Date of airing: October 31, 2011 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 6.59 million viewers, 4.1/7 in Households, 2.1/6 with Adults 18-49
This episode is also known as LAW & ORDER: TERRA NOVA. Because now the law is part of the series, after Jim has proven himself to be a great cop, or security detail, or homicide detective, or whatever his position in Taylor’s administration is. I wondered when that would be the case and he could flex his cop muscles, and I wondered when the writers would go a bit deeper into the world of Terra Nova and what it means to live in this place without an official law book written as of yet, without an official administration running things, and without a judicial branch making decisions about what is allowed and forbidden in the colony. But this episode became the science-fiction version of a Dick Wolf series, and for that, it was just too boring for my taste.
Instead of going into the judicial part of the story, this whole thing was just a constructed Whodunit, with a twist that brought the story into a predictable corner, and with an outcome that may open up new possibilities in the narrative, if the writers weren’t so steadfast in their mission to serve up a proceduralized family drama in a pre-historic setting. Did Taylor never think about the banished colonists ending up with the Sixers sooner or later (since they won’t be far for the banished colonists to find or be found)? Sure, he says people can survive out there in the jungle, but what do you do when you have a ton of banished colonists out there and they decide to survive, form their own colony, and be the new villains in what could have been season six of TERRA NOVA? Did no one think that you would give the Sixers a new weapon in form of a disgruntled soldier when the banished colonist gets caught with (or without) a gun off the grid? Why was I the only one thinking about it when Taylor banished Milner? No questions were asked, and no answers were sought out. No, the banishing of colonists was used as a plot device for a crime procedural that sent this episode out of its fantastical genre and into CBS primetime programming during the mid-2000s.
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| CGI is hard when actors don't know where to look. |
The story wasn’t interesting either. It was pretty much just a Whodunit, only with a murder executed via a dinosaur instead of a knife or gun. And I can’t think of any reason why Curran would kill Foster, because I don’t believe for a single second that it was just about owing gambling money. First of all, Curran must have been a terrible gambler for losing so much money, and secondly, Foster was not much of a friend to Curran – he could have told Curran to stop betting until the debts were owed, but I guess that never happened and Curran turned out to be a desperate man who didn’t want anyone to know that he owed money to someone else. Ugh, money... the thing that turns everyone into a braindead zombie, and it made this episode of TERRA NOVA a braindead experience.
By the way, Curran could have been a much more clever murderer (and a more brutal one in turn): Instead of having Foster’s body found, Curran could have directly killed Foster and hacked him to pieces to be eaten by dinosaurs. Then again, maybe Curran hoped that the dinosaur was eating the whole of Foster’s body, and the fact that wasn’t the case bit the killer in the butt eventually. As I said, Curran was a dumb villain.
When Milner confessed to the murder, I was already thinking that he would be lying, as his story sounded too contrived to be believable. Plus, this show doesn’t just pack the conclusion of the story literally in the middle of an episode when you still have loads of time to twist the story around for seconds and thirds. Except of course you were actually planning to turn this episode into a LAW & ORDER-type experience, which means the first half was all about the investigation, and the second could have been about Taylor making the devastating decision to exact law on Milner. Maybe I would have appreciated that type of episode more than what was delivered, but I guess that would not have entertained the family audiences that were the target demographic for this show. It does make me wonder though: Was there a discussion in the writers’ room about a LAW & ORDER-type episode, to not turn this hour into a troped-up crime procedural? Because the entire middle section of the episode felt just weird. Milner and his wife had a backstory that never seemed properly developed, and I understood only half of it. It made it look like the story was hamfisted into the script because someone was making the decision to change up the entire hour and serve up the “It wasn’t Milner at all, and there is still a killer on the loose” twist halfway into it.
Meanwhile, I don’t even know what to say about the egg-hatching story. It reminded me too much of that one scene in JURASSIC PARK, and it reminded me too much of a story I never wanted to see in this show, since it didn’t bring any character depth or drama. Malcolm continued to “hit” on Elisabeth, and Elisabeth continued to not get anything meaningful to do as a character because the entire story she got stuck with was outside of anything else that happened in the episode, making her character essentially useless. At least Alana Mansour had some screentime here and had something to smile for in the show, but then I remembered that she is still a kid and that the writers would never have given her any meaningful storylines – child labor laws and all. But hey, Malcolm’s continued involvement made me wonder if he may be the spy for the Sixers in Terra Nova. It can’t be Tom Boylan because that would be too obvious, since he is already dealing with the Sixers behind everybody’s back.
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| Goodbye and good luck out there! |
That brings me to Josh, who – to my surprise – had the most interesting storyline in this episode, and I say that as someone who does not like the character at all. And I can’t believe I’m writing this, but his story gets more interesting, as he gets introduced to the Sixers and involved in a conspiracy that could either lead him to trouble or to a story arc in which he has to prove himself to be loyal to Terra Nova and his family. It’s like the writers placed him on the path of joining him with the Sixers, which could prove difficult, considering he’s in like with Skye and possibly likes his family too much to sell them out for whatever Mira wants him to do later.
