Terra Nova: The Runaway

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Terra Nova Season 1, Episode 4: The Runaway. Commander Taylor’s security force discovers a young girl outside the colony who has run away from the rogue encampment. As the Shannon family attempts to reintroduce the child to civilization her true motives come into question.

Were you getting tired of bland episodic plots yet? I don’t know of may television series which held as much promise as Terra Nova and utterly failed to deliver. Thankfully the most recent episode of Terra Nova resumes the story of the renegade colonists who arrived on the sixth pilgrimage. The group splintered from the main colony and now represent a considerable threat.

Terra Nova keeps teasing us with the back story of the sixers. Unfortunately the series has only provided vague hints about the politics of the future thus far. It appears someone back in the year 2149 has a problem with Commander Taylor (Stephen Lang) and wants him gone. Taylor has long suspected the renegades were sent by some faction from the future to infiltrate the colony. Taylor has suggested several times that he’s not sure who back in 2149 he can trust.

Mira (Christine Adams) The leader of the Sixers, confides to Jim Shannon that Commander Taylor has enemies in the future, but that her role in their plans is coerced. She simply wants to see her own child again. That’s about the only new information this episode provides about Terra Nova and temporal politics.

Terra Nova – New sci-fi series on FOX this fall

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About halfway through the third season I had really become concerned that Fringe wouldn’t make the cut for renewal. Now that the series has been picked up for a full fourth season I can relax a little and think about some of the new programs coming to FOX this fall.

Terra Nova looks to be one of the most interesting new titles slated for fall premier. In order To save mankind people are transported millions of years into the past. Some people are already saying this could be the new “LOST”.  As long as the visual effects are good and the characters are compelling, Terra Nova could be HUGE.

Here’s a summary from Wikipedia because this honestly took me completely by surprise and I don’t have much more to tell you about it.

The show begins in the year 2149, a time when all life on planet Earth is threatened with extinction. In an effort to save the human race, scientists develop a portal allowing travel 85 million years back in time to prehistoric Earth. The Shannon family (father Jim, his wife Elisabeth, and their three children Josh, Maddy and Zoe) join the tenth pilgrimage of settlers to Terra Nova, the first human colony on the other side of the temporal doorway. However, they are unaware that the colony is in the middle of a group of carnivorous dinosaurs.

As much as I criticize FOX for pulling the plug on some of my favorite shows I really have to give them credit for taking chances on some really risky concepts. Think about some of the sci-fi series which FOX took a chance on. Some worked out while others … not so much.

  • The X-files
  • Fringe
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
  • Firefly
  • DollHouse
  • Earth 2
  • Space: Above and beyond

As far as Terra Nova goes, if it has  temporal doorways and dinosaurs,   I’m already looking forward to it.

Remember Journeyman?

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Remember the television series ‘Journeyman’? it aired briefly on NBC during the last WGA writers’ strike. The series featured Kevin McKidd and Moon Bloodgood as unwitting time travelers.

Investigative Journalist Dan Vassar (McKidd) finds himself suddenly transported through time. Dan begins to suspect that he must correct some error in the course history or right an injustice before he can travel back to his own time. In his travels Dan encounters his former flame Livia Beale (Bloodgood) who he learns is also a time traveler. Dan Vassar’s sudden disappearances from his own time have begun to cause stress in his marriage and raise suspicions as to the nature of his activities. [Read more...]

Time Traveler’s wife – a good adaptation even if condensed

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“The Time Traveler’s Wife”, the movie based on the much loved novel by Audrey Niffenegger, is now available on DVD. I can’t believe I forgot to post an entry about seeing this film in theaters.

The Time Travelers Wife stars Eric Bana as the chronologically displaced  Henry Detamble and  Rachel McAdams as His wife Claire. The endearing but sometimes complicated relationship between Clair and Henry translates reasonably well to the big screen. However, the overall plot is somewhat hurried, with some events seeming to be out of context or poorly explained, but that’s to be expected from any film adaptation of a novel. Peter Jackson (The Lovely Bones) said that there is no such thing as a perfect adaptation. Time Traveler’s Wife is ‘close enough’.

If you are a fan of the novel you will no doubt feel that some of the ‘magic’ is missing from the film version, but all things considered I recommend this as a good ‘date night’ dvd.

If you like Audrey Niffenegger’s writing, you may also enjoy Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel.