Terra Nova: So much promise... (1/2)

Remember Terra Nova? That show that seemed to combine Jurassic Park, Avatar, Lost and Stargate into an epic sci-fi family drama? Remember when we all thought it was going to be good? In our very first two-parter episode, Tom and guest host, Woody Laui, look back at one of the biggest let-downs in paleo TV...and the brief period when it looked like it wouldn't be. Join us as we enjoy Stephen Lang in his other role as a soldier in a fictional rainforest world, marvel at a set that's better made than most of the show going forward, and apply real evolutionary biology to a totally made-up species of dinosaur. Also, how many Jurassic Park and Avatar references can we squeeze into one episode? Answer: a lot. 

Find us on IG at: @dinosaurboxpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Dinosaur Box, the podcast where we dig up and study dinosaur TV shows to see what makes them thrive or go extinct. I'm your host, Thomas Gomersal, and joining me for the very first time on this podcast is a very special guest host. He is, like me, an ecology graduate with a keen interest in writing and storytelling, and unlike me, is also a published author. If you're a super fan of Westerns, you may already be familiar with him from his debut novella, Six Tales of Wealth, which I highly recommend checking out if you haven't yet. Please welcome to the Dinosaur Box, Woody Lowy.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Thank you so much for having me on, Thomas. So as Thomas said, uh, I also did an undergraduate degree in, or at least related to ecology. And uh we met through a mutual friend uh who was actually a diver himself. And um I think we had a very quick connection once we found out that we were both so much into storytelling and ecology.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, we had a lot of very interesting lunches where we found this out about each other. Most definitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

And you know, I think one of the things that drew me in the beginning was the fact that we not only were we interested in writing, we also had many genres that I think sort of coincided. I'm not as big of a sci-fi fan as I believe you might be, but I think we were both quite interested in a lot of things that have to do with creatures, either imaginary or real. And so I think that was also another point that we connected on.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, just in case anyone's interested, the mutual friend in question is Alex Croney, who some of you will remember from an earlier episode of this podcast that he and I hosted. So it's kind of come full circle. So, how are you feeling about being on your very first podcast, isn't it, Woody?

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Uh I would say as far as doing an official professional podcast, this would definitely be my first. I mean, the only real experience I had prior was at a high school extracurricular, which I think hardly counts. So I'm feeling a little bit nervous, but at the same time very excited. Uh, because I think that podcasts are a great medium nowadays for people to sort of um learn about other people who have similar or differing opinions or or learn new information while they're on the go. So it's my one of my favorite media nowadays to learn a new thing. So I'm very excited.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, it's also really good if you're like me and you're too lazy to make a YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

That's fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Um yeah. Um so also just very quickly, you are, as I mentioned, a published author. Do you want to say something just very, very briefly about your book?

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yes, of course. So the very first thing I published, as Thomas said earlier, is called Six Tales of Wealth. And uh it's a Western and follows five characters and is a collection of short stories that follows them through where they happen to coincide on one town. And it was released December of 2020 and is still available for those who would like to pick up a copy.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, well, it's appropriate that your debut novella is a Western because what we're covering today is, I guess, kind of a frontier story in itself, wouldn't you say? I would agree with that, yeah. Yeah. I am, of course, talking about Terra Nova. Okay, so by now you should be familiar with what goes in this part of the show. So here we go. Terra Nova is an American science fiction drama television series that aired on the Fox Network in 2011. The series follows the Shannon family, Dad Jim, Mum Elizabeth, and kids Josh, Maddie, and Zoe, as they established themselves as members of a colony in a parallel universe resembling the Cretaceous of 85 million years ago, fleeing the dystopian, overpopulated, hyperpolluted world of the mid-22nd century. The series was based on an idea by British writer Kelly Marcel, an executive produced by Steven Spielberg. It ran for one season before being cancelled in March 2012 due to low ratings and its unsustainably high production costs. So, uh Woody, this is a completely new show to you, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 4:17

This is a completely new show to me. Uh I had only really heard of the title, most likely through the numerous advertisements and trailers that I saw online, but that's the extent. Um, you know, what's your personal history?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, I likewise saw a lot of ads for it. And I would say definitely one of the things that was most successful about Terra Nova was the ad campaign because a lot of people got very excited for it. It was one of those things where the ads showed you just this really gorgeous looking show, like a beautiful looking world, and gave you just enough tidbits of what the show is about to get you interested. And it definitely paid off because the pilot was seen by nine million people. So it got off to a really great start commercially and critically as well. I mean, some were a bit more mixed than others, but on the whole, the critical reception was pretty positive. So I was definitely feeling very good about it, having seen the pilot, as were a lot of people. And then the second episode was also pretty strong. And then that was when the high morless ended, because after that, cracks started to develop in the show pretty quickly. And I remember just reading reviews of it every week, and each review was worse than the one before. And by about, I think, the maybe eighth or ninth episode, I was starting to realize, yeah, this isn't gonna get a second season. Um, so it's remembered mostly nowadays as a show that had a lot of people really excited for it at the beginning and had a lot of potential, but ultimately turned into a flop as it went on. A classic case of anticipation being better than the product.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

So that brings me to the way that we're going to do this review, which is we're gonna do it in two parts. The first part is going to be just looking at the pilot episode, the very first one. And the second will be looking at the rest of the show. Now, the reason we're doing that is because the pilot actually had kind of an interesting production history where it got passed around to quite a few people and actually had some pretty competent people in the business at the helm for at least some of its production. And as a result, I actually think it is considerably better than most of the show. So we're going to spend this first episode just discussing the pilot. So we're going to appraise what it did do right, what it didn't do right, and then we're going to spend the second episode covering the rest of the show, comparing it to the pilot and examining how it all fell apart. You could say this is a what went wrong review, at least in the second episode.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

So, Thomas, as I asked, um, well, as I was wondering earlier, what is your personal history with Terra Nova?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Well, I kind of discovered the show by accident. I don't know if you've ever been on fan wikis where you scroll down to the very bottom of a page and you see a bunch of pages, not just on the same wiki, but also from other related wikis.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

I've been on some of those. Yes, I know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yeah. Well, I was on primeval wiki back in 2011, and I scrolled down to the bottom of one page and I saw a page for this show called Terra Nova, which had this really beautiful background of these avatar-like mountains and pterosaurs flying around. I thought, okay, what's this? I clicked on it and I read a basic premise of what the show was about, and that got me hooked. I thought, okay, this looks interesting. I then ended up watching a teaser trailer, which definitely seemed promising, if pretty dinosaur-like. It had a couple of snippets, the Brachiosaurus feeding scene and the carnotaurus chase scene, but it was enough to really get me into it. Like I say, the advertising for this show was very good at getting you interested with just a few bits of it. And in this case, I just liked the look of the set and the scenery, and the dinosaur stuff was tantalizing enough for me to be invested in it and want to check out the show when it eventually aired later in the year. And also, primeval was coming to an end, and I was keen to try a new dinosaur show. I think one of the things that really interested me was reading articles that implied that this would be a show whose world was very much unlike anything I'd ever seen in paleo media before. There was an article I remember reading where they said we're not just going to have dinosaurs, we're going to focus on a whole ecosystem with lots of different prehistoric organisms, including some speculative ones. I mean, it seemed a lot like it was going to be like Avatar, which I had loved in both its visuals and its world building. And the idea of like a dinosaur version of Pandora was just the most amazing thing in the world to me. And I just wanted that so, so badly. I was just so pumped for this. I mean, I was already very interested in world building, and I really wanted to see how a human society would operate to be eco-friendly and to coexist with dinosaurs. So, as I've said, there was a lot of advertising and a lot of build-up and a lot of supplementary material was released in the weeks leading up to the premiere. So, very much like primeval, I was on the internet all the time looking for new updates, just going on fan sites or forums, whatever, to see is there a new trailer, is there a new something else, or whatever. There was actually a brief period where I thought that this show had a good chance of taking primeval's place as my favorite dinosaur drama, which, if you knew how much of a primeval gig I was at the time, was no mean feat. That was not something I would have said lightly. It sounds like they did a good job with the marketing then, because that's a pretty big statement. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And the supplementary material was just so catered to my taste in world building. A lot of it was things like encouraging people to get vaccines before they went to Terra Nova, saying what they could and couldn't bring, like you can't bring your cat or your dog or any fruits or vegetables from our world, which I think was quite clearly based on Australian customs. Um, and yeah, I was really, really excited for it. I actually managed to get some of my friends interested in it, even my two friends, Alex and Ben, who hated Prime Full. Um, yeah, that was a pretty big thing for me because at the time I didn't really have any shows that I liked that I could talk about with my friends. So this was actually something I was really pleased about. And we were really, really excited for the rest of the show. Like we loved the pilot. And I remember us talking in geography classes, saying, when's the next episode? Our geography teacher actually had to say to us a couple of times, dinosaurs are not going to be on the exams. Um, yeah. Uh so there was that very brief period before we ended up being horribly disappointed from the third episode onwards, to borrow a quote from our boy George R. Martin. Sometimes when a dream comes true, it's not as cool as the dream. Unfortunately so. Yes, very much unfortunately so, because this show really had so much potential that it completely threw away. But not for the pilots, at least, which is what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the brief halcyon period where it looked like it was going to be good.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

So, uh Thomas, why don't you tell us a little bit about the history of the production of the show, a little bit of background information for our audience?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yes, absolutely. So Terra Nova was actually based on a short story called Gondwana Land Highway by British screenwriter Kelly Marcel, who nowadays has actually gone on to have a pretty successful career in Hollywood. She was the writer of Saving Mr. Banks. She co-wrote Cruella. She also, I think, was a co-writer on the Venom movies. So something of a mixed bag in terms of her screenwriting credit, but on the whole, she's definitely a very competent screenwriter, I would say. So at the time she came up with this idea, she was working at a video rental shop in London. And she got the idea while she was discussing Gondwana Land with her father over Sunday lunch. Gondwanaland being a landmass where all the continents were joined into one back in the Triassic period. And she decided to write this short story for him based on this conversation they'd had, also combining elements of a Stephen Hawking time travel book and Al Gore's climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Later, she ended up turning it into a script and actually wrote out a series Bible outlining the characters, the world, and how the show would play out over five seasons. But I must assume that this was just a case where she kind of went on a creative high for a bit and then started to come down. Because later, when she presented an outline for this show and also a pilot for a death row drama called Westbridge that she was developing to her British agent, her agent decided to go with Terra Nova. And in an interview later on, she said that even at the time, Terra Nova was, quote, my least favorite idea, which of course did not bode well for the project moving forward, as we will see. So having sold this to her agent, she was due to sell it originally to Carnival Films, who are the makers of Downton Abbey, but she was persuaded by American producer Aaron Kaplan, who her agent had sent the script to as well, to pitch the show to US networks instead. So she went to LA and she works on a pitch with another screenwriter, Craig Silverstein, and got a lot of offers from networks within a week. Ultimately, they chose to go with the Fox Network. And then Kelly Marshall returned to London and wrote the full pilot with Craig Silverstein over Skype. Not long after that, Steven Spielberg decided to join the show as an executive producer after reading her script, much to her pleasant surprise. But ultimately, this was kind of a honeymoon phase that started to fizzle out and run into a lot of problems moving forward. Because ultimately, both Kelly Marshall and Craig Silverstein decided to quit Terra Nova, although they are credited as writers for the pilot. By this point, Kelly Marcel had really just lost all interest in working on the show, essentially. And she wanted to work on Westbridge much more instead, which is ironic because ultimately that show never got made. She also felt that the network was taking Terra Nova too far from her original vision.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that the writer herself was a little disinterested in the project probably didn't help immensely with the way the project moved forwards, because if they had decided to take it away from what she had initially envisioned, I can't imagine that that helped with her enthusiasm, even though Steven Spielberg was one of the executive producers.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

I actually have to wonder if one of the reasons why she had issues with the direction they were taking is because in the pilot, they don't specifically name climate change as the reason why the world was destroyed. And given that this was being aired by the Fox Network, I suspect that may have been done so as not to anger old man Murdoch.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Yeah, I think it's quite possible that did happen because if you think about it, she based her short story partially on one of the most influential climate change documentaries of all time. But in both the Finnish pilot and in the original draft of her script, which I actually found a PDF on online, there was no explicit reference to it, not even a name drop. And later in an interview, the showrunners said that they deliberately left the cause of the Earth's destruction vague. So one does have to wonder if this is a notoriously conservative network leaving its fingerprints over her script. Potentially, I would reckon so, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is the same network who refused to air an episode of Family Guy for taking a pro-choice dance on abortion. So that's true. That's true. Yeah. Um, so this doesn't seem too far out of their ballpark, but we'll leave the conspiracy theories to them. Yes. Um, so um actually getting back to what you said about Steven Spielberg, Kelly Marcel did clash with him a bit as well because he wanted more focus on dinosaurs, and she didn't really. Um and apparently neither did the writers of the later episodes.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Somehow that doesn't really surprise me that Steven Spielberg was quite fixated on dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

No, of course not. Jurassic Park director, right here.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, that wasn't the only decision that ultimately ended up sinking the show. Sure. Um, so with Kelly Marcel and Craig Silverstein gone, Brannan Brager of Star Trek and 24 Fame was brought on as a showrunner, essentially at gunpoint, because he really was not very keen on the whole thing from the start. He actually said in a podcast that he considered the script, quote, tormented, unwieldy, and the most strained idea I've ever heard of.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Wow, those are some choice words.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah, we will get much more into detail of the other choice words he had about Terra Nova later on. Um, but basically, he had signed a contract with Fox at that time. So they could force him to do whatever they wanted. So he went on to edit the script with another writer, David Fury, also 24, who himself later left due to creative differences with Brannan Bracker. And so what ended up happening is the second half of the script is almost totally different from the original draft, while the first half is more or less the same.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Wow. So I so I mean that definitely contributed to the inconsistencies, I suppose, that people probably experience moving forwards in the season.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah, and the production itself didn't help matters either, because this was famously one of the most expensive shows ever made at the time. The pilot alone cost 20 million dollars.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

I mean, that is that is almost, you know, that's more than independent movie money. I mean, independent studios usually work with what a like maybe under 10 million for production.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah, and um, then going back to what I said about Spielberg making not the best decisions in the world, he actually chose Australia as a filming location. The original suggestion was to film in Hawaii, but he vetoed that because he didn't want it to look too much like Jurassic Park, which he had filmed in Kauai. But of course, because Australia at the time was the most expensive place to do anything in the world, that of course ballooned the cost a lot. And what happened was Fox then had to order an entire 13-episode season instead of just a pilot in order to justify the cost, which from what I've heard was pretty unprecedented at the time. So, what that meant was that the writers had to write the entire show at once, as opposed to being able to see what worked in the pilot and what didn't, and then adjust things accordingly. So they kind of had to go into this whole thing blind.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

So it sounds like there were a lot of obstacles besides just the creative differences with the production of the show. And for those who are wondering, I still have not seen the rest of this first season. I have watched only the pilot.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Well, actually, I want to mention something else as well. They've actually built a full set for this, which looks gorgeous, and I could go on all day about that, but it did also add to the cost. It was extremely expensive to build and maintain. And they also had problems with flooding, which only added to problems more. Right, obviously, yes. Yeah, so all of this was a portent of the show's ultimate fate, and um, that's what we're going to discuss in the next episode. Um, yeah, anyway, let's get into the actual pilot itself.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

So, why don't we talk about what I believe is probably your favorite element of the show, even though it wasn't the writer's initial intended fixation. The dinosaurs, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:31

I imagine. Of course. So, just a quick bit of background. There are three species of dinosaur in the pilots. Jack Horner, who was the paleontological consultant on Jurassic Park, was the consultant on this show too. And the dinosaur effects themselves were created by German effects company Pixamondo, who later would go on to create the dragons in Game of Thrones.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Okay, so that's a powerhouse company right there.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, definitely. I would actually say that with these effects, certainly the Brachasaur and Carnotaurus, I would say these are on par with the dragons in Game of Thrones, wouldn't you agree?

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Do you know what I remember before I started watching the pilot, I was thinking to myself, I wonder how the CG holds up to my eyes now that are so conditioned to 2020 visual effects. And I remember the first dinosaur that appeared on screen, I said to myself, huh, that's pretty good. You know, I think you can you can tell that it's CG, but in no way does it take you out of the experience, which is the which is really the main thing. I think as long as it's good enough where it keeps you in the experience, you're all right. I think one thing that definitely helped was the fact that they were very clever about their camera work. For example, when the Brachiosaur first appears, I think they did an amazing job with choosing angles that really showcased the size of the Brachiosaur. And I think that they were angles that presented enough detail where it could really bring the creature to life.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, I think it was a great decision of them to shoot this from the perspective of Zoe, the five-year-old daughter, because it shows just how huge this is from her pretty short perspective. You know, at that age, she already sees the world as massive. So to shoot this from her perspective just really amplifies how huge this thing is. I'd say it actually does a slightly better job than Jurassic Park does. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Ooh, you know, only I suspect, only because Jurassic Park really wanted to show off their animatronics. I suspect. Oh yeah? Well, you know, if you're going to have animatronics, you want people to see the whole thing. So potentially the priorities were just a bit different. I'm not entirely sure. Don't quote me on that. I could be entirely wrong, but I think that could have influenced the decisions of um camera placement.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

I'm thinking more in terms of this scene where they see the brachiosaurus for the first time. It does shoot from their perspective as well. Um, I think Terra Nova did it better for shooting it from the perspective of a five year old. Sure, sure. I I can agree with that. Speaking of the brachiosaur, the scene in which they first appear was actually Stephen. Spielberg's idea. It's not in the original script. So, what happens in this scene is Zoe goes outside to the perimeter fence of the colony and she sees these thrachiosaurs eating trees just outside it. And she picks up a branch they've dropped and she holds it up to them. And one of them bends its necks down to feed from it and is then joined by the rest of the herd who do the same. This was inspired by a trip Steven Spielberg took to, I think it was the San Diego Zoo, where he saw kids feeding giraffes in a similar manner, and thought to himself, what if they were dinosaurs?

SPEAKER_02 22:34

It was an interesting decision because I think right away it sets the tone that the dinosaurs aren't just there to be terrifying creatures, which I think was a really important distinction to make between what the role of the dinosaurs is in Terra Nova compared to the role of dinosaurs in many other dinosaur films.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Yeah, yeah. And just a little something for all of you paleontology pedants who were saying brachiosaurs are Jurassic dinosaurs. You are right for the most part, but there were Cretaceous species of brachiosaurs, albeit in the early Cretaceous, so a bit of time before the period that Terra Nova is set, 85 million years ago. I personally felt when I was going through what species this might be, I decided they were sauroposidon, which is a Cretaceous species of brachiosaur from Oklahoma and Texas. But that's just my own suggestion. Um, but you'll also be pleased to hear, Woody, that the brachiosaurs are probably the most frequently recurring dinosaurs in the show.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

I think that would be one of the elements that would keep me coming back. If I were a fan and I wasn't watching this for the podcast, I think the brachiosaurs would have been a very attractive element of the pilot that would have kept me wanting to come back to watch the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

So, anyway, after the first dinosaur scene in the show, which is the herbivore, we then not long afterwards get our very first carnivore, Carnotaurus.

unknown 23:54

What the hell is that?

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Carnotaurus. I hate Carnotaurus. Previously seen in Disney's dinosaur as the main antagonist.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Yeah, so the Carnotaurus was an interesting appearance for me. I think this with the Brachiosaur, I wasn't too distracted by the CG. The Carnotaurus, I was a little bit, but only because I was looking for it. Oh, yeah, how so? Well, I mean, because prior to even watching the show, I was already curious about the computer graphics. And so I think when a Carnotaurus appeared, I was definitely looking to see if I felt as if the differences in technology have uh well, if it's aged at all. And and I would say that not enough where it's a problem, right? And I and I think that there is a slight obsession with making everything photo real these days. But you know, having something photo real doesn't necessarily mean that your story is going to be told correctly. So I I thought that it was just fine, actually.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

What did you think of the way they use them in a car chase scene?

SPEAKER_02 24:53

It's interesting. I ooh, you know, this this sort of slides into that realm where I feel like I wouldn't understand the ecological justification for a carnivore to expend so much energy to get prey out of a metal box, which is essentially what their car is, right? Um so I think it it branches a little bit into that realm where carnivores are just being carnivores for no real reason. They just have to eat the thing that they're chasing.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Do you feel that way about the T-Rex car scene in Jurassic Park?

SPEAKER_02 25:26

I suppose a little bit, definitely a little bit. I think any time that you see a carnivore expending energy unnecessarily to chase their prey, it becomes a little bit of a question of why. Because for any anyone who studies ecology, you know, we know that energy is very, very precious. It's a luxury resource to creatures.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

So yeah, although you mentioned this when we were watching it, I think you said that given that at the time the show takes place, humans have colonized this world for about 10 years. So by this point, probably carnivores in this world have learned to recognize humans as a food source. And so maybe from that perspective, that's why they're willing to expend energy chasing them down in cars.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

That is true. I I suppose um that is a point that I made while we were watching the show. And I think to add on to that is that there probably aren't uh there isn't a species out there that is that size that is as numerous as people are, right? Because I think with humans you have a lot of them, and we're not very fast compared to dinosaurs that are about our height. Any two-legged dinosaur hour height can run significantly faster than us. And so I imagine to a bigger carnivore like a carnotaurus, actually, we'd comparatively be probably easier prey when we're not in the car, at least.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Funnily enough, at the time that this episode aired, there was a study released by the University of Alberta which revealed that Carnotaurus was actually one of the fastest theropods. So it was an excellent choice for a chase scene.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Yes, definitely. If that's the case, then absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah, what they found was that basically theropods have the carnivorous dinosaurs, for those of you not in the know, have special muscles in their tails, which also attach to their thigh bones. So when these muscles contract, they pulled the leg back and generated a running stroke. What this study found was that Carnotaurus, relative to its body size, had very large tail muscles. So it could have generated a very powerful running stroke.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

Okay, so I mean, if evidence of those biomechanics stack up, then that makes a convincing case for choosing the carnotaurus as the animal for chasing.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

I think it's just a coincidence because as I said, this study came out shortly after I think the episode aired. So it was just a lucky coincidence. I mean, sometimes you need that, right? So yeah. I do want to say just very briefly, I do like the designs of the Carnotaurus. The warty skin is actually very true to life because we actually have skin impressions of Carnotaurus that showed they had a lot of skutes and knobs on their skin. I don't know if you remember this, but there's also a very brief scene where one of them snatches a human off the top of a car and it has this really nice spotting on it, whereas the other one doesn't. And I think to me that suggests that it's a male and a female.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Sure. So they were trying to display a bit of sexual dimorphism for those uh for those ecologists out there who like a bit of terminology thrown around.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah, like this this sort of shit is what really uh gets to me as an ecologist. Like this is what really drives me in. I like I love seeing these principles applied in shows and movies.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Yes, and and it's funny because I think that even people who don't know the theory, the ecological theory, I think our eyes are so trained to understand what feels real and what doesn't, you know, and so having those little details, even if people don't understand the technical background of those details, it really adds to the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Yeah, this is another reason why I really loved Avatar, and by extension, why I thought I was going to really love Terra Nova, because Avatar to me really felt like it was a real ecosystem on Pandora. There were just so many things I can't really articulate them all off the top of my head, but just watching that movie, I felt like I was seeing a real ecosystem. And I'm saying this as somebody who was studying environmental systems in high school at the time. So I had a much more enhanced experience seeing that world than I think maybe other people did. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Yeah, I mean, potentially, I imagine that anyone with a bit more technical knowledge would probably have a perhaps a more interesting perspective or experience.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah. Anyway, speaking of fictional ecosystems, let's talk about the very first speculative dinosaur in this show, the slasher, real name Aseraptor, meaning slashing thief in Latin, but not on Google Translate.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Slasher Rock! Go, go, go, go, go, go!

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Yeah, so I thought that when they first appeared, the design was reminiscent of a real dinosaur, uh, the Overaptor, if I'm not mistaken. Correct me if that's wrong, but uh no, no, you're you're you're right.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

It is reminiscent of that species with the big head crest. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

And I thought that overall the design was quite intriguing, and I thought that the way they moved looked very good.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Yeah, the interesting thing about the slashes, um, the first interesting thing is the reason they're called that is because the males have barbs on the ends of their tails, which they use in hunting and presumably also in battles over mates. The other thing is they're not actually raptors in the same family as Velociraptor and Troodon and species like that. Because if you take a close look at their feet, you'll notice they don't have that killing claw that Velociraptor and its ilk has. They have the standard three-toed feet of any normal theropod.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Okay, I did not notice that detail. I that was this in perhaps some supplementary information that they were giving, because I don't believe there was any shot where it was extremely clear.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Um, there is there is a shot where you see the whole body. It's when the slasher is standing in front of the car at night. You see its whole body and it's calling. It's very quick and you have to be looking for it specifically, but you actually do see shots of its feet and you see there's no big claw there.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Okay, wow. Well, that's very observant of you, but uh, that's an interesting observation.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Actually, I have a theory about that crest of theirs, which is that I think it's used to amplify calls in the forest. Um because we see in the show they do call to members of the pack during hunting. And crests have been used in other dinosaurs to amplify calls, most famously in hadrosaurs, the dubbird dinosaurs. And some species of forest dwelling hornbill also use their crests for the same purpose.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Right. So it could be an acoustical advantage.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yeah, it helps to amplify calls in a way that's more necessary when you live in enclosed environments like forests.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Right, right, where uh the vegetation is very dampening.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah, exactly. Now, I thought something that's unusual about the slasher's tails, it's very flexible, which is very unusual for theropods. They typically had stiff tails to aid balance and they had no ornamentation. It's not like stegosaurus or ankylosaurus, where you had tail weapons there. I think the closest example you would get to that in a real-world theropod would be the tail fin of Spinosaurus, and that was used for swimming, not for combat.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

I imagine though, that having such an ornament, it would eventually result in some sort of well, mating behavior between males, perhaps. Because I think in most creatures where you have some sort of I don't want to call it a weapon, but some sort of ornament that can do a bit of physical damage, it often is used to some degree within the same species during mating.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

I actually thought quite a bit about how this could be selected for or why it might be useful for males to have this. So the obvious answer is used for fighting over females, but I think it also would play some role in the development of slasher societies too, because later in the show there is an episode where you see a male and a female slasher forming a mated pair together prior to forming a full pack, which to me suggests a similar structure to wolves, where only the dominant pair breeds, and then the rest of the pack is made up of their adult offspring who help with hunting and caring for younger siblings. So it could be that during those early days, when it's just the two of them, the male could use his tail barb to protect his mates and his young. And so females would select males with tail barbs for protection during those vulnerable periods. And it would also then be beneficial to her sons to have tail barbs inherited from their father. So they could be better hunters and be more attractive to females. So through that mechanism, that trait would be more likely to proliferate through the population.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Yeah, I would I definitely agree with that. Um and actually, you've really thought this through because that is uh a trait that I think makes the most sense, right? I think the selection in terms of male competition uh is most likely secondary to something like that. Because I I mean, if they do in fact venture around in pairs and they have to protect their young from creatures that are bigger than themselves, then that in fact would be a trait that's very likely to be selected for.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Yeah, I also don't think it's the primary means by which males compete for a mate because slashes, it's not very well shown in the pilot because of the lighting, but males actually do have very colorful plumage. It's black, blue, yellow, and red. You see some concept out of them, it's really very gorgeous. And also they made an animatronic for some of the close-up shots, where if you see the video of how they made that, they really do give it these really attractive colors.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Oh wow. Okay. Uh, I mean, I yeah, I haven't seen any of the supplementary material either, for those who are wondering. So uh this is news to me, but that makes a lot of sense then. If they've got colors, then that's probably more likely the way by which they were selected for.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

But as we've seen also, the tail barb is used for attack because they use it during the scenes where they are hunting Josh and his friends. I actually had some thoughts on this too, which is that I think males and females play different roles in the hunt. And in terms of attack, it could actually be quite beneficial for the males to have that because it allows them to inflict damage on their prey without having to get too close to them. So you reduce your risk of injury.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

That's true, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

And then what you probably noticed in the pilot is that it was always the males attacking first. So they would always slash at the car, they would always ram it themselves. So I think maybe what happens in slasher packs, if anyone from Terra Nova's writing staff is listening to this, I would love it if you could tell me if this was in fact your intention. Um, but I suspect that what might happen is that during a hunt, males will probably lead the attack and will use their tails to slash at the ligaments and the underbellies of prey to immobilize them. So you cut the hamstrings and then the females would move in to finish them off.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Oh, wow. Okay. I you know, I hope that someone does confirm that theory because one of the things I definitely felt when I was watching it was there was sort of no premise to their carnivorous behavior. Um, I I think this is even more so than with the Carnotaurus, where I felt like the slashers were very much attacking just to attack, and it wasn't really clear why it was just the males attacking.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Yeah, I actually have thoughts on something they could have done to improve that attack scene. We'll get to that in just a minute. Also, do you remember the scene where they drag one of the kids out of the car and they chew on his leg while he's lying there unconscious? Yes. That, according to a behind-the-scenes interview with Jack Horner, was inspired by what's called the raptor prey restraint model.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Our real raptorial dinosaur, we think we're very much like birds in that they would start eating before they actually killed you.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

So, this was a study that came out in 2011 looking at Deinonychus, which suggested that raptors would actually use their toe claws to pin prey down under their bodies and then feed on them while they were still alive. It was based on morphological similarities between the feet and legs of Deinonychus and those of birds of prey that show this behavior.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Okay. Interesting. I um, you know, this is all news to me, right? And I think that this supplementary information is very useful, actually. Because I think the only real downfall of the slashes, as much as I thought they were really cool, is just I wish there was a bit more premise to the way they behaved in that first episode. But then but then again, this is coming from somebody with a bit more of an ecological background.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yeah, you might be able to tell who's more of the paleo enthusiast on this podcast. Listeners. I was definitely more of a paleo enthusiast when I was a younger child, but I gotta say though, that for someone whose paleo enthusiasm has waned as they've gotten older, you're still pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, I think it's waned to the extent that my interest shifted to extant creatures instead of extinct creatures. But that is that is extant, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Yeah, extant for those not in the gnome means not extinct, so still alive. Yes. Actually, speaking of problems with the slashers, this is something I have with Jurassic Park as well, which is I felt that they were not really demonstrating much intelligence. So often in fiction, they build raptors up as being really smart, but they don't do very much to demonstrate it. In Jurassic Park, the extent they do is that they open doors, and then in Jurassic Park 3, there's a scene where they snap a guy's neck but leave him still alive as bait to tempt some other humans down from a tree, which that's actually really clever, I thought. But that's about as far as it's ever gone.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

Yes, I would agree. I I would think that if they presented more pack hunting behavior, I think it would demonstrate more realistic intelligence of such creatures.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

They did show pack hunting behavior, it's just it's not terribly um, it's not terribly well coordinated.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

No, I mean that was less pack hunting behavior and more so just a group of raptors hunting, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Now, leading on a little bit from the slashers, there was another dinosaur which was hinted that it would appear in the pilot based on a blurry picture of the banner for Terra Nova, which was a hadrosaur. Now, when I heard that, I actually envisioned this scene of Josh and his friends encountering a herd of hadrasaurs briefly. And then later, when the kids have to take refuge in the car, you have a whole stampede of hadrosaurs being chased by the slashers through the river and past the car itself. And then what would happen is the slashers would fail in their hunt, which would lead to them turning their attention to the kids, as opposed to what happens in the show where they just go for the humans outright from the start. Right. And I think that this scene would have added more context to why they were so determined to get at the kids, why they would want to spend all this energy ramming the car, slashing off bits of it with their tails. It would have made them more like real animals rather than just monsters. You know, they only they would only have gone for humans after failing to catch their natural prey.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

Right, right. And and I think it seems like a very trivial detail, but I think it would have been very good for context.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Yeah, it's interesting how things you wouldn't think would make a big impact actually can make a huge difference in a story. So I think the thing that's really great about the world of Terra Nova in the pilot is that it is very immersive. Even with the future world that they start off in, it's a pretty standard blade runner type dystopia. Everything's black, gray, and brown. Apparently, they're still burning fossil fuels because you can see smoke coming from chimneys. So an encouraging sign of how much we'll learn from our mistakes in the future. And also, there are these other small details that show this is a very authoritarian world. So the main conflict of act one of the pilot is that the Shannon family actually breaks a law which says that you cannot have more than two children because they end up having Zoe. And for that infraction, Jim ends up going to prison, which is what sets up a lot of the drama within the family for the rest of the episode.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

I thought that the world building for the first act was less significant, I think, than the world building in the second act.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Because the first act was a lot more about the characters themselves. And then, of course, when they get to Terra Nova itself, it's a complete turnaround. You go through the portal, there's an instant color change, these vibrant greens, bright red flowers, blue skies. It just shows you how alive this place is in contrast to the one they've come from. I actually wonder if they used a specific lens or setting on the camera to heighten the colors of the world they were filming, because it really just jumps out at you.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

Yeah, I mean, I reckon there was probably some sort of color grading to emphasize how gray the first world was and then how vibrant the second world was to amp up the contrast between the two places.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

I want to say as well, Terra Nova, I think, is one of the most inviting dinosaur worlds I've ever seen on TV.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

Yeah, I think one of the issues I've had with a lot of futuristic sci-fi is anytime there's a camp in a new world, it feels more like an open-air prison sometimes, more so than a new colony.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

Yeah, like Hell's Gate and Avatar.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

Right. Uh, because for example, you know, when we get to Terra Nova, the first thing I noticed was the fence, right? That the outer fence of their camp. It's not this metal electrified fence that nobody can get out of. It's actually just a fence made of big wooden logs with vertical metal supports in between them that people can actually just crawl out of. There's a scene where one of the protagonists and a side character just crawl straight out of the camp. And I thought that was a very great detail to making the world more inviting because you're not going there to be prisoners, right? You're going there to colonize and start a new human population.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Great detail or design flaw?

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Oh, I don't know. That's a good question. I mean, I they'll have to deal with the smaller dinosaurs, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Um, yeah, but not even just the set, but also the ecosystem itself, comparing it to things like the various impossible pictures documentaries. You had prehistoric worlds filmed in real locations too, like you do in Terra Nova, but I don't feel they were ever really as beautiful as this. They weren't as colorful and vibrant. You felt like the animals themselves belong there. You didn't feel like you necessarily would want to live there. But the fact that they chose to shoot this in a really beautiful part of Australia means you could have real rainforest, real waterfalls. There's very little green screen or CG backgrounds in this pilot. It all feels so real and it feels so beautiful. It does to me feel like Pandora on Earth.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

I agree with it. And I think it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Complete with the CGI mountains that they very clearly crib from Avatar.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Yes. I will say I think there's something to be said about filming on location where all the details of the rainforest are really hard to replicate. And I think as humans, we're so used to seeing nature that whenever something is replicated and it's not quite organic enough, we notice it. Even if we can't pinpoint exactly what it is, I think something in our brain says, Oh, that doesn't seem quite right.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Unless you're James Cameron and you've got a shit ton of money for your effects department. Yeah, okay, sure. I think it was a good decision that they chose to set this, as I mentioned in the summary. This is in a parallel universe. They're not going back in time. And so, as Maddy mentions, that means there's no butterfly effect. Right. That's always the problem with time travel shows, is that they tend to mostly ignore that inconvenient detail about time travel, which is not necessarily a problem, but it is a logical flaw. And I think it was a good choice of Terra Nova to find a way to deal with that.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Yeah. That was a pretty clever little loophole they found.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

I also really love how there are so many small details to this world that just make it feel so much more lived in. I mean, like for instance, I don't know if this is medically sound, but when the colonists first go through the portal from the future world where they have to use special machines to breathe to Terra Nova, they actually have a hypoxic reaction to breathing high oxygen air. And Jim the dad actually collapses because his lungs are not used to breathing such clean air.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

He's going into hyperoxic shops, CO2 infusion now.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

And then there's a scene later on where the kids are having to drink a special algae mixture because real food has a lot of enzymes that their bodies aren't used to. It does create a bit of a plot hole later when Josh eats a real fruit and for some reason doesn't puke it up later. I think he had no reaction whatsoever. I actually feel it could have come in handy in the slasher scene when, like, if one of them smashed its head through the car, if Josh ended up puking on it and then that drove him away, it would have been a grows-out scene, but it would have been a payoff for what was set up.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Yeah, the protagonists seem to have very little issue with adapting to the new conditions.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Going back to what they mentioned in the article of how there were other components of this ecosystem other than dinosaurs, I think they did a good job of teasing some of those. Like when Elizabeth, who's a doctor, is in the medical building for turnover, one of her very first patients is being given a giant leech to suck out excess oxygen in his blood. And then you also have things like there's a giant centipede that appears. There's a kind of fruit called a frat portmanteau of fruit and nuts that the teenagers Josh befriends use for making alcohol. And I think is actually one of the only fictitious plants ever used in Terra Nova.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Throughout the whole season.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yes. Oh, okay. I would have hoped for more. So would I. Um, also, you find that this world has its own diseases as well, because there's a scene where Sky mentions that her parents died of a disease called sensillic fever. It just provides an additional layer of complexity to this ecosystem that sadly was never really expanded on very much. But speaking of something that really delivered fully, and I would say is one of the best things about Tono as a whole, let's talk about that gorgeous set.

unknown 46:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

So you've mentioned already how you liked how it didn't have an electric fence like Jurassic Park.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Well, yeah, and I mean, besides that, I thought that it did a very good job with creating little bungalows. And to some degree, I thought the bungalows were somewhat reminiscent of buildings you would see perhaps in Central or South America. You know, they weren't very tall, but they were very well constructed. And I thought the colors were somewhat reminiscent because you do get buildings with a lot of colors.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Yeah, beautiful shades of yellow and blue.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

And even the interior was well, the the interiors didn't have as much detail, but I thought they made the interiors nice, which makes sense, right? You're building homes for these people, it's not a refugee camp.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

So, yeah, the interior of that house that Shannon's walking is so nice. Like I would like to live there, it's very light and airy. It reminds me a little bit of an ecolodge I stayed in in Borneo the year Terra Nova came out.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Right. It's very modern construction on the inside, and I thought that was a very nice detail. Because again, I think a lot of shows or movies in this genre they have very stark interiors, right? Very industrial, sort of very pragmatic interiors. So it was nice to see something where they really value the comfort and quality of life of the people that were going to be inhabiting those houses.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

And the level of detail in this set, my my god, it's Harry Potter-esque. Besides the little things you'll see if you pay close attention. There was a behind-the-scenes video from the daily of Naomi Scott, who plays Maddy, and Alison Miller, who plays Sky, giving a tour of the set where you just see how much detail went into it. When you go to the marketplace, they have prosthetic bugs on sticks being barbecued. They actually had a kind of fish which had teeth that were actually shark because Naomi Scott pricked her finger on one of them. And you see little dishes of spices like you see in India, the solar panels on the windows, all the non-residential structures made from bamboo and other woods. They've put vines all over the fences. It just adds this really eco-friendly, inviting feeling to it.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

And you know, I had to think about this. So there are scenes in other movies where it's like a bazaar, maybe in Morocco or some Islamic country that has that sort of aesthetic, right? There can be a lot of detail in that scene with the vendors and all of their products. But I think one big thing that makes Harry Potter and to a large extent the set of Terra Nova really effective is that there is continuation between each section. As in you can almost see a map of the set in your mind, and it's not just one disjointed location after another. There's an actual flow, and you do feel like it is one coherent location that your brain can follow. And I think that's what makes it really effective. For example, that market, well, it's not a full-on market scene, but they do show a market, right? That could have easily just been a row of stalls with a green screen behind it, and it could have looked really detailed with somewhat tight shots because you can just get a look at all the items that they place there as props. But then in most movies, it would just cut away from that and you would never have any concept of where the market is in relation to the rest of the location.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Before we move on, let's talk about probably my favorite detail in the set, which was that dinosaur skull desk Commander Taylor has.

SPEAKER_02 49:56

Yes, this was something you pointed out while we were watching the pilot.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

That was so cool.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

Yeah. I mean, good use of things you'd find. I mean, people now, when they're hiking in the forest, they'll find shed deer antlers and they'll use them as ornaments, right? So there's no reason why they wouldn't do that with big dinosaur skulls.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

I actually went full nerd on this desk, and um, because there's a scene early on in the episode where they mentioned that this world has allosaurs. So I looked at that skull and I compared it to the skull of Cretaceous allosaurids, things like Carcharodontosaurus, gigonotosaurus, and eventually, just based on the morphological details, I concluded it belonged to a species called Acrocanthosaurus from the early Cretaceous of the USA. Coincidentally, actually from some of the same deposits that Sauro Poseidon, that Cretaceous Brachosaurus mentioned, is from. Uh-huh. So you're keeping everything tied together then. Yeah, I don't think that was intentional on the writer's part because they did say in interviews that they were not particularly concerned about where Terra Nova was set geographically because it wasn't important to the story. But yeah, that was just a nice detail that I envisioned in my mind.

SPEAKER_02 51:03

Yeah, I mean, and and I think details are always nice in world building.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

So absolutely. This is one of the most beautiful paleo worlds I've ever seen in fiction. Okay, so of course, any story is arguably only really ever as good as its characters. So let's talk about that. And I'm gonna let you lead on this one, Woody, because you have some interesting thoughts on this, I think.

SPEAKER_02 51:35

Sure. So I thought that when the pilot opens up, we open up on the Shannon family in the world where natural resources have basically been completely depleted.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

An orange is a luxury food item in this world.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Right. So, in terms of the characters, I thought that the way they set the personalities, I mean, because that is essentially what you have to do when you open up the show, because the audience doesn't know who these people are, and you're throwing the audience into what is actually a pretty convoluted storyline. And I definitely thought that they set the father's motives and his premise quite well. And I thought the mother was there to support that, and I thought I did a fairly good job with that.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Yeah, it's really very compelling him trying to break out of prison and join his family before they go through the portal and never return. Because the whole thing with the portal is that you can't come back once you go through it. I mean, I said this to you when we were watching it. By the time when they were going through the portal to Terra Nova, I wrote down in my notes I'd actually kind of forgotten that this was meant to be a show about dinosaurs because the human drama had just been done that well.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

And actually, I would say that this show suffers a lot less from a symptom that a lot of shows have, where they have a lot of characters, which is you don't remember any of the character names, even the protagonists after the first episode.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

Yeah, I wonder if that's gonna be a problem when we end up reviewing La Brea, which takes a lot from Terra Nova, including having a very large cast.

SPEAKER_03 53:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 53:02

So let's talk a bit about Jim, because he is arguably one of the main characters, well, no, he is the main character of this pilot, alongside Josh. So what are your thoughts on him?

SPEAKER_02 53:13

You know, he fulfills a little bit of the trope that a cop is going to be a cop. I find that this is quite a recurring American theme where the policeman can't seem to get away from being a policeman. Um, but I don't think that infringed on my ability to respect the way he was developed as a character. You know, a large part of his motivation is his desire to protect his family as well. And I thought that that was very, a very compelling way to open up the show.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

I kind of forget a little bit sometimes that Jim even is a cop, just because to me he comes across so much more as a family man. I wouldn't say he is an intrinsic badass, he has that quality to him, like he can handle himself in a fight and does. But his motivation and the core of his universe, you can tell, is his family. You know, he goes to such great lengths to get his illegal daughter, Zoe, through the portal, even though she's not supposed to go. And when he's with his kids, he's really very doting. The whole scene with him and Zoe when they're in the new house and they're seeing each other for the first time since he went to prison two years earlier, is pure Spielbergian saccharine sweetness, and I love it. He does this role-playing thing where he says, Oh, I'm this person, and then she just sort of giggles and says, 'No, you're not, that's not your name.' So, well, what's your name? Daddy.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

That was a very endearing scene.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Yeah, it's corny as hell, but it's really sweet.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that the coin, well, to be fair, the cornyness is not unrealistic, right? I thought the interaction itself felt organic or natural enough where it was corny, but not unrealistically corny.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

Talking of a trope that I think is actually done reasonably well here. I think it's also quite realistic the way they show how Jim and Elizabeth have grown apart a bit by virtue of him being in prison for two years.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

Yeah, I thought they did do that really well because I think sometimes people try to push it too hard and they just make them seem like they're not even friends anymore. You know, that's not how it was portrayed, more so that they still loved each other, but there's been this distance that's been created by him being in prison.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

Yeah, like they don't even sleep together in the same bed the first night. And there's bits where you realize that she knows the kids a lot better than he does now. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 55:19

And I thought that those subtleties are are much better way than just having them be strangely antagonistic towards each other. I actually think Elizabeth and Jim's relationship is very realistic, and their dialogue is some of the better dialogue, probably in the show, especially Elizabeth's. I think the way she speaks, maybe it's the actress's delivery, but I find her dialogue compelling in the sense that it feels like it's a real person speaking.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

I think Shelly Kahn, who plays her, is very comfortable with this role. You know, she comes across as she understands this character and she has no uncertainties about playing her. Right, right. That makes sense. Anyway, we've talked about the Shannon parents a bit. Uh maybe let's talk about the Shannon kids, or rather, the only one who gets any sort of development in it, who is Josh. Josh is the oldest son of the Shannon family. He's 17 when they moved to Terra Nova. He is the only one of them who actively does not want to go, mainly because he is leaving his girlfriend behind in the dying future world. And he's very bitter as well towards Jim for going to prison because he assaulted a population control officer who was manhandling Zoe. What do you have to say about him, Woody?

SPEAKER_02 56:28

I thought it was a compelling thing to have the audience learn about this new world through the perspective of the teenager who's struggling with having his father back for the first time in two years and having unaddressed frustration and probably resentment for the actions of his father. And so I thought that having us learn about the new world through his eyes was a very interesting way to do it. Um, and I thought Josh being an angry teenage boy sets the stage for volatile situations.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

Yeah, I would agree that his scenes are the ones that really help to flesh the world outside of the compound that they all live in out. The very first time we hear about slashers, for instance, is when he is using the dismembered tail barb of one to cut a front, uh, which I think is very good for setting up the slashes later on and their main weapon. But also, he's the one who goes to the waterfalls with his friends, he gets to see more of this beautiful forest. And I think the fact that he is young lends us a sense of, I don't want to say whimsy because I don't think he's necessarily very enchanted by it, uh, but it lends a certain energy for lack of a better phrase that makes it seem exciting.

SPEAKER_02 57:36

Yes, definitely. Although it's funny you say that he's not very enchanted by it because part of the whole thing is that he's not happy that he left his girlfriend behind, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Yeah, although there is the scene actually when he meets up with Sky where he says, When it's the only thing you know, it doesn't seem too bad for you, but coming here makes you realize how bad it was in the future. I kind of felt that for that character, that seems not too realistic. Because I just think if you're the sort of person who is not happy having to leave home, even if you know that home is bad, it doesn't make you suddenly turn against it just because you go somewhere that's better. Because at the end of the day, it was still your home. You still had an emotional attachment to it. And I did feel it was unrealistic that he seemed to come to terms with how shitty it was so quickly.

SPEAKER_02 58:22

It was very quick. And I think, especially for a teenager who was coming to terms with a lot of unresolved anger, you know.

SPEAKER_01 58:30

I think what makes the Josh storyline really quite compelling is the relationship he forms with Sky, who, by the way, I think is actually my favorite character in the show.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

Yeah, I think that their dialogue feels a lot more natural than his dialogue with a lot of other characters.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

Yeah, Landon LeBuiran and Alison Miller have really great chemistry.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:48

In the early descriptions of her character that were released before the pilot, it was said that Skye was the one who would guide Josh through Terra Nova and she would be his conduit for learning more about it. And I think that actually shows very well because before he meets her, he's probably the least curious about his surroundings compared to Maddie or even Zoe, the brachiosaur feeding seen aside. But then when he meets her, he asks questions about the world, he's looking around a lot more, he's paying more attention to things. There's kind of this Jake Sully and Natiri vibe I got from the two of them.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Sure. Yes, a little bit. Um, but I think that I struggled a little bit, I must admit, with Josh. Not in the sense that his struggles are unrealistic, but more so in the way they set everything up. For instance, I felt the scene where he was saying goodbye to his girlfriend was so short and such a dense part of the story. It kind of got drowned out in my memory a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Oh, don't worry, they really hammer this relationship that you don't care about very much. So in the later episodes, right.

SPEAKER_02 59:51

And I think they also didn't really set up his frustration towards his father very well prior to going to Terra Nova because it does sort of reappear out of the blue, like his frustration just sort of appears, right? And but even before they go off to Terra Nova, his dad's already been away for two years. So if he were angry, you'd think that he would show signs of it already. Whereas it was just go through the portal and suddenly he's very angry. And as an audience member, I had to be like, wait, why? I think that the function he serves as part of the family in terms of making the story compelling works well. I just think some things could have been set up much better for when they got to Terra Nova.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

Yeah, yeah. So speaking of Sky, let's talk about the two other non-Shannon family main members, Commander Nathaniel Taylor and Sky herself. Do you want to start with Commander Taylor?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:42

Sure. I well, first of all, the very first thing I said when I saw him, I was like, is that not the guy from Avatar?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Yes, yeah, it is the guy from Avatar. Playing both the same character and a completely different one.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

Welcome to Terra Nova, folks. Welcome home.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

I mean, he's playing the other side of the same coin.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:03

Yeah. Stephen Lang, that actor, was actually handpicked by Steven Spielberg himself. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:08

I mean, he's got the look, right? He's got the silver beard and the short silver crew cut, very military, clearly works out a lot and really does the sort of drill sergeant accent properly and has that sort of atmosphere, that like disciplinary atmosphere about him. But in this case, unlike an avatar, he plays somebody with morals and um someone who actually cares about the environment, exactly, and people. And what was interesting to me though was despite the fact that he was playing again the sort of militaristic character, he wasn't that one-dimensional. I thought that there were layers to him, which is quite unusual, actually. Usually these military guys in power in American or British productions for that matter, they're very just sort of, I am the military man. That's about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

Yes, you see, he actually cares about the people he's responsible for, he cares about the success of the colony as an eco-friendly society. You find out that he had a son who went missing years ago, and there's a sense of guilt for whatever part he may have played in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:08

Yeah, exactly. And I think there's also some hidden desires or intentions for the future on his part, which I think also added a bit to the uh and and it's not like the hidden desires were necessarily nefarious, because usually one of these characters have hidden motives or something, it's usually something sinister, but it's not immediately clear, which I think is a good layer.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

Stephen Lang has really great chemistry with Jason O'Mara who plays Jim.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

Yeah, I agree. So, do you want to talk a little bit about Sky? I know she's probably your favorite character out of all of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier. Um, what I love about Skye is she's a rebel, like she's willing to break rules and bend them herself, mainly in the interest of having fun. But I really like that there's a certain way that female characters like her behave where they have this great sense of being really rebellious. You know, they don't really care that much about rules, but you also like them very much as people. You can tell they've got morals and you can tell that they're just really sweet people at the core. And as I said, she has incredible chemistry with Josh.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:07

So, what's better to do around here anyway?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:11

Well, depends on how close to the edge you like to walk.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:15

What do you think it is about her character that makes her compelling?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:18

I think it's just the fact that she's so at ease with her surroundings. Like when she and Josh are at the waterfalls, she just casually mentions the name of some dinosaur that's calling. She tells him what the plants are, what the different animals are, what the behaviors are. You can tell that she spent a lot of time in this environment. And it's a great contrast to Josh, for whom all this is new. But I would say she doesn't come off as nerdy in her knowledge in the way that Maddy does. And so I think they found a very good balance for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:53

Do you think she has because you know, usually when there's a side character who's what I presume is supposed to be the female interest for our male protagonist, they're often quite unidimensional.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:03

I'd agree, but this is not Megan Fox and Transformers. This is a character who actually does have complexity to her. I mentioned earlier how Skye's an orphan that she lost her parents to syncylic fever. There's a great scene by the river with her and Josh where Josh is bitching about his dad, and Skye actually calls him out for it, not in an aggressive way, but just kind of in a sarcastic way, like, yeah, you two are nothing and like, he'd never get your orientation, just go for a swim with a bunch of people he doesn't know. He just went to prison and broke a bunch of rules to get to Terra Nova.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:31

So it was her good moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:33

That was her calling him out for it and saying, Be grateful for your family without it being antagonistic or confrontational.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:40

Right. And it wasn't pedantic either, which which sometimes it can be, I think, if you don't write the dialogue properly.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

Yeah, it's a shame that Alison Millen didn't go on to get more recognition because her acting is really good in this. Although I saw in Wikipedia she was in an episode or two of 13 Reasons Why.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:56

Never watched that show.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:57

Me neither. I just know it's popular. Um, anyone else you want to talk about, character-wise?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:02

Oh, yes. So another set of side characters are the Sixers. And uh I thought that the Sixers were a really good addition because A, it adds another variable.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:11

Do you want to just mention who they even are first?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:14

Right. So for those who haven't watched the show, the Sixers are essentially the people that came on the six, what was the term they used? Pilgrimage. Yes. So they're these people that arrived in the sixth pilgrimage, and for whatever reason, they have left the colony to set up presumably their own encampment, and they made off with medical supplies, guns, ammunition, what have you. And nobody knows, not even Commander Taylor understands why they're here or if they were sent by someone, why they were sent by someone, or why they opposed the colony. Exactly. And so they're this sort of mysterious group of people, which I think is great for adding variability to the environment. And overall, I thought actually that they the dynamic wasn't simply just colony versus sixers. I thought that the dialogue between their leader and Commander Taylor was much more interesting. Interesting than what I would have expected.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:02

How so?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:03

Well, it's usually so. It's usually just I'm the leader of this colony and I'm a badass and I'm gonna stand my ground. And then the other person's I'm the rebel who's a little bit sinister, and I'm going to steal your crap, and you better give me the deal I propose, otherwise, I will kill one of your people. That's usually how those interactions go, right? That is literally the template for writing rebel group of people confronting the people from the original colony. That is the template.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

Yeah, but here it's like I think there's more of that in there than you're making out. But at the same time, there's an element of compromise between them. So, like, oh, we've got this meteoric iron that you need, we'll trade it for you if you give us what we want. And said, Okay, you can have this, this, and this that you want, not this.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

Yeah, I mean, and I think one compelling thing was they weren't portrayed as immediately just trigger happy. Because I mean, you think about a lot of these groups that confront the main group of people, it's usually so you won't give us what we want here. I'll just kill one of your people first. That's how shows usually go. And I think it's just a bit of a burned out trope.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:05

Actually, fun fact, Shelly Khan, who plays Elizabeth, originally auditioned to be Mira, the leader of the Sixers, but then they ultimately decide to cast her as Elizabeth and then cast a different British actress of color, Christine Adams, to play Mira. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:20

Okay, I did not know that, but um, I would say they got the casting right.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:24

Yeah. Christine Adams is a really great American accent. You'd never think she was British.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

No, never.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

Okay, so I think that's pretty much all we have to say about the pilot itself. So, as someone who's not seen the rest of the show, Woody, what would you like to see more of later on?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Well, I would like to see just more world building, right? You are in a completely new place. The fauna and flora are completely different. And, you know, they set it as humans have depleted Earth's natural resources, so they have to go build something new and something where they don't exploit natural resources in the same irresponsible way. So you would hope that in the story moving forwards, you see how they develop a lot of these technologies and how as the population grows, how do they split off into new colonies? How do they become a little more integrated into the natural environment?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

Yeah, I can feel all the Terra Nova fans who were hoping for something like that, just thinking, oh yeah, so did we, so did we?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:29

Um, and and actually, I I was I was just gonna bring up the whole thing with Commander Taylor's son, which sort of tipped me off at the end of the episode when the Sixers revealed that the scratchings on the rock were made by his son, and you know, it was all this hinting at some sort of thing that his son was trying to figure out. And the first thing I thought was, oh man, they're gonna come up with some sort of overly convoluted plot surrounding Commander Taylor's son, and it's gonna have nothing to do with the world itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:56

Um, I'm not going to confirm nor deny that.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:00

Okay, but but you know what I'm saying, right? Because the thing is you can have a very convoluted plot, but if it doesn't include the world itself, then there's no point in being in this new world and going through the effort of having a new set and sort of making nothing, everything becomes unimportant in the new world if your convoluted plot does not involve the new world itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

I think it is interesting they use speculative dinosaurs in Terra Nova because the reason why they chose the time period that they did 85 million years ago is because it was a period of the Cretaceous where we had the least complete biota of species. I think the figure they used was only 10% of species that are likely to have existed at that time were recorded by science. So there's a lot of wiggle room for speculative dinosaurs there.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:42

And I hope they use that wiggle room.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:45

Yeah. Um, I mean, I remember we had a talk about this as well, but something I would have liked to see in the world building is just the little details about colony function. I mean, they didn't really do that too much in this pilot. Uh, you know, they had the bit where the newbies do orientation and then older teenagers work instead of going to school. Zoe, for some reason, goes to school in Terranoving, though she's literally only arrived there yesterday. I would have liked to have seen more of that. Because, like I said, one of the things that really drew me to this show was just seeing how a society would evolve and would structure itself to survive in a world of dinosaurs. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:22

I mean, system of governance, infrastructure, educational systems, financial systems. I mean, there's so much that you could potentially do with a new world, like an entirely new world, and adding on the premise of they're trying to learn from their mistakes from the world they abandoned. You know, there's so much that could be done there.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

And we will get into all of the ways that this show dashed our hopes in the next episode. So, Woody, have you got anything you want to plug?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

Oh, yes. So, uh, for those who enjoy a quick read and for those who are interested in the Western genre, my novella Six Tales of Wealth is available on Amazon in paperback and for the Kindle.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:01

Yeah, as I say, definitely recommend checking it out. Okay, so that's it for this episode. Hope you've enjoyed yourself, and we will see you on our next dig. Take care.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:11

Thank you for everyone for listening, and uh, we'll see you on the next one.