(-- The Beacon)
By Jason Hortsch Staff Writer hortsch12@up.edu
"Terra Nova," Fox's latest mega-budget TV show, debuted Sept. 26. Faced with extinction in a futuristic world riddled with overcrowding and pollution, humanity elects to send a handful of people 85 million years into the past to start a settlement. The settlement, fittingly named Terra Nova (literally "new land"), is the center of the show. While seeming a comparative paradise at first, it has many dark secrets of its own.
The show itself is an even mixture of "Avatar," "Jurassic Park" and "Lost," with a dash of "Dinotopia" thrown in. While filled with potential, the series' pilot sputtered as it tried to squeeze in too many storylines – bonds between family, teenage angst, time travel, causality, conspiracies and, of course, dinosaurs. Additionally, for $4 million an episode, the visuals were disappointing. I found the dinosaur models to be on par with those used in "Jurassic Park," a 17-year-old movie.
This is not to say that the show cannot pick up steam. On the contrary, the last third of the pilot episode drastically improved, raising enough interest that I will tune in to at least the next two episodes.
If time travel and dinosaurs pique your interest, give "Terra Nova" a shot. Just don't expect the next "Game of Thrones."
