What happened?
Whilst on an excursion outside of the colony looking for his son, Taylor is captured by, and then subsequently captures, Mira. The pair of them are forced to work together from a couple of territorial dinosaurs. They part on amicable terms, with the suggestion that things could have been different between them.
In Terra Nova, Skye is revealed to be the mole in the camp, though she is seemingly only acting out of a need to save her dying mother in the Sixer camp. She has to act to prevent Jim and Liz from discovering her identity by destroying her blood DNA evidence. Never-the-less, Jim now has a list of under 50 females as his list of suspects and his investigation continues.
Thoughts
Well well well, I don’t want to get enthusiastic, even giddy, at the prospect of Terra Nova actually showing signs of becoming a decent television programme, but I can at least enjoy the fact that my perseverance is being rewarded by the last couple of episodes being rather good. It’s by no means anything special, but it’s much-improved!
The little adventure of Taylor and Mira was a splendid angle to take, and unexpected. (Not sure what she was doing out on her own, mind.) There was some clarification that Mira and the rest of the Sixers are basically mercenaries, hired-help, and as like Skye would prove to be, she’s acting in the interests of protecting her loved ones.
Whilst their see-saw power struggle over who had captured who was fun, the potential legacy of what their coming together may mean is the most intriguing. I am staking a guess that the Sixers may eventually switch from being enemies to allies, with the two sides uniting against this powerful organisation back in future Earth looking to drain resources from the new world.
Taylor made a remark that Mira didn’t realise what the people she was working for were really all about, and I suspect she’ll see the error of her ways and convince her people to stand with Taylor and fight for Terra Nova. I would certainly welcome this plot line. As I’ve said previously, I kind of hope the business of this battle of the portal can get cleared up in the first season – and if that leaves the situation where Terra Nova and the Sixers are left in Terra Nova to forge a new life for themselves (and all the potential challenges and struggles that presents) then that’s fine with me.
Lucas, as well, I expect will be returned to his father’s favour and the two of them will get along. Ordinarily I wouldn’t feel so optimistic about future plot lines from a sci-fi drama, but Terra Nova has a near-perverse level of wholesome decency about it that makes me assume that there’s a level of darkness it’s not quite prepared to drop to.
Take Skye as a clear example. Here she was revealed to be the mole in the camp (fair enough, I can buy that, considering our first introduction to her was when she escorted Josh over the fence). As it turned out, however, she wasn’t a duplicitous schemer of evil intent. She was working for the Sixers to somehow aid her dying mother. In Terra Nova, no one is turning out to be a bad person – they just do occasionally bad things for what they perceive are good reasons.
Taylor mentioned that there had been some kind of disease that was responsible for more deaths than anything else they’d encountered in Terra Nova. First we’d ever heard of it, of course, though it does lend some weight behind the motivation for making Josh steal the drugs from the clinic for the Sixers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sixers, courtesy of Lucas, had got close to formulating a cure for this terrible sickness.
See? Even Lucas won’t turn out to be all bad!
Terra Nova can’t quite dispense with the cheese, mind. Nursing the young dinosaur and releasing it into the wild to reunite with its own kind for a sweet, feelgood finish sums up what the show won’t easily dispense with – and I’m not saying it even should. There’s room for serious drama inside a family-friendly show, it’s just a matter of finding the right balance. Terra Nova hasn’t, for me, ever really got that down to a fine art but it’s getting better at it.
The business with Jim and the young solider suitor courting his daughter verged on the absurd. The boy’s trepidation at stating his intentions to Jim didn’t completely go over for me, mainly because the person Jim states he is, the intimidating, short-tempered person that he is written as in the script, isn’t how he appears on screen. He may talk the talk but you can’t help but see him as a thoroughly decent, teddy bear of a father before the tough-talking, head-busting cop.
It was also absolutely risible that Taylor would leave him in charge of the entire camp during his absence. . . He’s only been there five minutes! But these are niggles in a show that is thankfully gaining some momentum and a sense of identity. I'd really like nothing more than for these next few episodes in the run up to the finish deliver some total zingers and, hey, if it has the guts and the gaul to go darker and meaner than it'll hit all the more harder due to the good-natured quality it has exhibited thus far. Maybe that's the point!
What was the best part?
All the parts with Taylor and Mira (and who knew she had quite the hot body tucked away!?) were enjoyable, though the pick of the bunch was the scene at their night campfire when the dinosaurs attacked. Sure, the effects looked a little bit Ray Harryhausen rather than state of the art CGI, but in an odd way that gave it more charm.
What do I think will happen next?
Big bold prediction time! Lucas will successfully get the portal to do what he wants, which will herald the arrival of the big bad corporation doing something terrible and/or reneging on their deal with the Sixers. The Sixers, and probably Lucas, will then unite with Taylor and battle to turn the portal off and oust the evil corporation to defend the world for themselves.
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