%%* ClicheStorm
* DracoInLeatherPants: Lucas is a favorite character of a considerable minority of the show's fans, mostly of females who find him attractive.
* EnsembleDarkhorse: Nathaniel Taylor, thanks to being played by Creator/StephenLang and his FanNickname "Santa Steroids" (which originated from Jeremy Jahn's review of the show).
* IronWoobie: Taylor. His wife dies in what is suggested to be very poor circumstances (he was ready to commit suicide over the fact) which in turn causes a life-long hatred towards him by his son. And then [[spoiler: Washington, someone implied to have helped him over his issues, gets killed during an attack on what now amounts to Taylor's life's work -- preserving humanity's future from really evil forces.]]
* JustHereForGodzilla: Many people probably only watched this show because DINOSAURS, and were probably very disappointed that [[AdvertisedExtra there was only about six minutes worth of dinosaurs in the entire show]].
* TheScrappy: Josh is overall considered pretty unlikable mainly from the pilot.
* SpecialEffectsFailure: For a television show that was reported to have one of the largest production budgets in the medium's history, a keen eye is able to see several [[Toys/NERFBrand painted Nerf guns]] make cameos in the hands of numerous characters during episodes.
* TearJerker:
** [[spoiler: Nathaniel Taylor having to kill his own mentor and banish his son for the good of the colony.]]
** [[spoiler: Washington's death. Taylor can barely hold himself together, especially when Zoe is trying to cheer him up by talking about the things the Washington taught her. Then she hugs him. Daawww.]]
** To some extent, [[spoiler: Kara's death. Nowhere near as wrenching as Washington's demise, not to mention [[KickTheDog completely off-screen]], but it makes you feel bad for a character and actress who got maybe half-a-dozen actual lines of dialogue in the ''entire season'' and then promptly had [[DroppedABridgeOnHim the proverbial bridge dropped on her]] [[BackForTheDead within seconds of finally arriving in Terra Nova]].]]
* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: For a network TV program, the CGI was pretty damn good and the show looked awesome as a result. Unfortunately, this was [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools part of the reason]] that the show was dropped so quickly, as the large amounts of CGI needed to uphold the standard made it prohibitively expensive to produce.
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