I'm not sure where the confusion's coming from, next week's two-part episode is the Season 1 Finale. It airs December 19th. I don't know anything about a possible Season 2, though.
He's like fire and ice and rage. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time. Rory punched him in the face.Alas, poor Wash. Nobody totally saw this coming from the very first episode.
Kara, Josh's girlfriend, is dead from a suicide bomber! Can you believe that? They let us see this character in the flesh, and then kill off the character very shortly afterwards! Would this qualify as Dropped a Bridge on Him or Stuffed into the Fridge?
I was sad to see Wash get killed off, but at least she basically spat on that little brat Lucas by bravely telling him that he has his father's eyes!
This finale was, I thought, very satisfying! I mean, it wrapped a number of details, but it left enough open to go into a possible second season. Could you believe that the wrapped up cargo was none other than the prow of an 18th century ship? Out of all the things I was imagining, that was not one of them! Oh, I would love to hear the story behind that! Also, they talked a bit about the Badlands up north. Something is going on there, that's for sure!
Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!Normally I'd be disappointed that I found these spoilers by accident...but really? They killed Josh's girlfriend? Seriously? I don't know whether I find that funny or pathetic. Wow. Die for Our Ship much?
He's like fire and ice and rage. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time. Rory punched him in the face.Where do I even begin.
Well the prologue to this. I want to like Terra Nova. No, I want to love Terra Nova. It's Colonel Quaritch vs. the Dinosaurs, this should be so damned awesome that I'm DV Ring Monday Night Football so I can watch it later instead of the other way around. So understand that I don't have a massive hate on for this show.
That said... damn it to fucking hell.
- Meteroic Iron? That's what all this is about? FUCKING IRON? Meteoric doesn't mean magical, it means it came from a fucking meteor. It's IRON. These twats were expecting to get rich off an iron mine? The only reason it's of value to the colonists is that meteoric iron is much more likely to be located close to the surface and easy to get at. It's still IRON.
- Lucas, just Lucas. He goes from a guy pissed off at his father and trying to fuck up his work to... that. A guy who in cold blood executes prisoners, beats people for fun, tortures prisoners, and gets sexually excited when he finds out that the girl he's blackmailing into helping him is kinda, sorta his adopted sister. Then just because he's now a complete caricature of an actual character he's shot twice in the chest and survives and apparently is a ninja to vanish in the half second Taylor wasn't looking right at his corpse. All that's sort of ironic because his actual motivation for hating his father is actually rather creative. That said, what the fuck was a soldier doing with his wife and kid in a war zone? On the whole though, I have no idea what they were thinking as in the space of 30 minutes he goes from a guy who hates his father into a mustache twirling psychopath.
- Why did Wash have to die? Seriously, "You need a distraction," and before she can even leave there's a big fucking explosion. Well there's the distraction, how about she leave with them? There was no point in staying behind besides giving Lucas someone to shoot in case we weren't quite sure he was evil. Waste of the character.
- I wanna give Taylor the benefit of the doubt but their "defense" of the terminus of the rift was laughable. First off, when they first started talking about the invaders only being able to come in two or three at a time I told my wife, "The first thing I'd do is lob a bomb through and just blow the thing up so I can make my initial landing unopposed." Within ten seconds of having the problem presented I had figured out how to avoid Taylor's "defenses". Yet Taylor blithely proceeded to prepare for the attack with less tactical acumen than your average Call of Duty pick up game. Everyone clumped in right next to one another around the jeep? Guys on tiny perches in trees? People firing over each other's shoulders? They didn't even clear the line of fire from the jeep to the terminus. Just incomprehensible.
- The terminus. Talk about something no one bothered to think through. Why was the Terminus just sitting in the jungle? Why hadn't they cleared the area around it? Why wasn't there a fence and a built in recieving area to make bringing the new colonists in easier than having them sit against whatever random tree was in the area?
- I did like the bit with them going straight from Jim getting blown up to him waking up in the hospital. I realize that this was likely done because they didn't have the budget for a full on battle scene. Still, I liked the quick transition as the battle would have largely been just explosion porn and not really done all that much for the story.
- I actually laughed when they killed off the girlfriend. After everything to do with the younger Shannon man's story revolved around getting her there they killed her off not even 30 seconds after making it to the past. In a bit of fridge horror the assholes picked her out, put her at the front of the line, then put the guy with the bomb right behind her. They knew the kid wanted his girlfriend to come through and then they did their best to make sure she died immediately. That's just cold. Skye was the big winner as the producers murdered the hypotenuse for her.
- How incompetant was Lucas and his mercs? They have Shannon laying on the bed and they can't station one guard right there to watch him? They don't have a guard watching over the piece of tech they needed to get back to the future? Watching Jim walk around more or less unmolested was just ridiculous.
- Was it necessary to have the exec shoot the brachisaur? Was that incredibly ham handed scene showing us that "HE'S EVIL!" necessary? Why was Lucas off put by this? They were talking about setting off a bomb in the valley to clear it out of essentially all life. So... he was just grinning and agreeing with killing the thing by bomb, was the gun shot too low tech for him?
- The return of the rebels meshed nicely with the first walk to Terra Nova.
- The Sixers got pretty much thrown in the trash this episode. They're the main bad guys for 12 episodes and in the season finale they are little more than an after thought. I think Myra got... five lines? I do hope they play up how badly she got screwed later on.
- They took the bridge metaphor far too literally for Hope Plaza and the rift. Why did they need to blow it up? What these guys are doing is obviously illegal. They have found a way to get a hold of the rift and coopt it to their ends. Why not send Jim back with a radio along with video evidence of what was happening? If you have to then take the bomb back as a back up plan but why did it have to be blown up? If the world finds out what's happening Lucas and his group are screwed.
- Back on the topic of how stupid the executives in charge of this little hostile takeover are, how did they image they could keep what was going on a secret? What with dozens or even hundreds of people involved in Hope Plaza, a hundred or so involved in the attack on Terra Nova, trucking activity coming to and from the area around Hope Plaza oh and THE FUCKING PARTICLE ACCELERATORS STILL RUNNING? How did they ever imagine they could keep this a secret for years while they made their money and even if they did what do they do when it's all over, nuke the place? It's hard to take someone seriously as a bad guy when they're that incompetent.
- In the vein of leadership incompetence, what the hell were they thinking? Going self sufficient when still reliant on all that tech? Never mind the fact that at 1,000 colonists and quite a few of them not looking like they're in a position to be doing much breeding, they are so far below minimum viable population that they are almost certainly doomed. You'd think that these people would realize that going native wasn't an option at this point.
- I knew that once they sealed the portal they wouldn't be able to actually cut the colony off. The ship's prow is obviously a demonstration that there is another potential portal through time and Phoenix and Lucas are off to find it and bend it to their means. In other words a race to stop them before he can figure out a way to move the rifts end point to 2149.
Overall... damn it to hell. The more they got into Lucas and the Sixers along with the motivation of the people backing them the more I knew this was going to suck. Unfortunately it sucked even more than I feared. The writers didn't bother to really think about their bad guy's plan even a little bit. It's so full of holes that calling it a first draft or alpha would be generous. This was the first inkling of a first pass but they didn't fix it, they just puked it up on paper and went with it. The heros don't do any better, as they swallow the idiot ball proceeding to employ the tactical skill of a COD n00b and take metaphors way, way, way too literally.
While I hope the show gets renewed, I really am wanting it to be good so badly it's sad, but I hope they take the current crop of writers out behind the woodshed and beat them to death with Brannon Braga's corpse.
"Tyyr's a necessary evil. " SpiritHe did fight a couple of Slashers. And set them on fucking fire.
There is a glimmer of a good show there. But it's run by the same pieces of shit that ran Star Trek into the ground, so I don't hold out much hope. Still, Colonel Quaritch and DI Sam Tyler and a not-completely-awful supporting cast might mean it'll at least be entertaining before Fox cancels it.
Well, except for the fact they killed off Wash. Jesus, they should stop giving that name to people in Fox productions.
edited 22nd Dec '11 5:48:39 AM by Medicus
It's not over. Not yet.I think more than anything Wash's death and Lucas' losing his shit show the ineptitude of the writers. That's the best they could do with Wash and that's the best they could do to make Lucas a villain. Kill her off pointlessly just to make him look like even more of a caricature of a villain. Bravo.
"Tyyr's a necessary evil. " Spirit

Brannon Fucking Braga, everything this man touches turns to shit. Between him and Berman they destroyed possibly the most promising Trek franchise, Voyager, and then pissed in the face of the fandom, good taste, and even decent television with Enterprise. Now he's got his claws sunk into another show with an awesome premise and he's doing his best to dumb it down. I should have known this thing was in deep trouble the moment I found out about the amnesia virus episode.
"Tyyr's a necessary evil. " Spirit