Hello,
I'd just like to welcome the lovely Taylor Swift to Salt Lake City. I hope you have a good time here and my kids and I are looking forward to a great show. I felt I had to "Speak Now". Hopefully I'll be having my concert review tomorrow sometime.
With a slight amount of anticipation I watched the series premiere of "Terra Nova" last night. I have to admit I'm a sucker for big sci fi type shows with a smart, evolving story line. Unfortunately "Terra Nova" isn't that show, in fact it's a bloated mess. From the multiple executive producers, how would that not make for an incoherent mess? Let's put it this way if counting how many executive producers was a drinking game, you'd be drunk in the first couple of minutes of the show. For those who don't want to count there are 12 executive producers. 12! Too bad they didn't have one of these producers in charge of quality control. That would probably be too much work for one producer though.
What this show needs is more executive writers. This show is so cliche it's embarrassing. We don't just have one father-son conflict, we have two. The Shannon father son relationship feels very 50s, it reminds me of the father-son conflict that powers "Rebel Without A Cause" The Shannon son Josh, is a very boring character, skips out on a mandatory orientation. His Dad tries to stop him but is unable. Josh magically had already met up with Skye, how Utopian is her name? Cue the upcoming cliche. Of course she's rebellious and on his first day in Terra Nova he agrees to go OTG (Outside the gate) with them. The Taylor father-son relationship is so contentious the son has left the Terra Nova compound. Of course he has. The Taylor son also is a rebel, drawing mysterious geometric designs. He's using the geometry to figure out something and to piss his father off at the same time. Those two father-son conflicts involve the two main male characters. Obviously that ground is going to be tilled throughout 13 episodes, don't worry it won't last longer than that. As with everything else on this show, those two story lines are extremely boring and a convoluted mess.
Terra Nova, which means "new earth", isn't exactly what it seems. Does that shock you? Of course the camp commander Taylor has an ulterior motive for running the camp. There are dinosaurs running around, ranging from the peaceful to the dreaded slashers. Perhaps one of the Executive Producers, Steven Speilberg, is trying to limit the comparisons to his own "Jurassic Park". For some reason the few dinosaurs here aren't called by their actual names. For instance, the Slashers are really velociraptors. Both are intelligent and hunt in packs. Also while they are smaller than many other dinosaurs, they are the most lethal. It seems someone got the idea to make their tails really dangerous, hoping that would make them different enough from velociraptors. Too bad Steven Spielberg wasn't the director as well. I'm sure these different named dinosaurs will be explained away by Terra Nova being in a different time stream than they came from. Don't even start me on the stupidity of that idea. And no it doesn't make more sense if you watched the first episode.
What this show really needs is one coherent viewpoint, not the mishmash of views they have now. For villains we have the so called Sixers (not to be confused with Dr. J), Taylor's son, perhaps even Taylor himself. Also I was getting a creepy vibe from Taylor and Skye, it appears that they live together. He helped her after her parents died. She thanks him for taking care of her since that tragic occasion. But they feel more like lover talking to lover (ew!) than a father daughter relationship. The vibe feels like they are in a romantic relationship. I don't know if that's just my imagination or are the producers preparing for that as an evolving story line? (The producers of "The Killing" I'm sure are watching this show and thinking hey we may not be the dumbest show on TV.)
Those are just some of the many flaws in this show. Other flaws include the Jim Shannon character. While I like Jason O'Mara as an actor, his earnestness doesn't work well for his character here. Being a square character in a messy world as in "Life on Mars" worked for him. But it doesn't work for JIm Shannon in this show. After all Jim Shannon is a convicted felon who broke out of a maximum security prison. The biggest disappointment of this show is how dreadfully boring it is. The alleged exciting finale is when (cliche alert) Taylor and his security men have to go rescue the OTGers. Of course, the kids get in trouble that they can't get out of on their own. And of course both Shannon parents go out on the rescue. Of course they rescue the kids without any fatalities. The security teams get back to the compound. Then Jim and Josh Shannon hug and it seems as if all is forgiven. Of course they do and of course it is. Really? Can you see me rolling my eyes? There wasn't one original idea that was injured in the making of this series.
I'm sorry like the show "Terra Nova", this blog is also all over the place.
themusicaddict
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