What if the Earth were on the precipice of demise — dirty air, people dying, wars over the few natural resources left, limits on the amount of children one is allowed to have?
OK, so maybe we do already have all of the above going on here, there and over there. So, maybe the chances are slim we’ll make it another 1,938 years without exploding.
But what if we didn’t?
That’s the premise of the most-anticipated drama this fall, “T
erra Nova,” from Steven Spielberg. Or that’s the beginning of the show’s precipice premise, at any rate.
What would we do? Maybe go back to the past to restructure the future — that’s what. Or that’s what they do in this mostly fine, new adventure series.
The series opens with the future (illegally) perfect nuclear family, the Shannons. Jim (Jason O’Mara), the dad, is a cop. Wife Elisabeth (Shelley Conn) is a doctor.
They have three kids: 17-year-old Josh (Landon Liboiron), 15-year-old brainiac Maddy (Naomi Scott) and baby Zoe (played by Alana Mansour later in the pilot).
The family is illegal, because they’re over the two-child limit.
When the authorities come a-calling, Jim fights them off. Not a great idea, and it lands him in a maximum security prison.
Fast forward a few years (and two failed escapes) later, and the family is lining up to pass through a space-time continuum hole that the government has discovered.
Once they pass through, they will be transported to Terra Nova, a colony set in a Garden of Eat’em on the Earth 85 million years in the past. Their job is to save the Earth from the future mess it will become.
That means dinos — lots of dinos. Happy-as-Barney dinos and rip-your-head-off and suck-your-legs-for-dessert dinos.
That’s why the settlement has tough-but-fair Commander Taylor (Stephen Lang, the mean guy in “Avatar”) in charge.
In addition to flesh-ripping, 50-foot reptilian predators, there are also a renegade bunch of humans called “The Sixers” who have broken away. They are bad. They are worse than the dinos.
Why do “The Sixers” want to screw up humanity’s only chance at survival — and why must they dress like they are on the set of “Mad Max”?
Why didn’t the government pick a time in history in which to transport people that didn’t involve dinosaurs?
(And what are a bunch of hairless humans going to do when hell freezes over in the Ice Age?)
Mixed into the action are the usual TV family-drama traumas. Josh is a total pain in the butt, Maddy cares more about the laws of physics than the laws of physical attraction and so on.
Good family fun — providing your family doesn’t include little kids who are scared to sleep. Ever.
Yes, there are some very scream-worthy, dino head-crunching scenes that may even keep adults awake.
It feels at times like you’re at a theme park with rides rather than a real place in prehistoric times.