GoDespite the hype, I won’t be watching Terra Nova when it premieres tonight. I love dinosaurs and the chance to see one or more of them dining on a person (especially if I could pick said person) would be fun. But to watch this week after week. Um, no. Especially when people deserve to be snack material when they’re the ones who went back in time in the first place and invaded the dinosaur’s territory.
Then there’s the lame premise.
Humanity has destroyed the planet, most plants and animals are extinct. Apparently, we forgot how to clone animals and all those seed banks just vanished over night. Granted, I willing to buy into that bit of stupidity for a good story but then comes the kicker–these destructive and ignorant humans go back in time before Humankind was even around, destroy the planet then and batt a-bing the whole human race never comes into being.
NEWSFLASH: an asteroid didn’t destroy the dinosaurs, time traveling humans did.
Doesn’t that bring a tear to the eye?
Makes me proud.
So there series will be predictable. Man versus dino. Then there’ll be some infighting as the latent ecowarriors realize they’ve violated their sacred code by going back in time to screw up the earth earlier. Then we’ll get some dinosaur action couple by stupid people action. And those rules don’t apply to me action.
And when the ratings start to sag, they’ll introduce a mystery like the smoke thing on Lost to try to revive it.
A much better twist would be to send the people into the future. Imagine the possibilities: any surviving humans would have evolved into something else: Creating instant strife and battle for keystone predatorship. New species would have evolved as sea creatures crawled out of the oceans and tide pools to fill the empty niches on land.
And hey, who knows, maybe there are aliens about.
Anything would have been better than the ceaseless Jurassic Park. And heading into the future would have allowed the writers to flex their creative muscles and, I don’t know, dream up something new.
So past or present, where would you rather be?