TERRA NOVA was a fun adventure series fraught with production delays.   It only live for one short season of 13 episodes to get cancelled by FOX and not even get up picked by another network (or Netflix) due to the usual reason of not enough viewers for the budgetary costs.  The series wasn’t without its flaws, but it was an expensive series I wish found more of an audience and was still on air.    It was one of the new shows of Fall 2010 that got me excited.   I even liked Stephen Lang better in this show than I did when he was a megalomaniac evil military guy in AVATAR.  The show had many themes at its core including family and power.   It had storylines that cared over from episode to episode or even came back later to refer to a previous episode.

 

The Shannon family went into the past to get a new start and the leader of Terra Nova wants a new start for everyone, but forces such as the rogue group of colonists known as the Sixers and the company who sent the colonists back have their own plans.  Jim Shannon (Jason Mara) goes to work for Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang) as they both try to keep the future of Terra Nova safe from the decayed world of Earth circa 2149 AD (a world that is overpopulated with some dangerous air pollution).   Each member of the Shannon family has their own stories during the series as does Commander Taylor and his estranged son Lucas who wants to destroy Terra Nova.   

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Disc 1 has deleted scenes from GENESIS while Disc 3 has the other deleted scenes.

 

DIRECTOR’S DIARIES (disc 1) is a 34 minute featurette that chronicles the challenges of making the pilot episode from pre-production through production.

 

Disc 4-

MYSTERIES EXPLORED looks at the various story threads of the show

CRETACEOUS LIFE: THE DINOSAURS OF TERRA NOVA is about the real and fictional dinosaurs created for the show that has interviews with the crew, producers, and dinosaur expert James Horner.

The gag reel has some silly bits.

An audio commentary for OCCUPATION/ RESISTANCE with Stephen Lang, Brannon Braga and Rene Echevarria rounds out the extras.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  TERRA NOVA is another enjoyable show that lasted for a short time to join other short-lived shows like FIREFLY, JOHN DOE, and other cult shows.   Too bad Fox couldn’t release this show on Blu-ray too (I rather have purchased the series in that format instead of DVD).

 

This review is (c)9-18-2012 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com