Terra Nova

A television show produced by Steven Spielberg and Brannon Braga which, after a Troubled Production, premiered on Fox in late September 2011. On March 5, 2012, it was announced that Fox would not pick up the series for a second season.

The plot involves humans from the post-apocalyptic future traveling through a time portal to live in an Alternate Universe (maybe; see below) that resembles the Middle Cretaceous. From what we see in the first episode, all life on Earth is dying in the future and so the people have gone through the portal to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Essentially, the premise is more or less a reason to have dinosaurs and humans interacting on a television show. The showrunners have promised that the show will take pains to prevent upsetting dinosaur fans.

There is a Character Sheet.

Completely unrelated to the video game Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri.

Tropes featured in this work include:
"Jim: (to Mark) "You know I carry a gun and hold grudges right?""
 * Affably Evil: Boylan is more of an Affable Jerkass than deliberately evil, although he is collaborating with the Sixers. May cross over into Jerkass With a Heart of Gold territory, as of the finale. He certainly prefers Taylor to . And in one episode, it's implied that Boylan and Taylor use to be very good friends but
 * Alien Sky:
 * Of a sort. The first thing the Zoe asks when she sees Terra Nova's sky is "Are those clouds?". The future is so polluted the sky is nothing but smog.
 * Due to the moon apparently moving back a centimeter each year, and this being 85 million B.C., the moon is very close to the sky, but it just adds to the Scenery Porn. The characters also mention the stars being different (although this is not reflected in the visual since there are no visible stars). Technically the moon shouldn't actually be that close. 85 million years ago the moon would only be 2,007 miles closer (it recedes 38mm per year) meaning that it would be 0.8% closer than it would be in 2149, it wouldn't be significantly different. However, it can appear much larger due to an optical illusion because it's a new perspective for them to see the moon.
 * All Animals Are Domesticated: The Brachiosaur eating from Zoe's hand. Since they are grazing right next to the fence, though, it's doubtful Zoe is the first human they've met.
 * Alternate Universe: We are told that Terra Nova exists in a different timestream than our Earth, which is why they can safely go back in time without creating all sorts of horrible time paradoxes. Various hints indicate the reality of the situation is far more complex.
 * Amnesia Danger: "What Remains"
 * Annoying Arrows: Taylor is shot by a Sixer and he basically just shakes it off.
 * Antagonistic Offspring: Lucas is this to Taylor
 * Armies Are Evil: The Phoenix Group
 * Artistic Licence:
 * The opening credits show Pangaea, despite the fact that 85 million years ago, apart from some minor continental shift and rise in sea-level, the planet was almost identical to present day Earth.
 * The moon was closer to Earth, 85 million years ago, but, unless the portal in time also displaced them in space and put them far nearer to the equator to create an optical effect, the Moon was barely distinguishable from the way it looks now.
 * Badass/Colonel Badass: Nathaniel Taylor, who went one on one with a carnotaur as a distraction. And lived. More than that, when he first came through the portal, there was a strange temporal effect that meant backup wasn't coming for a long time. Taylor survived 118 days alone in the Cretaceous. Mira points out - snarking of course - that congrats, he survived 118 days. The Sixers? Yeah, they're over 1000 days. Of course, they got sent out with hundreds of people, a fair amount of supplies, and still lost a lot of people before they learned. Taylor was sent alone with whatever he was carrying, and survived without aid.
 * Badass Family: The first season finale shows that the Shannons definitely are one
 * Batman Gambit: When Taylor
 * Beauty Is Never Tarnished:  slams   head into the hood of a rover hard enough to knock her unconscious, yet she gets up again a few minutes later without a mark to show for it.
 * Beneficial Disease: A cold provides the main character immunity from another infection that wipes the person's memory.
 * Benevolent Boss: Lucas thinks of himself as one. He's obviously nothing of the sort.
 * Big Bad: Lucas
 * Big Creepy-Crawlies: More plausible than most instances of this trope, three-foot long centipedes. Which really existed. And leeches that get very big when sucking blood. You have to figure the latter are adapted to feeding on very large animals, so...
 * Big Damn Heroes:
 * Just when the Too Dumb to Live teenagers are about to die a very deserved death from the Slashers, Taylor and Jim's reinforcements arrive and deploy all kinds of advanced weaponry to drive them off.
 * Jim saving Maddie from Horton's spider.
 * Jim again, where he beats up Lucas and at least 5 mercs before being held down when they were beating up his son.
 * Bigger Bad: Lucas' benefactors.
 * Big Good: Nathaniel Taylor.
 * Big Bad Duumvirate: On one side there's the Sixers antagonizing the Tenth Voyagers for survival, . On the other hand we have the Slashers and Caurnotaurs (although technically, they're just hungry). There's a third side, too:
 * Black Market Produce: The orange in the first episode.
 * Book Ends: The season begins with the Shannons coming to Terra Nova and ends with them returning to Terra Nova, complete with the same sound track.
 * Broken Pedestal: Zig-zagged with famous geologist Horton. At first Maddy is just disappointed that he doesn't seem like the person who wrote the book, then she learns that he's a fraud when his hand-written letter doesn't match his current signature, and then the fraud (who was Horton's research assistant) claims the real one wasn't as nice as Maddy believes. Maddy is torn on whether or not to believe him, but her mother points out that the real one took the time to respond to a hand-written letter in a No-Paper Future with a letter of his own.
 * Can't Kill You - Still Need You: Taylor decides not to execute
 * Casual Danger Dialog: Nate Taylor. Justified by being that Badass. Averted with the teenagers.
 * Chekhov MIA: Taylor's son went missing a few years back.
 * Crapsack World: The future; there's a reason they're leaving for the past.
 * Cool Versus Awesome: Dinosaur versus ATV versus Sonic Pulse Gun.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: The people backing Lucas.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: Pretty much anyone can do this to Lucas, as every time he has gotten into a fight the person gave him a thorough beating that he so justly deserved.
 * Cut Short: Sadly.
 * Dawson Casting: Skye is a "teenager" (actual age unsaid) young enough to be flirty with 17-year-old Josh. Allison Miller was 25 when she filmed the pilot episode.
 * Death From Above: So far, the colony has suffered a swarm of horny pterodactyls AND a meteorite that fried every electrical circuit in camp, rendering guns, lights, and all but the most primitive medical equipment useless.
 * Death of the Hypotenuse / Back for the Dead / Dropped a Bridge On Her / Kill the Cutie:
 * Defiant to the End:, pretty much says "screw you" before Lucas killed her.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: "It's an EMP Pulse!" Thank you Maddy.
 * Dysfunctional Family: A lot of the show's conflicts come from this, mostly between Jim and Josh. Explained by the presence of two Hormone-Addled Teenagers and the fact that dad was in prison can't help.
 * Earth That Used to Be Better: Much better; within the adults' lifetime the sky was completely blotted out by pollution, domes are in use, population control is in effect, masks are needed to breathe, and everything is grimy.
 * Elite Mooks: The Phoenix Group, or as Lucas puts it "The best army money can buy."
 * Enemy Mine: Taylor and Mira end up working together to fend off a pair of territorial slashers. After some personal backstory, they recognize it's a Worthy Opponent relationship between them. In fact, they also reason that they're much more the same than different - both ultimately want to protect their family and loved ones in the only way they know how. For Mira, that's her daughter back in the future. For Taylor, that's the colony.
 * Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Basically the reason the show exists.
 * Expy:
 * The Sixers sure sound a whole awful lot like The Others.
 * Also, who wasn't secretly hoping that Stephen Lang's speech to the newcomers would start with, "You're not in Kansas anymore! You are on Terra Nova!"
 * And the Slashers are essentially Jurassic Park Velociraptors, except they look different.
 * The Shannon family has been likened to The Simpsons.
 * Failed a Spot Check / Offscreen Teleportation: How else to explain ?
 * Females Are More Innocent: It turns out that the female sixer leader Mira is working for  in much the same way as another female "villain",  . , on the other hand, causes trouble for the colony largely out of a sense of Disproportionate Retribution for  , and the associates are doing it out of
 * Fingerless Gloves: Taylor, mostly, though Wash and Guzman also wear 'em. All the better to be badasses with, my dear...
 * First Time in the Sun: In the pilot episode, when characters are about to walk outside into the past, a voice on the PA system warns them that their eyes may not be used to the strong sunlight.
 * Fling A Light Into The Past
 * Future Food Is Artificial: To the point where the black market orange Jim brings home is regarded as a rare, exciting treat.
 * Generation Xerox:
 * Jim and Elizabeth both note that Josh's rebellious nature and his relationship with Skye mirrors their relationship when they were younger.
 * Josh is just as rebellious and ambitious as Jim while Maddy is whip smart like Elisabeth. Also, Josh looks like Jim while Maddy and Zoe resemble Elisabeth.
 * Some very specific examples:
 * Elizabeth is a brainy doctor who fell in love with a policeman. Maddy is a brainy medical student who fell in love with a security officer.
 * Jim broke the law to get his family through the time portal. Josh broke the law in an effort to get his girlfriend through the time portal.
 * Genre Blindness/Too Dumb to Live:
 * Tasha, who thought it was a good idea to run for it rather than wait in the heavily armored vehicle waiting for confirmed backup for rescue.  In all fairness, she was clearly in a state of extreme panic and not thinking rationally. And she took a machine gun with her. On top of that, the slashers do eventually punch a hole through the ATV, forcing the other teens to abandon it.
 * Grey and Gray Morality: Is increasingly this.
 * Guns Are Useless:
 * All the dinosaurs are apparently Immune to Bullets. Luckily, they have sonic turrets for dealing with larger predators that near the perimeter and those odd green-light-shooty-gun-thingies seemed to work pretty well on the slashers.
 * Averted when Weaver takes down a brachiosaur with one shot.
 * Hand Wave: The show at times seems to be made of it:
 * Humans would probably take a lot longer to adjust to the much higher oxygen levels in the Mesozoic age, but a simple facemask for a few minutes post transfer seems to do the trick.
 * In the pilot Josh refers to Jim having to break out of a maximum security facility armed with a few items Elisabeth is able to sneak into a rebreather. And the very next scene
 * Happily Married: Jim and Elisabeth
 * Herbivores Are Friendly: The herbivore dinosaurs are shown to be playful in the pilot episode. The main character's youngest daughter even feeds them treats.
 * High Heel Face Turn: The Mole  switches her allegiance back to Taylor once
 * Idiot Ball: Both sides suffer this in the finale.
 * I Have Your Wife: Seems to be the Sixers' and Phoenix Group's standard M.O.; they do this in spades.
 * Mira's employers in 2149 are holding her daughter to ensure her cooperation.
 * Mira, in turn, was holding a young girl's brother hostage to coerce the girl into retrieving a key artifact for Lucas' work. She does, however, let both kids return to Terra Nova when the situation is resolved.
 * The Sixers and their employers pull this one on Josh as well, promising to get his girlfriend Kara onto the Eleventh Pilgrimage if and only if he steals critical medical supplies for them.
 * The Sixers have been holding  for three years to effectively blackmail   into acting as their spy in the colony. They even threaten to   if   does not cooperate. Eventually,
 * Improbable Weapon User:
 * In the fifth episode,  commits an elaborate murder...with a live dinosaur as the weapon. Everyone thinks it's just an unfortunate accident until Jim's cop instincts kick in. A skeptical Taylor hangs a lampshade: "How do you kill a man with a dinosaur?"
 * Used again in the 1st season finale, where they send one into 2149.
 * In the Back: Lucas does this to his father. But seriously, you didn't have to be Genre Savvy to spot that coming a mile away.
 * It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time: Word for word reasoning for the third child.
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Skye helping Josh to possibly get his girlfriend onto the next pilgrimage to Terra Nova.
 * And then
 * Jerkass:
 * Boylan, but he's just so charming...
 * Lucas and Weaver are less charming
 * Just Shoot Him:
 * Jungle Punk: Especially the Sixers.
 * Kick the Dog:
 * Kill and Replace:.
 * Killed Off for Real:
 * Kill It with Fire:
 * Laser Sight: Green lasers are standard issue on the assault rifles, which is reasonable when dealing with dinosaurs, but they'll have to turn them off when fighting the Sixers.
 * Like Brother and Sister: Lucas claims that Skye and he are this since they share the same "father," though his questionable actions towards her would say another thing.
 * Made of Iron:
 * Hunter gets the end of his leg chewed on by a dinosaur. Despite this, at the end of the episode he’s merely hobbling along on the leg with the help of two friends.
 * The Slashers themselves, as well. At one point, Josh puts something like five assault rifle rounds into one. It retreats, but it ought to be dead. The Carnotaurus are even tougher -- one of them takes several dozen rounds to the face from a jeep-mounted BFG, falls over, and gets up again without an apparent scratch. Taylor doesn't even bother to shoot at it with his rifle during his distraction, even as it charges him.
 * Meet Cute:
 * Maddy and her explanation on dinosaur digestion to the young soldier.
 * Josh and Skye meeting in the marketplace.
 * Memento MacGuffin: Josh's necklace, which was given to him by his girlfriend.
 * The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Feet and Yards still get a mention occasionally, though.
 * The Mole:
 * Jim has his son Josh become this when the Phoenix Group takes over.
 * Moment Killer:
 * Maddy has a habit of killing the mood at any given time by explaining in great detail the science behind whatever way cool thing everyone else is looking at.
 * Episode Three's pterosaurs, meanwhile, raise it to an art form.
 * Skye does it to herself when...
 * Lucas too. It appears that his father as finally gotten through to him, and they share a warm hug. That is until Lucas literally stabbed his father In the Back.
 * Negative Space Wedgie: Harnessed by 22nd-century technology in order to send the "pilgrimages" back in time to Terra Nova.
 * Never Found the Body: Invoked as the reason why 22nd-century scientists determined Terra Nova was in a different "timestream", after they sent a mechanical probe through the Negative Space Wedgie and it never showed up in the present era. The probe, for its part, currently rests on a monument in the middle of the Terra Nova settlement.
 * No-Paper Future: It's implied that non-digital media is pretty much dead in the future. With Earth's resources effectively gone, this is understandable.
 * No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup:
 * Obfuscating Disability: Jim Shannon pretends that an explosion has made him deaf, mentally inhibited with partial amnesia, and left him with a limp. He blows his cover when he beats the shit out of  with his crutch to defend his son.
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
 * Shannon and Taylor return from luring the pterosaurs to their new mating ground sporting numerous wounds and gushing about how awesome it was. Too bad the budget couldn't handle showing it.
 * On the villainous side,.
 * Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
 * Averted with Lucas. Malcolm states that despite Lucas being a brilliant physicist, he is no engineer.
 * Malcolm, however, plays this trope significantly straighter, as he seems to be both a biologist and an engineer. He is head of the Science Department, after all.
 * Overprotective Dad: Jim has shown signs of this towards his daughter's dating life. It should be noted that Jim is likely just messing with Mark for his own amusement. He doesn't seem to mind the relationship.
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
 * Shannon and Taylor return from luring the pterosaurs to their new mating ground sporting numerous wounds and gushing about how awesome it was. Too bad the budget couldn't handle showing it.
 * On the villainous side,.
 * Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
 * Averted with Lucas. Malcolm states that despite Lucas being a brilliant physicist, he is no engineer.
 * Malcolm, however, plays this trope significantly straighter, as he seems to be both a biologist and an engineer. He is head of the Science Department, after all.
 * Overprotective Dad: Jim has shown signs of this towards his daughter's dating life. It should be noted that Jim is likely just messing with Mark for his own amusement. He doesn't seem to mind the relationship.

"Jim: "You seem more nervous than usual. Is that because today I'm not just Maddy's father, I'm also your CO?"
 * And then again when he became temporary CO:

Mark: "Permission to neither confirm nor deny, sir.""

"Skye: (Beat)
 * He also half-heartedly pulls this routine regarding Josh; when Jim is questioning Skye in "Within" about her whereabouts, she comes up with the cover story that she was with Josh at her house:

Jim: Anything you say can and will be used against you."


 * Planet Looters:
 * Plot Time: The teenager sneaks out with his friends on orientation day and has the adventure in the evening, while the father's first day sure feels like more than one.
 * Poison and Cure Gambit: Elizabeth does this to get Jim out of prison in the season finale.
 * Population Control: In the future, families are limited to two children each.
 * Prehistoric Monster: Zig-Zagged:
 * With a dash of Super-Persistent Predator: Judging by the early episodes, most theropods, fictional species and otherwise, think of nothing but murder all day. Parodied here. However, it's not that big of a stretch for a hungry predator to go after humans.
 * Averted with the giant centipede, which doesn't attack Jim; he just freaks out when it crawls over his hand.
 * When Taylor and Mira are forced to team up against a pair of slashers the justification for the pursuit is that the dinosaurs are claiming new territory and see them as threats to be chased away, not just food.
 * Private Military Contractors: The Phoenix Group.
 * Psycho for Hire: The mercenaries in the Phoenix Group.
 * Psychotic Man Child: Why does Lucas wants to destroy Terra Nova, kill countless innocent people and strip mine the past for all its worth? Simply to get back at his dad for the delusional belief he was a constant disappointment to him.
 * Psychotic Smirk: Lucas again (and often). Anybody else notice the pattern here?
 * Punch Clock Villain:
 * Putting on the Reich: The flag of the Phoenix Group looks very reminiscent of a Nazi battle standard, and the thuggish mercs turn Terra Nova into a virtual stalag, complete with searchlights sweeping the grounds at night.
 * Rags to Riches: Sort of. Jim goes from being an escape convict in the first episode to pretty much Taylor's right hand man and at one point temporary Commanding Officer of Terra Nova.
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: The Brachiosaurus have fleshy nostrils on top of their heads, just like their counterparts in that other mass media work showing dinosaurs. However, in the two decades since that movie came out Science Has Marched On, with the most likely position of the nostrils being on the snout.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure:
 * Commander Taylor. Yes, he's keeping a few secrets, but mostly he's just interested in making sure the colony survives. Noted in the third episode, where he immediately takes measures (with three deaths to deal with) to ensure that people are kept as safe as possible until the threat is resolved.
 * Lucas claims himself to be one, right before he has two mercs hold Josh so he could beat him.
 * Rebellious Spirit: Josh. An encounter with Slashers in the middle of the jungle straightens him out, though.
 * Red Shirt: Terra Nova seems to send patrols out into the jungle for the sole purpose of dying dramatically, which they do in droves.
 * La Résistance: Jim begins to set one up within minutes of.
 * Sadistic Choice: Taylor was made to choice between saving his wife or his son.
 * Scenery Porn: Frequently.
 * Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: At the end, the family comments on how much bigger the moon is, 85 million years in the past, as it drifts from the earth at about half a centimeter per year. However, at that rate, the moon would only have drifted about 425 kilometers out of its total 400,000 km. distance -- not enough to make such a significant difference in appearance. It could be that the smogginess of their century-of-origin meant they'd never seen the optical illusion that makes the moon look larger when it's near the horizon.
 * Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: Nathaniel Taylor. Well, it's more like  But you get the idea.
 * Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The basic plot.
 * Shell-Shock Silence: Done from Jim's perspective early in the season finale when he wakes from a three-day coma and stumbles around the badly-damaged settlement to find Phoenix Group soldiers everywhere and Lucas and Mira in charge. Jim soon runs into Elizabeth, who restores his hearing and fills him in on what he missed.
 * Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The basic plot.
 * Shell-Shock Silence: Done from Jim's perspective early in the season finale when he wakes from a three-day coma and stumbles around the badly-damaged settlement to find Phoenix Group soldiers everywhere and Lucas and Mira in charge. Jim soon runs into Elizabeth, who restores his hearing and fills him in on what he missed.


 * The Slow Path: Taylor was first through the portal, with the next person right behind him... but that next person didn't arrive for 118 days from Taylor's perspective.
 * Summon Bigger Fish:
 * Super-Persistent Predator:
 * The Slashers are really determined to get into that jeep. The carnotaurs, however, realistically freak out and retreat as soon as the sonic pulse guns start firing.
 * In the next episode, the pterasaurs are really determined to get to their hatching ground aka.
 * Sympathetic Murder Backstory: Commander Taylor
 * Tempting Fate:
 * The Sixer who gets snatched out of his ATV and eaten by a Carnotaur. Famous Last Words: "We're all clear!"
 * "Don't worry, slashers hunt mostly at night!" Guess what happens about five minutes later.
 * "Don't worry, Hunter, if slashers munch on one of us, it won't be your scrawny ass."
 * There Is Another MacGuffin:
 * Thunderbolt Iron: Meteoric iron is mentioned as a vital resource for Terra Nova, presumably for construction and repairs. Shame the Sixers control the quarry. Also
 * Too Kinky to Torture: Skye considers trying to beat the ignition code for a vehicle out of Lucas, but believes he would enjoy it.
 * Town with a Dark Secret:
 * Although initially presented as a world of peace and bounty, the Shannons quickly learn that they're in danger from Slashers and Sixers ... something the orientation tour failed to mention.
 * Jim Shannon also later discovers
 * The season finale reveals that the Badlands, a supposedly empty area far from the portal,
 * Trash the Set: Used in the first season finale to show the Terra Nova settlement in the aftermath of the Phoenix Group's curbstomping of the defense forces.
 * Trojan Horse: In the first season finale, Taylor and Jim replace a cargo container being shipped to 2149 with one containing a.
 * True Love's Kiss: Jim kisses Elizabeth to infect her with a virus that helps cure her memory loss.
 * Ungrateful Bastard: The Sixers. In the first episode Terra Nova accepts them in to save them from a dinosaur attack. The moment the dinosaur leaves, they come out of their vehicle with guns armed. In their defense, the two forces are extremely bitter enemies.
 * Villainous Incest: Lucas toward Skye. They're not actually related (Taylor is a father figure to her rather than her actual father), but he refers to her as a sister nonetheless. This doesn't stop him from constantly touching her affectionately flirting with her.
 * Weird Moon: Justified, as they are 85 million years in the past...kind of, see above.
 * You Can't Go Home Again: The portal is one-way, so anyone who goes to Terra Nova isn't coming back. The future can still send supplies and such, though..