Terra Nova Premiere Review SPOILERS

I realized that I wanted to review some stuff I watch (also, I'm bored and have lots of free time since the hubs is at a training class this week in a city 6 hours from here) so here goes:

So, I really wish I would have written a blog post for this show before it started, because I have some mixed feelings about the synopsis I read about it. But after watching this series premiere, I do have to say I am hooked to watch the next episode and possibly more episodes in the future. The whole premise of humans living alongside dinosaurs just makes me happy. Jurassic Park has remained one of my favorite movies since that epic night roughly 18 years ago when my parents took me to watch it in the theatre and I became the talk of the patrons...for my terror was apparent, but I love that terror and by the end of the movie I cheering with all other satisfied patrons over the movie experience we just shared.

***~SO STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SPOILERS ABOUT TERRA NOVA~***

So, it starts with the human race on Earth 100 years in the future (may be more, I was engrossed), and what scientists predict now has basically happened. The sky is a shade of thick greyish brown, no trees. People must wear filtering masks when out of their oxygen controlled housing units. The super rich have the opportunity to live in domes where the engineering has made parts of earth livable, but it isn't somehing that appeals to the Shannon family. Jim Shannon played by Jason O'Mara is a cop turned criminal since he and his wife decided to have a 3rd child (population control is made apparent in the first few minutes as investigators knock on the door of the family's apartment saying they have reports of criminal activity, the family hides the child, Zoe Shannon played by Alana Mansour). Jim Shannon gets put in jail and his family goes on without him. He is in prison for 2 years of his 6 year sentence when his wife, Elisabeth Shannon played by Shelley Conn gets word that she has been recruited to go Terra Nova, but she can only bring her two legal children, Josh Shannon played by Landon Liboiron and Maddy Shannon played by Naomi Scott. The recruiters won't let her bring Zoe. She visits Jim in prison and gives he a filter mask with some sort of laser hidden inside of it so that he can escape. As the family is leaving you see Josh saying goodbye to a girl about his age and you get the feeling they were in love. Then, as the family is cleared, you are seeing bits of Jim heading towards the compound where the time travel happens. He meets with an unknown man and retreives a large bag in which you realize is holding little Zoe. I felt very attached to this family from the start because I can't say that if these circumstances were in my way, my family would find a way to do exactly what the Shannon family did. As the family is walking across a bridge that apparently leads through the portal of time travel, the security team notices that something is wrong due to some video footage from a few minutes earlier and approaches Jim asking him to step out of the line. At this point, Elisabeth exchanges bags with Jim so that she is now carrying the large bag. Jim tells them to keep going and steps out of line to speak with the security officer. This goes on with the family getting through the portal and Jim punching the officer in the nose and jumping through the portal into a jungle. Everyone in this scene is having breathing problems and there are medical professionals and security teams all around the group of settlers who have just passed through the portal. A security member sees Jims gun and immediately reacts, this part is  a little chaotic as people are yelling and Jim and Elisabeth are still suffering the effects of time travel all while trying to get Zoe out of the large bag.

From here, the security team is just more anxious to get everyone to the settlement compound that is called Terra Nova. So, they lead the group through the perimeter gate which to my dinosaur infested mind thinks is insufficient. I mean, come on. Dinosaurs! Anyway, the travelers get a small speech from Commander Nathaniel Taylor (my maiden name, lol) played by Stephen Lang. Elisabeth and Jim are escorted to the commanders office where a giant dinosaur skull serves as the legs to his desk (I do believe I have found my next 'I Want That' item). They discuss Elisabeth's profession which turns out is basically doctor, given that she is an -ologist in a ridiculous amount of fields of medicinal and biological studies. Commander Taylor lets them know that Elisabeth would be a great asset to the settlement and sends her on her way. Short and sweet, he tells Jim that he doesn't give a crap about the population laws of the future, cause this place is different and assigns him to agricultural duties. The family gets escorted to their new living quarters and there is a level of tension and awkwardness as the family hasn't truly been together in two years. This scene ends with our first peek at the first dinosaurs of the show. CGI brachiosaurs (sp?) eat leaves from Zoe's hands over the fence. The CGI was not bad at all. Higher caliber than Sci-Fi Channel, yet not as good as the CGI yoda in the newer Star Wars movies. (Sorry, I had to throw my all time favorite movies out there in this post...just had to)

After this commercial break, it appears to be the next day and the parents go off to their duties and the children go to orientation. Maddy is super educated on all things Terra Nova so she spouts off some information about a statue she sees of the probe that was sent through the time fracture before Terra Nova was formed. Josh is bored and pissed off about leaving his giflfriend behind and takes off to explore. Josh meets another teenage girl Skye played by Allison Miller and she intrigues him enough to follow her. He meets a few other teens and they go OTG (outside the gate). Teens have to find some way to break the rules, it's just how they are. Haha...I know not all teens do, but in my experience, A LOT do. 

You get to see Jim at work in this area of the show, and he is just assigned to chopping weeds off the gate...he encounters a giant centipede-like bug and falls off the fence in terror. He laughes and gets back to work. Elisabeth is shown working and she has to remove what looks like a ginormous tick off of some dudes back. So, basically the bugs are huge there. Bleh!

From here, you see Josh hanging out with the other teens and Skye shows him some strange markings on some rocks by a waterfall. They look geometric he says. They go find a stash of moonshine and end up sitting down by some pond to cut up more fruit for the moonshine distiller. Inside Terra Nova, Elisabeth's life is threatened by a prisoner who was injured in which a security member says in a sixer (All members of the sixth pilgrimage turned against Terra Nova and are now living out in the jungle). Jim ends up saving Commander Taylors life by apprehending the sixer before he points a gun in his direction. After this, Commander Taylor takes Jim on a ride outside the gate and tells him he has earned a spot in security. On their way back, sixers lead some carnisaurs towards Terra Nova and Commander Taylor has to divert the dinos attention. After that, they confront the sixers inside the gate and end up giving them their bad guy that tried to assassinate Cmdr. Taylor and some medical supplies. They leave but steal the power cells of the teens transport on their way out. They are hit by Slashers (type of dino with serated tail that they can whip), and are stranded.

The teens make it back to their vehicle and realize their power cells are gone and notice the sixer vehicle close by. They investigate and get ambushed by Slashers and jump inside the sixer vehicle. At this time, you see Cmdr. Taylor speaking with Jim about footage of Josh leaving the compound. They form a search party and head outside the gate to find them. They find the teens, save their lives and get them back to Terra Nova.

The show ends with some interesting twists that will have me anxiously waiting for next week. It turns out that Skye is kind of an adopted daughter of Cmdr. Taylors and he makes sure she stayed away from the waterfalls because he claims the Slashers live there. Then you see the leader of the sixers sitting on the rocks with the markings talking with one of her fellow sixers. Their dialogue here really impressed me. The leader of the sixers Mira played by Christine Adams says that Cmdr. Taylors missing son is the culprit behind the markings on the rocks and he does it to show his father that he knows the truth. Then she says the truth is that Terra Nova basically isn't what the settlers think it is. They believe it is the same planet, same time as what they were told, but in a different time stream so that things that happen while they're their won't impact the future in any way, but she basically stomps that into the ground by saying Terra Nova is the same time stream and the reason is to change the future in some way. They do not let you know in what way they wish to change the future, but now you know they're messing with the past to change the future.

I basically expressed most of my thoughts about the happenings in the show in my synopsis, but I still want to touch on a few of my favorite things. In the beginning, Jim brings home a brown bag secretly as he walks to his apartment. What is inside the bag is what tells you how bad off the planet is other than the shots you get of the dying planet. An orange is in the bag and the famil is so delighted when they see it, it makes you sad and for me, I craved an orange. There are many other ways they were able to show how bad the planet had become...Zoe later on in Terra Nova says, "Are those clouds?" A five year old girl that has never seen clouds before. And in the end, Zoe gets very scared when she walks outside the house to see a huge grey/white ball in the sky. She thinks it is going to crash into them and they explain that it is the moon and that it hasn't been visible on Earth since the parents were very young children.

Now, before, I really had a problem thinking that they would send people back in time to a period before the mass extinction of the dinos, meaning humans would go extinct when that happened also, but they threw me when they explained that the time fracture, which is what they travel through, was accidentally discovered and they had no idea what time period it would take them to. Also, they explain that it is same planet, different time stream meaning that nothing they do will affect the future. I became okay with this idea after that was explained, but after the last few minutes of the show, I am right back where I started...So, they did go back in time to the same time stream they were in anyway. I really don't know where this is going to go, but I will be watching, because well...I love Sci-Fi and dinos, time travel and futuristic weapons.

Tune in to Terra Nova Mondays at 8pm PST on FOX.