Anyone Watch The Terra Nova Premier? Spoiler Alert!

I'm actually surprised that they revealed as much as they did.

I think it would be really cool if both sides observed one of the types of dinosaurs starting to develop the rudiments of intelligence though.

After all, don't they say we know about only 10% of the dinosaurs from that period?

Be interesting if a stone age or better "dinosaur civilization" was firmly in place at the time the asteroid hits eventually.

Regarding asteroids, just how can the people at Terra Nova be certain the "big one" 20 million years in the future was not preceded by a number of small and medium sized rocks that hit with "only" the force of an atomic bomb in their region?

About as certain as we can be that one of those small or medium sized rocks isn't heading towards us right now.

I guess that depends on whether dinosaurs had scales and hard leathery skins (similar to modern reptiles) or whether dinosaurs were soft and feathery (like modern birds).

For decades dinosaurs have been depicted as being more of the former. But recent evidence seems to suggest that at least some of the species were the latter.

For the purposes of a dramatic, action-filled television show about man's struggle to survive in a harsh land, the former model probably works better. It's not very dramatic if velociraptors are as easy to kill as flamingos.

Of course dinosaurs were around for so long, there were probably more kinds at one point or the other than we can even imagine,

Doesn't matter.

I don't expect a rifle round to take a dino down in one shot short of a head shot or a heart shot. Nor obviously handgun rounds.

But vehicle mounted weapons? Weapons mounted on guard towers? Those things if they are at least .50 caliber should be chewing dinosaurs up for lunch.

And they know they are going back into the past they need some real heavy firepower (20mm and up) vehicles and heavy weapons capable of taking on and defeating any dinosaur. I'd send back a handful of tanks and park them outside the gates with ammo. They'd be immune to dinosaur attack (short of being stepped on by the huge ones) and their cannon round will be more then enough to stop a dino in it's tracks.

RPG's would be useful too. And 40mm Grenades.

I would be willing to bet anything that a full magazine of an AR-16 or an AK-47 emptied in a body would kill anything that ever lived on this Earth, unless the target was extremely lucky.

I wouldn't be willing to make that bet, but you may be right.

My knowledge of hunting is fairly limited, particularly big game hunting. But there's like, the "Big Three" (or "Big Five" or whatever) dangerous game in Africa. IIRC, it includes elephant, rhino, and certainly Cape buffalo. It takes a special kind of bullet from a high-powered rifle to get through their hides. If you're shooting an African elephant of a big Cape buff, you're better off with a single shot rifle in something like .375 H&H than a whole magazine full of 5.56 NATO or 7.62 Soviet.

Well... I bow to your superior knowledge. (Not sarcastically, I know very little about firearms except how to take apart and put together a Mauser...)

I really enjoyed it - first genre show if cared to watch in a while and I was very positively surprised. Love the whole "building something new" vibe (reminds me of the Stargate Atlantis premiere) and think this has potential. I'm also happy they didn't make the Commander a big old meanie (which I expected at first, looking at the trailers).

Not so sure about the whole conspiracy angle but could be fun. Who knows?

The other thing (besides the lack of firepower) that seemed a little off was the whole moon thing - that looked awfully close. The girl mentioned 0.5cm a year, google says 4 cm a year - no matter which one you pick, that's at most 4,000 km - vs a current distance of 400,000 km. Unless my maths and physics are seriously wrong, a 1% difference shouldn't have such a dramatic impact...

A little Julian May, a little Orson Scott Card.... I liked it though. I think there is real potential for this show. the cast is appealing, the premise is pretty interesting, and the set up went without too many "eye-rolling" incidents.

Regarding dinosaurs and bullets, the only thing that might make them seem "bullet resistant" would be if they have such a primitive nervous system that single or just a few bullet hits don't do that much damage.

IIRC, there are some animals existing today which do considerable movement even after taking lethal injuries due to that.

Unfortunately, I don't think we have any soft tissue samples of any dinosaurs left.

re: headshots on dinos - remember: brains the size of walnuts. Usually encased in really thick skulls. Probably better to go for chest shots. LOTS of chest shots.

They should have brought some .600 Nitro Express double-rifles with them.

They've got their dinos wrong. Brachiosaurus are from the Jurassic. So are allosaurus. Carnotaurus is from the Cretaceous, but from only 70 million years ago. In fact, the only reptiles from that time period actually shown were the pteranodons in the background!

I guess that was bound to happen. Science? SCIENCE?!!? This is TV, dammit!

The explanation before the show even began was that we only have evidence of an estimated 10% of the dinosaurs from that period.

Which seems reasonable.

By the way, I happened upon a short story from one of those "Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year Collections (1993) called "There and Then".

Must of been what Terra Nova was based on.

It is based upon a converted U.S. Navy ship (an amphibious assault vessel) sent back to the Silurian Period to serve as a base of operations for a time traveling team.

A "media specialist" (actually a corporate spy) is sent back to survey the area for exploitation for its resources by 21st century Earth.

Okay, that there might have been Carnotaurus 15 My earlier than the fossil record indicates is plausible. That there are Brachiosaurus 70 My after they were thought to have gone extinct? I don't buy that. Same with Allosaurus (but 65 My later). I mean, you're talking scales that say we shouldn't be surprised if we found evidence of humans who really did ride dinosaurs and keep them as pets.

Oy, nearly forgot what I came into this thread to say.

Not a promising second episode.

That was a very Barga-esque episode. I really don't mind that much if this is a Trek knock off - but do DS9 please, not Voyager,

I thought the second episode was pretty good. A pretty workman like effort.

Of course, I think after you've enjoyed the two hour premier you tend to look at subsequent episodes with a more favorable light anyway.

It had its highlights and obvious holes. But it was the very first show (and now the second is on the PVR to be watched yet) - its hard to judge right off the bat. Some of them get better...some get worse.

I also don't understand how she hid her pregnancy but then I also don't get the show 'I didn't know I was pregnant'. How can you not? And yah the whiner annoyed me too (oh poor me...oh like you were so hard done by *smack*)

Regarding the wifes pregnancy, how do we know she actually hid it?

It might be that women are allowed to give birth to a third child but not actually KEEP a third child. That is, if they give it up for adoption to a childless couple then there might be no punishment at all.

Thus a third pregnancy might not be that big of a deal.

Finally, just how would anyone know it was her third pregnancy? They obviously had the first two children more than a decade earlier. They quite easily might've been living on the other side of the country or even outside of the country during those.

I don't think that America is nearly the "police state" in 2149 as some would suggest. After all, the dad seems to have relatively little problem breaking out of prison and infiltrating what has to be one of the most secure facilities on the planet.

You would think that if they were allowed to have a third child and give it up that they would have had to have had some sort of followup and paper work. If they were out of country and allowed to have a third child then it wouldn't have been a big deal.

I wouldn't read too much into the breaking out of prison part. It was obviously written in to explain how the third child got to Terra Nova.

In regards to the third child another possibility exists. The father is a police officer. It is not unreasonable that he managed to get some favors from various people he knows in law enforcement to delay and obstruct any investigation into his family.

Perhaps by pointing the "baby police" in the direction of other violaters.

He just finally ran out of tricks and markers.

I think that if having a third child was just a fine then it wouldn't have been such a big deal. Its a pretty big deal in China....go have a third child there and see what happens to it and you.

He's a teenage boy (and a whiner to boot) their perspective on the world is a little different. It is entirely possible that it would have been just a fine for the parents..but that they still would have taken the girl. Perhaps they were allowed to keep her because Dad being in jail DID make 'four' (the allowed limit for a family then).

And I have no idea about a dinosaur but even an elk or bear is pretty hard to kill if you don't hit them right. You would have imagine that they aren't exactly shrinking violets and it would be hard to hit something moving that fast just right but I have to admit that that scene did kind of bug me. Especially considering how fast those things are supposed to have been.

(and you can't say that the boy's perspective is skewed about one issue and then turn around and take another casual comment as truth...either they are both true or they are both skewed)

THis just started on British TV as well.

Jonathan Ross, UK TV personality and major sci-fi and comic book geek tweeted that he thought the show was terrible. So, this, combined with Dayton liking it and Brannon Braga's involvement, I'm really not seeing the attraction.

I'll wait to see if people say it gets any better.

Next week: An amnesia virus!!
Okay, I'm not interested in watching Voyager plots on a dinosaur show.

Yeesh really? Well that's disappointing. Besides True Blood and Being Human this is really the only 'me' show i get to watch (and Being Human seems to be taken off of our channels )

Think of all the books I'll get to read then.

This episode seems about as interesting as a really boring mission in an FPS-RPG, only you don't get to play it yourself; instead you get to watch a mentally handicapped ten-year-old fail at it repeatedly.

This is worse than "Threshold".

Yeah, that one was pretty bad. That's the Braga we know.