Terra Nova Vs Review!

This weeks episode of Terra Nova is called Vs., the title seems to refer to the struggle between Taylor and his son Lucas. This episode along with the previous one is an active continuation of the Terra Nova mythology and as such both form a short story arc.

As for the plot…

Boylan, under duress while in jail, gives Jim a tip about a body buried in the jungle. Jim uncovers a skeleton and investigates it as an old murder that Commander Taylor may have committed. Meanwhile, the colony celebrates the Harvest Festival, in which Zoe stars in a play commemorating Commander Taylor’s arrival in Terra Nova. The play reveals an unexpected clue to the murder. Malcolm discovers how the Sixer spy inside Terra Nova communicates with Mira, but it creates a trail leading to the Shannon’s house. Taylor stages a possible false arrest of Jim.

While Jim is in custody, Taylor reveals the dark truth to him about the 2149 leaders’ real intent for Terra Nova: upon Taylor and his son Lucas’ arrival to Terra Nova, Lucas created a “bridge” to and from 2149. This would allow greedy corporations in 2149 to strip the new world’s resources, reaping huge profits. To prevent this, Taylor destroyed his son, Lucas’ work, causing Lucas to bring his father’s superior, General Fillbrook to Terra Nova to relieve Taylor of command. When Taylor refused to step down in order to protect Terra Nova, he was forced to shoot the general in self-defense, then buried the body.

Conclusion…

So far as Terra Nova goes, this was my favorite episode thus far. However, it does have a number of gripes and they seem to be symptomatic for this show in general. The episode’s biggest flaw its the denouement, it was fairly obvious that commander Taylor had Jim shannon arrested because he wanted to use the opportunity to exact some leverage on him. And thus the show doesn’t go as far as it can and instead chooses for a hollywood style happy ending.

That said, the teenage angst that surrounded the youth in this show seems to be more and more replaced by active involvement and that is great because this show did lack in the number of active participants. The character of Alicia Washington is still under-used.

Score; 8.5 / 10.

Viewer rating; 6.5 million. Which is a sharp drop for a show that seemed to gain traction with its ratings.