Greetings from the future! Or... the past! And welcome to Terra Nova! As the big budget dinosaur epic finally debuts at San Diego Comic-Con, UGO was on hand to catch the first half of the epic series premiere!
So what did we see in the episode an learn from the creative team?
- The story begins in the desolate future of 2149, where pollution has gotten so bad that citizens need re-breathers to go outside, and oranges are a rare commodity. Families are population controlled, and Jason O’Mara’s Jim Shannon is thrown in Golad prison for concealing his third child, and punching a cop in the investigation,
- Years later, his wife finds him in prison and explains she’s been recruited for the tenth pilgrimage to Terra Nova, but they wont allow her to take their youngest child. She sneaks him a cutting tool so that he might escape, and make his way into the time displacement facility to join them!
- The future tech and effects are very well done, as Jason boldly sneaks in and breaks through into the portal. The producers assure us that the future will indeed be revisited, rather than keep solely to Terra Nova.
- Once the Shannons make it to lush Terra Nova, they're reticently greeted given Jason O’Mara’s fugitive status. Stephen Lang’s Frank Taylor greets the new arrivals, seeming much friendlier than his Avatar character Quarritch. He questions the family from behind his dinosaur skull desk, and ultimately assigns Jason to agricultural duty rather than the police work he held in 2149.
- There’s also plenty of family drama, as the youngest daughter scarcely remembers Jason and his eldest son resents him for spending years away in prison.
- Once the story has firmly shifted to the orientation phase of the new colony, there was a very friendly, almost Firefly-esque quality to the series. And don’t worry, the time travel question is addressed as the daughter explains that Terra Nova takes place in a different time stream, thus not affecting their future.
- Josh Shannon (the son) meets a pretty young thing named Sky, and she and her friends sneak out of the gates for some waterfall diving action. She also shows Josh some mysterious and unexplained inscriptions on the cave's walls, indicating a much deeper mystery to the series.
- Aside from the dinosaurs, colonists also face danger from the “Sixers.” The Sixers are people from the sixth pilgrimage who splintered off from the colony, and were evidently sent to the past for mysterious reasons. There’s a big action sequence after Taylor finally assigns Shannon to police work, as some fleeing Sixers have a car chase shootout with a large “carno” dinosaur (seen in the trailer), who even eats a guy right out of the turret! The preview ended with the camp fending off the dinosaur, and confronting the band of Sixers, led by Mira, an old associate of Taylor's. How does it end? “You’re new. Welcome to paradise.”
- When asked how the budget would affect the dinosaur action going forward, producer Jose Molina assured us “We’re an expensive show, and you’re gonna see the money on the screen. It’s gonna be badass.”
- Given the enthusiastic reaction, Stephen Lang believes Fox will mandate “one eating per week.”
That’s all, folks! Be sure to catch Terra Nova this fall on Fox!
