Let us begin with a nice “rawr lookit our CGI!”
They should begin more episodes like that.
It leads to Jim – aww, damn, can we go back to the CGI?
No? Damn it – anyway, Jim and Taylor playing with bows proving that they are,
indeed, accurate enough to hit the sea. I feel a more challenging target may be
in order. Apparently it’s a lazy way to
fish. Jim is nearly killed by a giant prehistoric monster fish but, alas,
Taylor saves him.
Back at Terra Nova, Maddy is all gleeful because her scientific
hero, Ken Horton, is returning from an expedition. The doctor himself (oooh
English accent, 60% chance of being evil!) brushes past and dismisses Malcolm
before going to a full range of check ups with Elizabeth. Maddy gushes all over
her hero, gets his autograph and is taken on as his assistant. Yet he’s not
everything what she expects – there are things he doesn’t seem to remember. She
also reveals she wrote a fan letter to him which he replied to – he wants to
see the reply so he can keep a copy for his archive.
When she goes home she talks to Elizabeth about her misgivings
and notices that the signatures between the letter she received and the
autograph don’t match – but Elizabeth points out Horton had a stroke that could
have changed him and warns her that heroes often disappoint – before going to
stop Zoe overflowing the bathroom.
The longer Maddy spends with him – including looking at
the blighted apple crop – the more Maddy becomes suspicious of his lapses in
memory. She becomes ever more suspicious as Horton doesn’t hand in his report of
his trip to an irate Malcolm. Horton goes on to lose her letter which she is
convinced is part of his secret – and she sneaks into his house to take it
back, but only finds fragments of it, burned in his bin. When she hides under
his table to avoid him, Horton enters, leaning heavily on his stick, which he
casts aside and walks without a limp as soon as he thinks he’s alone.
She is convinced Horton is an imposter and steals his
coffee cup to compare his DNA against the DNA on the envelope of the letter the
real Horton sent her. She compares it in the science lab but Malcolm catches
her and points out what a serious violation of privacy it is. Learning that she
suspects Horton, Malcolm agrees to help – though it seems more to do with
professional jealousy or dislike of the man than
However, the DNA is a match – it seems Horton is legit.
This doesn’t stop Maddy and she wonders if Horton had a research assistant who
mailed Horton’s post and then stole his identity. She researches the research
assistant, Andrew Fickett, in the super-future-wiki and finds that he is the
same age, height and build. Checking out crimes for the area she also finds an
unidentified male murder victim who had his eyes and hands mutilated so he
couldn’t be identified. She believes Fickett murdered Horton (told you, evil) –
which is when he pops up behind her. He tries to menace her but she easily
escapes
But when she goes to pick up Zoe from school, the teacher
tells her that Horton has already picked her up. Maddy finds them at the apple
fields and sends Zoe back to her dad, staying with Horton. He ties her up and
tells her that Horton was far from a great man (and doesn’t believe her when
she promises not to tell anyone, of course). He has a clever way of killing her
– forcing her hand into a cage with a poisonous spider… until Jim arrives and
rescues her, summoned by the secret panic words Jim taught his daughters.
That night Elizabeth admits that she didn’t listen to
Maddy but insists that Maddy force them to listen rather than deal with
something like this on her own. And Jim praises her for trusting her gut even
when all the evidence was against her. WHY!? Why is this even remotely laudable?!
Someone who sticks to their guns when everything proves them wrong isn’t
praiseworthy – they’re foolish and stubborn and 99% of the time completely and
utterly wrong! Ugh, I hate hate hate hate hate hate the media’s worship of “gut”
or “instinct”.
Sadly, we have to check in on Josh who is being called
upon to pay his debt to the Sixers. Apparently there is an illness in the Sixer
camp and they need medicine – medicine that is too tightly controlled for
Boylan to get his hands on. But Elizabeth, Josh’s mother, has a key card to
access it. Time for Josh to be shocked that the evil rebel org might actually
ask him to do something questionable!
Can something please eat him? I don’t mind if it’s one of
the fictional dinosaurs, I’m easy – attack little Angstosaur! Even Skye thinks
he’s being ridiculous, risking his life to deal with people who he doesn’t even
know whether they can come through with their promises.
Rather than interpret that as “stay away from the Sixers”,
he decides that he needs a guarantee and goes to see the Sixers at their camp.
Mira is less than amused because she wants him to do as he’s told no questions
asked as she said originally. Mira uses a device that lets her speak to Kara –
or appears to anyway.
Josh goes ahead, stealing his mother’s card and breaking
into the hospital. He gets the medicine but not without causing damage
On their fishing trip, Taylor and Jim run across a camp –
not a Sixer camp, it has Terra Nova equipment. Taylor decides it must be
Curran, the soldier he banished. He tells Jim to go back to Terra Nova while he
goes to look for Curran – for reasons he refuses to share. Taylor starts tracking
the obviously harried and maybe wounded Curran, alone.
This leaves Jim free to return to Terra Nova and investigate the break in – the drugs have a high street value, or did in 2149. But Jim is confident that whoever did it – using a sonic pistol in close quarters – is bound to be hurting. We cut to Josh with a lot of bruises on his torso.
Josh continues to feel guilty especially as he learns that by taking Terra Nova’s entire supply, he has put someone’s life at risk and they won’t get more until they can send a requisition with the 11th Pilgrimage (Terra Nova apparently not having the same communication abilities as Mira). On the plus side, Kara is confirmed to be on the next Pilgrimage – or so Boylan says. Josh steals back one vial and tells Boylan how suspicious his father is – Boylan decides to set up one of his debtors to take the fall.
Nice idea, but his debtor isn’t very convincing and Jim
doesn’t believe his confession. He quickly fingers Boylan as the criminal
And Josh confesses to breaking into the clinic and
stealing the medicine to Elizabeth and Jim. And why he stole and who set him up
with the Sixers to get Kara over. Jim goes to confront Boylan and also calls
him a liar since the Sixers don’t have the technology to get people over.
Boylan denies it – he’s many things but not a liar (how can you be a mole
without being a liar?!) and Mira can get in touch with 2149.
Taylor finds Curran with a nasty, infected leg wound.
Which he proceeds to taunt him about. He
has been bitten by an Ancestral Komodo – which hunts by biting and then running
away, allowing it’s highly infectious bite to weaken its prey before killing
it. Taylor stands guard over him and provides some rough doctoring.
When the Komodo arrives Taylor fights it – with a knife and a wooden torch. Why not a gun? Because he’s Taylor (and these dinosaurs are weirdly bullet proof). The Komodo, a coward, flees. Taylor now tells Curran what he has to do to be redeemed – he has to go to the Sixers, ask to be taken in and try to find out who the mole in Terra Nova is.
Back at the camp, Jim tells Taylor everything and he
thinks it’s impossible to contact 2149 without the portal being open. Taylor
realises it must be Lucas, his son – he’s a genius. Jim suggests he’s being
held against his will by the Sixers. But Taylor doesn’t believe there’s any
chance of him ever coming back home.
Needs more “rawwr lookit our CGI”. It was interesting to
see Maddy developed and be part of the cast more than she has been – and to
move away from Jim. But it’s deflected by my frustration with Josh who really
needs to be eaten by something. I still like the show but it’s feeling less
shiny – I think it’s because the main characters annoy me too much and I’m
reaching a point, at episode 8, where I want a few more answers to all the
questions. There’s also a strong element of personal taste here – I just don’t
like any story where the majority of the characters problems are caused by
their own damn foolishness – and that pretty much sums up all there is to know
about Josh.
And I want more shiny dinosaurs.
I’m also kind of curious why a 10 year old colony, almost
completely cut off from the outside world, subsistence living chose to adopt a military
dictatorship with a capitalist economy rather than any kind of democracy (and
with such a low population, direct democracy is easily possible without a
representative system) and a collectivist economy. After all Taylor keeps
spouting off “for the good of the colony” but their economic system is one that
dismisses the idea. Apart from anything else, deciding that this brand new
utopia just desperately needs individual wealth is the source of not only the
town’s first murder but also Boylan’s corrupt hold on people.
And this one town that trades with nowhere has a
currency? What’s underpinning it? Taylor’s Big Damn Hero-ness? Who sets prices?
Who sets wages? Is their taxation or does the town just make more coins and hand
them out to the “civil servants” which is just about everyone anyway since,
barring the few entrepreneurs (like Boylan and the guy who makes guitars)
everyone seems to work for the greater Terra Nova… government. By which I mean Taylor.
He even assigns people what jobs they’ll work when they arrive on the
pilgrimage!
Of course, I’m reading far far too much into this, I know
I am. But it annoys me – the system is just ludicrous.
