When folks speak of unjustly canceled shows, they often speak of Firefly, but I’ll always speak of Terra Nova. Premiering in 2011, the show takes place in the year 2149, when the Earth is so ravaged by pollution that mankind has no choice but to roll the dice on time paradoxes and begin evacuations to the Cretaceous period. That’s right, future humans and dinosaurs! What’s not to love?
The series is packed full of folks you may recognize from their later work. The Terra Nova colony is lead by benevolent military dictator Commander Nathaniel Taylor, played by Stephen Lang. While Lang may not be a household name, he’s practically a household face. Lang is a great actor, and by this point in his career, you’ve seen him in something. Our lead protagonist is Jim Shannon, a police detective who stows away with his family to Terra Nova. It would seem that the colony would have no need for a detective, but circumstances quickly launch him into a leadership role. Shannon is played by Jason O’Mara, whose voice you may recognize as the voice of Batman from DC’s latest animated films. You may also recognize Shannon’s son (played by Landon Liboiron) as Peter from Hemlock Grove, and Shannon’s daughter (played by Naomi Scott) as Jasmine from the Aladdin remake.
The series follows our characters as they learn to survive in a past rich with new adventures and dangers, ranging from dinosaurs to a corrupt future corporation that wants to “control the past to control the future” and their agents in the past (lead by Mira, who’s played by Christine Adams, whom you may recognize as Dr. Lynn Pierce from Black Lightning). This is basically Jurassic Park, but humans are the ones in the wildlife preserve, and they’re from the future. With Steven Spielberg serving as executive producer, and bringing over some unused sets from the Jurassic Park franchise, the show will feel incredibly familiar to any fan. The cinematography is gorgeous, the overall story is great, and the actors and characters are outstanding. My only complaint is that some of the side-plots can be a bit cliché, but what do you expect from the first season of a network show? Oh yeah, and there was only one season.
Terra Nova didn’t end on a standard cliffhanger, it ended on the worst cliffhanger of all, the world-building cliffhanger. Not only was the new enemy still out there, the world and situation were far grander than we ever knew. And we won’t know any more than that, because the series was too expensive for pre-Disney Fox to continue. It’s a shame, really, the show had a lot going for it. While I have seen many canceled shows in my life that I’ll never recommend because of that, this is one of the few that I do recommend regardless of the cancelation.
Despite the cancelation, Terra Nova was a great show and it deserves to be seen. Maybe one day we could even crowdfund a continuation of some kind, or at least share our own ideas of how it would have continued. Terra Nova is not available on any streaming platform, but you can purchase the entire series from Apple TV or from Amazon for just $9.99.