Date of airing: November 21, 2011 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 6.50 million viewers, 3.9/6 in Households, 2.1/6 with Adults 18-49
This was an episode for the mythology chasers and series bible collectors. Commander Taylor lost his wife back in the day, he killed his mentor, and he abandoned his own son over conspiracy and treason charges. That certainly is a backstory for a character who could be both an ally and an antagonist in the fight against the future, but it seemed like a backstory ripe for a CBS crime procedural and not a time travel sci-fi dinosaur family action drama. The fact alone that Jim was investigating a five-year-old murder turned this series into COLD CASE for an hour, and since Elisabeth was working on bones, you would be excused for expecting Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth to pop up and flash their FBI credentials. And because this episode felt like it was the culmination of various crime dramas on broadcast TV back in its day, it didn’t feel like it belonged to the greater narrative arc of the series. Although which episode of TERRA NOVA does that anyway, as they all feel like stand-alone adventures that you can forget all about after a week and rediscover in syndication five years later (if the show had made it to that point)? The whole story only served as Taylor’s backstory, and to give the audience assurance that Taylor won’t be made a villain – a potential that was clearly there halfway into the episode when Jim and Elisabeth realized who the five-year-old skeleton man was.
The episode was okay. The fact that Jim’s investigation was only being used for Taylor to spit his guts out to him seemed alright at first (after all, it was the delivery of a backstory, and I do like my fair share of backstories), but Taylor could have told his secrets much sooner than that, and he could have found someone to trust way before Jim kind of forced him to tell his story (I guess Taylor doesn’t trust Wash?). After all the secrecy during the past couple of episodes, I was expecting something much bigger and more dangerous, but the episode was just here to get Taylor to one specific side (the one the good guys are on) while telling the viewers and the characters that there is a war brewing. I was thinking about more than just the murder of the one-armed General from 2149 and a conflict with the son, but this episode didn’t deliver any of that.
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| Terra Nova, as written by Kathy Reichs. |
There was one interesting tidbit about the story, however: Lucas being genius enough, according to his father, to create a way back through the portal, almost guaranteeing that there will be a constant exchange of goodies and personnel between Terra Nova and Hope Plaza. That sounded like an interesting story for future seasons: a war between Terra Nova and the future they were leaving, as well as swapping the future and past, if the budget (and a second season) had been there, because now the opportunity has been created for some of the characters to return to their damaged future. Not to mention the notion that Lucas’s equations could lead the series back to 2149 where the writers could have elaborated on that time, how the Earth came to be this damaged, and if there was more to that than just standard climate change and capitalism stuff.
The search for the spy was not to my liking, especially since we didn’t get to find out who the spy was, after the episode kind of promised that we would. When Malcolm said that the dragonfly was down and couldn’t fly, I was waiting for him to find a new dragonfly he could use, because the one they had was most likely not the only one around. But a couple of scenes later the dragonfly was able to fly again, because Malcolm operated on it (how convenient). Consider me amused because, in this timeline, you can apparently do surgery on insects. It was also quite a lazy way to move the story forward, as the writers couldn’t figure out a more thrilling and logical way for Malcolm to find a way to the spy, without necessarily having to use a dragonfly. Heck, he had the transmission frequency, why was there no tech to just follow that instead? Didn’t Taylor say that he was checking on anything electronic coming in and going out of the colony? And he didn’t find that one particular frequency that was most likely unique (it must have been, or the dragonfly would not have found its way to the spy)?
That the fly flew to the Shannon house eventually was absurd. At first, it made me think that the spy wanted to blame the Shannons for being in business with the Sixers, because spies need to blame the innocent to get themselves off the radar of the cops of Terra Nova. It would have made the story with the spy a little more interesting, but I have no idea why Taylor found it to be a good idea to lead the fly to Jim’s house, just so he could have a conversation with him about a five-year-old murder case. Taylor could have talked to Jim all day long, he didn’t need the fly to cause an arrest warrant...
So, what about Boylan now? I don’t think his story is over, and I found it pretty much foolish that he was free to go, after the attack on the convoy, or the simple fact that he was communicating with the Sixers. Does nobody think he is going to continue making business with the Sixers, since it’s just “business” for him and nothing else? And I don’t think he has taken it lightly that he was “tortured” by Taylor. I would wish for him to return, to show some anger towards the leader of the colony, making it obvious he is not just seen as an antagonist back in 2149, but also in Terra Nova. And maybe even creating another section of anti-Taylors, just for the giggles. I don’t think absolutely everybody likes or loves Commander Taylor. There has to be someone other than Boylan and Hope Plaza who thought about staging a coup.
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| Fireworks make night skies look pretty. |
Meanwhile, I found the harvest festival to be partly hilarious. I loved Zoe in the costume of Commander Taylor, though it was awkward to look at, considering what you know about Taylor now. But this episode showed that you simply cannot do any more with Zoe than having her be that cute little kid who does cute stuff and makes everyone smile. Yes, that is her job, but it’s also not an enticing way of creating television for a mature audience. After all, this is not a Disney Channel family sitcom, this is a time travel sci-fi dinosaur family action drama that includes conspiracies in its narrative. That means everything Zoe gets involved in is to waste time and remind the audience that TERRA NOVA is also a family show.
