CRIT!

Terra Nova - Declan’s not in Canada anymore

Let me preface my mini-live blog of the Terra Nova pilot with this: I liked the show. Quite a bit, in fact. However, I couldn’t help but make bad Degrassi jokes, the land looks like the Settlers of Catan board from above and there were a handful of similarities to LOST, which were of course not lost on me.

• Mankind’s only home for survival lies 85 million years in the past. Okay.
• Hey, there’s Declan! (Landon Liboiron)
• Population control says you can’t have more than two kids. Just like Ender’s Game. (Ender was a “third.”)
• Time to go through the portal back to the past! Wait a minute, Declan, who’s this girl behind the fence? THAT’S NOT HOLLY J!
• Of course the dad was going to make it. Yawn.
• Dad goes through the portal, lies on his back in the jungle, looking up through the canopy of the trees. Hey that looks familiar. (See: the first scene of LOST, where Jack wakes up in the jungle after the crash.)
• Speaking of which, I’m not sure I like Jason O’Mara. Since I was thinking in a LOST frame of mind already, I thought that Matthew Fox would have been a better choice for this role. (Even though I don’t always like him that much as an actor. He has his moments.) Too bad Fox is too busy punching female bus drivers in the private parts like an asshole.
• Hey, are they on Pandora?
• Nope, it’s actually a life-size Settlers of Catan board. Oh, alright. And hey, there’s the colony’s army. So they get two points for having the largest army.
• Cool house. The little village reminds me of Dharmaville. Why is the sun beaming in from all sides? Did Earth have more suns back in the day?
• Hey, dinosaurs! Declan, you’re not in Canada anymore, buddy.
• All the best cowboys have daddy issues. Even 85 million years ago.
• Declan, stop hitting on that girl. THAT’S NOT HOLLY J! SHE WILL NOT BE HAPPY ABOUT THIS.
• Oh look, weird markings on the rocks near the waterfall. Reminds me of the blast door map in the Swan.
• The Sixers : Terra Nova :: The Others : LOST.
  
• The Sixers want to trade meteoric iron for medical supplies and ammunition. Almost like in Settlers, when you really need to trade for some ore to build a city or buy a development card.
• Dino fight! If only everyone could get along!
• The Sixers check out the markings by the falls. “Control the past. Control the future. These are the key to everything.” Cliche, yes, but that sets up the long-term mythology of the show, because it has to be about more than just the colony and the dinosaurs, and of course, it is. What are these markings, what do they mean, who put them there, etc. The most intriguing question for me is does Taylor have some ulterior self-serving motives for the place? The most interesting thing for everyone will be how they handle slowly revealing that side of things versus colony/dinosaur issues week-to-week. It was much easier for LOST at the beginning, because it was formulaic: focus on a character through a flashback, have the flashbacks events highlight something they’re going through on the island. I’m in for the ride.