What happened?
Maddy became suspicious of an explorer idol of hers when he returned to Terra Nova and yet appeared to lack memory of key things from his past. She eventually uncovered that he was really the assistant and had murdered the explorer on Earth and stolen his identity to get to Terra Nova.
Josh, having been promised reunification with his girlfriend, steals drugs on behalf of the Sixers using his mother’s passcard. Learning that lives depend on the drugs, though, he confesses what he has done and in the process outs Boylan as a mole.
Taylor tracks down the soldier he banished, helps him recover from near-fatal injuries and suggests that if he can infiltrate the Sixer camp and obtain information for him he may allow him back into Terra Nova.
Thoughts
You know, once you just accept the cheese and clunk that is Terra Nova in script and screen acting, there’s something rather likable about it. Unless there is a tremendous rug pull around the corner – the equivalent of the all the gloss and lights been yanked away to reveal a dark, twisted truth – then it would appear Terra Nova isn’t to be treated as seriously as other shows, and is perhaps geared more towards a family Doctor Who audience.
It doesn’t quite have the right tone for that, because I think it wants to cater to a family audience whilst also being considered serious dramatic sci-fi. In trying to straddle both genres it’s not a fine example of either, but it’s muddling along in an amusing, bumbling, near-inoffensive way.
Maddy’s excursion into detective work this episode, for example, was actually rather engaging. Was it serious adult drama? No. But it was an intriguing mystery that was slowly peeled away to reveal a murderous truth. Quite how Horten thought he was ever going to get away with killing Maddy after Zoe had been sent off is beyond me, mind. What did he think he was going to do? Style it out despite being the last man to see Maddy alive when her father is the sheriff and would be beyond enraged and ceaseless in his hunt for the all-too-obvious culprit?
No, that was dumb. Better would have been to play up the contradiction of a murderer with his own not insignificant intelligence and positive benevolence; like curing the apple crops. He’d have been better played as a good man taking desperate measure after doing a bad thing out of a sense of necessity. I guess Terra Nova just doesn’t have the time to get beneath the surface in that way. Another example of a good idea squandered in favour of simplistic skimming over: it’s this show’s worst trait.
There were some unintentional laughs to be had here. Jim’s fishing exploits were one. The effects on his ‘catch’ were truly awful. The people in charge ought to have seen the CG in those scenes, cut their losses and edited the scene at the point where Jim was seen getting a bite on his line. Given how inconsequential it was anyway it would have been better leaving his struggle to land the dino-fish to our imaginations.
Other unintentional laughs: Taylor hissing and yelling at the cowardly dinosaur; Jim surveying a huge broken window and remarking about how that was the point of entry for the robbery (no fucking shit, Sherlock); the Shannon family having a panic codeword “asparagus” – would have been clever if that had been seeded in a previous episode rather than feeling somewhat conveniently conjured here.
Taylor’s tracking down of the banished soldier, Curran, was an enjoyable detour, though I am somewhat confused by the pertinence of it considering Josh’s confession and ousting of Boylan as the Terra Nova link to the Sixers. I mean, for a good few episodes now I’ve been confused whether the ‘mole’ in Terra Nova is meant to be a secret from the viewers (as in a key character will be revealed as a double agent) or if Boylan is it, and has been all along, and we’ve known about it all this time.
If Boylan truly is the one and only mole then Taylor has sent the solider on a redundant mission; infiltrating the Sixers to find out something already known. Unless the soldier comes back with a revelation that there really is a double agent then it’s pointless.
It was interesting that the belief of Jim, and perhaps Taylor, that the Sixers were primitive was shown to be false. Taylor instantly figured his son Lucas was the man to have developed such communication technology and, since Terra Nova apparently doesn’t have this, it still leaves the door open for the idea that Taylor has been ruling autonomously in a way not agreed by ‘future Earth’ and is the reason why the Sixers wish to overthrow him.
I’d really love Terra Nova to be pulling that kind of surprise but it just feels too wholesome, too set on making Taylor and the Shannons as good people and everyone else. . . not necessarily bad but in conflict with their well-meaning goodness. If Taylor is disobeying the original schemes for Terra Nova then it’ll no doubt be for a ‘good’ reason, and the Sixers and Lucas will have plans that we, as an audience, are probably supposed to feel isn’t the best thing to do.
I’d be thrilled to be absolutely wrong on that last point.
What was the best part?
Really struggling to think of a standalone scene that impressed, despite this episode generating an overall good impression. For sheer dumbness, I’m going with the fishing scene. Not only did they choose to fish on a cliff edge where the dino-fish could swiftly drag them to their doom, the visual effects were so shockingly bad I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the poor quality. Uniquely, then, the best part of the episode is one that really ought to have been left on the cutting room floor!
What do I think will happen next?
Hopefully there’ll be some clarification as to why the Sixers wanted the medication. I’m not convinced there really was an epidemic in their ranks they needed curing, but I can’t imagine that other purposes they needed it for. I’d have to assume Lucas requires it, but since what he is up to is the most oblique part of the show I’m literally clutching at straws in the dark wearing boxing gloves trying to grasp any sense from it. Now there’s an image.
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