Terra Nova film still.
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Maybe it's the result of too many cooks and rewrites. Maybe someone decided that family entertainment must mean dull, familiar characters (contra The Waltons or, for that matter, The Simpsons). It's a shame, because a show with Terra Nova's near guaranteed buzz could have had cover to tell a sophisticated story about the beginnings of society.
Instead, it's cinematic, but in the sense that it feels built from spare tent-pole-movie parts. The pilot ends with a very generic family staring at a spectacular moon (which was much closer 85 million years ago). I wound up feeling about Terra Nova's premiere the same way I felt about the smog-ruined earth that opens it: It really is an amazing world. I just wish they'd given it to someone else.