★★★★★ 0/5

Terra Nova: reviews

Dino-series Terra Nova is like tuning into the old Sunday Night at the Movies.

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We’ve been waiting a long time for Terra Nova and it all begins on Sunday with a double-dose premiere from 8:30pm.

In many ways it’s like tuning into the old Sunday Night at the Movies. This is family fun (ok, it’s a little bit violent sometimes) on a grand scale. Shoot ’em up dinosaurs, teenagers misbehaving, eco-themes and lots of action.

Keep your eyes peeled for Damian Walshe-Howling and a buffed up Dean Geyer. Phwor. I also spied Eka Darville from Blue Water High, The Elephant and the Princess and Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Definitely worth checking out, hope it sustains long term. It’s sci-fi after all…

Here is what the US critics are saying.

The Hollywood Reporter:
It might be impossible for Fox’s new drama series Terra Nova – one of the most hyped and anticipated of the fall – to either meet expectations or, more damning, its hoped-for Nielsen ceiling, but the show has a lot to get fans excited about. It’s ambitious in scope, has a likable, far-ranging cast and appears to be planting enough storylines to lure in fans who are having Lost withdrawal. The show only runs into trouble when it involves dinosaurs and, since Steven Spielberg is the main name attached to the program, will undoubtedly go Jurassic more often than not,” he adds. “However, for every eye-rolling appearance of a dinosaur causing Jurassic Park redux, there is a morsel of hope in some other, mythological strand that pops up in the pilot.

LA Times:
Easily the most exciting show of the fall season, Fox’s Terra Nova has such obvious, instant and demographically diverse appeal — sci-fi fans, fantasy fans, 5-year-olds, 50-year-olds, Al Gore — that you have to wonder why no one thought of it before. Part post-apocalyptic epic, part family drama, part monster-thriller, the two-hour premiere of “Terra Nova” manages to introduce a panoply of narrative threads and themes while telling a remarkably clean story, both in terms of plot line and tone; “Terra Nova” is whole-family friendly.

New York Times:
Is Fox’s Terra Nova, with Steven Spielberg’s name at the top of its long list of executive producers, the best of a generally unremarkable bunch of new network shows this fall? Possibly, though to make that argument you need to work around the fact that it’s without doubt the squarest, most old-fashioned series to hit television since — well, since Mr. Spielberg’s Falling Skies on TNT this year…..Turning conventional, sentimental family soap opera into moving drama and taut suspense is a Spielberg hallmark, of course, but that happens only intermittently in the “Terra Nova” pilot, which was written by Craig Silverstein, Kelly Marcel, Brannon Braga and David Fury and directed by Alex Graves. It doesn’t help that despite a reportedly lavish budget, we don’t get to see an abundance of dinosaurs. The Australian jungle locations, meanwhile, are colorful but look artificial and too heavily computer generated compared with the more realistic Hawaiian scenes in “Lost.”

Variety:
Depending on how one chooses to view it, “Terra Nova” represents another attempt to do a family drama in a (very) exotic locale, or the new TV season’s biggest gamble. Fox’s dino-spectacular — which counts Steven Spielberg and former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin among its herd of exec producers — boasts a muscular pilot, a serviceable plot and considerable ambition — none of which, it should be noted, sustained the net’s “Terminator” series. For starters, though, “Terra Nova” shines pretty brightly, even with the possibility it might wind up being remembered as another really expensive TV camping trip.

8:30pm Sunday on TEN.

37 Responses

  3. Go the dinosaurs!!! Roar… Eek run away…. Stomp, stomp, stomp…. Chomp, chomp, crunch, crunch…. Mmmm, fingering licking good! Bye, bye, dino fodder humans…. > ; P

    Millions of years later… Oh, look Professor, a fossilised dinosaur turd. Oh, look, there’s a human skull in it. Wonder how that got there???? > ; P

  4. David, I think you’re referring to the “Butterfly Effect”, whereby even the smallest of changes can cause a ripple effect and eventually become bigger changes. Time Travel is full of potential cause and effect consequences which is why many believe it’s not possible, or it’s only possible if alternate timelines/ universes are created, so I’m always interested to see how writers decide to deal with the various issues that time travel throws up.

  6. Good point about Primeval, But in those cases what they took with them was limited, in Terra Nova is 100s of people and tons of modern equipment. Loads more chances for things to survive 85 million years. But like I said they have some 20 million years to get things right, and maybe even leave the planet. Remember modern humans have only walked the early for some 50,000 years.

  12. I don’t know what the in-story reason will be for going back 85my but the writers chose it because… *Dinosaurs, man!*

    I’ve decided that this will be rubbish, that way I will hopefully be pleasantly surprised rather than the other way around. Er, now I’m expecting to be pleasantly surprised so I will prob be disappointed…

  13. @DansDans : yeah fair point, i did jump the gun. For the record, I’m looking forward to the show. All I’m saying I just thought it a strange time in earths history to jump back to. Maybe i should have had my breakfast before I posted 🙂

  14. I have seen the promos and i will definetly be tuning in. Looks very good, now presuming Ten stick with the sunday 8.30pm timeslot then the show should do well. However Ten in recent years have had a bad record in shifting timeslots on Sci-Fi shows. This show can also be a good learning experience for the rest of the doveloped world regarding environmental degradation, and i am aware of this being sensationalised so nobody needs to point that out, with the exception that we dont have time travel technology, to save our hides.

  16. The dinosaurs are still there, so the comet has not hit yet. Also by going back in time would change the future and possibly change the evelution of man.

  17. Maybe it’s not an asteroid, and by going back they themselves were the ones to cause it?!

    Star Trek is always good for lessons on time travel. 🙁

    Besides; it’s a show, and maybe the reason they travel back that far will be explained within it. Who knows, they might not have been able to go anywhere else?

    Either way – looking forward to it. Well, for however long Ten keeps it on. 😉

  18. @brisvegas – well done mate. You’ve yet to watch the show to see how its explained, yet you seem to have found a major “flaw” that hundreds of people have potentially overlooked… some people…

  20. Well given its 85 million years in the past I’d say the changing history is not going to be an issue, maybe the settlement is where the astoriod hits 20 million years later? Either way it’s a lot of time to sort any issues but I agree I hope some of those basic time travel questions are answered.

  21. I’m very sceptical of the whole ‘going back in time to save humanity’ idea. Time travel brings up a whole lot of problems ie. Changing the future. Hope they address this or it’ll be poor scifi.

  23. I hate to say it – but I tkink I’ve found a major flaw with this show right off the bat.

    Ok, so to save humanity, they travel back in time – to the age of the dinosaurs. Ummm….what happened to the dinosaurs again? Oh that’s right – they got wiped out!! Epic fail on the part of either the writers or the humans who decide to go back in time.
    I love my sci-fi, but with such a major sloppy flaw as this…come on.

  25. I’ll be tuning in.

    It’s good to have something different to watch, especially a serialised story set against such an interesting background. I’m a huge Jurassic Park fan and also a Lost fan, so this show is definitely near the top of my Must Watch list.

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