Date of airing: December 19, 2011 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.24 million viewers, 4.1/6 in Households, 2.2/6 with Adults 18-49
How interesting would the episode have been if the show was all about alternate realities and timelines? What would have happened if this episode looked more like FRINGE’s “The Day We Died”? How would the audience have reacted if the writers had found a way out of their little convoluted plot in this episode? Granted, alternate timelines and realities are always of interest to me, and when the kamikaze bomber blew up the portal in the beginning, I believed that what would transpire now was a bit of complex storytelling, but then I realized this was TERRA NOVA, and there is absolutely nothing complex about the show. So I was a bit glad that the episode went through with what it established right after the explosion, and Jim waking up in a world of terror like Rick Grimes did in the pilot of THE WALKING DEAD. It might have looked a bit dumb, it might have been a bit absurd here and there, and for moments I believed it was all a dream or a vision, but for what it was, it was an entertaining hour of television. I am applauding the writers for going through with the occupation portion of the episode’s title, and for making this episode look darker than the rest of the show (since the characters are now fighting evil humans with guns and technology). But the episode cliffhanger looked extremely random. Ending with “To be continued” by putting the male members of the Shannon family into the brig wasn’t that interesting and threatening or dangerous and exciting.
The whole sequence with Jim walking about and around the colony as if he was in a dream looked particularly intriguing. Here I was thinking that Jim might be in an alternate reality, or that he might have been in a dream because it all felt so different and alienating. After all, the portal blew up and he was standing right beside it, so maybe some energy from the portal might have captured him and thrown him around in time and space. Every TV writer without a muse would have used that as part of an alternate storyline, just to get an exciting plot going, especially when the narrative was about to go to dark places. But after a short while, it all became real (pretty much when Elisabeth showed up and started sounding like Mrs. Exposition), even if I had a bit of a problem with the fact that the occupation became like this only three days after the arrival of the Phoenix Group. I guess Commander Taylor’s words about fighting at the end of the previous episode went on deaf ears...
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| Time travel can be bombastic at times. |
What a shame that the writers haven’t used the occupation for a bloody body count though. Malcolm could have been dead, Washington could have been dead, Boylan could have been dead, and so on. The writers could have gotten rid of some of the red shirts in the recurring cast field, just for the shock and drama value. But it seemed like the writers were using those characters to fight a fight before they get killed off on-screen, so I’m still thinking some of them will be killed when the colonists finally decided to fight back and do what New Caprica did in the first story arc of season three of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. It would even help if Reynolds were to die in the season finale, just so Maddy could have blamed her father for his death in the second season, creating additional tension in the process and removing all teenage romance from this dinosaur science-fiction family drama. After all, the writers knew how to do that by killing off Kara (who, I just learned, became a contestant in Australia’s THE BACHELOR seven years later).
But yeah, as I am thinking about the occupation force a little bit, the episode turns out to be kind of silly. All of a sudden, Lucas is ruling Terra Nova with Mira from the Sixers, although Mira was the one who “ruled” in the background for most of the time, barely getting any screentime (since that belonged to Lucas). The only soundbite the writers allowed Mira to deliver was how smart and dangerous Jim is. That makes me misunderstand once more what the Sixers were all about, since it always seemed like they were sent to assist Lucas, and yet here he is, barely even needing assistance, and when he does, he gets it from the Phoenix Group. The only thing the Sixers were good for in this entire series, when it comes to Lucas, was to bring him the box with the equations, something Lucas could have scribbled on pieces of paper (since he was scribbling them on rocks already) instead. I also would have thought that Mira would despise Lucas and his plans (since they are evil, and maybe Mira had some empathy left), and yet she is a villain here, right beside Lucas, doing his bidding while being underutilized. Then again, Mira was only a quick face in this episode, since the writers focused on the villainous Lucas only, so maybe she will still turn up to be part of Taylor’s resistance in the next episode. Here is to hoping, so that the character can be redeemed.
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| And hellfire rains upon you... |
Well, as I said, at least the action was good to look at. The explosions in the woods with Taylor and his resistance fighters driving away, the fist fights between Jim and the army (why does he always have to be the hero in town? And how was he able to fight about a dozen of the Phoenix Group members on his own without anyone else in the bar getting into the fight as well?)... Don’t tell me TERRA NOVA was conceived as a family show set in a world of science fiction and dinosaurs. After the violence in this episode, you can’t tell yourself any longer that you were writing a TV show for the entire family. Maybe this episode was able to get TERRA NOVA to its roots it should have been from the beginning, but I guess we will never see where the show would have gone in the long run.
