Shiw Where Family Gos Back in Past to a Colony Where Dinasours Are

Terra Nova is a goggle box show produced by Steven Spielberg and Brannon Braga which, subsequently a Troubled Production, premiered on Fox in late September 2011. On March 5, 2012, it was announced that Fox would not pick up the series for a 2nd flavor.

The plot involves humans from the mail service-apocalyptic future traveling through a time portal to alive in an Alternate Universe (maybe; see beneath) that resembles the Tardily Cretaceous. From what we run into in the first episode, all life on Earth is dying in the futurity and so the people have gone through the portal to Fix Right What Once Went Incorrect.

The premise is an Excuse Plot to have dinosaurs and humans interacting on a television show. The showrunners promised that the show would take pains to foreclose upsetting dinosaur fans. As expected, they lied.

In that location is a Character Canvass.

Completely unrelated to the similarly-named video game Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, and the Star Trek: Enterprise episode of the same proper name, which Braga co-wrote and produced.

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Tropes featured in this work include:

• Aborted Arc: The infant Ankylosaur taken in past the family looked like the setup for a Squad Pet, just then at that place's cipher until they release information technology dorsum into the wild a few episodes later.
• Adult Fear: When the Shannons get to Terra Nova, one of the soldiers nearly slashes open with a pocketknife the backpack their youngest daughter is hiding in.
• Advertised Actress: Dinosaurs actually don't thing that much in the central plot. The only episodes in which they have a real office are filler episodes; even then they barely appear because the CGI budget needed to show them off would be ridiculously high for a television show.
• Affably Evil: Boylan is more than of an Affable Jerkass than deliberately evil, although he is collaborating with the Sixers. May cross over into Jerkass with a Heart of Gold territory, equally of the finale. He certainly prefers Taylor to the Phoenix Group, and is one of the very kickoff to welcome him dorsum to Terra Nova. And in one episode, it'south implied that Boylan and Taylor used to be very good friends but the murder of their CO/Taylor's mentor at Taylor'due south manus, and the subsequent cover up betwixt the 2, put a lot of pressure on the relationship. It is suggested that Boylan for his function wanted to be a good soldier and study the incident but Taylor wanted to protect the colony and bribed him to go along serenity. The end consequence being the current situation betwixt the two.
• Alien Sky: Of a sort. The first matter the Zoe asks when she sees Terra Nova'due south sky is "Are those clouds?". The future is so polluted the heaven is zippo but smog. The characters also mention the stars being different (although this is not reflected in the visual since there are no visible stars).
• All Animals Are Dogs: The Nykoraptor from "The Delinquent" was seen wagging its tail while trying to attack Jim, who was suspended from a rope trap (this is particularly unusual as raptors have very potent tails).
• All Animals Are Domesticated: The Brachiosaur eating from Zoe's hand. Since they are grazing right next to the debate, though, it's doubtful Zoe is the first human they've met.
• Alternate Universe: We are told that Terra Nova exists in a different timestream than our Earth, which is why they can safely go dorsum in fourth dimension without creating all sorts of horrible time paradoxes. Various hints indicate the reality of the situation is far more complex.
• Amnesia Danger: In "What Remains", a scientists attempts to cure an Alzheimer-like disease using a viral vector and accidentally makes it contagious instead. The disease causes mental regression to an earlier period of the victim'due south life.
• Creature Assassinator: Curran nearly gets away with murder by luring a Nykoraptor into a remote bunker and locking information technology in, the night earlier his victim goes to take upward his post there.
• Animal Heart Spy: A behemothic dragonfly is used by the Sixers to spy on Terra Nova. They lure information technology in using specific colors and vibrations, and a microchip attached to its torso records information.
• Annoying Arrows: Taylor is shot by a Sixer and he basically just shakes it off.
• Combative Offspring: Lucas is this to Taylor, regarding an incident he mistakenly believes Taylor blames him for that led to his mother's expiry.

• Creative License – Biology:
  • When a crow-sized beast with hollow bones flies into people and vesture racks at full speed, more likely this will kill the beast, not fling things 40 times their weight into the air.
  • At that place is no way an animal as bulky and heavily congenital equally a slasher could run 45 mph.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The symbol used extensively in media material and in-Universe by the trek features the supercontinent Pangaea in a configuration from the Triassic Period, 150 meg years prior to the setting. By 85 meg years agone Gondwana was almost entirely broken upwardly and much of Laurasia was covered in intercontinental shallow seaways.
  • The final episode does announced to acknowledge that the world is not just one big landmass at this point. When the Phoenix officers are discussing the planned detonation of the charges that will strip away the vegetation and animal life, they apply a map paradigm showing multiple detonations across a big land-mass and comment that the dozen or so detonations will articulate one-half the continent.
  • The Sixer army camp has avoided detection and stayed hidden for years, despite the fact that the spy in Terra Nova can leave and get to it on foot without well-worn paths, and then render to Terra Nova all within a workday. In reality that would place information technology actually close.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • Anachronism Stew and Misplaced Wildlife can be applied to basically every dinosaur present and several other animals (i.eastward. swordfish had not evolved yet, although the very similar-looking Protosphyraena had, while rhamphorynchoid pterosaurs were extinct by then).
  • In an unusual inversion of portraying dinosaurs with insufficient plumage, the Carnotaurus is seen with highly developed feathers fifty-fifty though it is well known Carnotaurus had no feathers. And even if it did, its feathers would still be primitive.
  • Information technology is, however, played painfully straight with the Nykoraptor, which are dromaeosaurs that don't have quite enough feathers (it is averted with the slashers though, as they are not dromaeosaurs).
  • Near of the theropods as well have pronated hands.
  • Some of the inaccuracies are perchance justified, since the show may or may not accept identify in a dissever time stream, where resemblances to our own time stream would be purely superficial.
• Artistic License – Infinite: The moon was a bit closer to Earth, 85 one thousand thousand years ago, simply, unless the portal in time also displaced them in space and put them far nearer to the equator to create an optical effect, the Moon was barely distinguishable from the way it looks now.
• Astronomic Zoom: The opening shot of the first episode begins almost the Apollo footprints on the Moon, pans upward to reveal the smoggy yellowish Earth That Used to Exist Amend, zooms down to the Chicago skyline, past a mag-lev train, and into an apartment building window where we find Jim Shannon returning habitation from work with his breathing mask on.
• Badass Family: The first season finale shows that the Shannons definitely are 1.
• Batman Gambit: When Taylor is ambushed by Mira and taken hostage, he runs into a grove of explosive plants. He knows the plants are explosive just he also knows that Mira won't shoot to impale. Anticipating this, the real reason he runs into the plants is to get her to shoot the plants, cause an explosion, and so take one of the constitute'due south thorns every bit a tool to gratuitous himself.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Lucas slams Skye'southward head into the hood of a rover hard enough to knock her unconscious, still she gets up again a few minutes later without a mark to show for it.
• Beneficial Disease: A cold provides Jim with immunity from some other infection that causes the victim's retentivity to backslide to an earlier point. Even believing she's a medical pupil, Elisabeth is able to synthesize a vaccine from Jim'southward cold viruses.
• Chivalrous Boss: Lucas thinks of himself as one. He'southward obviously cypher of the sort.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Slashers are famed for the barbs on the ends of their tails. Promotional materials suggested that they could cleave a human in half, but in the evidence, all they tin can do is brand lacerations. Realistically, this isn't a good mode for a predator to hunt. Even so, the prove tries to make it more realistic past having the slashers generally jump at their casualty headfirst with claws outstretched, rather than use their tails. The tails are only brought into play when their casualty is cornered or unaware of the slasher'south presence. A later episode confirms that only males have these barbs and that they are mostly used in fights between males, rather than as a hunting implement.
• Big Bad: Lucas Taylor, whose main goal is to show up his begetter in revenge for perceived guilt.
• Large Creepy-Crawlies: More than plausible than nearly instances of this trope, three-foot long centipedes. Which actually existed. There's also a gigantic dragonfly. And leeches that get very big when sucking blood. Yous take to figure the latter are adjusted to feeding on very large animals, so...
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Simply when the Too Dumb to Alive teenagers are about to die a very deserved death from the Slashers, Taylor and Jim'south reinforcements arrive and deploy all kinds of advanced weaponry to bulldoze them off.
  • Jim saving Maddie from Horton's spider. Justified—Zoey told him the duress word and where they were.
  • Jim again, where he beats upwards Lucas and at to the lowest degree 5 mercs earlier being held downward when they're beating up his son.
  • To a lesser extent, the Carnotaurus that the Shannons use to infiltrate Hope Plaza and cut off Terra Nova from the present solar day.
• Large Good: Nathaniel Taylor. He's doing everything in his ability to sabotage the true purpose of Terra Nova, because he believes that much in its advertised goal of a new beginning for humanity.
• Big Bad Ensemble: On one side there's the Sixers antagonizing the Terra Novans for survival, and what's unsaid to be control over fourth dimension at the end of the pilot. On the other hand nosotros have the Slashers, Nykoraptors, and Carnotaurs (although technically, they're just hungry). At that place's a tertiary side, too: The people of the future, nominally in charge of the Sixers, want access to the past in guild to exploit Terra Nova for resource, and they're perfectly willing to use violence to achieve their ends.
• Black Market Produce: The orange in the first episode.
• Bookends: The season begins with the Shannons coming to Terra Nova and ends with them returning to Terra Nova, consummate with the same audio rail.
• Cleaved Pedestal: Zig-zagged with famous geologist Horton. At first Maddy is simply disappointed that he doesn't seem similar the person who wrote her volume, then she learns that he's a fraud when his hand-written alphabetic character doesn't match his electric current signature, and then the fraud (who was Horton'southward research assistant) claims the real one wasn't as overnice as Maddy believes. Maddy is torn on whether or non to believe him, but her mother points out that the real 1 took the time to respond to a hand-written alphabetic character in a No-Paper Future with a letter of his own.
• Butterfly of Doom: Referenced when Maddy is expositing near the probe, which the scientists sent back through the fourth dimension rip; when they didn't notice it in the nowadays twenty-four hours, they presumed this meant they'd plant an Alternating Universe and no Temporal Paradoxes would ensue from further exploration—i.eastward. stepping on a butterfly volition not cause Doom.
• Can't Kill You, Nevertheless Need You lot: Taylor decides not to execute Curran, a soldier he previously exiled for murder. Instead, he appoints his former subordinate to be his spy among the Sixers. He later proves instrumental in rescuing Skye's mother.
• Coincidental Danger Dialog: Nate Taylor. Justified by being that badass. Averted with the teenagers.
• Chekhov G.I.A.: Taylor's son went missing a few years back. He'south backside the Sixers, or at least they work for him by proxy.
• Chess Motifs: After Jim and Taylor place the spy, Taylor and Skye play chess. He pauses the game to hash out a pick chip of intel with a subordinate, than says, "Your motion."
• Comforting the Widow: Jim immediately twigs that the real reason Elisabeth was called to come to Terra Nova was because Malcolm intended to seduce her, knowing that her husband was imprisoned back in the future. Hence his shock upon realising Jim broke out and came dorsum with them.
• Commanding Coolness: Nathaniel Taylor, who goes one on ane with a carnotaur as a distraction. And lives. More than that, when he first came through the portal, there was a strange temporal upshot that meant fill-in wasn't coming for a long time. Taylor survived 118 days alone in the Cretaceous. Mira points out—snarking of form—that congrats, he survived 118 days. The Sixers? Aye, they're coming up on 1000 days. Of course, they got sent out with hundreds of people, a fair amount of supplies, and even so lost a lot of people earlier they learned. Taylor was sent alone with any he was carrying, and survived without help. His second-in-command, Washington, is no slouch in the badass department herself.
• Absurd Versus Crawly: Dinosaur versus ATV versus Sonic Pulse Gun.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Lucas Taylor'southward backers are nigh cartoonishly evil. They bring an evil ground forces through the gate, they shoot a harmless Brachiosaurus for no reason, they want to commit mass deforestation and genocide in guild to facilitate their mining operation, and they fifty-fifty talk about all the selfish things they're going to do when they become their money.
• Crapsaccharine World: Basically what Terra Nova is. It's initially presented as a land of peace and bounty, where human being beings can Set Right What Once Went Incorrect. However, it'southward quickly revealed that the colony is under constant threat from ferocious dinosaurs and Sixers. Fifty-fifty within the walls of the colony, things aren't e'er cracking.
• Crapsack Globe: The future; there's a reason they're leaving for the by.

  Josh: You don't know what 2149 is similar! I had three friends who killed themselves in my junior twelvemonth. No one believes they take a time to come, no i believes in annihilation anymore...

• Curb-Stomp Battle: Pretty much anyone tin do this to Lucas, as every time he gets into a fight his opponent gives him a thorough chirapsia that he then justly deserves.
• Cut Short: Sadly. The first season wraps upwards thirteen episodes with the Terra Novans successfully preventing Lucas's backers from strip-mining the past past destroying the connexion to the future. Plenty of set-ups for a second half-season are in place, including the stranded Phoenix Group soldiers and the 18th-century artifact they establish in the Badlands, but the second season was never picked upwards.
• Death from Higher up: The colony suffers a swarm of horny pterodactyls AND a meteorite that fries every electrical circuit in camp, rendering guns, lights, and all but the most primitive medical equipment useless.
• Death of the Hypotenuse / Back for the Dead: Josh's girlfriend from the futurity is rather abruptly killed by a bomb sent through with her group.
• Defiant to the End: Washington before Lucas kills her.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "It's an EMP Pulse!" Thank you Maddy.
• Desert Punk: Or rather, Jungle Punk; the evidence has the full general experience, particularly regarding the Sixers, but the setting is the tropical Cretaceous.
• Dysfunctional Family: A lot of the show's conflicts come from this, mostly between Jim and Josh. Explained by the presence of two Hormone-Addled Teenagers, and the fact that dad was in prison for two years can't help.
• World That Used to Be Better: Much better; within the adults' lifetime the sky was completely blotted out past pollution, domes are in use, Population Control is in event, masks are needed to breathe, and everything is grimy.
• Elite Mooks: The Phoenix Group, or as Lucas puts it "The best regular army money tin buy."
• Enemy Mine: Taylor and Mira stop upwards working together to fend off a pair of territorial slashers. After some personal backstory, they recognize information technology's a Worthy Opponent human relationship betwixt them. In fact, they besides reason that they're much more than the same than different—both ultimately want to protect their family unit and loved ones in the only way they know how. For Mira, that's her daughter dorsum in the future. For Taylor, that's the colony.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When Weaver cruelly shoots downwards a brachiosaur for no reason Lucas, of all people, seems to experience that this is an unnecessary form of action. Making the portal become both ways, hiring an evil regular army to help him destroy the Terra Nova colony just to prove that he's better than his dad, and killing innocent colonists in the process: certain... no problem. But gunning down innocent animals without a expert reason is where he draws the line.
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: When your prove's premise is well-nigh colonizing an alternate World by manner of a Swirly Energy Thingy, you lot could have your setting include annihilation. So why not brand it the Late Cretaceous and fill up it with dinosaurs?
• Evil Is Petty: Seems to exist a running theme. While the proficient guys and even some of the Sixers and their agents are all motivated by the greater skillful or the well-being of friends and family unit, Lucas Taylor's sole reason for destroying Terra Nova is to testify his male parent that he's better than him. And his Corrupt Corporate Executive backers are perfectly willing to deforest the entire planet and kill every living thing on it for no improve reason than budgetary gain.
• Exact Words: The Sixers stated to Josh that if he helped them, their bosses would get his girlfriend to Terra Nova; they practise, along with a bomb that kills her as she enters.
• Expy:
  • The Sixers sure audio a whole awful lot similar The Others.
  • As well, who wasn't secretly hoping that Stephen Lang's spoken communication to the newcomers would outset with, "You're not in Kansas anymore! You lot are on Terra Nova!"
  • And the Slashers are essentially Jurassic Park Velociraptors, except they expect dissimilar.
  • The Shannon family unit has been likened to The Simpsons.
  • Near of the fictional dinosaurs are expies of real dinosaurs:
    • Nykoraptor: Velociraptor
    • Empirosaur: Spinosaurus
    • Slasher: Velociraptor once again, as mentioned above, though of the fictionalized Jurassic Park variety.
    • Ovosaur: Ornitholestes (or some other small, primitive coelurosaur).
    • And the Ancestral Komodo Dragon, although non a dinosaur, is an expy of Dilophosaurus and Dimetrodon.
• Failed a Spot Check / Offscreen Teleportation: How else to explain Lucas getting shot twice and so somehow escaping cleanly despite existence mere anxiety abroad from both Taylor and Skye?
• Fanservice: Why else do they bear witness Skye in a bikini in the very starting time episode?
• Feathered Fiend: The Slashers and Nykoraptors, and to a lesser extent the Carnotaurus.
• Females Are More Innocent: Information technology turns out that the female Sixer leader Mira is working for associates of Lucas Taylor, and has more or less been coerced into the role in much the same way as another female "villain", Sixer spy Skye Tate. Lucas Taylor, on the other hand, causes problem for the colony largely out of a sense of Disproportionate Retribution due to his mistaken belief that his father blames him for his mother's death, and his associates are doing information technology out of pure greed.
• Fictional Currency: The Terra Novans appear to have staples such equally housing, medicine, and basic food provided, but other goods are paid for with "terras" alongside a spirited barter arrangement. 20 terras buys a dainty outfit, while 60 is somewhat steep for a handmade guitar.
• Kickoff Time in the Dominicus: In the airplane pilot episode, when characters are most to walk outside into the by, a voice on the PA system warns them that their optics may not be used to the strong sunlight.
• Fling a Light into the Hereafter: Or rather, the past; Terra Nova'south stated goal is to colonize an Alternate Universe Cretaceous to provide a way for humanity to go on as Earth That Was collapses into ecology ruin.
• Foreshadowing: Remember the starting time Sixer nosotros see? And how Skye convinces him to allow them into the vehicle by telling him her name? Aye, she's the spy. Of course he'southward going to help her.
• Future Food Is Artificial: To the betoken where the blackness market orange Jim brings home is regarded as a rare, heady treat.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Jim and Elisabeth both note that Josh's rebellious nature and his relationship with Skye mirrors their relationship when they were younger.
  • Josh is only every bit rebellious and aggressive as Jim while Maddy is whip smart like Elisabeth. Also, Josh looks like Jim while Maddy and Zoe resemble Elisabeth.
  • Some very specific examples:
    • Elisabeth is a brainy doctor who fell in love with a policeman. Maddy is a brainy medical educatee who falls in love with a security officer.
    • Jim broke the police to get his family through the time portal. Josh breaks the police in an effort to go his girlfriend through the fourth dimension portal.
    • Jim attacked a law officer threatening his family. Josh attacks Lucas when he'due south threatening Skye. Pointed out when Josh says he finally understands Jim's actions.
• Genre Blindness/As well Dumb to Live:
  • Tasha, who thought information technology was a practiced thought to run for it rather than look in the heavily armored vehicle waiting for confirmed backup for rescue. She survives, though badly injured. In all fairness, she was conspicuously in a country of farthermost panic and not thinking rationally. And she took a machine gun with her. On elevation of that, the slashers do eventually punch a hole through the ATV, forcing the other teens to abandon it.
• Gigantic Moon: Due to the moon apparently moving dorsum a centimeter each year, and this being 85 million B.C., the moon is very close to the sky, just it just adds to the Scenery Porn. Technically the moon shouldn't really be that shut. 85 million years ago the moon would only be 2,007 miles closer (information technology recedes 38mm per year) meaning that it would be 0.8% closer than it would be in 2149, it wouldn't be significantly different. However, it tin appear much larger due to an optical illusion because it's a new perspective for them to run into the moon.
• Good Animals, Evil Animals: The Brachiosaurus and Ankylosaurus are both depicted as harmless (sometimes even playful) vegetarians. The Carnotaurs, Slashers, and Nykoraptors, on the other mitt, are vicious and feral predators.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Weaver and the residue of Lucas's benefactors.
• Light-green Aesop: the Polluted Wasteland that 22nd-century Earth has become.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Increasingly; the Sixers are shown to have valid viewpoints and motivations, while Taylor'due south Dark and Troubled Past comes more than and more into the light. The corporate interests behind the Sixers, notwithstanding, are not sympathetic at all.
• Guns Are Useless:
  • All the dinosaurs are apparently Immune to Bullets. Luckily, they accept sonic turrets for dealing with larger predators that about the perimeter and those odd green-low-cal-shooty-gun-thingies seemed to piece of work pretty well on the slashers.
  • Averted when Weaver takes downward a brachiosaur with one shot.
• Mitt Wave: The bear witness at times seems to be made of it:
  • Humans would probably have a lot longer to adjust to the much higher oxygen levels in the Mesozoic age, but a simple facemask for a few minutes postal service-transfer seems to do the pull a fast one on.
  • In the pilot Josh refers to Jim having to interruption out of a maximum security facility armed with a few items Elisabeth is able to sneak into a rebreather. And the very next scene finds Jim riding the train...
• Happily Married: Jim and Elisabeth
• Herbivores Are Friendly: The plant eater dinosaurs are shown to exist playful in the airplane pilot episode. The main grapheme'southward youngest daughter even feeds them treats.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: The Mole Skye switches her fidelity dorsum to Taylor one time Lucas finishes his equations.
• Idiot Ball: Both sides suffer this in the finale.
  • Hero Ball: Shannon keeps damning evidence in his pockets when he attacks a platoon of soldiers, thus revealing that he's a traitor (attacking them in itself exposes his ruse, simply the evidence simply makes things worse).
  • Villain Brawl:
    • Lucas takes Skye at her word when she claims she wants to practise a Heel–Face Plough, going so far as to escort her without guards. Predictably, he's captured.
    • It gets even more stupid when one of Lucas' bosses comes with him to Terra Nova for no divers reason and is manipulated past Elisabeth, who injects him with a parasite and promises to cure him if he secures Jim's release. He, instead of using the Phoenix Group to force her to cure him, agrees (and she was bluffing the whole fourth dimension). No wonder the skilful guys won if this guy's in charge.
• I Have Your Married woman: Seems to be the Sixers' and Phoenix Group'due south standard Chiliad.O.
  • Mira'south employers in 2149 are holding her daughter to ensure her cooperation.
  • Mira, in plough, was holding a young daughter'southward brother hostage to coerce the girl into retrieving a cardinal artifact for Lucas'south work. She does, nevertheless, allow both kids return to Terra Nova when the situation is resolved.
  • The Sixers and their employers pull this one on Josh as well, promising to get his girlfriend Kara onto the Eleventh Pilgrimage if and only if he steals critical medical supplies for them. It does not end well.
  • The Sixers accept been belongings Skye'southward ill female parent for three years to finer blackmail Skye into acting equally their spy in the colony. They fifty-fifty threaten to withhold medical treatment or outright harm her if Skye does not cooperate. Eventually, Curran breaks her out and returns her to Terra Nova.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • In the fifth episode, one of Taylor's soldiers commits an elaborate murder... with a live dinosaur as the weapon. Anybody thinks information technology'southward just an unfortunate blow until Jim'southward cop instincts boot in. A skeptical Taylor hangs a lampshade: "How do you impale a man with a dinosaur?"
  • Used again in the 1st season finale, where they ship one into 2149.
• In the Back: Lucas cons his father into a hug, then stabs him.
• It Seemed Similar a Expert Thought at the Fourth dimension: Jim's word for word reasoning when asked why he and Elisabeth had a forbidden tertiary child.
• I Desire My Beloved to Be Happy: Skye helping Josh to perchance get his girlfriend onto the side by side pilgrimage to Terra Nova. Unfortunately, the guy who tin help is working with the Sixers, who program to utilize Josh against Terra Nova. That fact eventually turns her confronting the idea. And then later, nosotros discover out that Skye is the true spy for the Sixers...
  • Then this thought ends up backfiring completely.
• Jerkass:
  • Boylan, but he'due south just and then mannerly...
  • Lucas and Weaver use equally well.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Only in case y'all've forgotten that we're not supposed to be rooting for the Decadent Corporate Executive, he coldly guns downward a Brachiosaur for basically no reason. They were going to burn down the entire surface area anyway, which surely would have killed it. Even Lucas seemed put off by it.
  • The Phoenix group disables the anchor for the portal on Terra Nova's cease by strapping a flop to i of the new colonists (definitely without his consent) and sending him through to explode.
  • While Slashers aren't exactly cuddly, you have to admit Taylor and Mira shooting 1 with an pointer and so setting it on fire was a bit over-the-top. The second Slasher'due south reaction could probably exist translated into English language as "What the hell human being? What was that all about???".
• Kill and Replace: Horton's assistant killed him and took his place.
• Killed Off for Existent: Kara and Washington.
• Kill It with Fire: As function of their mining operation, the Phoenix Group plans to use incendiary bombs to completely sterilize miles of jungle.
• Laser Sight: Light-green lasers are standard effect on the assault rifles, which is reasonable when dealing with dinosaurs, merely they have to turn them off when fighting the Sixers.
• Last Fertile Region: The alternate universe that Terra Nova inhabits is one compared to the devastated and ruined future Globe. Phoenix Group wants to take Terra Nova and strip mine it, regardless of how much harm they'll do the ecosystem, making Terra Nova just like Earth.
• Like Brother and Sis: Lucas claims that Skye and he are like siblings since they share the same "male parent," though his questionable actions towards her would say some other thing.
• Made of Iron:
  • Hunter gets the end of his leg chewed on by a dinosaur. Despite this, at the end of the episode he's merely hobbling along on the leg with the help of two friends.
  • The Slashers themselves, as well. At i point, Josh puts something like five attack rifle rounds into i. It retreats, but it ought to be dead. The Carnotaurus are fifty-fifty tougher—ane of them takes several dozen rounds to the face from a jeep-mounted BFG, falls over, and gets upwardly again without an apparent scratch. Taylor doesn't even bother to shoot at information technology with his burglarize during his distraction, even as information technology charges him.
  • Lucas gets shot twice, eye of mass, and manages to get away unnoticed, while no more than than a meter away from Taylor and Skye. No word on how far he got, simply he shouldn't have been able to walk straight, much less escape so quickly and quietly.
• Come across Cute:
  • Maddy and her explanation on dinosaur digestion to young soldier Marking Reynolds.
  • Josh and Skye meeting in the market place.
• Memento MacGuffin: Josh'south necklace, which was given to him past his girlfriend. Taken to inanimate and in-universe Tear Jerker status in the season finale. Information technology's now his 1 tangible reminder of her.
• The Metric Organisation Is Here to Stay: Feet and Yards nonetheless get a mention occasionally, though.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • The show takes place 85 million years into the past, which puts it in the Late Cretaceous Catamenia (the Santonian Age, to be specific). Carnotaurus (lived 70 million years ago) isn't too far out of place, but the brachiosaurs and Allosaurus (mentioned but not seen) are way out of place.
  • In addition to issues of time, you've also got problems of space—although Brachiosaurus and Allosaurus fossils have been constitute in similar places from western to central Due north America, Carnotaurus was located in Argentina.
  • The second episode has pterosaurs which are clearly vest in rhamphorhynchoidea, minor with long tails but that went extinct at the end of the Jurassic, and non the surviving suborder pterodactyloidea, larger with short tails.
  • Subverted with the "Empirosaur", the giant Spinosaur that appears in one episode; A Spinosaur of similar size and appearance—and possibly a species of Spinosaurus itself—was discovered in Southward America around the time the prove aired.
  • Regarding the behemothic centipede, at that place were giant myriapods at i point in Earth's history, only they weren't centipedes and, more than importantly, they lived over 200 million years earlier the timing of the bear witness, in the late Carboniferous.
• The Mole:
  • Skye, while her mother was effectively held hostage by the Sixers.
  • Jim has his son Josh resume his task at Boylan's, which is now a Bad-Guy Bar, when the Phoenix Grouping takes over.
• Moment Killer:
  • Maddy has a addiction of killing the mood at any given time by explaining in great detail the science behind whatsoever way cool thing everyone else is looking at.
  • Episode Iii's pterosaurs, meanwhile, raise it to an art form. Every single time Jim and Elisabeth get a moment alone for what is implied to be their first lovemaking session since Jim was sent to jail, at least one of the piddling buggers starts screeching.
  • Skye does information technology to herself when coiling upwards the parasite in Hunter'southward tum. He'southward talking most his feelings toward her when the parasite breaks and slides back inside.
  • Jim walks in on Maddy getting intimate with Reynolds. Their error for doing and then in the jungle about the makeshift camp, of grade. Maddy very most ruins it herself, as she oft does, but Reynolds gets her back on track.
  • Lucas too. It appears that his begetter has finally gotten through to him, and they share a warm hug. That is until Lucas literally stabs his father In the Dorsum.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Harnessed by 22nd-century engineering science in order to send the "pilgrimages" back in fourth dimension to Terra Nova.
• Never Constitute the Body: Invoked as the reason why 22nd-century scientists determined Terra Nova was in a dissimilar "timestream", subsequently they sent a mechanical probe through the Negative Space Wedgie and information technology never showed upwards in the present era. The probe, for its part, currently rests on a monument in the middle of the Terra Nova settlement. Until it gets diddled up in the Phoenix Group'southward attack. The Stable Fourth dimension Loop may withal be in play.
• No-Paper Futurity: Information technology'due south implied that not-digital media is pretty much dead in the time to come. With World'south resources effectively gone, this is understandable.
• No Plans, No Epitome, No Fill-in: Blowing up Hope Plaza is treated equally a permanent solution, even though the engineering behind it should be something easily reproducible (albeit time-consuming and costly on that scale).
• Obfuscating Inability: Jim Shannon pretends that an explosion has left him deaf, mentally inhibited with partial amnesia, and limping. He blows his cover when he beats the shit out of Lucas and a few Phoenix soldiers with his crutch to defend his son.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Shannon and Taylor return from luring the pterosaurs to their new mating basis sporting numerous wounds and gushing nearly how awesome it was. Besides bad the budget couldn't handle showing it.
  • On the villainous side, the Phoenix Grouping pretty much rolls over Terra Nova while Jim is in the hospital.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
  • Averted with Lucas. Malcolm states that despite Lucas beingness a bright physicist, he is no engineer.
  • Malcolm, however, plays this trope significantly straighter, as he seems to be both a biologist and an engineer. He is head of the Science Department, later on all.
• Overprotective Dad:
  • Jim shows signs of this towards his daughter's dating life. It should be noted that Jim is probable just messing with Marker for his ain amusement. He doesn't seem to mind the human relationship, and is generally just befuddled that Mark is "courtship" his daughter the one-time-fashioned way.

    Jim: [to Marking] You know I carry a gun and concur grudges, correct?

  • Then once again when he became temporary CO:

    Jim: You seem more than nervous than usual. Is that considering today I'm not just Maddy's father, I'm besides your CO?
    Mark: Permission to neither confirm nor deny, sir.
    Jim: [wryly] Permission granted.

  • He likewise half-heartedly pulls this routine regarding Josh; when Jim is questioning Skye in "Inside" about her whereabouts, she comes up with the comprehend story that she was with Josh at her house:
• Overpopulation Crunch: Overpopulation is one of the factors that jumpstarts the plot (the other one being extreme pollution) - the plot being "transport some humans through a wormhole to an alternate Earth resembling the Cretaceous Period."
• Planet Looters: Turns out to be the true purpose behind Terra Nova, rather than the advertised "new beginning". Once Taylor'due south son, Lucas, can make the portal two-way, hereafter Earth will strip mine alternate past Earth for its own do good.
• Plot Time: Josh sneaks out with his friends on orientation twenty-four hours and has the adventure in the evening, while Jim's first mean solar day sure feels like more i.
• Poison-and-Cure Gambit: Elisabeth does this to go Jim out of prison house in the flavor finale. She was bluffing. The "cure" she injects is a sedative.
• Population Control: In the hereafter, families are express to 2 children each.
• Portal to the By: The reason colonization of the past is possible. Unlike most portals, it'southward but stable in space and betwixt the ii time periods because of engineering science, and only communications are two-way; anyone who travels through is there for keeps. Until Lucas finishes his equations.
• Prehistoric Monster: Zig-Zagged:
  • With a dash of Super-Persistent Predator: Judging by the early episodes, most theropods, fictional species and otherwise, call up of nothing merely murder all day. Parodied here. However, it's not that large of a stretch for a hungry predator to go after humans.
  • Averted with the giant centipede, which doesn't set on Jim; he just freaks out when it crawls over his manus.
  • When Taylor and Mira are forced to team upward against a pair of slashers the justification for the pursuit is that the dinosaurs are claiming new territory and meet them as threats to exist chased away, not just nutrient.
  • The little pterosaurs at first appear to be this, attacking people in the streets for no reason. It'south later discovered that Terra Nova was constructed where it was because eggshells found in the soil made information technology fertile growing footing. Turns out that it's actually a nesting ground, and every few years the creatures that laid those eggs return to breed. What may have laid all those eggs, you enquire? Those very aforementioned pterosaurs that are now attacking Terra Nova.
  • The Carnotaurus pretty much plays this trope straight.
  • Sometimes Nykoraptors attack people for nutrient, but only when the human is vulnerable or the nyko is cornered. It'due south actually mentioned that their favorite nutrient is a herbivorous compsognathid called Gallusaurus prima.
  • The empirosaur doesn't endeavour and attack anyone, information technology'south simply terrified of the fire the Sixers use to bulldoze it toward Terra Nova. Ultimately information technology doesn't fifty-fifty assault the colony; they successfully frighten the beast abroad with burn of their own before it even gets close. Turns out it was just a lark.
  • While information technology's unfortunately never shown on-screen, Xiphactinus is supposedly a unsafe and aggressive fish. It also is very tasty. Terra Novans regularly catch and eat the juveniles.
• Previews Pulse: The pulses in the trailer betoken the end of the peacefulness.
• Private Armed forces Contractors: The Phoenix Grouping.
• Psycho for Rent: The mercenaries in the Phoenix Group.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Why does Lucas wants to destroy Terra Nova, kill countless innocent people and strip-mine the by for all its worth? Merely to get back at his dad for the delusional belief that he was a constant disappointment to him.
• Psychotic Smirk: Lucas once more (and often). Anybody else detect the pattern here?
• Ptero Soarer: Averted with the unidentified tapejarids seen in a few brief flyovers.
• Punch-Clock Villain:
  • Mira is only working for the bad guys because they have her daughter, and the only way they'll ever be reunited is if Lucas tin get the portal to work both means.
  • Skye is only The Mole because Mira is treating her mother for a disease that Terra Nova doesn't even know is curable.
• Putting on the Reich: The flag of the Phoenix Group looks very reminiscent of a Nazi battle standard, and the thuggish mercs turn Terra Nova into a virtual stalag, consummate with searchlights sweeping the grounds at night.
• Rags to Riches: Sort of. Jim goes from being an escaped convict in the first episode to the town sheriff, pretty much Taylor'due south right mitt man (too Lt. Washington, making him third in command), and at ane point temporary Commanding Officeholder of Terra Nova when both Taylor and Wash are out.
• Raptor Attack: Instead of actual raptors, though, we go the slashers, which appear to be proceratosaurids. With tail barbs, for some reason. The only genuine raptors to appear are Nykoraptors, which resemble adequately-accurate Velociraptor-type dinosaurs. They aren't as unsafe as the slashers and have just a scarce few scenes.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: The Brachiosaurus accept fleshy nostrils on meridian of their heads, just like their counterparts in that other mass media work showing dinosaurs. However, in the 2 decades since that movie came out Science Has Marched On, with the well-nigh likely position of the nostrils beingness on the snout.
• Reasonable Dominance Figure:
  • Commander Taylor. Yes, he'south keeping a few secrets, but mostly he's just interested in making sure the colony survives. Noted in the 3rd episode, where he immediately takes measures (with three deaths to deal with) to ensure that people are kept as safe as possible until the threat is resolved.
  • Jim himself, as he grows into his new position as Terra Nova's sheriff.
  • Lucas claims himself to be one, right after he had two mercs hold Josh down and so he could beat him.
• Rebellious Spirit: Josh. An come across with Slashers in the middle of the jungle straightens him out, though.
• Red Shirt: Terra Nova seems to ship patrols out into the jungle (particularly at night, when the predators are most active) for the sole purpose of dying dramatically, which they do in droves.
• La Résistance: Jim begins to set one up within minutes of getting his hearing back from the explosion.
• Sadistic Choice: During a war in Somalia, Taylor was made to choose between saving his wife or his son. Effectively, he lost both; Lucas mistakenly believes Taylor blames him for his mother's death, and he hates Taylor over it.
• Scenery Gorn: The opening shot of the first episode is an Epic Tracking Shot that swoops by the moon to reveal the decaying yellow Earth of 2149, then zooms down to a gritty, rusting skyline with enough familiar buildings standing to recognize as Chicago'southward (Sears Tower is no longer tallest).
• Scenery Porn: Ofttimes. Most episodes open up with swooping helicopter shots filled with CG dinosaurs.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: At the end, the family comments on how much bigger the moon is, 85 million years in the past, every bit information technology drifts from the globe at nearly one-half a centimeter per year. However, at that charge per unit, the moon would simply have drifted about 425 kilometers out of its full 400,000 km. distance—not enough to make such a meaning difference in appearance. It could be that the smogginess of their century-of-origin meant they'd never seen the optical illusion that makes the moon look larger when it'southward near the horizon.
• Screw the Rules, I'grand Doing What's Correct!: Nathaniel Taylor. Well, it's more similar "Screw the corrupt corporations in 2149 who desire to strip-mine the Cretaceous Flow, I'm doing what's all-time for the future of humanity!" But you get the idea.
• Seldom-Seen Species: Carnotaurus isn't very common in media despite being well-known, and (apart from the feathers and the forelimbs) was depicted very accurately. There are also Xiphactinus, a type of marine fish, which lives in the lakes near Terra Nova. The 20-foot-long adults are never seen or mentioned, but 3-human foot juveniles are caught and eaten past Terra Novans. A less obvious example are the large pterosaurs seen in a few curt scenes—rather than the typical Pteranodon seen in pop culture, it's an unnamed (and probably undiscovered) type of tapejarid. The slashers also aren't raptors at all; they're proceratosaurids.
• Settling the Frontier: A new frontier in time instead of space.
• Set Right What One time Went Wrong: The basic plot—in this alternate Earth humanity can make a new kickoff, utilizing proper conservation of resources and then that the environment doesn't plummet every bit it did the get-go time around. Until Nate Taylor reveals that it's a lot unlike than and so; corporate interests back in the future would rather strip-mine the past for everything information technology has.
• Shell-Stupor Silence: Done from Jim'southward perspective early on in the season finale, when he wakes from a 3-solar day coma and stumbles around the badly-damaged settlement to find Phoenix Group soldiers everywhere and Lucas and Mira in charge. Jim soon runs into Elisabeth, who restores his hearing and fills him in on what he missed.
• Shout-Out:
  • Possibly a coincidence, but exercise you happen to know of another short-lived sci-fi show with characters named Malcolm, Zoe, Reynolds, and Launder?
  • Sky and Josh's exchange about the Slashertails: "They mostly come out at night... by and large."
  • "Instinct" was basically a huge The Birds homage.
  • "Jim, I'k a md, not a chemist."
  • In "Now You Run across Me", Elisabeth makes passing mention of 1 Nurse Ogawa.
• Shoot the Canis familiaris: Shoot the Brachiosaurus.
• The Slow Path: Because no one realized that the initial portal connection wasn't stable, when Taylor stepped through the portal with the adjacent person correct behind him... they didn't make it for 118 days from Taylor's perspective.
• Stable Time Loop: Patently not an case, but with the destruction of the probe in the season finale, the "proof" that Earth'southward scientists used to merits it's an Alternate Universe is gone, and and so things are uncertain.
• Stock Dinosaurs: The evidence plays this straight while as well averting it. Most of the dinosaurs appearing are fictional, but the few real species that appear are pretty famous: Carnotaurus, brachiosaurs, Ankylosaurus, etc. Fifty-fifty almost of the fictional species resemble well-known dinosaurs. Completely averted with the Slashers, which expect like proceratosaurs.
• Summon Bigger Fish: When Jim infiltrates Hope Plaza, he brings a carnotaur with him to fifty-fifty the odds.
• Super-Persistent Predator:
  • The Slashers are really determined to get into that jeep. The carnotaurs, however, realistically freak out and retreat as soon as the sonic pulse guns starting time firing.
  • In the next episode, the pterosaurs are really determined to get to their hatching ground aka the Terra Nova base of operations. Justified, as that'south a identify they'd realistically want to get to. They don't actually go out of their way to attack people who aren't outside, except for one occasion where they interruption into a business firm.
  • Averted with the bequeathed Komodo, which has patently gained a reputation among the colonists as a coward.
• Sympathetic Murder Backstory: Commander Taylor killed his commanding officer in cocky-defense after an argument, when he arrived in alternating past earth to salve him of control of the Terra Nova colony shortly later on he learned the truth about the project: that those backside Terra Nova are trying to find out how to make the portal go both means so they can exploit the resource on the Terra Nova side.
• Have Our Word for It: Information technology'southward repeatedly said that it'south dangerous to go outside the fence without back up—in that location are that many unsafe critters out there. Yet the characters seem to show, time and time again, that it is fairly safe to go wandering outside the fence, especially during the day, and actually pretty common to do so.
• Tempting Fate:
  • The Sixer who gets snatched out of his ATV and eaten by a carnotaur. Terminal words: "We're all clear!"
  • "Don't worry, slashers hunt mostly at night!" Approximate what happens nearly five minutes subsequently.
  • "Don't worry, Hunter, if slashers munch on one of united states, it won't be your scrawny ass."
• At that place Is Another MacGuffin: The Phoenix Group found an ancient send's figurehead in The Badlands, implying there'south a second time fracture that leads in that location, they just don't know where on Earth it exists in the time to come. Still.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Meteoric iron is mentioned every bit a vital resource for Terra Nova, presumably for construction and repairs. Shame the Sixers control the quarry. Also the resource that the guys in the future are virtually interested in.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • The scientist who chases the little green beetle right into the path of a carnotaur, and simply stands in that location grin equally the dinosaur looks down on him, preparing for a very easy breakfast. Even so, he is later revealed to take been exposed to a virus that regresses people mentally to various ages. Given his scientific notes turned into nursery rhymes and drawings, it'southward implied that he regressed to a young child, which would explain his reaction of artless wonder instead of fear.
  • Tasha. Sure, love. Exit the armored ATV and run into the jungle at night where there are hungry cannibal dinosaurs waiting to eat you. The other teenagers are pretty bad too, makin' moonshine out where the predators are and all that. It was like a checklist for a slasher picture show.
  • Josh is a pretty high contender too, almost to the point where "Rebel" becomes synonymous with "idiot."
    • Did no research about what life will be similar in that location. ("Allosaurus? That's a meat eater, right?")
    • Does not beverage the fluid designed to acclimate his body to the new biosphere considering it doesn't gustatory modality practiced.
    • Grabs a fruit considering he's craving solid food but has no thought how to open up information technology.
    • Distracted by the Sexy into going exterior the walls (hey, call up that Allosaurus you were scared of before?)
    • Drinks alcohol in a wild environment full of predators.
    • Of course, as far as the Terra Novans knew, that surface area was off limits for no reason. Skye but constitute out about it beingness "Slasher territory" (fifty-fifty if that isn't the real reason...) at the finish of the first episode, and she'due south been there for years. It's not as if Josh can be expected to know what is and isn't off limits if she doesn't. Makes no sense that he doesn't become sick, though.
  • To be off-white, this was all in the airplane pilot. Having a nearly-death experience seems to accept counterbalanced Josh out a lilliputian.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Skye considers trying to beat out the ignition code for a vehicle out of Lucas, but believes he would enjoy it.
• Boondocks with a Dark Secret:
  • Although initially presented every bit a world of peace and bounty, the Shannons chop-chop acquire that they're in danger from Slashers and Sixers... something the orientation tour failed to mention.
  • Jim Shannon also afterwards discovers Taylor may not be such a clean person, having murdered his mentor. Simply then Taylor himself reveals that the entire reason for the Terra Nova colony wasn't a second chance, but a mode to obtain more than resources for the time to come.
  • The season finale reveals that the Badlands, a supposedly empty expanse far from the portal, holds artifacts from World's history. As soon as they're cutting off from the time to come, the Phoenix group heads there without filibuster.
• Trash the Set: Used in the first flavour finale to show the Terra Nova settlement in the backwash of the Phoenix Group'south curbstomping of the defense forces.
• Trojan Horse: In the first season finale, Taylor and Jim replace a cargo container being shipped to 2149 with one containing a carnotaur.
• True Love'due south Kiss: Jim kisses Elisabeth to infect her with a virus that helps cure her retention loss.
• Ungrateful Bastard: The Sixers. In the first episode Terra Nova accepts them in to salve them from a dinosaur attack. The moment the dinosaur leaves, they come out of their vehicle with guns armed. In their defense, the 2 forces are extremely bitter enemies.
• Villainous Incest: Lucas toward Skye. They're not actually related (Taylor is a father figure to her rather than her actual father), merely he refers to her every bit a sister however. This doesn't stop him from constantly touching her and affectionately flirting with her.
• You Tin't Get Abode Again: The portal is one-way, so anyone who goes to Terra Nova isn't coming back. The future can still transport supplies and such, though. When Lucas makes the portal two-manner, Jim blows upwards Hope Plaza, permanently cut them off from the future... although the wooden figurehead implies that there's some other portal in the Badlands.
• Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: Skye and her roommates have a habit of sneaking out into the jungle full of unsafe predators and rebellious Sixers, where they go swimming, hang out, and distill and potable moonshine.
• Zerg Blitz: A flock of crow-sized pterosaurs attacks this style when their nesting ground is invaded due to the fact that Terra Nova was literally built on top of information technology! And there are millions of them.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TerraNova

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