Terra Nova Cancelled


Arcanaville

 

Posted

Fox is done with Spielberg's expensive and aimless time-travelling dinosaur dystopian sci-fi thriller family adventure ... wait, where was I?

We'll see how things go for Alcatraz and Fringe.


 

Posted

Color me surprised. Won't miss it really.

#mediocreshowismediocre


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Posted

Well I guess that answered whether they were going to waste the time to make a few more episodes -before- they cancelled it or not. There was really no way it could've limped on longer than that.

I suppose in the long run I'll always be able to picture in my mind the kind of show it -might- have been if they hadn't doomed it to failure from the very beginning. *shrugs*


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Posted

I'm sad for the show it could have been, but never was.


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Posted

Fallen Skies, Terra Nova are two series that had potential but were undercut by sloppy unimaginative acting and writing.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DreamWeaver View Post
*wanders into thread about show she's never seen, mumbles something about FOX, Firefly, Futurama and crushing asinine morons to fine pink powder, wanders off again*
The only difference this time is that FOX finally cancelled a show that deserved to be cancelled.
I'm not exactly sure if this should be considered good news for FOX or not...


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
The only difference this time is that FOX finally cancelled a show that deserved to be cancelled.
I'm not exactly sure if this should be considered good news for FOX or not...
Well it shows they have someone paying attention at times I suppose, still the Futurama and Firefly cancellations will likely never be forgiven despite Serenity and Futurama returning.


 

Posted

Eh, it got better towards the end. It had the same downfall as Sarah Connor Chronicles, namely focusing too much on the teenager component (Riley in SCC and then the 16yo daughter + her suitor and that idiot son's quest to get his old gf). Though the dino running rampant in the staging area was neat.

I would've liked to have seen how an 18th century ship's figurehead got back in time and what that area the corporate guys were heading towards.

It is pretty sad that a show that had 7 million viewers at the end wasn't enough to keep it around. Shame that Fox seemingly judges a show's worth around the metrics of American Idol.



 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark One View Post
Eh, it got better towards the end. It had the same downfall as Sarah Connor Chronicles, namely focusing too much on the teenager component (Riley in SCC and then the 16yo daughter + her suitor and that idiot son's quest to get his old gf). Though the dino running rampant in the staging area was neat.

I would've liked to have seen how an 18th century ship's figurehead got back in time and what that area the corporate guys were heading towards.

It is pretty sad that a show that had 7 million viewers at the end wasn't enough to keep it around. Shame that Fox seemingly judges a show's worth around the metrics of American Idol.
The people making the show threw several sci-fi plot ideas against the wall to see what would stick and one could argue that a few of these ideas might have been interesting if they had been formulated properly into a workable show. Unfortunately too many of those ideas fell on the floor and the godawful dialogue coupled with the heavily rehashed Star Trek DS9-like storylines made the show literally cringe-worthy to sit through.

It's funny that you mention American Idol in reference to this show because while it's obvious Terra Nova didn't have the same ratings as Idol I considered it just about as mind-numbingly vapid and hollow as that supposed mega-hit. This was the kind of sci-fi that the SyFy network would have made - you know, that network run by people who have actually said during interviews that they don't have a clue what "sci-fi" is. Yeah, those people.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mystic_Fortune View Post
Meh, I liked it. I also liked The Cape...
Even with all The Cape's faults it was Shakespeare compared to Terra Nova. *shrugs*


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Posted

Terra Nova = Earth 2 = just plain bad stuff


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mystic_Fortune View Post
Meh, I liked it. I also liked The Cape...
I didn't like Terra Nova and liked The Cape.


*shrugs*


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei View Post
Fallen Skies, Terra Nova are two series that had potential but were undercut by sloppy unimaginative acting and writing.
Can we throw V and The Walking Dead in there as well? >.>


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
The people making the show threw several sci-fi plot ideas against the wall to see what would stick and one could argue that a few of these ideas might have been interesting if they had been formulated properly into a workable show.
Actually, the fact that they seemed to be making it up as they went along suggests to me that none of those ideas could have been made interesting on their own. The show, like many recent shows, wasn't *about* anything. It had no rudder, which I suppose is ironic given its cliff hanger conclusion.


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Posted

You can't have a series that takes more than half the ordered run to set up all the players and plots.

Also teen love in a scifi series hoping to ensnare adults is never well received. The stories were quite bipolar with half the time using plots found in shows on the CW/ABC Family and the other half of the time from SyFy.


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Posted

Glad I decided to not bother until it had a few seasons under it's belt. Gotta love the option to just Netflix a show without having to bother keeping up with it weekly or waiting months for stupid breaks.

Now I don't even have to bother doing that.


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Posted

I have mixed feelings on this one....I'm sad because it was being filmed in my home state of Queensland in Australia, so it meant local actors were getting noticed and was generally good for business down here. Plus I think the locations were just gorgeous and are never seen enough on screen in any medium.

I'm glad because this was a directionless show. It had oodles of potential, with the time-travelling and the idea of controlling the future by manipulating the past...but instead, they focussed on the teenagers and made it episodic where absolutely no consequence came out of the prior week's episode. They ran an arc where the teenage son was deliberately betraying the colony, but when it was revealed, he suffered no real punishment! I was dumbstruck at that. At least the colonel's daughter had a half-decent excuse and the colonel had a backup plan.

It started showing its potential in the later stories, but they too had no lasting consequences. Whether they were reined in by the network and not allowed to tell decent stories, or the writers just had no idea of what to do, the execution was poor, at best.

Fingers crossed that the next production to be filmed down here (which'll be the most expensive children's television show made in Australia) will do better. Jane Badler is in it (she's an Australian resident now) and Australian kids' shows are wildly imaginative. A lot of our top producers work in the field and the shows are top quality viewing.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
The only difference this time is that FOX finally cancelled a show that deserved to be cancelled.
I'm not exactly sure if this should be considered good news for FOX or not...
Dollhouse deserved it.


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Posted

Interestingly, Netflix is in talks about picking up Terra Nova since its DVR ratings are in the top increases. Still, Terra Nova is a very expensive special effects-heavy show, so it's not in the same class as Netflix bringing back Arrested Development.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman View Post
Interestingly, Netflix is in talks about picking up Terra Nova since its DVR ratings are in the top increases. Still, Terra Nova is a very expensive special effects-heavy show, so it's not in the same class as Netflix bringing back Arrested Development.
I'm not so sure that's correct. Buster's prosthetic hand and Gob's magic tricks had to cost them a pretty penny.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Actually, the fact that they seemed to be making it up as they went along suggests to me that none of those ideas could have been made interesting on their own. The show, like many recent shows, wasn't *about* anything. It had no rudder, which I suppose is ironic given its cliff hanger conclusion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperOz View Post
I'm glad because this was a directionless show. It had oodles of potential, with the time-travelling and the idea of controlling the future by manipulating the past...but instead, they focussed on the teenagers and made it episodic where absolutely no consequence came out of the prior week's episode. They ran an arc where the teenage son was deliberately betraying the colony, but when it was revealed, he suffered no real punishment! I was dumbstruck at that. At least the colonel's daughter had a half-decent excuse and the colonel had a backup plan.
Yes I totally agree that Terra Nova failed mostly because it was shaping up to be a directionless, consequence-free show.

I guess my main point was that the core premise of "future people go back to dinosaur-land" could have been made really interesting if it had been given a "rudder" to work with. It wasn't a failure because the subject matter was inherently bad - it was a failure because the writers of the show didn't know what to make of the story concept they had to work with. For instance I would have loved to have seen more political intrigue between the factions of the past and future rather than a suburban family drama with a couple of dinosaurs thrown in.

Basically trying to combine a pseudo-modern Swiss Family Robinson with dinosaurs into the framework of badly rehashed ST-DS9 episodes was doomed from the get-go.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
Dollhouse deserved it.
Yeah I guess I'd agree that Dollhouse had enough of its own problems to justify an early cancellation as well. It was too complicated and/or convoluted for its own good and got bogged down with too much backstory for most people to chew on or put up with.

I'd argue that Terra Nova had the opposite problem - it was so vapid and pointless that I very quickly gave up caring about where the story might be going. There was nothing to hook into and none of the characters resonated as being worthwhile to care about.

I suppose in the end Terra Nova was simply MORE deserving of the two.


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