ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Click on the image above to see a larger version of the poster.
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I never watched this series, so everything below is pure speculation based on the Wikipedia article at this link (which they won't let me embed, dammit).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series)

Let's find out how accurate the article is, and how good I am at analyzing the series from the evidence the article provides.

Here goes nothin'.
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Good lord, here's a premise for a series that absolutely could NOT fail . . . unless the writers felt obliged to screw it up by polluting a pure concept by making the story about a corrupt social systems and a bunch of dirty politics.

Sadly, that's exactly what brought down this intrigue series.

The pure concept was this.

The world of 2149 is so overpopulated that people would rather live in Jurassic Park, with no fences and no way to get out! So, the government uses a "temporal rift" that permits one-way travel to a parallel "time stream" resembling Earth's Cretaceous Period to get rid of some of the excess people.

(My first question is: If they can only send people back to this Lost World, how do they know anything about it? Who "came back" and reported what it was?)

Never mind that, let's just make this series about groups of refuges from a hellishly polluted Earth who want to make a new home in pristine environment free of pollution, a world with just one tiny drawback.

It's ass-deep in dinosaur that like the taste of people!

Boy, I wouldn't need to add a thing to that premise to enjoy writing stories about brave pioneers equipped with abundant futuristic technology and a healthy respect for the local wildlife . . . even though the local wildlife is eager to eat 'em all up.

And now, what screwed up this pure concept.

One of the groups of colonist sent back to his savage Dinosaur World were just there to strip the Cretaceous Earth of its resources and transmit them to 2149.

(Okay, so apparently they could send matter into the past and then bring it back to the present Earth, but not people . . . .which means that probes with recording devices sent into the past were able to return with information about Dino Planet. Ah-ha! Got it! )

But wait a minute! Something smells over-rip in the state of Denmark!

If the world of the present is overpopulated and low on natural resource . . . why go to all that trouble to strip the resources from the prehistoric world and then ship them back to the crappy present?

Here's a smarter idea!

Send most of the people back to Bedrock USA and start all over again with an UN-polluted world!

And think how easy it would be to just leave the less intelligent and less healthy people here to prevent the pristine Cretaceous World from being over-populated as well!

A large population of humans on the new world — equipped with modern technology — would make mince meat of those pesky prehistoric vermin!

And who knows, maybe if they were cooked slowly in large oven at the right temperature, and seasoned with a few savory sauces, they might turned out to taste better to US than we did to THEM!

My point, ladies and gentlemen, is that a premise like the one this series was based on tends to frustrate the crap out me, simply because it's so easy to see how it SHOULD have been done, instead of how it WAS done.

Why make a series about how stupid people ARE, when you can make one about how smart they can BE?

By the way, I didn't care much for the narrow, low-color poster . . . so I fix it!

Here's the original, along with my altered, expanded version which you can click on see more detail.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Terra Nova Trivia

The high fences for the TN colony came from left over stock from producer/director Steven Spielberg's feature film Jurassic Park.

Steven Spielberg did not want to shoot TN in Hawaii because he felt he wanted TN not to be identified with JP.

Australia was chosen for the filming location for TN after Florida, Louisiana, and New Zealand were ruled out.

TN was shot in SE Queensland, Brisbane, The Gold Coast, Gold Coast Hinterland. Shooting in Australia would end up proving to be very costly.

Terra Nova means New Earth in Latin, Portuguese, and Catalan.

The two-hour pilot for TN cost $20,000,000. Each episode after that cost $4,000,000.

More than 250 sets were constructed for TN, the colony set occupied four acres.

The FOX Network took the unusual step and commissioned the pilot and 13-episodes immediately as opposed to ordering a pilot first and then considering whether they'd pick up TN as a series later on.

Episodes took eight to nine days to shoot, which was normal for most television dramas. However, post-production required six-weeks when the average TV shows only needed two-weeks post-production.

TN was created by Kelly Marcel and further developed by collaborator Craig Silverstein.

Kelly originally named her project Gondwanaland Highway.

Gondwanaland refers to when Earth had one gigantic land mass.

This came as a result from a discussion between Kelly and her dad who was reading Stephen Hawking's book about time travel.

Filming of the series was plagued by troubles. Torrential rains delayed shooting, creator Kelly Marcel left the show early on due to her creative disagreements with the direction the series was taking, executive producer David Fury (24, Lost) also left early on due to artistic disagreements, and Craig Silverstein resigned when he had the opportunity to develop his own show.

Casting for the show took so long that it delayed production getting started and this incurred a $660,000 penalty fee.

The excessive budget eventually sank the show.

The physical production took place in Australia which is a fifteen-hour flight from L.A. Writers, producers, and post-production were all located in California. This time difference presented further complications for the already troubled production.

In addition, TN went through two writing staffs.

Whew, it's a wonder TN actually lasted for thirteen episodes with all the background calamity going on.

Steven Spielberg brought in Paleontology expert Jack Horne who Spielberg had consulted with for Jurassic Park.

Jack set TN during the Cretaceous period. His reasoning being that some folks would recognize some of the dinosaurs of that era. The period would also include less well known dinosaurs and that would make TN fresher for the audience.

Had TN been picked up for season two the writers had some ideas in mind for its second outing.

Commander Taylor of TN was going to lose his mind and a power struggle would have resulted between Taylor & Jim Shannon.

The TN colonists would also encounter highly intelligent dinosaurs

Netflix was interested in picking up TN and continuing the show where they would have relocated filming to Hawaii. Talks eventually broke down.

When word got around that FOX was going to cancel TN, fans mailed in plastic dinosaurs to the network in a campaign to save the show.

Many of the handguns used in TN were remodeled & repainted Nerf blasters.

[Gord Green]

More info from Wiki and others:

The series documents the Shannon family's experiences as they establish themselves as members of a colony, set up 85 million years in the Earth's past, fleeing the dystopian overpopulated and hyperpolluted present of the mid-22nd century. The series is based on an idea by British writer Kelly Marcel with Steven Spielberg as executive producer. On March 5, 2012, Fox announced that the show had been cancelled.

The series is initially set in 2149, when overpopulation and declining air quality threaten all life on Earth. When scientists discover a temporal rift permitting (one-way) human transmission, they initiate a series of "pilgrimages" to a parallel "time stream" resembling Earth's Cretaceous Period.

The series focuses primarily on police officer James "Jim" Shannon, his wife Elisabeth, and their three children Josh, Maddy, and Zoe, as they join the colony there, named "Terra Nova" (Latin for "New Earth" or "New World").

Elisabeth Shannon is chosen to join Terra Nova for her medical expertise, and her two older children with her. Her husband, imprisoned for violating population control by harbouring a third child and assaulting an official agent to protect his young daughter, stows away to join them and eventually convinces the colony's leader, Commander Nathaniel Taylor, that his own police expertise is of use to the administration.

Opposing the colony and its leader Taylor is a group of separatists known as the "Sixers", so called because they arrived in the "Sixth Pilgrimage", working in concert with corporate industrialists to strip the Cretaceous Earth of its resources and transmit them to 2149, allowing for massive profits at the cost of environmental destruction.

It is later revealed that Commander Taylor's estranged grown son, Lucas, is working with the Sixers as well. Toward the end of the series, Lucas perfects travel to and from the future, thus enabling the industrialists, with a private army called "The Phoenix Group", to invade Terra Nova.

At the end of the series, Jim Shannon returns to 2149 to destroy the gateway permitting travel to the Cretaceous, whereupon the Phoenix Group retreats to the nearby "Badlands", leaving behind a wooden ship's figurehead apparently located there by another temporal rift.

Mid-season reviews were highly critical. Mark A. Perigard of the Boston Herald said that the series was Stargate Universe by Dr. Seuss.

Sam Wollaston of The Guardian stated that there was only one interesting character and that "A lot of the fault lies with what they have to say to each other. The script is as corny and cheesy as a family-sized portion of cheesy corn nachos."

New York magazine reviewer Chadwick Matlin vowed never to watch the show again, saying "Sure, the premise had promise, but even masochists like us can only take so much."

But by the finale in December things had turned around again where critics were mostly pleased and enthusiastic. Entertainment Weekly called the season finale "exciting".

One reviewer commented :

"The Story? Boriiiiiing. It started very good, in a dystopian future, which seemed pretty interesting even if not the most original of settings... But it only declines from there. At the end of it all, we're in a "family drama", a very cliché one incidentally, with dinosaurs.... so yeah.

The plot is dumb. Typical dumb characters that do dumb things because there needs to happen something to fill the time of the show. The characters are dull, completely un-original, their dialogue is often cringe-inducing, and sadly, the actors that portray them don't seem to be very inspired.

It's fine to have laser guns and dinosaurs and retro-sci-fi stuff, but give us an intelligent story please. I don't want to watch another show about the estranged dad, the angsty son, the nerdy daughter, the innocent child, the worried mom, the hot girl-friend and the over-confident military guy... There seems to be only rehashed stereotype characters in this show... ugh! To be honest, this seems like a waste... it looks expensive enough, but I was expecting something less dumb. Seriously, I wanted to slap every last one of the characters silly. And then the writers...

Let's hope it picks up and quickly, but something tells me it's not going to. I'm already dreading the 'family drama of the week' pace, with a little bit of mystery to try and seem like an interesting show.

Oh well, at least we still have Fringe, we sci-fi buffs... "
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Krel.]

[Pow]

From Comic Book Resources: 10 Reasons Why Terra Nova Flopped.

10. The Series Was Oversold. The hype was set too high and the show was heavily promoted up to its release. Terra Nova premiered to an audience of over 9,000,000; the finale was 7,000,000. Not a fatal drop-off but it showed that 2,000,000 did not remain for the entire run of the series' 13 episodes.

Sidebar: Kind of an odd criticism by CBR. Of course any studio/network is going to saturate an expensive new TV show with ads. Did they overdue it? Or were they doing their job? I'm not gonna buy that this caused TN's failure.

9. Reviews Weren't Spectacular. Unsustainably expensive owing to its costly special effects, each episode required six-weeks for post-production work, twice as long as most television shows. Combined with the general expense of building sets from scratch, maintaining them, the network needed an astronomical success to justify the show's lavish budget. Pretty good ratings were just not going to cut it.

8. Needs More Dinosaurs. Terra Nova's premise was an excuse to have humans and dinosaurs co-exist together. Audiences wanted a lot of dinosaurs, but even with a high budget, the best they could do was to have brief cameos. The rest of the series was generic science-fiction plots with dinosaurs in the background at best.

7. None Of The Shannon Family Were Compelling Leads. Characters in any television show worth investing in are a requirement for any good series. It's is vital. If the audience doesn't like the characters, there's no reason to show up week after week. Not a single member of the five Shannon family had more than two dimensions.

Sidebar: I liked the family. They were good, decent folks who loved one another and watched out for one another. Part of their coming to Terra Nova (under false pretenses) was to save the life of their youngest child. While they weren't hugely colorful or dynamic or amusing people, I still admired them and rooted for them. I found them grounded in reality rather than falsely melodramatic or soap operatic.

6. It Tried To Be Too Many Things. The show had no distinct identity. The studio, the network, and producer Steven Spielberg all had different visions for the series. One of the cast members of TN said "A lot of cooks were in the kitchen. You know how when something starts out as one thing and then gets diluted? That was us."

5. The Showrunners Lacked Confidence In The Material. Showrunner/writer Brannon Braga said "This was the only awful experience of my career." He found the series creator British Kelly Marcel's pitch for the show "unimpressive, tormented, unwieldly, and the most strained idea I've ever heard." Not in a position to turn down Steven Spielberg, Braga agreed to come in on the show. He admitted that he had no real creative vision for Terra Nova.

Sidebar: I guess turning down Spielberg can damage your career. At the same time couldn't Braga just honestly express his lack of enthusiasm for the series? Or did he lie to Spielberg? If Braga did level with Spielberg, then Steven needed to move on to find a showrunner who was excited about Terra Nova, and had a vision for it.

4. Things Behind The Scenes Were Very Messy. The writers room for the show was a revolving door. The pilot required reshoots after the initial shoot was hampered by Australia's torrential rains.

3. The Series Skipped The Pilot Stage. Due to the high cost of producing even one episode of Terra Nova, the FOX network skipped over the pilot stage and picked up the series for thirteen episodes right off the bat. This threw showrunner Braga and his staff right into the deep end of the pool right from the get-go.

TV pilots aren't just proof of concept for executives to see if a series can work on a weekly basis. They're a lab for writers to get a sense of what works for a series and what doesn't work. Braga and his writers had to script a full season of Terra Nova before any footage was ever filmed. This left them little room to adjust once the cameras finally rolled.

2. Too Many Filler Episodes. The mid-stretch of the season, episodes three through eight, showed that the writers were struggling to get a handle on the show and the characters. The stories were hackneyed and the pacing erratic. The show did pick up around episode nine, but it was too late by then.

1. It Aired On FOX, A Network Infamous For Canceling Shows. Terra Nova failed to be an instant hit. However, that doesn't mean it couldn't have improved as it went along. Braga felt that the show was beginning to come into its own towards the end.

Sidebar: Really? Isn't just about any TV network guilty of cancelling their shows too quickly? I hardly think that FOX stands alone in that regard.

[Bud Brewster]

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Mike, I enjoyed your post, even though I've never watched Terra Nova!

If I do decide to take a look at, at least I've been told what to expect. That can help when you watch something that was not done quite right.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

It became obvious to me that many of the concepts from TERRA NOVA were "borrowed" for LA BREA , which was also filmed in Australia.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.