Verno wrote on Sep 28, 2011, 14:07:
Offtopic but was anyone else disappointed with Terra Nova?
The production values were lavish but I couldn't help feeling exasperated at the sheer amount of glaring plot idiocy in the pilot, let alone future episodes. As an example, the part where the Sixers crashed the colony and Taylor does a deal for iron was so dumb I thought my eyes would roll right out of my head. Hey I'm sitting a bloody time portal that shits weapons, ammunition, people and futuristic metals but sure terrorists, let's do a deal for some raw iron ore. How would the other camp survive? They lost what, 4 people in the pilot alone? I think the count was something like 100 per pilgrimage so surely attrition must be wearing them down.
I heard the pilot cost something like 40mil when it was all said and done. I don't know what the ratings were like but they better have been good to last long if production is ~2mil an episode.
I had a very long list of things I thought was wrong with this, but the primary one was NO ONE DIED.
By my count it was 2 that died in the pilot: one got ripped out of a turret and one got slashed by a slasher. Aside from that? You had 4 or 5 stupid teenagers in the jungle surrounded by 5 dinosaurs. One stupid teenager ran screaming into the jungle alone, right into the gaping maw of a dinosaur. Net result? Really nothing much. The girl looked like she walked through a thorn bush. Another kid had a minor chest wound. And one guy had his leg gnawed on, which isn't very good, but considering he was dragged out of a car by a 5 ton dinosaur and left alone with it for a decent amount of time he made out pretty decently.
The dinosaurs weren't the slightest bit menacing. They can't kill teenagers lost in the jungle in the dark.
Plus, as you mentioned, the pilot cost $20m (the quote I heard.) Which means we'll probably go 5 or 6 more episodes before we see another dinosaur.
Plus some of the dialogue blew (but got better), nearly ever character blew except for Taylor, that little girl just mugged for the camera, I have no sympathy for a couple that broke the law and had an extra kid when having extra kids led to environmental ruin, the throwaway line about how they can communicate with the "future" was pretty weak after establishing it was a different time stream (seems like a one-off line to cover plot holes), and the cast is very thin. A somewhat lame family, a handful of teenagers they talk to (of which I'd guess Skye and the boy talking to the daughter are the only ones we see much of), a commander and maybe one or two other soldiers, and the other faction.
The show really, really needed to introduce a wider range of characters that seemed they may have some importance. And it needed to off some. And it shouldn't have revealed the mystery of the carvings in the damn pilot.