I only watched the first half of Terra Nova because Fox and Comcast teamed up wear me down with commercials.
See, we set up the Terra Nova recording last week. After dinner on Monday, we checked the scheduled recording to make sure Alphas, Weeds, and Terra Nova were on it. It was, Thunderbirds were go, and we turned off the TV, intending to watch the show later that night. Only, we didn’t actually get to turn it back on, instead having a big, deep discussion about how I feel dead inside. Then I went to bed crying, which proves I’m not dead inside, just dented.
Tuesday, I was feeling some residual emotional poopiness and watching some CG dinosaurs and Stephen Lang doing manly things was just the thing. Only the DVR recording wasn’t there.
At least it was on demand. Only….ONLY! Fox On Demand on Comcast does not let the viewer fast forward through commercials. That’s murder on a two hour show. And it murdered my viewing of this show – which I’d been really looking forward to – because commercial breaks had worn me down in the first hour.
I get that advertising is where the money is, but that’s not how we watch TV, now, Fox. It’s not my responsibility to let commercials play so you can make money. It’s your responsibility to come up with a new business model that allows you to make money with the way viewers view now. Your revenue stream isn’t my problem. But, me not watching is yours.
Damn you, Rupert Murdoch.
Now that I’ve gotten that first world problem off my wheezy chest, let’s talk about Terra Nova.
I was actually enjoying it. Dinosaurs are always fun, as are futuristic refugees from a gas mask wearing future. While I appreciate that Show didn’t waste any time, moving from happy family to baby raid to prison to time traveling stowaways in minutes, I might have liked spending a few more minutes in $h!ttyEarth. At least long enough to be able to connect the dots between $h!ttyEarth and dirty energy, the dismantling of environmental policy, and corporate polluters run amok.
But, hey. Dinosaurs, Jason O’Mara without a shirt, giant centipede!, girl in a bikini, splinter group, another BIG EFFING BUG THINGY! OH MY GOD IS THAT A GIANT LEECH ON THAT GUY’S BACK WTF????
The main thing that had been bugging me going into Terra Nova was disrupting the future/present by taking all our stuff into the past. I thought, “Someone never read Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’”.
That was explained in the obligatory Orientation/ Exposition Discussion between the Shannon siblings – it’s the past in a separate time stream. So, the Terra Nova colony exists without nullifying $h!ttyEarth. Just like JJ Abrams’ Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. Also, Sister Shannon’s butterfly reference happily indicated that someone did read “A Sound of Thunder”.
The Zoe issue doesn’t garner any sympathy from me. I’m probably supposed to applaud the Shannons for going with their biological instincts, choosing life, and continuing to add numbers to the species in the face of devastating overpopulation. Let’s be clear. I’m not anti-Zoe. I’m anti-the (alleged) unsustainable humanity isn’t our problem mentality that led to her conception in the first place.
Preventing overpopulation is a team effort, y’all.
Besides, the Zoe story isn’t totally consistent with the seemingly totalitarian society of $h!ttyEarth. A society that raids your condo for contraband baby is a society that monitors and enforces birth control.
I stopped right after where Papa Shannon became supercop. I’ll finish it later – with limited commercial interruption – with the Xfinity app on my iPad.
![Terra Nova [HD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Il%2BhbQzQL._SL160_.jpg "Terra Nova [HD]")
Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
One of the biggest questions I have about Terra Nova is how do they know that the portal worked? They said the beacon wasn’t recovered, so they conclude that it was sent back to an alternate timeline. That’s quite a leap! How do they know it wasn’t sent into a black hole at the center of the galaxy? Or to some hostile alien world? They made it pretty clear that you can’t go back once you crossed through the portal. So how do they know it’s safe?
Big frackin plot hole if you ask me. You didn’t. But if you did.
That was also bugging me through the show. There has to be more to it, some communication that could be received on the future end of things. Either it’s lousy writing that wasn’t thought through, or there’s something more that will be revealed later. Terra Nova is looking like it could go either way as a series right now.
Well, I’ve already lost patience. But hey, if they do resolve that issue, please update this thread! And then I’ll check it out later on Netflix.