Terra Nova, 11/7/11

Instead of people being eaten, this episode opens with a calming scene of domesticity for a change. Josh and Maddy are getting on each other’s nerves, Elizabeth is leaving for work, Rick is about to take Zoe to a secret location he hasn’t divulged “because no one in this family can keep a secret.” Huh? Hold your horses there, buddy. You and Elizabeth hid Zoe for three years, you’re not telling Taylor what Mira told you, Maddy’s sneaking out to see Hot Mark (Approve.), and Josh is in cahoots with the Sixers. Except for Zoe, I’d say you’re all pretty damn secretive.


Chief Science Officer Malcolm and Taylor are examining that shiny box Mira sent Newt-oops-I-mean-Lea to Terra Nova to get. They still can’t figure out how to open it.

FINALLY, this show tries to discourage and not encourage underage drinking. Instead of showing the happy teenagers indulging, we see Hunter doubled up on an examination table, sick after drinking the juice of an unfermented taroca root. Elizabeth lectures for a bit, then examines him and sees A THIRTY-FOOT TAROCA WORM GROWING INSIDE HIM. See kids? There are repercussions for drinking, whether it’s a DUI, unadulterated parental fury, or a ginormous prehistoric intestinal parasite.


Rick takes Zoe to The Eye, which is a supercool digital history library that shows you whatever you want. She wants to see where she was born; he shows her the house way out in the middle of nowhere where he and Elizabeth sneaked off to have her. Then she wants to go on a virtual roller coaster ride. I’m jealous; it looks fun. Hot Mark takes Maddy to a field where pretty flowers are growing — how very Twilight of him — so they can picnic. She calls him beautiful; he calls her perfect. They start to kiss, but are interrupted (Dammit!) by a rumbling in the distance.

It’s a meteor hurtling through the sky! (Side note: it’s kind of pretty.) It emits an electromagnetic pulse that causes a Terra Nova-wide power outage, interrupting Rick and Zoe’s roller coaster ride and stopping Hunter’s worm removal surgery before it evens starts. Then it slams into the ground, sending a destructive sonic wave through the camp. The hospital is overrun with injured people, Hunter’s going to have to have that worm taken out the old fashioned way, Rick and Zoe are trapped in the basement, and their rover is dead so Hot Mark and Maddy have to hike the six kliks back to camp.

CSO Malcolm can make replacement chips to fix all the broken electronic stuff … after his chip-making machine is itself fixed. Which only Tom the Mole can do. Taylor, no fan of Tom’s (Oh, just wait til you find out he’s the mole, Taylor!), actually growls. HA! He hasn’t done that since the premiere. Out in the forest, Mira gets word that TN has “gone dark.” She orders everyone to prepare for a raid. Ooooooooh, but the last time the Sixers stormed the castle, Taylor said if they did it again, the isht would hit the fan!


As Elizabeth cuts Hunter open and starts extracting the parasite, Skye watches. She's a much cooler cucumber than Maddy was that day she observed her mom working. (Hunter asks why he can't be put to sleep; Elizabeth sayz cuz with the power out, she wouldn't be able to monitor his vitals. YEAH RIGHT. She just wants him wide awake to have to endure the consequences of drinking. High five, Elizabeth!) When she has to go help some severely wounded soldier, Skye takes over. As she’s working, Hunter tells her he likes her and wishes she weren’t in love with Josh. The worm, having had quite enough of this incredibly awkward conversation, re-enters Hunter and starts wreaking havoc. Elizabeth sends Skye running to Tom for the first available chip to work some suddenly desperately needed surgical equipment. Night falls out in the forest, where the Sixers are driving a huge dino toward TN. Elsewhere, Hot Mark and Maddy have covered themselves in smelly mud and climbed a tree to stay safe til morning. They kiss! They kiss! Yay! Awwwwwwww!


After Zoe crawls through a shaft and unlocks the door from the outside, she and Rick are finally free; he sends her to school and joins Taylor and the soldiers at the gate … just in time to see the raging dino approach. Unperturbed as always, Taylor hands Rick a crossbow, and they shoot some flammable arrows that erupt into a dino-deterring wall of flame. But Taylor realizes this was a diversion. He and Rick head off to the research lab, where Mira’s impenetrable box is.


Josh rushes the chip to Elizabeth; Hunter is saved. Maddy sneaks back home before anybody misses her. Rick and Taylor enter the lab, Taylor gets shot with an arrow, Rick goes running after Carter, who has the box, Tom enters and shoots the guy fighting Taylor (Good call, cuz that'll totally convince Taylor that Tom's not the mole.), Rick chases Carter all over camp, but he gets away and gives the box to Mira.

They take it to … Taylor’s son! The box is a computer of sorts containing information he needs to do his research. Mira warns him that Taylor probably knows he’s getting close to an answer; he responds Taylor will have to kill him to stop him.

Terra Nova, 10/31/11

Yeah, um … with the double threat of Sixers and all manner of dinosaurs roaming the forest, I would very much NOT be the soldier sent out alone at night. And Soldier Foster proves why when he arrives at Communication Relay Station 19A — then is promptly eaten. :( The next morning, as his remains are carried out, Chief Science Officer Malcolm (he gets mad if you don’t call him that) explains to Taylor and Jim that it was a narcoraptor. “Narcoraptor”???? Ha ha ha! Narcotics. Narcolepsy. It kills you, then gets high, then falls asleep. Ha ha ha! Oh — wait. Jim pronounces it more clearly: “nikoraptor.” Damn British accent.

Josh is hard at work in the bar, because teenagers can work in bars on Terra Nova, when his boss, Tom the Mole, tells Josh he’s going to have to do something if he wants Cara brought to TN. Uh oh.

CSO Malcolm brings a cracked dino egg back to the hospital, where Elizabeth’s busy autopsying Foster at Jim's request. When she finds the blood of both a nikoraptor and its prey on Foster’s body, Jim tells Taylor and Lt. Wash that he (Jim) thinks somebody set Foster up. Death by niko, if you will. Taylor’s skeptical, but tells Wash and Jim to investigate. They head to the bar to question Foster’s two friends, one of whom is Maddy’s boyfriend Hot Mark. “Hey Mr. Shannon,” he says dully, and I’m thoroughly disappointed he wasn’t all, “Most enthusiastic greetings and salutations, good sir.” I guess sadness over the death of his friend has robbed him of his penchant for old-timey talk. Hot Mark and Other Friend tell Wash and Jim that Foster had a secret girlfriend, whose pic he was always looking at on his computerized dog tag thingy. (Random: I totally dig how Wash wears her gun in a thigh holster. IN A THIGH HOLSTER. Cool factor: off the charts.) She and Jim head to the hospital to get Foster’s personal effects … just in time to see CSO Malcom’s dino egg quiver. Omg! Yes! Raise it and try to domesticate it! That would be so awesome! Why hasn’t he tried this already? CSO duty FAIL.

The locator in Foster’s tag is on the move. Because it’s inside the niko that ate him. Dinosaur huntin’ time. Oh man, it looks like fun! Driving rovers and motorcycles at top speed, they chase it down and tranq it. Nope, they don’t kill it, to the overwhelming approval of PETA. Wash, who’s a combat medic (who once had to put 67 stitches in Taylor’s side), does a bit of surgery and cuts it open to get what they need. She recognizes the pic on Foster’s tag, some chick who works in the mess hall. They question her and her nervous husband, who doesn’t need much prodding before he admits to killing Foster. The first murder in TN! Taylor has to decide if he’s going to banish Hubby or imprison him. Jim and Elizabeth argue about it later: she thinks banishments is cruel; he’s of the opinion that he’d much rather have been banished to a sunny jungle, dinos or no dinos, than imprisoned for several years; she says what if Hubby was forced to confess? (It’s entirely too convenient that she hit upon that, but) Jim, remembering how jumpy the dude was, has to pause.

At the hospital, CSO Malcolm has discovered the baby inside the dino egg has birth defects. Elizabeth insists they try to save it. I do too. During a stroll through the marketplace, Josh tells Sky that Tom the Mole wants him to meet with Mira. She tries to convince him not to do it, but Josh had three friends who killed themselves because 2149 sucked so bad, and he’ll do anything to get Cara out of there. Skye says she’ll go with him.


Hubby is banished! (And I fully support Taylor in that decision.) Jim strolls into the jungle to check on him. “Between the wildlife and the Sixers, there’s a lot of ways to die in this jungle,” he says. Oh, hello, very first sentence of this recap. So, Hubby didn’t kill Foster; he confessed only cuz he thought Wifey did it. But she didn’t do it either. There’s still a murderer on the loose! Taylor’s understandably furious that Jim went after Hubby, tells Jim he best find out if there even is a real killer, and fast, or else Hubby is going to be re-banished faster than you can say “And stay out!”

At the hospital, CSO Malcolm watches Elizabeth perform in-egg surgery on the dino baby, complimenting her skill. *eye roll* Malcolm, please get a girlfriend.


Jim following up on a new lead, Wifey telling him that Foster had a gambling problem and that Tom the Mole runs the illegal gambling, leads him to the bar, where he’s shocked to see Josh. WTF. How could he not know that his son has a job? Anyway, Jim sends Josh home; Tom the Mole is arrested. Curiously, during Tom the Mole’s interrogation, Other Friend shoots Hot Mark a nervous glance, which Hot Mark either doesn’t notice or pretends not to see. Oh, ok. The arrest of Tom the Mole was a ruse to flush out Other Friend, who is the killer. Out in the forest, Taylor beats his ass square for killing Foster, then banishes him. (Prediction: he’s going to join the Sixers.) And since Tom the Mole played along helping to catch Other Friend, Jim lets Josh go back to working in the bar.

Josh and Skye meet with Mira and the Sixers. She says that she’ll help bring Cara to TN if Josh agrees to help her at some point in the future. Deal? He says yes. No, Josh. Nooooooooooooooooooo.

The egg hatches, and a healthy little baby dino pops out. Yay!