TV Review: Terra Nova Episode 1.04

We’re back for another round of  Terra Nova. This week’s threat, the colony deals with virus hijinks. Did it evolve beyond the usual formulaic stuff we’ve seen before on other shows or did it go extinct like the dinosaurs? Lets see.

Quick ‘n’ Dirty Review:

We start with a man at a remote outpost playing with a huge green beetle. Seriously, he’s playing with the beetle the way a child would. Beetle escapes said crazy man, who gives chase outside. He then sees a huge carnosaur, who promptly swoops down and devours him. Nice way to start the day.

Back at the main Terra Nova colony, Jim and Commander Taylor are discussing how Outpost 3 (which we just saw) has not communicate back to them in about 3 days. So Taylor will be heading out with Elisabeth to investigate since Outpost 3 is a scientific research station. During that time, Lt. Washington is in charge. Jim gets to watch the kids in Elisabeth’s absence. Malcolm, Elisabeth’s old flame from last week and the Chief Science Officer, is outraged that he was not even informed about this mission.  You need a moment, dude?

Elisabeth, Taylor and a soldier named Brady who feels suspiciously red shirt-like, arrive at Outpost 3. They find the cables used for outside communication have been chewed through by ovosaurs (think velociraptor but less vicious and not as smart) who are attracted to the cable’s nickel content. Inside the outpost, we find out the crazy man from the beginning of the episode was the outpost leader. Video logs and notes from the leader reveals that he was trying to solve some type of virus that had afflicted everyone in the outpost. The main problem is that this virus causes regressive memory loss similar to Alzheimer’s, where a person will start reliving aspects of their past. For instance, one of the outpost members who Taylor and Elisabeth found restrained to a bed believed she is back in Detroit during the food riots of 2137.  Taylor orders that since he and Elisabeth were probably exposed, they will not leave the outpost until she finds a cure.

After Brady finds what’s left of the outpost leader, Elisabeth tells Jim what she knows via video feed. After Jim tells her he caught a cold from their youngest daughter Zoe, Elisabeth chastises him to get better before she gets back home. But once the call ends, Elisabeth is left wondering who Zoe is. Uh-oh!

The next day, Jim finds out that Outpost 3  is quarantined. So as expected he decides to go off to the rescue against Washington’s orders. He brings Malcolm along, as the Chief Science Officer gets his own rover to drive in. And so Jim won’t sneeze all over him during their trip, he gives Jim a dried medicinal root that should help curb his cold.

By the time they get to the Outpost, Taylor is nowhere to be found. They do find Elisabeth, who shoots Jim with a stun gun. She recognizes Malcolm as her college classmate whom she just started dating. But she has no clue who Jim is.

Malcolm gets Elisabeth up to speed about what has happened  (you know, the whole time-traveling 85 million years into the past and being infected by a memory-wiping virus) while Jim is just introduced as a ’friend’. Malcolm felt that revealing that she is married with three kids might be too much for Elisabeth at this point. Of course he does.

As Malcolm and Elisabeth get back to solving what this virus is, as Elisabeth was just beginning to cultivate her medical prowess in college. Then the power goes out, thanks to those damn ovosaurs! Jim goes to deal with them and finds an unconscious Brady. Yeah, remember him?

Jim then gets blindsided by Commander Taylor, who believes he’s in Somalia circa 2138 fighting a long-ended war. Taylor’s looking for his wife, and before knocking Jim out, promises to murder him personally if she’s been hurt in any way.

Jim wakes up and interrupts Malcolm (who’s begin to get affected by the virus) from making some moves on Elisabeth. Jim, after findng out that Malcolm has started to lose his memory, warns that Taylor has escaped and Brady’s injured. And for some reason Jim’s been unaffected by the virus.

As Jim and Malcolm carry Brady to safety, which results at Jim having to knock Malcolm out after his memory results in him becoming panicky and utterly useless.

After going through some of the outpost crew's notes, Elisabeth discovers that the virus is actually the result of a gene-therapy experiment gone wrong. One of the staffers was trying to find a cure for Gorman’s disease, which is similar to Alzheimer's. But instead of opening up memory pathways, this faulty cure does the exact opposite! FAIL.

As for why Jim hasn’t been affected? At first it seems like the root Jim’s been eating to fight his cold. But then Elisabeth realizes that it was the cold virus that protected him form the memory-loss virus. So, in order to cure Elisabeth, he kisses her to get her sick. Really. No joke.

Back at the Terra Nova compound, Taylor has literally gone Rambo (camouflage face paint and all) to sneak into Terra Nova. Best. Security. EVER. He disables a few guards and sneaks into where Maddy and her kind of boyfriend Lt. Reynolds are telling Washington that they saw Taylor sneak into the compound. Taylor gets a knife to Reynolds’ throat and continues to ask about his wife from Somalia. Washington, after calming Taylor down some, gives him the brief details on where he is and that his wife has been dead for a decade. Taylor, not wanting to live in a world without her, goes to slit his own throat. Thankfully Washington nails him with a stun gun before he does the deed. Wow.

Taylor wakes up in the infirmary with his memory back. Elisabeth created a vaccine from Jim’s cold virus which reversed the affects to the faulty gene therapy. Everything is back to normal again thanks to the common cold!

In another storyline, Jim and Elisabeth’s son Josh is getting closer to Skye. But, he still can’t let go of his girlfriend Kara from 2149. Skye suggests that she knows someone who could help get Josh’s girl through the next portal—Tom, a bartender in the colony. 

However, it turns out that Tom secretly smuggles goods to the Sixers. And he also reveals how the new sheriff’s son is trying to make contact with 2149. Mira, the Sixers’ leader, is more than happy to take advantage of that situation.

My thoughts:

Not bad. The family stuff felt a little less forced this time around. It was nice to see the Sixers make a return with one of their moles within Terra Nova.

I’m still feeling a lot of ‘Meh’ for the characters, though getting that dash of Taylor’s bloody past was cool. He was clearly not too stable when in Somalia.

As you guys might know, Terra Nova will run through its 13 episodes til December with no additional episodes after that. Does that mean a cancelation? No clue. Either way, let’s hope it keeps improving before then.

- CCE