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, 11/28/11

Taylor leaves Jim in charge and heads off into the forest on a secret mission which he’ll tell no one about, despite having issued an order that everyone must have a valid reason for leaving TN now that Mole Hunt is in full swing. Taylor heads for the waterfalls where his son Lucas has scrawled equations all over the rocks, bumps into a gun-wielding Mira, who takes him prisoner.

Ok, that was waaaaaaaay too easy. Taylor knows good and well how to avoid capture. He must’ve wanted to be caught.


Jim and Reynolds, whom I prefer to call Hot Mark, see someone sending signals to the Sixers and head off to catch the person. They get there too late; all they find at the scene is a drop of blood in a jar of paint thinner … because Skye cut herself with the piece of glass she was using to send the signals. I KNEW IT! I said episode one she was the mole! Skye volunteers to go help dig a ditch, then sneaks away to take some TN intel to the Sixers. In exchange, they give some desperately needed medicine to a sick woman. Who is Skye’s mom. Wait— WTF?? Skye’s parents are supposed to be dead! Malcolm isolates the blood from the paint thinner; Jim takes it to Elizabeth to identify the culprit; Skye sneaks in later and ruins the sample. I guess the reason Skye doesn’t just explain to Taylor that she’s mole-ing in order to keep her mother alive, which he would totally understand, will eventually be explained to us.


As Mira and Taylor walk through the forest, squabbling like a couple in the midst of a contentious divorce, Taylor suddenly makes a run for it. He doesn’t get far thanks to Mira’s stun gun, but he manages to snap a sharp spine off a plant, which he uses to start cutting his ropes. A few minutes later, he gets free, overpowers her, and starts marching her back to TN. I knew it! That was his plan all along. Although … I’m sure the two toothy, hungry dinosaurs following them weren’t part of it. Just as Mira and Taylor find some common ground talking about their kids, the dinos attaaaaaack! Mira and Taylor jump off a (very pretty waterfall) cliff to get away. Now they’re gun-less, night is falling, and the dinos are coming back. But fret not, folks. We all know who comes out on top in every round of Taylor-vs-wildlife.

Hot Mark declares to Jim his intention to marry Maddy one day. HOW ADORABLE. “She’s sixteen,” Jim grumps. Hot Mark, who’s all of what, barely eighteen?, says he will wait, then says “I’m going away now.” Tee hee! Oh, those crazy kids. And given all the dancing and feasting at last episode’s Harvest Festival, I bet a Terra Nova wedding is hella major fun.

Taylor and Mira make a bow and some flammable arrows, scare off the dinos, share a dinner of grubs (Yuck.), and admit that if they didn’t have to kill each other, they totally could have been BFFs. Mutual respect: they have it. In the morning, they part ways, but not before Mira warns him that it’s almost over, because Lucas has almost figured out a way to reverse the portal. Say it with me: uh oh.


The Shannons share a cutesy family scene releasing a baby anklosaurus back into the wild. Later Elizabeth tells Jim the blood sample has been destroyed; he asks her to put together a list of everyone who came into the medical center yesterday. 84 people. Elizabeth examines the incomplete results the sample produced before it was destroyed. The mole is female. 47 people. Won’t be long now, Skye.

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.