Terra Nova

The new TV series that started last week with a two hour series premiere. Spielbergs next stab at the Jurassic Park franchise shall we say without going back to the movie series that is slowly being run into the ground, arguably since the original. Being that JP2 didn't have a lot of redeeming qualities to it.

Anyway, now we seem to be 140 odd years into the future, and the surface of the earth is becoming unlivable due to what seems to be pollution and overpopulation. Now, a time machine has been invented based around some kind of temporal rift, and they now choose groups that will go back to 85 million years in the past to start a new colony of man. I kind of had a flashback to the original Battlestar Galactica as I wrote that. But anyway, at this point the whole thing doesn't sound very interesting to me.

We discover throughout the two hours that there is a split between the colonists that have been going back. We have what we could call, the loyalists and the Sixers. The Sixers have split off to form their own group, and seem to be operating at this point as raiders and bandits. And have some spies in the camp of the loyalists.

Few other points we discover is that the son of the camp commander is missing in the wild, and that there is a waterfall 'Zone' that is off limits that has some strange writing, that may or may not have anything to do with this missing son. I should mention, that smartly one of the characters points out that they aren't really in the past, but apparently some alternate dimension of Earth. Or else anything they do could alter the future. And by the end of the two hours we find out that this may not be true..

Now that is the most interesting aspect of the whole thing for me. They think they are in an alternate Earths past.. But if they really aren't, than I look forward to seeing the repercussions in the future. With them not being able to get resupplied, or more people. Or even what may be sent back that they don't expect because of the changes. Because other than that I don't find this show to be all that interesting, but for the new Dino of the week. And I should mention it's established that once you go back you cannot return to the future. It's a one way trip.

Not, it's only been two episodes, shown together as a movie type thing. And I'm willing to give it a season to see how it goes. But, if this thing is really as expensive as I've read (Most expensive TV Pilot ever made) than will anyone else?? In this day and age where shows get canned after a few episodes if the ratings are low.. But then the cost may work for them in this case. With so much invested the suits may not want to pull the plug if they can wring a buck out of it.

In the end I will throw out a prediction, they should have used the basic premise of moving a colony back in time to the Dino Era as a reboot of the movies. And went from there. I don't see this as much of a TV show, but Stargate or Sanctuary with Dinosaurs in place of the Go'Auld or Monsters every week and some different trappings. But I guess most shows are like that, you just change the backgrounds and rename the monsters.

Oh, and props to the offhand remarks about getting used the past atmosphere being so high in oxygen. They could have been referring to their present being so bad. But I know I saw this is a documentary somewhere. That the Oxygen levels were so high then that it would have been a problem for Humans adapted to our present. And one reason why we don't have such large creatures or giant Insects anymore.