So tonight's new ep of Tera Nova

I actually dug it, and it kind of ticks me off. Why? Because they did a semi deceint sci-fi adventure ep with moving the story forward and revealing a bit about Taylor's past and not a damn drop of the emo teen sucktasticness that they've shoved into every episode.

... which means either A) they'll never do it again or B) it will be cancelled

or C) They learned from their errors and it will go on for a few seasons before being cancelled with Terra Nova being a great SF series.

Chances are that it will be A or B.

or D) Fox will consign the show to Sci-Fi Death Slot Friday, where it will languish, and then they can say, "See? We gave it a chance, and it got even poorer ratings! We have to cancel it!"

But I'm not bitter. No sir.

Based on what I've seen of this show it looks like they only really had about 3 episodes worth of decent story material and had to pad the rest with all the cheesy "Swiss Family Robinson with dinosaurs" filler just to make a full season out of it. It's sad because there was a chance they could have made something really cool out of this series.

At this point I've basically written the show off. Because I've "given up" on it it'll probably linger on for another 10 seasons the way other bad shows somehow manage to do.

After last nights episode, I'm drinking the Taylor Kool-Aid.

They way Taylor described the future wanting to use all of the resources of Tera Nova, I rather like how the conflict is slowly shaping up.

My wonderfully scientific mind sees two possibilities.

First, the future scientists are correct, and Tera Nova is in a alternate timeline/dimension. Shipping all sorts of equipment to strip mine the ‘past’ leaves the future with much more resources than they previously had.

Second, the future scientists are wrong, and Tera Nova is really their past. They just couldn’t find the probe because it was totally destroyed due to any of a dozen or more different reasons. But then we run into paradoxes. If tons of equipment is shipped back in time, metals, even plants and animals could be shipped back to the future. However, at this time in the past, there’s no fossil fuels to dig up and ship back to the future. Now since the metals are being shipped forward, we start getting into paradox territory. Depending on how much ‘mantle to crust to mantle churn’ has happened, a limited amount of metal in the crust in the past is still in the crust in the future. By taking the metals, minerals and what not out of the past, they are not there for nearer future people to pull out and use. Now depending on how they deal with this potential paradox in the ‘scientists being wrong’ scenario, either those resources were never there for the nearer future to use to begin with, or they were there before people being sent to 2149, in which case the future’s past changes and the resource crisis gets pushed to an earlier time. I’m not worried about transporting trees, plants, vegetables and the like forward, because only limited amounts of those things in the right conditions turned into coal, oil, shale and the like. But taking all the minerals and ores from the past to the future could lead to some really interesting possibilities, including the fact that the future's resource crisis was brought on by the fact that they sent people back in time in the first place.

I am also of the persuasion that thinks Taylor’s and Mira’s discordant opposition may not be quite so bitter a rivalry. Things both sides say and do, make it seem like they’re working for the same goal with different means, even that Mira might be working for Taylor. Then there are things they the both say and do that really make it look like a bitter fight to the end. But I do have to wonder why Taylor hasn’t just sent in a bunch of soldiers and wiped out the Sixers. If he sees them as a truly such a big threat to Tera Nova, and knowing about them having communications to the future, he really has no reason not to.

Here's my question: since the Powers That Be back in 2149 know Taylor's gone rogue (since the second Pilgrimage), why wait until the sixth Pilgrimage to do something about it. Every Pilgrimage should have been military commandos with the sole goal of taking Taylor out and re-establishing control of Terra Nova. Why would they let a loose cannon retain control of *their* colony?

Taylor only tells people what they need to hear.