Terra Nova / My Favorite SCI-FI Shows / Overview: SCI-FI TV Shows in Alphabetical Order

terra nova, star trek, star wars, sci-fi, alternative universe, space, spaceships, time-travel, stargate

Last Rewatch: 07/03/2021 - 05/04/2021

Plot (IMDb): In 2149, earth is nearly wrecked by pollution. Police detective Jim Shannon is jailed for illegally raising an extra child, Zoe. He's sprung from jail just in time to join his family on the latest 'pilgrimage', through a unique time-space-continuum rip, to Terra Nova, a colony run with modern technology in a dino age forest. Colony commander Nathaniel Taylor soon recruits as security professional Jim, who gradually finds out about some threats, notably from Saurian monsters, the 'sixers' and his own, bitterly estranged son Lucas. Meanwhile Jim's son Josh keeps getting into trouble, mainly due to his girlfriend Skye. His smart sister Maddy is in love with gentleman soldier Mark Reynolds.

Terra Nova premiered on the FOX network on September 26, 2011 and last episode aired in that same year on December 19th. On March 5th 2012, FOX announced it's cancellation. Yes another SCI-FI show cancelled by FOX. I am the first to say it sure wasn't perfect, it got better over the coarse of the first season, up to a point I really hoping for a renewel, just to give the creators some more time to make this show a success.

The series is initially set in 2149, when overpopulation and declining air quality threaten all life on Earth. When scientists discover a temporal rift permitting (one-way) human transmission, they initiate a series of "pilgrimages" to a parallel "time stream" resembling Earth's Cretaceous Period. (Wiki)

Jason O'Mara plays Jim Shannon, the lead character. Before this I first saw him on the US version of Life on Mars. Stephen Lang, who plays Commander Nathaniel Taylor, we knew him of course from the movie Avatar. Extecutive producers also not the least known! Steven Spielberg, Rene Echevarria (Star Trek, The 4400, Dark Angel), Brannon Braga (Star Trek, Threshold, The Orville) and Alex Graves (The Boys, Altered Carbon) to name a few.

After it's cancellation, 20th Century FOX negotiated with Netflix to possibly create a second season but unfortunately it became a dead end. Of course it was a very expensive show to produce, that's why FOX directly ordered 13 episodes instead of just the pilot but the sets were too expensive to rebuild if a full season was ordered after the pilot. Remarkable is that Terra Nova retained it's audience (3.1 demo ratings) in it's second week after airing of the pilot. That almost never happens.

On Rotten Tomatoes Terra Nova has overal reasonable numbers, 62% Critics, 66% Audience. Like Alcatraz, Terra Nova was one of eight honorees in the Most Exciting New Series category at the Critics' Choice Television Awards, voted by journalists who had seen the pilots. Like Stargate Universe with it's second season, Terra Nova's first season was also announced on Blu-ray in the UK, back in 2012. But like with SGU's second season, Terra Nova's first season never was released on Blu-ray unfortunately. Is about 7 years since my last rewatch, so perhaps this year or next year I will pick this up again for another rewatch on a plain and simple DVD set!