# Terra Nova premiere 9/26 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 26, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666 "2011-09-26T16:34:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/161 "2011-09-30T15:58:55Z")
> [@JSexton](#): > > I guess that’s possible. Still, the idea that they can ask the future for things blows the alternate timeline theory out of the water. Not really. The future they are getting things from could be an alternate timeline. Possibly a different one every eight months. ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/162 "2011-09-30T16:00:12Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > No. The oxygen levels would not be high enough to cause oxygen toxicity. Could you elaborate? In the carboniferous period, which is the “giant insect” age (thinking of the sloppy giant bug again), oxygen concentrations are thought to have been 30-35% versus 21% today. Given that “Oxygen toxicity is caused by exposure to oxygen at partial pressures greater than those to which the body is normally exposed” ([cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#Causes)) I would imagine that such a substantial difference would, over long periods of time (the days, weeks, months and years the colonists have been on Terra Nova) result in toxicity. ---
**Author:** ![Labtrash](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/labtrash/32/528_2.png) [@Labtrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labtrash)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/163 "2011-09-30T16:04:05Z")
When the kids went through the fence on their little adventure, the jungle was right up against the perimeter fence. I know they said the vegetation/vines grew quickly (dad was hacking them), but wouldn’t a couple hundred feet of “no man’s land” between the jungle and the compound fence be appropriate? Aren’t there quite a few Cretaceous dinosaur/big-ass bug species who would readily fit through those gaps in the perimeter fence? ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/164 "2011-09-30T16:23:00Z")
> [@Abe](#): > > Could you elaborate? In the carboniferous period, which is the “giant insect” age (thinking of the sloppy giant bug again), oxygen concentrations are thought to have been 30-35% versus 21% today. Given that “Oxygen toxicity is caused by exposure to oxygen at partial pressures greater than those to which the body is normally exposed” ([cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#Causes)) I would imagine that such a substantial difference would, over long periods of time (the days, weeks, months and years the colonists have been on Terra Nova) result in toxicity. From that same page: > [@](#): > > The lungs, as well as the remainder of the respiratory tract, are exposed to the highest concentration of oxygen in the human body and are therefore the first organs to show toxicity. Pulmonary toxicity occurs with exposure to concentrations of oxygen greater than 0.5 bar (50 kPa), corresponding to an oxygen fraction of 50% at normal atmospheric pressure. 30-35% is less than 50%. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/165 "2011-09-30T16:30:48Z")
Plus, Cretaceous oxygen levels were around 26-28%. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/166 "2011-09-30T16:58:50Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Not really. The future they are getting things from could be an alternate timeline. Possibly a different one every eight months. The changes they are making just have to render the future wildly different, don’t they? Or maybe the Ice Age renders a few thousand humans mostly irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![Grendel\_s\_Father](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grendel\_s\_Father](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grendel_s_Father)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/167 "2011-09-30T17:19:38Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > I liked it. > > I’m skeptical that the writers did their scientific research Research? On Terra nova? Speaking as somebody who knows a little about dinosaurs… BWAHAHAHAHA! Watching this you would think the science of paleontology had actually regressed in the 20 years since Jurassic Park. > [@](#): > > You know, this show already has the greasy fingerprints of executive meddling all over it. > > Could we have dinosaurs like from Jurassic Park? (same place they stole the compound’s walls from) More right than you know. The “we obviously don’t listen to our” scientific consultant, Jack Horner, said in an interview a few months back that he tried to convince the producers to set the show in the Paleogene, a few Ma after the dino extinction. Makes more sense in terms of a new beginning, plus a lot of crazy mammal and bird species people aren’t over-saturated with. They nixed it of course. for better or worse, they specifically set the show 85 Ma ago, a time period with few known dino-bearing fossil localities, to give themselves license to make stuff up whole cloth, like the utterly ridiculous-looking “slashers”. Too bad. At least it could have been a good dinosaur show if not a good drama. > [@](#): > > Carnotaurus wasn’t around 85 million years ago, either, as far as we know. It’s actually one of the last (non-avian) dinosaurs, and has thus far only known from the late Cretaceous, around 70 mya. To be fair, until the last decade the formation Carnotaurus fossils were found in had been dated to around 85 or 80 Ma ago. Maybe they DID do their research but used a 15 year old book. > [@](#): > > there was definitely something wrong with that pterosaur’s wings. Thin, loose, leathery wings flapping the breeze, rahther than taught, muscular, shape-shifting membranes. Dinosaurs got “revised” in the popular media after JP. Ptersaurs are still waiting for their renaissance to reach the public. The media’s portrayal of pteorsaurs is stuck in 1910. > [@](#): > > Next week, the TNers are supposed to get attacked by pterosaurs, so we’ll see if this was just a fluke, I guess. Ten bucks says they pick something up with their feet. :smack: > [@](#): > > Were there any facts the allegedly smart, fact-spewing kid actually got right?! Not that I noticed. ---
**Author:** ![Unpronounceable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de0a6/32.png) [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/168 "2011-09-30T17:20:36Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > The probe cannot communicate to the right timeline but the camp can? That wasn’t the issue - they sent the probe back 85 million years, and then expected it to turn up in someone’s basement or something. Then declared it an alternate timeline when it didn’t. Here’s one: the first guy sent showed up some 6 months before the rest of the team, so why the hell do they NOT have the pilgrimage landing point secured? ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/169 "2011-09-30T17:47:14Z")
> [@Abe](#): > > I could live with the show’s hundreds of gaffes (and more) if they had rolled it all up into a fun and entertaining package. But no. They just had to delve deeply into useless time-filling bullshit like teenage angst, teenage rebellion, teenage love and the unbearably unappealing vicissitudes of the modern nuclear family. With all the subtlety and light touch of a sledgehammer. There must be a rulebook somewhere in TV world that specifies the mandatory inclusion of inane, inchoate and irrelevant dramatic sub-plots into any science fiction effort, lest the audience become too interested when viewing the show. Sadly, it looks like angsty teenager is going to be a central character who drives the plot. From the same interview I linked above: > [@](#): > > “I think in the pilot, he was asked to bear the load of the family strife. I understand some people didn’t connect to him,” Echevarria said. “He’s a wonderful actor. And we pretty much leave that [strife] behind after the pilot. He’s got a point of view – he left a girl behind. He promised her he’d get her [to Terra Nova], that becomes a huge story for him, very romantic, and it turns out, it takes us right into the heart of the conspiracy.” ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/170 "2011-09-30T17:51:20Z")
> [@Abe](#): > > \And the cop really should have broken his back after the fall that ensued,\ I’ve learned from my husband in the safety business that any fall over 10 feet has a 50% chance of killing you, and he fell further than 10 feet. Even though he landed on his back, your internal organs don’t care for a jarring shock like that - he probably would have died a couple of hours later from massive internal bleeding. Since this was by no means the most glaring of the problems with the show, I chose to overlook this. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/171 "2011-09-30T18:03:23Z")
Sorry, I should have said any fall OF 10 feet, and he fell more than 10 feet. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/172 "2011-09-30T18:45:10Z")
> [@brocks](#): > > In our present time, the moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle, and it is about 50,000 km farther from earth at apogee than at perigee. So no, a 425km difference would not be noticeable, let alone dramatic. \*Is that the Moon?! Yeah, it gets about half a centimeter further away every year, so now that we’re 85 million years in the past, **do the math!** it’s A LOT bigger!" \* LOL at the snotty little ‘do the math’ line. What math? Divide 85 by 2? :smack: > [@](#): > > She was also wrong about the stars looking different due to the expansion of the universe. That would not be noticeable, either. The proper motions of the stars, however, would probably distort the constellations quite a bit. That one also tilted me. The universe started expanding 13.7 billion years ago. 85 million is less than one percent of that. The larger problem is that people don’t care. When I complain, they roll their eyes and tell me it’s science fiction. Well, I grew up reading science fiction (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc.) and I think that science fiction should have some science in it. Or at the very least, not screw up simple math. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/173 "2011-09-30T18:54:38Z")
> [@standingwave](#): > > That one also tilted me. The universe started expanding 13.7 billion years ago. 85 million is less than one percent of that. It’s not the time frame that’s the problem there. The stars we see at night are in our own galaxy; they would not be moving away from each other because of expansion, the way galaxies themselves are! The positions of stars _would_ be different, as noted previously, just not for the reason she claimed. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/174 "2011-09-30T18:57:45Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > It’s not the time frame that’s the problem there. The stars we see at night are in our own galaxy; they would not be moving away from each other because of expansion, the way galaxies themselves are! The positions of stars _would_ be different, as noted previously, just not for the reason she claimed. Yes, that would be like saying that the trees are look different in my town than they did a hundred years ago because of continental drift. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/175 "2011-09-30T19:32:40Z")
> [@Cuckoorex](#): > > That doesn’t sound much like fighting ignorance… The goal of a TV show is to entertain, not fight ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2011, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/176 "2011-09-30T20:05:29Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > It’s not the time frame that’s the problem there. That’s true, I was just observing that even _if_ the apparent motion of the stars was due to expansion (her theory), there still isn’t enough time. Eighty-five million seems like a large number until you compare it to fourteen _billion_. Wrong on many levels. As I said up-thread, maybe she’s the Cliff Clavin of the show. ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/177 "2011-10-01T05:00:49Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > From that same page: > > 30-35% is less than 50%. But what I was asking is whether it would be safe to breathe a high oxygen mix such as that of the Carboniferous _in the long term_ (short term affords far more flexibility). I had a look around and stumbled on an experiment that discusses the issue: > [@](#): > > _from [Respiratory Research](http://respiratory-research.com/content/9/1/37)_ > > the potential lung injury caused by long-term exposure to relatively low-dose supplemented oxygen has not been fully analyzed. Exposure to low-dose oxygen (less than 50%) has been reported to induce no designable injury [5,7]. On the other hand, there have also been contradicting reports; an increase of albumin concentration in human bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid with only 30% oxygen exposure for 45 hours Exposure time is clearly a relevant factor and the colonists have been there for months and/or years. The experiment concludes: > [@](#): > > These results indicate that epithelial function is damaged, collagen metabolism is affected, and both breakdown of collagen fibrils and fibrogenesis are transiently induced even with low-dose 40% oxygen exposure. They talk about 40% in the conclusion not because it is a safe threshold but because that is one of the three concentrations of oxygen they experimented with (21%, 40%, 90%). > [@Darwin's Finch](#): > > Plus, Cretaceous oxygen levels were around 26-28%. But the time of the giant insects - when oxygen level was high enough to support their existence - was much earlier, in the Carboniferous. I just noticed that DrDeth made a similar point to my question in [post 106](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14300336&postcount=106) (an atmosphere in which giant insects can thrive would not allow humans to do the same). It seems reasonable to expect some effect on the colonists beyond the “you’re not used to the air and the brightness” warning they get when they first arrive to Terra Nova. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/178 "2011-10-01T07:11:18Z")
> [@Abe](#): > > But the time of the giant insects - when oxygen level was high enough to support their existence - was much earlier, in the Carboniferous. I just noticed that DrDeth made a similar point to my question in [post 106](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14300336&postcount=106) (an atmosphere in which giant insects can thrive would not allow humans to do the same). It seems reasonable to expect some effect on the colonists beyond the “you’re not used to the air and the brightness” warning they get when they first arrive to Terra Nova. Well, an atmosphere in which giant insects can survive probably wouldn’t be too healthy for allegedly Cretaceous Era dinosaurs, either. There is no time during which giant bugs, dinosaurs, and humans would have all been equally at home. But, given that the stated setting is the Cretaceous, there’s no reason humans couldn’t acclimate to the higher-than-present, but still less-than-Carboniferous, oxygen levels. ---
**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/179 "2011-10-01T08:30:58Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Sure…but it’s insane if the survival of the species is at risk. We could easily build industries and manufacturing facilities using just the technologies we have today that would have minimal impact on this brave new world yet provide for the needs of such a colony (and why only one colony, leaving aside the 6’er rebels? Why only from what looks to be the US?). Ship through a few USN nuclear reactors if you want clean power…why rely on solar that obviously still isn’t providing for all their needs?? Because the producers are liberal Democrats that support massive subsidies to bankrupt “green energy” boondoggles, and they are propagandizing you! > [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > All the show really lacks is an “adorable” mechanical dog. LMAO! Dagget (I mean Dangit), they were saving that for next week. Now you have spoiled the surprise. > [@The\_Controvert](#): > > Why did the Earth look yellow instead of blue in the opening shot? Because that proves GLOBAL WARMING! Remember, AGW deniers are like holocaust deniers! > [@](#): > > We get Sleestaks!! Would be an improvement. And you are probably right. Look for some long forgotten intelligent civilization to make an appearance. > [@DigitalC](#): > > Did anyone else notice Obama was on the money they used to bribe the guard? Didn’t catch that. Were the bills denominated in trillions, Zimbabwe style? I guess that is why he needed a backpack full to bribe a guard! > [@RealityChuck](#): > > One version may even have killed off the baby, but someone said, “we can’t do that” and changed it so that there was a fine (which makes no sense – why worry about hiding the kid if a few thousand bucks would solve the issue?). THIS. > [@](#): > > It was SF by committee, and most of the people on the committee didn’t know shit about SF. THIS. > [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > Nuclear power isn’t “clean”. It leaves behind dangerously toxic waste materials that still need to be handled and stored for generations. These are people who are escaping a world that was devastated by unchecked industrial waste. The last thing these people want to do is start out by making the same mistakes all over again. Have you ever thought about coming up with an SF television series? You sound like you have the scientific and technical knowledge to do the job! > [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > The child being taken off for a good fatal gassing by Pop. Control makes a whole lot more sense than the mess of a story we actually got. Yep. That would have actually been good. But that would be _wa_y to heavy for this show, which is targeted at the young and young of heart. Dreary looking production design is as far as they really want to go with their dystopian future. Commentary on the brutal mass murder of that exists TODAY of any fetus or newborn that has the poor luck to be a female in one-child China is beyond the scope of this dreck. > [@](#): > > I’ve read a LOT of sci fi in my life, and it has bothered me for a long time that the movies and tv shows that call themselves sci fi so rarely measure up to the books I read, and I don’t understand why. You read books? What the fuck is the matter with you? Four-eyes like you need a good punch in the throat. I am now off to reproduce with this cheerleader. Don’t you have my homework to finish? Now get lost! > [@Unpronounceable](#): > > I’m a little vague on how not finding the probe “proves” it’s an alternate timeline. > > All it proves is that they failed to find the probe. 85 million years is a lot of opportunity for it to be destroyed completely coincidentally. And then sending people afterward means _they_ have the opportunity to destroy it intentionally. LOOK, four eyes, I wasn’t fucking kidding. Now bug off while a real man like me scores some primo trim! > [@](#): > > And if they’re saving “the best and brightest” why is there a lottery? Are they trying the puppeteer experiment? Because, DUH, they need someone to reproduce! Nerds like you never get laid. Now get cracking on that homework! > [@](#): > > Assuming the show survives long enough, bets that the sixers turn out to be generically-religious fundamentalists? Not seeing that. The more likely twist is that they are the anti-heroes, escaping the authoritarian colony. ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE TWIST. There always is one, and once you look for it, it is pretty easy to spot. > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > **Things I didn’t like:** > -cliched family dynamics Just awful. But it is a Spielburger, so get used to it. > [@](#): > > -fairly bad CGI I understand there was a huge backlog, and they had trouble finding a house that would do it on the schedule and budged proposed. The dinos look like they got the absolute minimum of keyframing, the motions look simplistic and jerky. Don’t get me started on the cityscapes. No imagination going on there. > [@](#): > > -the boss of the entire society jumps into vehicles and puts himself in harms way on a moment’s notice for routine but dangerous operations. Sure. Captain Kirk syndrome. Can’t do much about it. Even badass Commander Ryker couldn’t fix that. Still gotta get the protagonist into the fisticuffs. It is just the way things are. No harm, no foul. > [@](#): > > **Things that seem stupid so far but just possibly might not be:** > -ambiguity about exactly how the portal works, is it open all the time, when do they send building material through, is communication 2-way, etc Stay tuned! I am sure that there will be very satisfying exposition in future episodes that explains all this in a way that both makes perfect sense and adds to the drama! > [@](#): > > -ambiguity about why they are interested in meteoric iron I’ve got that one. It is a lot easier to work with globs of pure iron than to extract it from thousands of tons of ore. But why do they need it at all if you can send dozens of badass vehicles the size of an Escalade back through time… > [@alphaboi867](#): > > There might be an element of prescreening involved with the lottery. Or the majority of colonist could be recruited with only a few token lottery winners thrown in to satisfy the masses back in 2149. Yep. This is it. You need to convince the proles that they have a chance, so you can tax the crap out of them to pay for the huge infrastructure that they showed surrounding the time portal. > [@GuanoLad](#): > > As a fan of VFX and CGI, I was particularly annoyed at how … the reviews, and most of the viewer comments on most sites, praise the VFX as being movie quality, when the original _Jurassic Park_ outstrips them by a hefty margin. They are _Jumanji_ bad, and that’s just not good enough, even for TV. They were flat out crap. The dinos, as I mentioned had very poor motion, and the cityscapes were not very imaginative. I HOPE were paying homage to Blade Runner, but I suspect they were merely ripping it off. I am very disappointed in you, Mr. Spielberg. I am sure you are very sorry and ashamed to have let down your geek VFX fans, from your seat on top of that huge pile of money! > [@bouv](#): > > Re: who gets chosen, I’m pretty sure they said it’s both by a lottery AND recruitment… I mean, it would almost be insulting to get _recruited_ because you’re the best janitor… Hey, you need a damn good janitor to clean up dino poop. The best in fact. That dude is critical to the whole operation! > [@xtisme](#): > > as the show has a lot of potential that’s being wasted. Sort of like Falling Skies had a lot of potential and they blew it. Falling Skies isn’t half as bad as this one. And probably cost a lot less to churn out. What bugs me is the fantastic waste of money on this show. For that kind of coin, we could have had moties! MOTIES!!! (one of whom was actually a good guy and saved everyone and made peace, and they all lived happily ever after with no need to blockade the Mote system because it was all just a big misunderstanding, and the Ewoks were there and they all sang a happy song. The End) > [@Oakminster](#): > > The Druidess was a little disappointed the dinos got so little screen time, but overall, we liked it. Plenty of action, some skin, some dinos, and a few obvious plot hooks. Mind candy, and it’s fun. Yah, sorry to say, it is. I actually enjoyed it. It will be like catnip to my girlfriend… > [@tanstaafl](#): > > I saw an interview the other day (I thought it was on io9 but can’t find it there now) where they said that Spielberg had specifically told the writers to _not_ have the humans killing dinosaurs. Apparently they’re going the “all life is sacred and must be preserved” route. Yeah, the feds can’t be going after ET with GUNS :eek::eek::eek: Better to CGI in some flashlights. Think of the children. Mr. Spielberg, you used to be cool. Remember when you had that shark bite Quint in half? I remember that… > [@](#): > > It also had a brief comment that they are able to communicate with the “future”, but only during the brief time when a pilgrimage is coming through the portal. So apparently the thing only opens for a few minutes every eight months or so or something. So all they could really manage is a basic grocery list, scrawled on the back of an envelope. They must have lost memory stick technology in the next 100 years… 😕 > [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I saw about half of it before I volunteered to go th the store. > > The probe cannot communicate to the right timeline but the camp can? > Let’s hide a 3 year old in a vent and hope she stays quiet. > Dad, you wiped my ass for 14 years but you went away to prison for 2 years TO PROTECT MY 3 YEAR OLD SISTER so now I hate you. > > Did I miss anything else? A wizard did it. > [@xtisme](#): > > Oh, and the 'we’re a bunch of teen agers with no brains, so lets go outside the fence (where the dinosaurs are) so that we can check out our home made still, drink some and frolic about in bathing suits…hope those dinos don’t show up! > -XT This is actually the most believable thing in the whole piece. > [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > I’ve learned from my husband in the safety business that any fall over 10 feet has a 50% chance of killing you, and he fell further than 10 feet. Even though he landed on his back, your internal organs don’t care for a jarring shock like that - he probably would have died a couple of hours later from massive internal bleeding. Since this was by no means the most glaring of the problems with the show, I chose to overlook this. 🙂 He landed on some of the branches he was cutting, and they were kind of springy. I guess. If that was the least of the problems, I would choose to overlook it as well. Of all the clinkers, was the one where the kid says, “You left us to fend for ourselves!” Um, yeah, your damn mother is some kind of world renowned medical type person to the point where she is selected for the most important mission in history, but you can’t get by without your Dad’s cop salary? MMKay. But yeah, this is in the “Falling Skies” category. Fun to watch, like a train wreck in slow motion. It is horrible, but somehow you can’t take your eyes away… /will be torrenting it again next week //my friend told me it had a lot of long commercial breaks ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666/180 "2011-10-01T09:38:01Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > Captain Kirk syndrome. Can’t do much about it. Even badass Commander Ryker couldn’t fix that. Still gotta get the protagonist into the fisticuffs. It is just the way things are. No harm, no foul. Fixing Captain Kirk syndrome is easy - just find a character who can get into all the fisticuffs you want, and make _him_ the protagonist. In other words: Jack O’Neill, not General Hammond. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/terra-nova-premiere-9-26/597666.md?page=10)