Young Earth, Dying Earth, still boring

I want Terra Nova to succeed, I really do, but I don’t think it deserves to.
I’m a fan of the genre, and Sci-fi/fantasy needs a big budget hit on network television, but it’s not going to be Terra Nova.

The ratings for Terra Nova have it on the bubble, it might make it to a second season, but it’s not going to have an epic run, and honestly it doesn’t’ deserve it. Shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica moved the genre forward while being some of the most thought provoking material on television, Terra Nova is a tepid, backward leaning piece of mildly non-boring fluff.

I don’t care for the concept much, it’s about humanity traveling back to the Jurassic age in order to escape a dying earth. Terra Nova is one part low-tension family drama and one part monster of the week, and sadly neither one is compelling.

I get it; it’s been a long time since I lived with my family, so I’m not the core audience for the family drama half, but it still doesn’t work. Jason O’Mera (From the brilliant but cancelled American adaptation of “Life on Mars”) and Shelly Con play the mom and dad that make up the core of the family. Besides the fact the actors are probably 10 years younger than then their characters, the entire family is unremarkable. They’re a family with no secrets, no drama, no tension and absolutely nothing interesting about them.

The only thing remotely interesting is that the Shannon Family is that they somehow get caught up in these weekly adventures. Oddly, no one in this colony finds it at all remarkable that this new family is at the center of all these massively improbable events. The plot complications are pretty standard sci-fi stuff, the sort of plots you’d expect to see on Star Trek, not the good plots, the plots that were so bad at the end they almost killed off one of the longest live action franchises in history.

It's not that there isn't a place for kid-safe, low tension family dramas, there is a place for those shows, it's called ABC Family. As a fan, and hopeful author in the genre, I feel like the genre carries around a lot of baggage from network sci-fi. Terra Nova isn't "About" anything. Battlestar Galactica was "About" questioning our society in a post 9-11 world. Lost questioned life, death and second chances. Terra Nova has the Hollywood mandatory green themes, but beyond it doesn't examine society, doesn't push any sort of agenda, doesn't make a statement.

Sci-Fi needs a hit on broadcast television; Game of Thrones, Trublood, and Walking Dead have all done well on cable, so it’s time for Sci-Fi to hold up its end of the genre. It needs a hit, but thankfully it doesn’t look like Terra Nova will be that hit.