Terra Nova, 12/19/11

In 2149, Lucas chats with … some guy; they plan their Terra Nova invasion. Some Guy asks Lucas something I’ve been wondering: how’d he get those scars on the back of his neck. Nikoraptor attack, Lucas explains. HA. Commander Taylor lived alone and unprotected in the jungle for months; he doesn’t have any scars. Taylor is clearly made of infinitely more win than his son. In Terra Nova, the soldiers head to the portal to oversee … whew! It’s just the 11th Pilgrimage peeps arriving. A young family … Josh’s girlfriend Cara … oh wait, then a dude with bombs strapped to himself. BOOM! Jim is knocked unconscious. He wakes in the hospital disoriented, stumbles outside into a ravaged and ruined Terra Nova. Elizabeth explains the explosion was three days ago, it destroyed the portal, and before Taylor et al. could get back, Lucas et al. opened another fracture closer to TN and took it over, forcing Wash to surrender by killing civilians. Twenty six people are dead, Taylor’s missing, and the evil bad guys are in control.

(One of the deceased is Cara. Skye is so off somewhere googling “How long should you let a guy mourn before putting the moves on him?”)

Wash and Jim put their heads together and start planning how to get things unFUBARed. Jim visits Malcolm, who’s busy repairing a new portal, which he was forced to do when his assistant was killed when he originally refused. Ugh. Can you imagine dying just because your boss decided to take a stand? I’d be the world’s most pissed-off ghost. Lucas, Mira, and Some Guy drop by looking for Jim to interrogate him about Taylor’s whereabouts; Jim and Malcolm pretend Jim is deafened, hobbled, and mentally impaired because of the explosion. The next day, Some Guy tells Mira that “our employers” (Oh, just say their names already!) want her to take a trip to an area called The Badlands. Meanwhile, Lucas has Skye brought to see him and tells her he knows she warned Taylor about him; she better not betray him again. ::eye roll:: Lucas, please stop talking like you’re Jesus. Thank you.

Elizabeth removes some bullets from a bad soldier who got shot in a skirmish with some good soldiers, notices somebody etched a bunch of numbers into them. She shows Jim; he realizes that they’re map coordinates to a rendezvous point. A message from Taylor. YAY! (And gosh, how clever. I’d’ve been trying something wack, like flashlight signals.) Malcolm and wheelchair dude Casey arrange a diversion so that Jim can stow away on a convoy manned by Lucas and Some Guy, who’s complaining about some big ugly bug that bit him. OTG, Lucas and Some Guy-whose-name-is-Weaver discuss how much money they’re going to make strip mining TN for ore; a bad soldier mentions that the only problem is the wildlife. Weaver grabs a gun and kills … a brachiosaurus. (We’re meant to contrast that with how Taylor and the good soldiers took care to tranq, not kill, any dinos if they could help it.) Nope, not a nikoraptor or a T Rex, but a big, slow-moving, plant-eating, sort-of-cute brachiosaurus. Weaver: not just evil but stupid. (Lucas, who’s evil but is still a scientist, tells Weaver that the dinosaur he killed was harmless.) Jim listens to Weaver and Lucas’s plan to detonate pyrosonic charges to clear out the vegetation and wildlife, then sneaks off to meet Taylor and the good soldiers (Yay! Hot Mark is alive!) and tell them the plan. They get to the charge, deactivate it, steal it. A furious Lucas grabs a rocket thingy and shoots a missile thingy, but misses. “SON OF A BITCH!” he screams. (And lol, he screamed it the way you really scream it when you’re super-mad, so it sounds like “SON OF A BETCH!”)

With Jim and Wash’s help, Taylor and the good soldiers wage war. They steal supplies from the bad soldiers’ rover convoys, interrupt their little forays into the forest, etc. (Which, lol, is exactly what the Sixers used to do them.) It’s driving Lucas ape-crap crazy, so he goes to the bar for a drink, and orders Skye to join him. He gets a little handsy; valiant Josh, mad about Cara, comes to her defense, and Lucas has the soldiers beat him up. Skye runs to get Jim, who comes and beats up several soldiers, thus revealing that he is, in point of fact, not deafened, hobbled, or mentally impaired. Lucas has him searched, and they find the transponder he’s been using to communicate with Taylor. (Really? It didn’t occur to him to leave that with somebody else before he went looking for trouble?) Lucas has Jim and Josh sent to the brig.

Lucas releases Josh, thanks to Skye’s begging; after he leaves, Lucas whips out an electric zapper cattle prod thingy. (*SHUDDER* Torture? I wouldn’t last 17 seconds before I’d give up Taylor’s whereabouts, reveal who really shot JFK, and admit to masterminding every bank heist in the last quarter century if you’ll, please, for the love of God, just make the pain stop.) In the hospital, Weaver gets a shot for a hella bad rash that he’s developed from that bug bite. Then Elizabeth sweetly tells him that that wasn’t medicine. Nope, it was a very nasty disease, which she’ll give him the cure for only if he gets Jim released. HAAAAAAAA! Elizabeth is so boss. But we should expect no less; she already broke Jim out of prison once. As Lucas repeatedly zaps Jim with the cattle prod, we FINALLY get to the bottom of Lucas’s hatred for Taylor. So, back in Somalia, rebels overran the camp and made Taylor choose if his wife or his son would get to live; Taylor (probably with his wife’s blessing, wouldn’t you think?) chose his son. The rebels “took their time with her.” :( And ever since that day, Lucas has felt that Taylor hated him and blamed him for his mother’s death. I’m slightly less mad at Lucas now. Not because Taylor did anything wrong, but because having to go through that at age 14 and carry around that memory for the rest of your life would screw anybody up.

Weaver bursts in just then claiming that Taylor’s camp has been found; Lucas leaves; the Shannon fam sneaks in and gets Jim; Elizabeth knocks Weaver out with a sedative. “Mom? That was cool,” Josh says. I second that emotion. Wash gives Jim a message for Taylor, then blows something up and gets arrested to distract the bad soldiers so the Shannons can escape. She won’t tell Lucas where they went, so he kills her. :( Childhood trauma notwithstanding, I am soooooo going to enjoy when he dies. Mira returns from her trip to The Badlands with … something that we’re not shown. Weaver promises her that as soon as the portal’s fixed, she’s free to go back to 2149 to her daughter. The Shannons take up residence in the good soldier’s camp. Taylor’s staring morosely into the fire, sad about Wash; little Zoe comes and gives him a hug. Awwww. Taylor interprets Wash’s message: they need to destroy not only the portal but also Hope Plaza so Lucas and Weaver can’t bring hordes more soldiers through and raze Terra Nova. Doing so would mean permanently cutting themselves off from 2149, but it’s the only way. Jim agrees. Me too.

Lucas and Weaver toast to the portal being repaired. Weaver heads out to ready the first shipment of ore for transport. Skye stops in to tell Lucas she’s had a change of heart and wants to be all cool with him now. This is obviously a trick and Skye’s up to something, but Lucas totally falls for it. On the way, Skye tells him she knows how to contact his father. He stops the truck—and Hot Mark and another soldier swoop in, tie Lucas up, switch the truck for one with Jim hiding in the cargo hold, and carry on to the portal. Stowaway Jim is sent through to 2149. Lucas realizes Taylor wants to obliterate Hope Plaza, gets free, knocks Skye unconscious, and tries to radio the bad soldiers at the portal, but there’s too much interference; he heads off on foot. (I’m glad he didn’t kill Skye, but he left her unconscious and alone. She could have been eaten by a passing nikoraptor! Jerk.)

In 2149, Weaver explains to a couple employers how much money they’re all going to make mining ore: “Gentlemen. Today, you’re rich. Tomorrow? Well, it’s just going to be stupid.” Ha hahahaha ha ha ha ha ha ha! High five to the writer responsible for that line. The employers ask Weaver if he looked into that other matter, in The Badlands. He says yep and opens the cargo container Jim’s hiding in … but not before Jim gives the sedated carnotaur inside a shot to wake it up. The container opens, the carnotaur bursts out and eats an employer, and Jim sneaks off. (Wait—so what was it that Mira brought back from the badlands that had everyone so fascinated? They better explain that. That was like the breakfast scene in Pulp Fiction when Vincent opened the suitcase and stared transfixed at the glowing contents.) Weaver sends the other employer running straight to the carnotaur; as he’s eaten, devious Weaver run in the opposite direction to get help. Jim sets the stolen pyrosonic charge.

Skye radios Taylor that Lucas got away. Taylor finds him running through the forest and beats the living hell out him (as I cheer). But then Taylor falls for the I’m-so-upset-please-hold-me-daddy ruse, and Lucas stabs him. NOOOOOOOOO! Then just as he’s about to slit Taylor’s throat, BAM! Skye shoots him. He tries again to kill Taylor; Skye shoots him dead. YAY SKYE. Back in 2149, Weaver is about to kill Jim when the carnotaur kills him. YAY CARNOTAUR. (Somewhere, the murdered brachiosaurus is laughing.) Jim takes off running for the portal and makes it through just as Hope Plaza is blown to bits. In the forest, Jim finds Elizabeth; Skye and Taylor realize that Lucas is gone. As in, not dead. DAMMIT. One of the bad soldiers tells Mira that they’re stuck on Terra Nova forever; she looks (understandably) furious. Bartender Tom radios Taylor to tell him that the bad soldiers have all left Terra Nova, inexplicably heading north. So come home.

Taylor, Malcolm, Shannon, and the good soldiers arrive back at TN to hugs and applause from all the colonists. Rebuilding of their ravaged home begins immediately. Hot Mark tells Taylor and Jim that the bad soldiers have been spotted headed toward The Badlands. Jim remembers the switched cargo container; they open it to find … the prow of an ancient ship. Huh? How it got to The Badlands or why the bad soldiers are headed there, no one knows. Taylor says to keep the whole prow thing hush hush. The episode ends with the Shannons safe and sound at home, watching a meteor shower. RIP, everybody who died. Especially Wash. :( Hope they name the school or the hospital after you.

Sooooooo many mysteries to delve into in season two! Wtf is going on in The Badlands? Are they really cut off forever from the future? Once he’s able, what complicated revenge scheme will Lucas come up with?

Terra Nova, 12/12/11

Taylor and Jim inspect the portal that brings people to Terra Nova. Like, specifically to Terra Nova, as opposed to several kilometers away or in the middle of a lake, as happened before it was built. The 11th Pilgrimage peeps are to arrive in a few days; Taylor tells Jim he wants that pesky mole found before that happens. (How perfect that it was folks from the 6th Pilgrimage who went rogue. “Sixers” sounds way cooler than “Three-ers” or “Eleveners.”) Jim’s interviewing all females who were in the medical complex the day that evidence was destroyed; when he gets to Skye, she says she was hanging with Josh teaching him to play chess during the time in question, then hurries to find Josh and ask him to back up her lie. Too complicated. She should’ve just told Jim she was alone in her room reading or something.

Let me quickly sum up the subplot, in case we should need to know any of this later: Maddy’s core on her plex, which is Terra Nova-speak for the battery thingy on her laptop thingy, dies; Josh tells her she can trade for a new one with Casey, that wheelchair dude in the market; Maddy offers up a green scarf, a teddy bear, and an abacus, FAIL; Casey tells her to get something somebody actually wants; she notices he needs a new wheel for his chair; she gets one but Casey’s already made the wheel-core trade with Tom the bartender; Maddy goes to Tom to trade; upon finding out she’s the sheriff’s daughter, he just gives her the core and tells her to shoo. The End.

Skye sneaks out, gives the Sixers some fresh Terra Nova intel, and sits with her ailing mother for a visit which is interrupted by Taylor’s son Lucas. “I want us to be friends,” he says, so you know he’s up to absolutely no good. He wants Skye to retrieve some data from The Eye for him so he can figure out how to make the portal go both ways and destroy dear old dad. Skye asks why he hates Taylor so much; Lucas says ask Taylor about August 2138. Then he calmly threatens if she doesn’t do what he’s asking, he’ll kill her mother. What a jerk. And I say again, I don’t understand why Skye doesn’t just tell Taylor the Sixers have her mom and are forcing her to mole-ify. Skye gets him the data, but she’s caught on camera sneaking under the fence. Jim goes to Josh, who admits he lied about the chess; Jim grounds him. (Josh actually gripes that he’s been grounded since he walked through the portal. Well maybe you should stop sneaking outside the gate, working with the Sixers, and lying for their spies. Just a thought.)

Jim reports to Taylor, who’s saddened to know that the girl he helped raise after her parents died (or so he thinks) is the mole, but quickly gets over it and decides to set a trap for the Sixers. As he and Skye later play a game of chess, Taylor tells Hot Mark which route a supply convoy will be taking … but the Sixers don’t attack the convoy. Jim deduces that 1. Skye never gives them any info that they could use to really hurt Terra Nova and 2. she’s probably working for them because they’re forcing her to. Pretty quick on the draw, that Jim. At the Sixers’ camp, Mira’s pissed cuz Skye didn’t tell them about the convoy, which Skye pretends not to have known about. Lucas, meanwhile, is elated cuz he’s figured out how to make the portal go both ways. OH NO. He tells Skye not to go back to Terra Nova cuz his employers are coming to wrest power from his dad and things could get ugly. He forehead-smooches her warmly as if they’re old pals, then heads out to go get started causing carnage. Upset about what she hath wrought, Skye goes crying to Mom, who tells her to run back to Terra Nova and tell Taylor, and not to come back. Ever. :( Skye kisses her goodbye and leaves … and runs into Jim and Taylor, who’re out searching for her, and tries to warn Taylor, but he doesn’t believe she’s even met Lucas. Until she says that Lucas mentioned August 2138, that is. Taylor and Jim hop in their rover and speed toward to portal, get there just in time to hear Lucas promise he’s coming back with reinforcements, then step through the portal and disappear.

God I hope he calculated wrong and ended up, like, stuck in ancient Egypt.

Taylor explains to Jim that August ’38 was when Lucas’s mom died cuz Taylor couldn’t protect her. Currin (Was he always that tall and handsome?) sneaks Skye’s mother out of the Sixers’ camp and safely to Terra Nova; Elizabeth says the medicine she was being given can be replicated, so she should be ok. Yay! (WHY THE HELL DIDN’T SKYE TELL TAYLOR ABOUT HER MOTHER AGES AGO???) The Sixers, realizing they themselves had a mole, desert their treehouses and relocate to parts unknown to wait for The Return of Lucas and Friends. Taylor pep talks everyone in Terra Nova, tells them a battle is coming, but if they stand together, they’ll prevail.

Let’s hope so.

Terra Nova, 11/14/11

Taylor and Rick are off fishing and, judging by the huge hunks of meat they’re using as bait, it ain’t for catfish. Back at TN, Elizabeth gets Maddy all super-nerd excited about the chance to meet Ken Horton, famed author and geologist, returning from a six-month expedition today. Horton’s convoy rolls into the opened gates with much fanfare and applause. Chief Science Officer Malcolm warmly welcomes him back; Horton calls him the wrong name then asks him to get the bags. I guess that title doesn’t carry as much weight as Malcolm thinks it does, heh. (Random: wow, did the character-creating department have a field day with this guy. He has longish, shaggy hair; walks with a limp and a cane; has a pronounced accent; and wears a skinny scarf looped and knotted around his neck and jodhpur pants tucked into knee-high boots. I think I know what I’m going to be next Halloween.)

Tom the Mole informs Josh that it’s time to do that favor for Mira. An illness has swept through the Sixers’ camp, Tom the Mole says, and they need a medicine: Azameth Schedule II Isomorph. (That’s a mouthful. What happened to simple names like Aspirin and Aleve?) The azameth is kept under tight security; Josh is going to have to steal Elizabeth’s key card to get it. Skye later tries to convince Josh not to do it and reminds him he doesn’t even really know if they can bring his girlfriend to TN. Strange that she should make that prudent point, when she’s the one who told Josh that Tom could do it in the first place. Anyway, Josh tells Tom that before he’ll get the meds, he wants proof that Cara’s coming. That night he’s sneaked into the Sixers’ camp (where I see not one sick person, mind you!), and Mira lets him talk to Cara via hologram/video phone-thingy for a few seconds. I’m imagining all kinds of ways that could’ve been faked, but it’s proof enough for Josh, and he agrees to get the azameth.

(Random: I want to know what “Maddy” is short for. Madeline? Margaret? Madison?) Maddy gushes to Horton about how awesome his book is; he asks her if she’d like to be his intern. She jumps at the chance and then starts the UH OHness. Firstly, she makes a dorky geologist joke, and Horton laughs like he’s never heard it, although it’s in his book. Secondly, she asks if he ever [did some sciencey thing], and he says no, despite the fact that in a response to fan mail she sent him years ago, he’d said he could wait to. Thirdly, upon examining that letter he sent her, Maddy realizes the signature on it doesn’t match the autograph he just signed on her book. Maddy’s troubled by all this, but Elizabeth brushes it off reminding her that Horton has had a stroke; maybe that explains the discrepancies.


Rick and Taylor are hiking back to their rover when they come across an abandoned campsite. The Sixers wouldn’t leave such an obvious camp, so Taylor assumes it’s Currin, the soldier he recently banished from TN. Taylor tells Rick to head on back to camp; he (Taylor) is staying OTG one more day. (That’s “outside the gate.” Learn your TN acronyms already!)


As Horton limps and Maddy walks around an apple orchard ruined by black mold, she gives him the letter, which he’d asked to see, then asks him about an expedition he went on. It was apparently a big deal, but he remembers nothing, blaming it on old age. He then tries to wow her by letting her release a colony of flying beetles that will eat the mold and save the apples (very cool special effect right there), but Maddy’s suspicions are not eased, especially when she later asks for the letter back and Horton claims to have misplaced it. Since Elizabeth didn’t take her seriously, Maddy runs her suspicions by Zoe. Who, as an adorable six-year-old, can’t really help, but does provide an excuse for us to get to hear Maddy explaining her hunches out loud all episode long. Maddy waits til Horton leaves the lab, then sneaks in to look for her letter. Just as she finds its burned remains in the trash; he comes back. She scoots under a table and watches as he stops using his cane and walks perfectly fine, then starts limping as he leaves. Old age and stroke can’t explain that away! Maddy suspects he’s an impostor. She tests the DNA from an envelope the real Horton licked against the DNA from a cup the might-be-fake Horton just drank from, sharing her theory with CSO Malcolm. Alas, the test results are a match. Alas again, the might-be-fake Horton was eavesdropping on the entire conversation.


Josh steals Elizabeth’s key card and takes it to Tom, who makes an unidentifiable copy and gives Josh a stun gun to use on the lowest setting in case anyone interrupts him. Josh breaks into the hospital and tries the key card, but it doesn’t work — Gee, thanks, Tom. — so Josh cranks the gun all the way up and shoots the locked cabinet doors. The blast throws him backward, but he staggers to his feet and does the job. Rick gets back to TN just in time to investigate to robbery.


Taylor finds Currin, who has a festering leg wound. Like the rest of us, Currin wonders if Taylor's there to kill him, but Taylor gives him something for the infection, puts maggots on the wound (They’ll eat the dead flesh, you see.), and scares off the bloody huge komodo dragon that bit Currin and is hanging around waiting for him to die. (Let's just call it, right here and right now: Taylor is the bad assiest bad ass ever to bad assify. The End.) Why's Taylor being so nice? It ain't cuz he's just feeling friendly. When Currin’s better, Taylor instructs him to go to the Sixers’ camp and become Taylor’s mole. If he does, Taylor might let him back into TN; if he doesn’t, Taylor might kill him. Currin chooses option A.

Refusing to let this go — I’m loving how Nancy Drew she is this episode — Maddy visits The Eye and finds out that the real Horton’s research assistant, who could well have licked closed and mailed that envelope, is now missing, and that just before Horton was scheduled to come to TN, an unidentified male’s body was found. Fake Horton enters The Eye just then, but before he can do anything to her, someone wanders in and Maddy takes off running. To go tell her mom? To go sound the alarm? No. To pick Zoe up from school. WTF? Anyway, she’s too late; Fake Horton has kidnapped Zoe to lure Maddy to the apple orchard. Maddy sends Zoe give Rick a coded message; he finds her just as Fake Horton is trying to induce death by spider bite. Whew!


Rick and Elizabeth chide Maddy (gently, cuz she was just almost murdered) about trying to handle this herself. Yeah! She could’ve at least told her hot boyfriend! During this conversation, Josh does that thing that only happens in movies/on television: wracked with guilt, he suddenly decides to come clean about the whole thing: trying to illegally get Cara on the next Pilgrimage, stealing the azameth, giving it to the Sixers, Tom being the mole. Tom is arrested (though I seriously doubt that the Sixers have only one mole in TN, so do your job, Currin.), during which Rick roughs him up cuz Rick's mad that Tom got Josh involved with the Sixers — in which case, it should really be Skye that Rick is slamming into walls.

When Taylor hears the Sixers can communicate with 2149 w/o the portal being open, he realizes his son Lucas is in cahoots with them. :( He looks so sad.