profit for their shareholders, nothing else matters. If they aren't seen to be maximizing profit for their shareholders, they get fired for not doing their job well enough.

Dealing with "the idiots who have all the money I need to make this cool thing happen" has always been a problem for creatives, dating right back for milennia, even classical artists had to cater to the whims of their patrons, which is the actual reason why a lot of old paintings are nudes. Rule 34 existed back then, too! If it's in the myth and legends, there is porn of it...

Post-Fox Futurama's parody of Fox as drooling retards in suits is very well-deserved. They earned that portrayal.

[Reply #27 on:]

THIS SHOW IS THE BEST SHOW EVER CUZ IT HUS DINOSARS!