darthmocha said:
Based on the synopsis of Terra Nova on Fox's website and the advertising blitz they threw at us I did not have high hopes for the series to begin with. The whole idea of sending people back in time 85 million years to save the species had a huge number of plot holes, as is basic with any time travel story anyway, but the way they went about it was just plain dumb for a variety of reasons. I could argue the bad CGI, kinda bad acting, poor and lazy writing forever. When looking at Terra Nova I don't see these thing I see basic ignorance and glaring stupidity advertised for all to see.
First, when we first encounter the time tunnel thing or whatever they state that in dialogue its a one way trip only and that this is the 10th such mission to that time. So basically they can't communicate with the people they already sent if everything is one way? I mean radio waves, even laser communications exist within reality and the way they describe it you are completely cut off. So as a 'pilgrim' you could just be generally being sent to your death none the wiser. I mean there could be a pile of corpses dead on the other side and no one would have any clue.
Second, sending people back 85 million years is basically just suicide. None of the plants or animals may be edible since our bodes are adapted to the post-Pliocene world, more specifically the Pleistocene and our current Holocene. We are completely unadapted to the Cretaceous world. Not only the food, plant life would be drastically different since flowering plants were just starting to appear. Even the atmosphere could be deadly with differing oxygen levels and microbes we are completely unadapted for. It also works vice versa where a simple bacteria in our bodies could devastate the planet of that time period.
Lastly, is the ethnocentric way humanity is being saved. Apparently mankind encompasses Anglo-Saxon traditional white Americans. Now one can argue that some minorities are there, but they are still minorities. I mean it makes no sense whatsoever. So as long as American culture survives the rest of the world be damned? Last I checked America was on the downward slope of world power and I highly doubt would be able to enforce committing the rest of the world to death.
I could go on and on how bad this show is and what a retarded bunch of chimps the writers are for ignoring obvious things. Overall, is just an amazing cascade of failure and I hope I am not the only one who just hopes it goes away very fast.
Well, any of these problems exist within the "modern people on a pre-historical adventure" premise, whether it's one of the many version of "Land Of The Lost" or the BBC's "Primeval" which I think is what they are actually trying to imitate.
As far as the political comments on ethnicity, like it or not that's kind of the way the world is. The USA *is* the dominant world power, and honestly the "downward slope" is debatable because really what your seeing is more a result of US morality than anything, whenever someone talks about the US ever representing it's own interests and stopping this you get one of those "this is why the world hates America" cracks, or liberals rants. It's not so much a matter of can't, but won't.
Even if the US ceases to be a global super power in a traditional sense, to be honest it's been fairly said that the USA has conquered the world more efficiently with Starbucks and The Big Mac than other similar powers have done with military invasion. Our influance is likely to be more or less eternal. Not to mention the simple fact that most people globally at least know America and understand it's culture to an extent. A guy from say Brazil and a guy from Thailand are both liable to be pretty familiar with America, it's culture, and it's conventions, where they probably have next to no knowlege of each other. Thus when dealing with global media the USA works as a decent middle ground. What's more the recognized advancement of the US, even if we were to go from a super power to merely being another world power (which hasn't happened yet, and might not occur in the foreseeable future) we're actually the country most likely to be able to do something like this and pursue it with a degree of benevolence. The USA at least cares what other people think, compared to most nations, even fairly progressive ones who would be far more ruthless about it's exploitation. Again it comes down to the morality that has caused the US to gradually slip away from power. With all the left wing Anti-Americanism we can produce a show with a straight face which has poeople telling the govermental powers "noes! you will not exploit this for America, it's for all of humanity" because for all of the bad things we've done we have been known to actually take that attitude... one of the reasons why we can be swayed so easily by internatonal opinion.
I mean you might not LIKE what I'm saying here, but understand that more goes into this than you might think, and while it might be hip to knock the US and the way media involving us is produced, there are some good reasons for it.
That said I have my doubtes about the survival of this show, largely because it's not a premise that has had much in the way of lasting success for a while. I think "Primeval" which is what they are trying to catch on the coattails of, was only a moderate success at best, and arguably had a better set up, even if they have had to screw around with alternate realities every season to justify radical changes to the show.
