Date of airing: November 28, 2011 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.19 million viewers, 4.3/6 in Households, 2.2/6 with Adults 18-49
Hello, Sixers spy. Even though I knew that Skye would be the spy, thanks to the original pilot script I read many years ago (I can’t remember anything else about it), I was still waiting for the revelation, hoping there would be a bit more of a different twist behind it, maybe even a different spy, or a different (and eviler) reason for Skye to go against the colony. However, it was a good choice to reveal her in this episode, as there are still three hours left to play with that premise and have her be placed on the arc of redemption (if the writers wished to do that, but never got the chance to, since TERRA NOVA got canceled after its first season).
After the previous episode, every clever TV geek would have figured out by now that the spy would either be Skye, Reynolds, Washington, or Malcolm, considering how much screentime they have gotten over the past couple of episodes and how the story was never putting the suspicions on those characters. At least the writers didn’t go half-assed into the reveal in this episode, since Skye’s backstory has almost always been about her dead parents, so seeing her mother still alive in this hour was more explanation than what any other show would have delivered to its audience when it comes to Skye’s reason for treason. As it was TV writing 101 when the writers went into Commander Taylor and his son’s background after Lucas was revealed to be part of the story, it’s TV writing 101 that the writers would get into Skye’s background immediately after she was revealed to be the spy.
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| Here is a possibly evil woman doing evil things. |
That’s what I liked most about the episode: Skye has a reason to be the villain, and there is the question if she is as trapped in the Sixers’ business as Newt– – I mean, Leah, was during the “Runaway” episode. In addition, it is even logical to have Skye be the spy. First of all, it rhymes. Second of all, she has a close connection to Taylor, so it would only be natural that Mira would look for someone in Terra Nova who is as close to Taylor as it can get. Heck, if Jim would have had an ailing family member in Terra Nova who was in the hands of the Sixers while the colony believed they were dead, then Jim would be the spy.
Generally speaking, the episode was not that exciting. I didn’t particularly care about Zoe and her little dinosaur friend she had to set free at the end. I didn’t particularly care about Reynolds’ dreams to marry a woman who is currently 16 years of age, making him something of a creep at this very moment (also, how old is Reynolds to say that he wants to marry her?) I didn’t particularly care about Mira and Taylor turning into survivalists together and trying to fight against a pair of slashers who were planning to move into a new section of jungle. How convenient that the two were clashing together in the very same episode they had to face off against monster-hungry dinosaurs on their own, as if to say that their partnership in this hour is needed for when the real threat comes from Hope Plaza, and Terra Nova and the Sixers need to band together. I didn’t really care about Jim’s point of view of the mole hunt either, especially since there wasn’t much of a point of view anyway, considering it turned into a whodunit of sorts and the writers were treating the plot like any other crime procedural on CBS would. This was almost a standard episode of TERRA NOVA – things happen in the show and I don’t care about any of it.
The whole blood sample thing seemed rather absurd, even for a sci-fi show like TERRA NOVA. For a show set in the future, it seemed like a surprise to me that it was apparently hard to get DNA samples from a body of water that had a single drop of blood in it. Not to mention how Skye must not have been talented enough to handle a broken shard of glass or mirror that she was cutting herself majorly and the only drop of blood she lost went into the glass container – oh by the way, why were there filled glass containers everywhere? It was a laughable piece of plot development, and I giggled even more about the stuff when Skye came back to the lab in the evening and simply destroyed the sample, as if it wasn’t secured somewhere, like a cell culture analyzer or a centrifuge. With the sample uncovered and out in the open, the environment would have had it pretty easy to destroy the sample, it didn’t even need to be manipulated by an actual human. And then I came to the realization that the lab in Terra Nova doesn’t even have cameras, or else, they could have checked easily who broke into it and destroyed the sample. I guess they never thought about installing security cameras, especially after Josh’s previous unlawful entry and theft? Damn, this colony kind of deserves to be invaded by all the bad guys out there when it doesn’t even want to protect itself from them.
Well, at least Taylor and Mira were bonding, even if it was put in a stereotypical story about enemies turned acquaintances. The writers probably need a reason for them to bond, especially with Lucas in the background slowly turning into a general nemesis for the entire world, so why not use this episode to establish that Taylor and Mira can be friends, too? That would make it easier for the audience to accept that they will be fighting alongside against whatever forces may be coming at them later. The story itself wasn’t really that entertaining though, since it never became more than just an episodic hunt. Taylor was in chains, then he freed himself and put Mira in chains, then they were hunted and no one was in chains, and then they accepted one another’s skills. The story could have deserved some survivalist thrills.
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| There's something out there in the woods. |
Let’s not forget that Jim was the boss of the colony for a couple of days. I assume no one had an issue with the fact that a reason addition to the colony (and one who came here, uhm, illegally) became the commanding officer of the military personnel, but I guess there was no room in this episode to go into it, since a) none of the military personnel besides the lookouts on top and Reynolds had screentime (where was Washington?), and b) it would have kickstarted a whole different story if some people had a problem with the new guy being their boss for a couple of days. After all, it would have meant that some of Taylor’s confidantes didn’t trust his decision to make one of his own the commander. Okay, now I want that storyline, as it would mean there are forces inside Terra Nova (not just the spy) who were working against Taylor – that is a thriller element in a show that seriously needed it.
