2149. Earth is a wasted yellow hell, and I am not going to sleep for a week, because this is my worst nightmare. The population is out of control, and air quality is so bad that the word “quality” shouldn’t even be used to describe it. Connotations are important at times like these. You know what else is important at times like these? Family. Enter Jim Shannon, with his likable face, his beautiful and intelligent wife Elizabeth, and his adorably mixed-race children. They seem like a happy family, despite the circumstances, so automatically we know that bad things are about to happen to them. Bad things always happen to good people (especially on TV, because it is fun to sit on our couches and watch other people suffer while we eat our munchies). The Shannons are bonding over an orange Jim has somehow managed to secure, and it’s the orangiest thing they’ve ever seen. They’re laughing and smiling and giggling, but then there’s banging and slamming, and then they’re hiding things and whispering, panicked. They’re shoving their three year old daughter into an air vent. It’s population control at the door, and they have one too many children (as we later learn, “A Family is Four!”). At first we think they might get away with it, but this is the first five minutes of a two hour pilot. Did we ever really think he wasn’t going to jail? Because he punches a cop. He goes to jail.

Two years later. Elizabeth is visiting Jim in prison to let him know she’s been recruited for something called Terra Nova, but as punishment she isn’t allowed to bring the third child, who’s called Zoe. Jim tells her to go. She slips him a laser of some sort, hidden not so craftily in a re-breather (futuristic mask that prevents humanity from choking on its own waste). And through some magical set of circumstances I still can’t determine, despite multiple re-windings, Jim and Elizabeth somehow manage–without communicating directly–to hatch a detailed plan wherein Jim escapes prison (no idea how he actually accomplishes this, by the way), bribe some people, and smuggle their now five year old daughter into Terra Nova inside of a large backpack. I’m calling it MAGIC. Anyway, it’s not important. Look at the shiny lights! The swirling vortex! The crisp and wonderful film-quality visual effects! Woooooooo. (This show is gorgeous, by the way. It’s like my eyes are eating Thanksgiving Dinner. Or brownies. Or something equally as awesome or delicious.) Oh, and did I mention that Terra Nova happens to be a colony on an alternate version of Earth 85 million years ago?

Anyway, right before the whole Shannon family miraculously makes it through the time vortex (or whatever we’re supposed to call it), there are a couple of tense moments where the Shannon children behave stupidly and almost ruin everything instead of just following instructions and NOT almost ruining everything. Even Elizabeth turns around to stare soulfully into Jim’s eyes while they slo-mo communicate their wordless panic through their special telekinesis power of love, instead of just getting her ass through the vortex like she’s supposed to, because HI! She has an illegal baby on her back. And it’s probably getting pretty hot in there. Jim seems to be the most competent Shannon. He punches the guard in the gut and bolts through the vortex so fast he doesn’t even land on his feet. On the other side? A lush green jungle full of people who want to shoot the Shannons in the face, until they realize it’s just a baby in the backpack. No big deal. Happens all the time. With all of that settled, they begin the long trek to Terra Nova. And so, after 25 bajillion minutes, ends the pre-credits sequence. (Longest teaser since Battlestar Galactica, I’d bet. Maybe even longer, and that show was infamous for its long teasers.)

There is no theme song, but instead of getting cranky about it, let’s just go watch another one instead. Or how about this one? Or this one? I could go on forever. Do you see, showrunners/network executives/people who make these decisions, I don’t know? DO YOU SEE WHAT A GOOD THEME SONG CAN DO? You have a week until the next episode airs. Make this happen. I mean it.

Now that I have pumped myself up for the wrong show, let’s get back to the Shannons, who are all looking scruffily attractive and/or adorable and/or both (pick and choose, please) as they enter Terra Nova. As for Nathaniel Taylor, leader of Terra Nova colony, I have many adjectives with which to describe him, most of which are variations on “incredibly rugged,” “handsomly hirsute,” and “forcefully bearded.” Stephen Lang always gives off the impression that he’s just spent the past six months living wild in the desert, with no companions but the dust and the wind, and maybe some prairie dogs, gnawing on bones for survival, that he wasn’t born, but carved whole out of wild, jagged stone of the north, worn down over the ages by fierce wind and foul tempest. I feel like if I ever met him he would snap me in two, just by looking at me. Just by the sheer force of his ice cold will. What I’m saying is, good job, casting directors.

Taylor addresses the colonists, letting them (and us) know that the purpose of Terra Nova colony is to give humanity a second chance to right its wrongs, to not screw up this time. “Together we are at the dawn of a new civilization,” he says. If this sounds extremely familiar, it’s because it is. Terra Nova plays like a hodge podge of great sci-fi, borrowing bits and pieces and here and there, and putting them together in a new shape. Yeah, we’ve had bleak dystopian futures before, hundreds of them. We’ve done the third child is illegal thing. We’ve had humanity screwing itself up so badly it can only end in destruction. And we’ve had places where the rules of civilization no longer exist, places where characters seek redemption and resolution of guilt and shame. Terra Nova has the potential for all of that (plus dinosaurs!), and there’s nothing I like better than great potential. But I can also see Terra Nova easily wasting that potential, if it focuses more on plot than it does on theme, on action more than it does quiet moments of subtlety. I think this could be a show that appeals to a large group of people if it can manage to strike a balance between both sides. They’ve got some subtle stuff going on: the fact that Terra Nova colony was built in a circle wasn’t lost on me, nor was the fact that the Shannons’ youngest daughter is named Zoe, which comes from Ancient Greek and means “life.”

Speaking of Zoe, how cute is she? It’s been two years, and her father is practically a stranger to her. As they settle in to their new home, Jim takes a moment to re-bond with his illegal baby, and it pretty much melted my ovaries into goo, not gonna lie. But this is our first clue that Jim’s stint in prison has really messed with the family dynamic. We’ve even got one of those angry teenagers everyone loves so much. His name is Josh, but he hasn’t earned my respect yet, so I’m just going to call him Degrassi, because Landon Liboiron’s biggest role to date was on the Canadian teen drama, from 2009-2010. Degrassi’s teen rage is temporarily halted when Zoe goes missing, but the Shannons quickly find her outside, being lifted bodily into the air by a gigantic brontosaurus. Their terror quickly turns to glee, because hello, it’s a frickin’ dinosaur. There is wonder in the world again. (Can you believe I made it all the way to paragraph seven before linking to Jurassic Park? Usually I don’t make it past paragraph two, and that’s when I’m not writing about dinosaurs.)

Weirdly, there aren’t many moments of wonder in this two hour pilot. We’ve got the first sighting of dinosaurs, Zoe’s wonder at the clouds and the moon, and Jim’s triumphant shirtless weeding of the giant fence, but that’s about it. (Something about that scene made me want to go do physical labor in a beautiful wilderness, but I couldn’t put my finger on it . . .) There could be much, much more joy. Shouldn’t these people just be flabbergasted by their own lives? I would be if I were them, and I haven’t been living in a sweaty, airless hell for most of my life. Instead, we’ve got Degrassi whining all over the place about going to orientation, and how EVERYTHING IS THE WORST and WAH WAH WAH let’s run away into the jungle and drink away our sorrows with pretty girls named Skye. Skye, by the way, is awesome. I liked her before she put Degrassi in his place, but while they’re cutting up fruts (fruit/nuts), she totally pwns him about his daddy whining. She’s all, guess what, kid? Both of my parents are dead, so shut the front door on your mouth or I won’t fall in love with you sometime in the next thirteen episodes. He’s a little more bearable after that. Plus, he almost gets killed by a Slasher, so that’s fun. (Apparently there are not going to be Velociraptors in this series, by the way, so I want to know where I should lodge my complaint.) Meanwhile, the middle child, Maddy, is basically serving as Maddy Exposition, for all the character development she gets. Like Hermione Granger, she knows so many things that the other characters (and the writers) use her as a fount of information. It’s through Maddy that we learn of The Probe that was first sent through the vortex, the Probe which proved Terra Nova not only exists 85 million years in the past, but in an alternate time-stream (because archaeologists never found remains of the Probe in theirs). I like that she’s smart, but come on guys, there’s got to be a better way to get all that information out.

I’m not exactly sure where part one ends and part two begins, but it’s somewhere around the middle that we learn about two important things. One, Skye takes Degrassi into the forbidden zone, or whatever, and shows him some strange carvings all over the rock walls. They shine in the sun, and look very alien, so of course my first frenzied thought was ALIENS. Which means ALIENs and DINOSAURS . . . IN THE SAME SHOW. (You can imagine my disappointment when Taylor’s “crazy bastard” son turns out to be behind the carvings, for some reason we mysteriously don’t know yet.) And two, we meet the Sixers. What the fuzzity is a sixer? A Sixer is a person from the Sixth Pilgramage to Terra Nova (the Shannons are from the Tenth Pilgrimage), and every single Sixer has broken away from Terra Nova to form another colony, also for some reason we mysteriously don’t know yet. Mira (Christine Adams) leads the Sixers, who apparently believe there is some ulterior motive to the founding of Terra Nova colony. It’s their almost assassination of Taylor that gets Jim his dream job. Communing shirtlessly with nature just wasn’t doing it for him, you know, so when Jim saves Taylor’s life from a homicidal Sixer, Taylor gives him a job and then takes him up for his Mufasa moment up on the cliffs overlooking Terra Nova. It’s beautiful, but there is DANGER lurking in the jungle, and he’s not just talking about the dinosaurs.

After all this goes down, there is seriously about thirty-five minutes of almost straight action, and honestly, when this stuff starts happening (unless there are dinosaurs), my brain starts clicking and whirring and going BOOOOOP. So here’s what happened: while they’re up being lions on a cliff or whatever, Jim and Taylor spot some Sixers on the move for Terra Nova and hurry back, but on the way, all three vehicles are attacked by carnosaurs (AWESOME! I do like the dinosaurs), and the Sixers are trapped inside Terra Nova, which is when we meet Mira. (“Welcome to Paradise,” she tells Jim, gun in her hand, because Mira is IRONIC, see?) They are hostile towards one another, with lots of guns and threats and stuff. They negotiate, the Sixers leave. One of the vehicles comes across Degrassi and Skye’s vehicle (some other kids are there too, drinking Jungle Juice and basically being teenagers), but before they can get away with the power cells, they are attacked by a herd of Slashers. These Slashers trap the kids in the vehicle and things go BOOM and BANG and the good folks back at Terra Nova have to put on a rescue mission to rescue their idiot children from being eaten by dinosaurs (not a bad way to go, really). One idiot named Tasha is particularly stupid. She runs out into the jungle like the fool that she is, and I was going to give the show props for killing her and deleting her useless genes from the gene pool, but then they take the easy way out and let her live. Also, one kid gets his leg chewed on like a turkey leg, so that’s pretty cool.

It’s pretty predictable, actually. I expect some actual peril in the future, but for now I’ll have to settle for great scenes like the one between Skye and Taylor at the end. Maybe it’s just because Stephen Lang (he of the rocky face) and Alison Miller are just both really, really good at what they do, but there was a nice tenderness to their exchange that was undercut by just a hint of menace. Skye is a great liar, by the way. Most teenagers never learn this, but the secret to getting away with lying to adults is to confess to something bad, as Alison does when she tells Taylor they were drinking in the jungle, so they don’t expect anything worse from you. You’re confessing to bad behavior, so they’re so proud of you for that they completely lose their minds at how awesome and trustworthy they must be that they’d probably let you get away with murder. (Or so I’ve heard. Kids . . . don’t lie to your parents.)

And so we come to the end. And it’s a happy ending, of course, because it just ain’t that kind of show (yes, that’s a fanvid: DEAL WITH IT). As the Shannon clan hug themselves silly, looking up at the giant beautiful moon, I’m surprisingly not moved, and I’m a sucker for pretty much about everything. (One time I burst into tears while watching Galaxy Quest . . . probably a low moment). At the end here, my main issue is that I don’t have the answer to the main question this pilot should have been addressing, and that is: What is the conflict here? The show tries to derive conflict from the family drama of Degrassi and his dad, but it’s feeble and ends here in this group hug, so that’s not exactly something that’s going to drive the show. Is it going to be the Sixers? If so, what’s that really about? And what’s really going on beneath the surface? Is this a show about man versus nature, or man versus man? Is it going to turn into a nighttime soap opera, only pretending to be a thematic exploration of the redemption of humanity? It’s here that Terra Nova needs to be careful. It will sink or swim trying to answer this question, and I think it’s not a great sign that I don’t have much of a hint as to the answer after watching nearly two hours of show. How much of this show will be about colony versus colony? How much will be about exploration? How much will be family drama? I have no idea, but I’m in for the ride. I just hope my ride doesn’t crash and burn and get eaten by those Slasher things, because I take it back. Getting chomped by a made-up dinosaur ain’t how I want to go.

Tags: alex graves, allan loeb, brannon braga, craig silverstein, fox', genesis, jon cassar, rené echevarria, steven spielberg, terra nova, terra nova pilot