- Network: FOX
- Series Premiere Date: Sep 26, 2011
Watch Now
Where To Watch
| Stream On |
|
| Buy on |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
Critic Reviews
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
As a weekly series, the effects need to remain impressive and the writers need to avoid falling into "Lost" and "Walking Dead" band-of-survivors rehash.
-
Terra Nova manages to introduce a panoply of narrative threads and themes while telling a remarkably clean story, both in terms of plot line and tone; Terra Nova is whole-family friendly.
-
The Shannons overall are about the last reason I would recommend this show, after the cool visuals, some effective action set pieces and the expected strong supporting performance by Stephen Lang.
-
Good family fun--providing your family doesn't include little kids who are scared to sleep. Ever.
-
The opener is marred by a conventional plot. The producers--who include Steven Spielberg--show almost complete indifference to science (or sci-fi). That said, TV's most ambitious new series has some promise.
-
If they keep the cute at bay for more dinosaurs and dirty dealings, this should be a great ride.
-
Luckily for Terra Nova, fans of the genre are often at least temporarily willing to overlook bad writing and performances if the battles are exciting and special effects convincing, and they are. That should buy the show time to improve.
-
Now that the premise of the show has been established, it would be nice to see more shades of gray and less black and white.
-
Even with a lavish two-hour premiere, Terra Nova could stand to slow down and admire the world it has taken us to--Earth, 85 million years ago. Still and all, it's a dazzling debut, with a variety of compelling mysteries to get itself going.
-
Terra Nova is another vehicle for a familiar story. It's one we're happy to watch, just maybe not with the fervor FOX is hoping for.
-
Terra Nova walks a fine line and how well it manages to stay on that path will likely determine its ultimate success or failure.
-
If you can make it past the exposition, and the earnest family cliches--a rebellious teenage son, an awkward brainiac daughter--there's plenty of satisfying dino action. And it all looks gorgeous.
-
In the good-news department, Terra Nova is big, noisy and wildly cinematic, and Fox has pulled out all the stops with an Allosaurus-sized campaign to ensure the series opens--all the things that ought to generate sampling in a big-screen HD era.
-
Terra Nova stakes out its own universe, and the fact that we have been on such journeys before may enhance the experience of this one.
-
So long as the dinos roam, Terra Nova has a future.
-
Even with Steven Spielberg listed among the executive producers, this distant world doesn't inspire much awe. [3 Oct 2011, p.45]
-
Indeed, it is hard to knock Terra Nova overall, such does it succeed on its own terms, which involve working over the pituitary brain and the sympathetic soul.
-
The idea that in the long-ago past there were differing versions of how to reinvent humanity's future could make for compelling drama, and those kind of story lines are more likely to be more intriguing than what will transpire among the Shannons, unless this bland family's character development takes a great leap forward very quickly.
-
After you've suspended about a 10-year supply of disbelief, Fox's new epic drama Terra Nova turns out to be an okay adventure story.
-
There's a lot of clunky setup, a lot of piece-moving to send the main characters back to Terra Nova, and a lot of explaining of rules once they get there.
-
The question is what they'll be given to do going forward, beyond generic relationship material, domestic comedy and the occasional action set piece.
-
There is a lot of potential in this series. It's just a shame that it appears to be veering away from something completely different--something darker and more sci-fi and ambitious, and settling into the feel-good, be-safe vibes of both Jurassic Park and Avatar.
-
Terra Nova certainly doesn't lack ambition and scope, which is a plus. But its first two hours fall short in the storytelling department.
-
Nothing in this pilot is as compelling as the idea for the show, which begs philosophical and ethical questions that Spielberg and company (for now, at least) aren't interested in addressing.
-
The slowdown of the show's pace is one thing, but the real issue here is that the family element often feels inauthentic and just isn't up to the quality of the CGI-fueled action sequences.
-
It's no mystery how the overproduced Terra Nova managed to turn out so drastically underwhelming.
-
The show lacks important elements that have been available to storytellers for 2,000 years, most notably compelling character development.
-
By the end of a couple of episodes, most viewers will be wishing Spielberg and his henchmen had spent more time on scripts and less on special effects, even if it meant splicing old outtakes of Barney and Friends into the action sequences.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 157 out of 308
-
Mixed: 80 out of 308
-
Negative: 71 out of 308
-
Sep 27, 2011
-
Sep 26, 2011
-
Sep 27, 2011