Terra Nova

[Johonebesus]

Velociraptors weren't even in that part of the world 85 million years ago (they weren't even around 85 million years ago) assuming the portal takes them to roughly the same geographical area (Chicago). This is supported by mention of North American species such as Allosaurus being mentioned.

Except the Allosaurus was long gone by then. Weren't the Carnosaurs replaced by Coelurosaurs by the early Cretaceous?

Since they believe it to be a different timeline, I wonder if they're giving any thought to trying to gently engineer the ecology to be more amenable to humans. In fact, wouldn't they just about have to introduce modern bees to engage in intensive agriculture? I know there were a few flowers by that point, but there weren't many specialized pollinators then were there? Had flowers even spread to North America yet?

It seems to me they could plant various fruit and nut trees and release lots of species of bees without causing an immediate ecological disaster.
I can see them being afraid to bring swine back, but chickens don't usually become invasive pests. Feral dogs cannot survive well without human garbage to scavenge from. Aside from ethical and aesthetic concerns, would a controlled local extinction of indigenous flora and fauna really be so terrible? The mere presence of the humans is going to create new selective pressures.

One thing that bothers me is the aggressiveness of the predators. Even if they're not as intelligent as mammals, crocodiles and monitor lizards can still learn. I would think the big predators would learn quickly enough that the vehicles are not good prey items and the settlement should be avoided.

[Flagg]

Well we know they aren't too bright since they obviously haven't been killing and eating massive meat sources like the brachiosaurs.

[LadyTevar]

Jack Horner himself has been on board with the writers, which is why it's set in 85mill BCE. That era has produced surprisingly few fossils, and thus not a lot is known about what species were around. Thus, it is a good era to play around in, with a wealth of species to either side that could be 'holdovers' from the previous era or early starts of the next.

Thus, we're going to see a lot of species that are "might have beens", such as the Slashers along with possible species that we do have records of living prior or after that time.

[Stormin]

Well we know they aren't too bright since they obviously haven't been killing and eating massive meat sources like the brachiosaurs.

Everyone might be vegetarian (I can't remember anyone eating meat in the episode) because of how much more resources it takes to produce meat than could really be afforded on old Earth. Even the rich people might not automatically look at an animal and wonder how it tastes.

Many of the weird things in the show can probably be explained with over caution on the colonist's part. They came from an Earth their forefathers had destroyed. It could be intentional that they are trying to not make wiping things out in their area (using stunners, tranqs, etc) the norm. Give it a few generations and they will be happily roasting the last animal on Earth on a fire made with the last tree on Earth.

[Ahriman238]

Well we know they aren't too bright since they obviously haven't been killing and eating massive meat sources like the brachiosaurs.

What, because a couple of brachiosaurs got close to the base and weren't killed and eaten? That doesn't prove they don't hunt. COnsider this, unless they have a truly vast refrigerated warehouse we haven't seen, a single 3 or 4 hour hunting trip will probably yield as much meat as they can eat before it goes bad. Why then should they killfuck every dino that crosses their path, unless its actively attacking them?

Alternatviely, they may be concerned about infection. They've already lost at least a few people to diseases no one has an immunity to, and not everything goes away when the meat is cooked.

Albeit, Quartch probably ate at least SOME dino meat while waiting for the rest of his group.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Velociraptors weren't even in that part of the world 85 million years ago (they weren't even around 85 million years ago) assuming the portal takes them to roughly the same geographical area (Chicago). This is supported by mention of North American species such as Allosaurus being mentioned.

Yeah, but dromeosaurs and deinonychus were, and they're more or less the same size and body types as velociraptors. As for the fence, jeez, I could fit myself through those gaps and I'm a full sized adult male. Looking at the picture, it's even more retarded than my mental image, I thought they were vertically standing logs. This... even if they couldn't fit between the slats, what's to stop manually dextrous dinos from simply climbing the nice log ladder over?

Well we know they aren't too bright since they obviously haven't been killing and eating massive meat sources like the brachiosaurs.

What, because a couple of brachiosaurs got close to the base and weren't killed and eaten? That doesn't prove they don't hunt. COnsider this, unless they have a truly vast refrigerated warehouse we haven't seen, a single 3 or 4 hour hunting trip will probably yield as much meat as they can eat before it goes bad. Why then should they killfuck every dino that crosses their path, unless its actively attacking them?

Alternatviely, they may be concerned about infection. They've already lost at least a few people to diseases no one has an immunity to, and not everything goes away when the meat is cooked.

Albeit, Quartch probably ate at least SOME dino meat while waiting for the rest of his group.

Maybe crediting them with too much intelligence, but also consider the smell of a rotting brachiosaur carcass would likely attract every opportunistic scavenger/predator in a fifty mile radius, raptor to tyrannosaurid size.

[GuppyShark]

Frankly I thought them screwing up the fact that the CO2 levels during the time of the dinosaurs were 5-10 times higher than today was far more serious an oversight. It is especially funny when you look at their "global warming doomsday" future setting. (Yes I know that there are lots of other pollutants that wouldn't be present but they were making a big deal about adjusting to lower CO2 levels)

Can you explain this further please? The CO2 level of 2011 seems irrelevant when the comparison they are referring to is a dying world circa 2149. I also missed the explicit references to CO2, I only caught the oxygen level difference. Should the level of CO2 in the time of the dinosaurs be impacting them negatively?

[Lord Insanity]

Can you explain this further please? The CO2 level of 2011 seems irrelevant when the comparison they are referring to is a dying world circa 2149. I also missed the explicit references to CO2, I only caught the oxygen level difference. Should the level of CO2 in the time of the dinosaurs be impacting them negatively?

In the beginning they mentioned the higher CO2 levels in 2149. When they got to Terra Nova they told them they would have to adjust to the higher O2 levels. Now it is possible they were only referring to the massive amounts of other pollution clearly visible in the future visuals but that doesn't seem likely. The CO2 level should be higher in the past even compared to the "global warming apocalypse" future. The primary source of global warming CO2 is from burning fossil fuels.

[Lord Insanity]

It seems my TV reception is non-existent for half the broadcast channels. Thanks to FOX now having a 8 day delay on putting new episodes up on their website (making it impossible to ever actually catch up ) it looks like I won't be commenting much here anymore.

[Ritterin Sophia]

So it looks like this episode is Birds: 85 Million BC.

[Meest]

Only 20mins in and hard to stay interested, terrible so far.

[Guardsman Bass]

That was a mediocre episode. The whole "accidentally put the base in the pterosaur nesting grounds" was an interesting idea . . . that they conveniently resolved in the course of a single episode, with a single convenient solution that worked perfectly the first time they tried it. It was very . . . Star Trek, to be honest. They also introduced a former love interest with one-sided attraction for Elisabeth, which probably means one of two things in one of the coming episodes:

1. He'll try to get Jim killed somehow.

2. He'll have a tense, man-to-man moment with Jim when Jim asks him to save his wife (presumably from the "memory-erasing virus" in the next episode).

All in all, the episode was just very predictable - you knew how things were basically going to go down once they introduced the premise (pterosaur swarming), even if you didn't know the exact solution (rapidly synthesized pheromone that triggers their mating in a new place). I also wonder how come they never encountered these things before, considering that Terra Nova has been there for close to two (?) decades (do they take nearly two decades to reach maturity?).

The next episode preview isn't exactly exciting me, either. Elisabeth is going to get hit with a memory-erasing virus, which will be conveniently be fixed at the end of the episode by Mr. Former Love Interest after he has a man-to-man moment with Jim. At least we'll learn something more about the Sixers, considering that it seemed like Skye was introducing Josh to Mr. Crazy Taylor Son.

EDIT: Turns out the writers for this episode were Rene Echevarria (who wrote a bunch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes), and Brannon Braga (who was heavily involved with Star Trek from TNG onwards). So the whole "feels like a Star Trek" episode might not be coincidental.

[bilateralrope]

The ones hit hardest by the pterosaurs were all military guys. 3 killed at the start, 1 knocked down by being hit in the chest in the market, another knocked out in the house. Why do they target body armour ?

Why does Terra Nova have enough soldiers to put one in every home ?

[Aleria]

...
Why does Terra Nova have enough soldiers to put one in every home ?

Conspiracy + Dangerous Environment = Lots of Soldiers needed.

@Bass
Yep, star trek writers are consistently mediocre. Good enough people will watch for a few seasons.

[bilateralrope]

...
Why does Terra Nova have enough soldiers to put one in every home ?

Conspiracy + Dangerous Environment = Lots of Soldiers needed.

The environment would be a bit safer if those soldiers actually killed something.

[NecronLord]

Velociraptors weren't even in that part of the world 85 million years ago (they weren't even around 85 million years ago) assuming the portal takes them to roughly the same geographical area (Chicago). This is supported by mention of North American species such as Allosaurus being mentioned.

I considered putting an instant-rebuttal in the original post, but I figured no one would be pedantic enough to object based on that.

The general type of species, Dromaeosauridae, existed long before and long after this show is set, and has been found in places as far apart as England, China and yes, America. My objections of course work equally well with any small, bold, predatory dinosaur.

Fuck's sake, you could get a full size crocodilian through that fence, and those by far predate the dinosaurs and are still in North Amerca now; human adolescents can climb through it. Hostile predators can too.

If you want an actual example of a similar dinosaur of the period, you're probably going to be disappointed, because our knowledge of the time is a long long way from complete. The show acknowledges this and is even making new species up, so yeah. A hostile small dinosaur similar to a Velociraptor is far from unlikely to exist.

[Flagg]

If there is one thing I'm good at sir, it's pedantry. If you don't like it then I demand satisfaction! Flamethrowers, 10 paces at dawn! ALERT YOUR SECOND, SIR!

[Oni Koneko Damien]

The general type of species, Dromaeosauridae, existed long before and long after this show is set, and has been found in places as far apart as England, China and yes, America. My objections of course work equally well with any small, bold, predatory dinosaur.

Fuck's sake, you could get a full size crocodilian through that fence, and those by far predate the dinosaurs and are still in North Amerca now; human adolescents can climb through it. Hostile predators can too.

If you want an actual example of a similar dinosaur of the period, you're probably going to be disappointed, because our knowledge of the time is a long long way from complete. The show acknowledges this and is even making new species up, so yeah. A hostile small dinosaur similar to a Velociraptor is far from unlikely to exist.

Like I said before, Dromaeosaurus existed at the time, though admittedly so far it's only been found on the west coast and Alberta. Deinonychus fossils, I believe, have been found as far east as Montana and Oklahoma. Utahraptor has been found, amazingly enough, in Utah. While it's theorized to be about the mass of a grizzly bear, its body and skull shape might still be narrow enough to worm through that ridiculous fence... and thus you have a raptor the size of a grizzly bear running through the base.

The fact is you're simply not going to find much Mesozoic fossil evidence of *anything* in the upper Midwest because a vast majority of it, geologically, is thick layer of disordered, glaciated shit left after the last ice age.

[Minischoles]

Uggh I'm still giving this another episode or two to capture my interest, but so far it just looks terrible. I found myself skipping the vast majority of this episode, because I already knew what would happen - I echo the sentiment that it felt very much like a Star Trek episode.
Introduce Danger, struggle to deal with it, find technobabble solution and solution works first time perfectly. Add in some false drama of 'we can't synthesise more than this, I hope it's enough'.
I was skipping nearly every part with the children as well, they seem utterly superfluous and only there to do some stupid shit/get put in danger.

[Wing Commander MAD]

It seems my misgivings of seeing Brannon Braga was involved seem to be playing out. This episode and the next feel very Star Trek: TNG like to me, complete with technobabble solution as noted above. Hell they even went with shitty touch screen computers, though that seems to be a trend/fad these days. Sereiously, did we forget how to make keyboards in the future or did the set designers/art directors never use a computer, or even a typewriter, before?

[weemadando]

Yeah, the pterosaur ep was CHILDREN IN PERIL! (with less "I HATE YOU DAD!") and convenient solution created by SCIENTISTS (because all scientists can do everything right?) in a matter of hours.

What madness.

[Stofsk]

What do you expect guys - Brannon Braga is in charge of the show.

[Ragnarok]

What do you expect guys - Brannon Braga is in charge of the show.

That was one of my first reactions when i saw the opening sequence. I loved the first episode, the second one? Total filler.

[Guardsman Bass]

What do you expect guys - Brannon Braga is in charge of the show.

It was just funny watching the second episode, thinking "Wow, this really feels like a Star Trek episode". Then you check the writers for the episode, and sure enough, they're Star Trek writers! Bloody hell.

[Ahriman238]

Velociraptors weren't even in that part of the world 85 million years ago (they weren't even around 85 million years ago) assuming the portal takes them to roughly the same geographical area (Chicago). This is supported by mention of North American species such as Allosaurus being mentioned.

Right. Why are we assuming they're in the same geographical place again?

Still don't see a serious issue with the fence, it's made of strong logs maybe eight or nine inches apart. I do think they should have more substantial defenses after all this time, but its not like they're sticking their asses out either.

See, I agree it was filler, and not all that spectacular filler, but I don't really have a problem with the resolution. Its a valid way of dealing with the crisis, the only unbelieveable part is how quickly they were able to devise a formula and synthesize 50 gallons of it. Chalk that up to advanced tech, and you're still about a parsec ahead of Voyager technobabble saves the day.

I do think those poor saps at the beginning really should have had the IR nightvision they had in the pilot. Flashlights on rifles? Poor bastards were almost begging something to leap out of the darkness and kill them. For that matter, they seemed pretty nonchalant about being stuck at night in dino-infested jungle. And, despite advising Terra Nova on their situation, and getting a reply, nobody came out to help until morning?

The colonists have devised their own currency. This amuses me greatly. Also, the 'skilled' workers come recommended by the Department heads, no potential for abuse there...

A scientist naming a species after himself? Bad form!

Finally, I liked that they're trying to learn something from history. The traditional European colonist response to the crisis would be to first divert them from the breeding ground if possible, then smash, burn, or bury the eggs so that it would never become a problem again.