The Core Within TERRA NOVA – Still Hollow
TERRA NOVA
Season 1, episode 10: “Within”
Watch out for those spoilers!
Once again I’ve dragged myself in front of the television on a Monday night and forced myself to watch a full hour of Terra Nova so that those of you out there in sci-fi land over the age of pubescence (the audience at which I think this show is aimed) do not have to suffer through it. Consider this my holiday sacrifice present to you all. Just remember that if Santa brings me what I want for Christmas this year then this show won’t get renewed.
The camera flies far above the jungle with some CGI Pterosaurs and we zoom in on the Stargate, err, the Portal, where Taylor and Jim are discussing the upcoming 11th pilgrimage that is expected to arrive from 2149 in a few days. Taylor wants the Sixer mole caught before the new guys arrive, and sets a guard on the portal in the meantime.
Jim starts questioning everyone who visited the Infirmary the night the spy’s blood sample was destroyed, including Skye (who was the one who did it). She lies and says she was teaching Josh how to play chess during the robbery.
Fake cutesy future names alert: At the Shannon home Maddy’s “Plex” (Plexpad: future tablet and a data access device used by citizens in 2149, i.e., computer) crashes, and she needs a new “core” (hard drive). Josh tells her to visit Durwin in the market and take something she can trade.
Skye asks Josh to lie to his dad about her whereabouts during the robbery, but gets too emotional while doing so, and he starts suspecting that something is not right. She again sneaks out to the Sixer camp with more TN intel and to visit her sick. Lucas Taylor suddenly pops up and announces that has a job for her. He wants her to take his portal equations back to the TN compound and finish the complex computations using their big computer (the Eye). He also threatens to kill her mother if she won’t do it, officially making him “the really bad guy” after all.
Josh dutifully lies to his dad for Skye, but Jim gets suspicious at his son’s too-quick response. Skye visits the Eye computer and activates Lucas’s program. Maddy meets Durwin and tries to trade her teddy bear and an abacus (really??) for the “Promethian Core” she wants. When he turns her down she offers to get him something that he really could find useful, a new wheel for his disabled wheelchair.
While examining surveillance footage, Wash and Jim view Skye sneaking out of Terra Nova through a drainage ditch. Jim goes home to confront Josh (who is playing that dang guitar again, gag) about his lying for Skye, and then goes to inform Commander Taylor. Taylor is very disappointed because he thinks of Skye sort of like a daughter, and decides to find out if it’s absolutely true by contacting his own mole in the Sixer camp, the banished ex-TN soldier Curran for confirmation.
While Taylor and Skye play chess he feeds her some false intel about a supposed TN convoy just to see if she will pass it on to the Sixers. Skye immediately sneaks out of the compound and Taylor and Jim (suspecting the worst) and a passel of TN soldiers head out with lots of heavy artillery to meet an expected Sixer trap, but instead simply run into some harmless Brachiosaurs (in Jurassic Park-speak “Veggie-saurus”). Jim feels that since Skye did not set them up after all, she can’t be all bad, and (miraculously) deduces that the Sixers “must have some kind of hold on her” for her to be acting as their mole.
Maddy finds that the core she wanted has already been traded to bad guy bar owner Boylan, so she approaches him and offers her organizational skills in exchange for it. But when he finds out that she is Shannon’s daughter he wimps out and refuses to trade with her, and simply gives her the core for free.
Skye gives back to Lucas his now completed two-way portal program and for no reason that I can discern, Lucas makes several comments about his Daddy Issues before telling her to get out. (What an ungrateful SOB. I think we are supposed to not like him even more now.) With his computations confirmed, Lucas can open the time travel Portal in both directions. Woo hoo! He heads off to the Portal to go get an army of baddies from the future that he hopes will help him burn TN to the ground. (He really, REALLY hates Daddy, I guess.)
Back in the Sixer camp, Skye confesses her fears about Lucas’ plans to her sick mom and is told that she should go back to the compound and tell Taylor everything (poor, brave sick mom).
Jim and Taylor run into Skye who is heading back. She blurts out the entire season in one go: all about her sick mom and working for the Sixers to try to keep mom from dying, and Lucas Taylor finishing his calculations and his being able to now make the portal go both ways, and how Lucas really wants to destroy Terra Nova because he hates his daddy so much, and well, just everything. (See, if she had only had this little informative chat with Taylor about six episodes ago we wouldn’t have had to watch all of the intervening dreck.) Jim and Taylor think it would be best for Skye to go back to Terra Nova now (so she can confess all of her indiscretions to Josh and cuddle) and they zip off to the Portal to try and stop Lucas.
Incoming wormhole! Unscheduled portal activity! Some well-timed Stargate Swoosh portal back blast controlled by Lucas blows away the group of good guy TN soldiers left behind on portal sentry duty. Bam! It’s night suddenly (someone really needs to talk to the editors about continuity) and the two Taylors meet up in the jungle and bicker for a while before Lucas steps backwards into the quickly open and shut portal, supposedly escaping Back to the Future to meet up with his 2149 bad guy buddies.
Skye’s mom has been rescued from the Sixer camp by formerly evil dude Curran, and Doc Liz thinks that mom can really, truly be cured now. Taylor decides to give Curran a second chance and un-banishes him for saving Skye’s mom.
Taylor confesses to Jim that back in August 2138, Lucas’s mom died “because [Taylor] couldn’t save her” and Lucas has never forgiven him. (This issue keep getting hinted at but never fully explained, I guess we have to wait for the big reveal in next week’s two-parter finale. Argh.) Then Taylor gives an impassioned speech to the TN population from his balcony about the expected upcoming fight with the future soldiers that they expect Lucas to bring with him when he comes back through the Portal.
My take? A whole lotta time was wasted in this ep just getting to the announcement of an eventual war with the future, which we now (arrrrgh) have to wait until next week to see. I don’t feel invested in of any these characters so it doesn’t matter one bit to me who lives and who dies, but I’d put money on the Shannon family surviving. And the “Daddy and Son Taylor” conflict has become downright annoying. Okay, they hate each other, that’s supposed to be news? Yawn… Plus there were only a couple of dinosaurs in this ep and NO ONE GOT EATEN. Boo. 🙁
Sorry, I don’t even care enough to list the rest of my dissatisfaction with the plot. I must now go gird my loins for the two-hour (oh, the horror!) season finale next week. I sense that I may need some liquid courage to face that challenge, and may have to start drinking right about now if I’m going to face it.
