Terra Nova (TV Show)

Galvasean

Heading to Australia in August? Well if so be sure to audition for Stephen Spielbergs new dinosaur themed TV show called Terra Nova which will be shown on Fox.

Find out more here.

In related news Muttaburrasaurus and Kronosaurus have expressed interest in the series:

"I'm sure if Mr Spielberg chose Queensland as the location for Terra Nova, our famous dinosaurs Muttaburrasaurus and Kronosaurus Queenslandicus would make fabulous movie stars."

Muttaburrasaurus was a herbivore that lived 120 million years ago, was up to two metres tall and 12 metres long. Kronosaurus is thought to be the largest marine reptile on Earth, with its head alone reaching 2.7 metres.

"I'm sure both of these prehistoric giants would love to star in Mr Spielberg's upcoming movie - after all they've already been famous for millions of years and would add to the number of Aussies making it big in Hollywood."

More on the series here.

Galvasean

Well here is the trailer:

Looks rubbish.

Kess73

Hard to tell from such a short teaser.


With a budget of $4 million per episode, there should be some good effects in this.

With only two brief glimpses in the teaser it is hard to guess how well the dinos ( and non dinos) will look.

Galvasean

From what little glimpes I saw I made out a brachiosaur(?) and a Carnotaurus. Hard to tell CG quality, but they look somewhere between Walking With Dinosaurs and a SyFy Channel exclusive.

Rubecula

Not sure how good that is going to be, a bit like an American glossy Primeval in reverse.

We will have to wait and see wht it is like. (I bet they get the dinos all wrong too)

JuliusCaesar

Rubecula wrote: »

Not sure how good that is going to be, a bit like an American glossy Primeval in reverse.

While the baddies in Primeval tried to kill off the early humans/humanoids, and the goodies try not to interfere with the life they run into (or who runs into us), the Americans go forth all guns blazing.





Should be good fun!

Adam Khor

I'm sad to admit it, but I'm not really excited about this... the dinosaurs look fake, and there's gonna be too much tough guys with guns for what I've heard.

But who knows, we may be surprised...

Galvasean

Despite the vat array of real dinosaurs out there, this show seems happy to make up new ones :rolleyes:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2011/06/terra-nova-previews-slasher-dinosaur/

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Despite the vat array of real dinosaurs out there, this show seems happy to make up new ones :rolleyes:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2011/06/terra-nova-previews-slasher-dinosaur/

Gimme a break!
That Bryan whatever-his-name-is really needs to stop being such a square. Yes, they made up a dinosaur. So what? There were probably thousands of dinos out there that we never found as fossils (and that we may never find). IMHO, if the series takes place in prehistoric Earth then there SHOULD be unknown animals surprising the time travelers (and the audience) regularly. There is no rule saying that if u create a work of fiction you should use dinosaurs known as fossils ONLY. It is not a documentary, so chill out!

The Slasher may not be the most original looking dino ever created for a show, but I'm sure that if the series creators had invented a very bizarre dino (say, a blood-sucking, porcupine-like dinosaur), squares such as Bryan whatever his name is would complain about it all the same.
The hands are innacurate? How tragic. It doesn`t have feathers? My heart bleeds for him. Its not such a big deal. If it was a documentary, ok, bitch about it if it makes u feel smarter. But leave fiction alone. It's just that; entertainment.

I'm sorry if I sound like a douche but it pisses me off when people can`t just relax and stop being so damned close-minded. And yeah, I'm having a rough week.

Galvasean

Meh, I don't see what this 'Slasher' can do that a Deinonychus can't. Might as well give the kiddies a quasie realistic idea of what dinos actually looked like IMo.

Rubecula

If we are going to push imagination out that far as regards what dino's can and did do... Bring back Dinotopia. I am ashamed to admit I enjoyed that.

*Looks guilty*

Adam Khor

Rubecula wrote: »

If we are going to push imagination out that far as regards what dino's can and did do... Bring back Dinotopia. I am ashamed to admit I enjoyed that.

*Looks guilty*

Hell, I enjoyed that too. Not the best show ever by any means, but enjoyable.
Did I miss something, tho? What do the dinos in Terra Nova do that is so hard to believe?

Kess73

Galvasean wrote: »

Meh, I don't see what this 'Slasher' can do that a Deinonychus can't. Might as well give the kiddies a quasie realistic idea of what dinos actually looked like IMo.

I thought that the premise of the show was that they discover a way to fracture time and travel back in time to arrive at an alternative past version of Earth?


Pretty sure I heard that in an interview by Stephen Lang.

If it is meant to be on an alternative version of a past Earth, then the rejigging of some species makes sense.

Adam Khor

Kess73 wrote: »

I thought that the premise of the show was that they discover a way to fracture time and travel back in time to arrive at an alternative past version of Earth?


Pretty sure I heard that in an interview by Stephen Lang.

If it is meant to be on an alternative version of a past Earth, then the rejigging of some species makes sense.

But it still makes sense if that's not the case! We don´t know everything about the past of this version of Earth either...

I hope its not so much about alternate universes tho cuz Im writing a fiction book about that and it involves dinosaurs too XD People would think Im writing a rip off.

Galvasean

Adam Khor wrote: »

But it still makes sense if that's not the case!

Yeah, we haven't discovered every species of dinosaur, but we have discovered a dazzling variety of species, more than enough to fill hundreds of shows with unique hazardous creatures. Making up new ones is completely superfluous. Like I said earlier, why invent a new dinosaur which offers nothing more of a threat than your standard Deinonychus?
If you wanna make a movie about made up monsters then go right ahead. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't go and try pass it off as a show about dinosaurs.

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Yeah, we haven't discovered every species of dinosaur, but we have discovered a dazzling variety of species, more than enough to fill hundreds of shows with unique hazardous creatures. Making up new ones is completely superfluous. Like I said earlier, why invent a new dinosaur which offers nothing more of a threat than your standard Deinonychus?
If you wanna make a movie about made up monsters then go right ahead. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't go and try pass it off as a show about dinosaurs.

I have to disagree. I don´t see anything wrong with designing new dinos for a fiction show. Being a writer and having studied filmmaking (I dropped out, but still... XD) I can tell you that when you create a work of fiction, you want to offer something fresh and new to your audience AND something that differenciates your show from all others.

You want your reader/moviegoer to say "whoah, I didn´t see this coming" and "what the hell is that thing?!". Sure, you can do that with already known dinos; Michael Crichton took Carnotaurus and made it into a giant chameleon; he took Dilophosaurus and made it venomous. That's all very cool.
But if he had wanted to create a completely new dinosaur, that would be cool too. No one knows everything about Mesozoic life, and there's lots of room for imagination, which you need if you are doing fiction. Creating a new species isn´t really too different from giving a real dinosaur a completely fictional trait.

Problem is, and I say this without any intention to offend, that many dino buffs just like to complain. Look at Jurassic Park! Here you have awesome CGI, awesome animatronics and a simple, entertaining story. You could just sit back and relax and have a good time but nooo, you HAVE to complain about how the raptors are featherless and have weird wrists, about how the Brachiosaurus chews its food, about how Dilophosaurus is venomous and even (gimme a break!) about how T-Rex didn´t have those angry-looking ridges over its eyes!
"It's just so inaccurate!" they say. Well, a giant gorilla climbing the Empire State is also inaccurate. An invasion of gigantic alien spaceships is also inaccurate. It doesn´t happen in real life. It's not real. It's called fiction! It's a work of imagination, not a documentary!
I can´t believe there's people out there debating about how Rudy the white Baryonyx from Ice Age 3 (an animated movie!) is way too big to be a Baryonyx and should be an overgrown Suchomimus or a spineless Spinosaurus instead!
It's kinda ridiculous if you ask me. Want science? Go to the museum instead of to the movies.

Like I said, this is just my opinion and not meant to offend anyone. I guess I take this subject a little bit too seriously because I like dinosaurs and I'm interested in paleontology but I am also a fiction writer and I would be very dissapointed if people who share my same interest were unable to enjoy my work because its "inaccurate" or because I took the liberty to create instead of just taking what was already there.
What's the point of being a friggin writer, filmmaker or storyteller if you can´t create anything?

Kess73

Galvasean wrote: »

Yeah, we haven't discovered every species of dinosaur, but we have discovered a dazzling variety of species, more than enough to fill hundreds of shows with unique hazardous creatures. Making up new ones is completely superfluous. Like I said earlier, why invent a new dinosaur which offers nothing more of a threat than your standard Deinonychus?
If you wanna make a movie about made up monsters then go right ahead. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't go and try pass it off as a show about dinosaurs.

But it is not a show about dinos though, it is a show that is being advertised as having dinos and other creatures in it.

The Jurassic Park trilogy had plenty in it that went against the grain in terms of what was known about various species at the time as well, but I was happy with that as it meant I got to see dinos on the big screen that looked pretty real.

Hell it is the same with some of the Ray Harryhausen films. Is The Valley Of Gwangi an accurate portrayal of an Allosaurus (or a Pteranodon)? Not even close but it is still an enjoyable watch.

Is One Million BC close to accurate? Nope and it is still an enjoyable watch, especially the young Raquel

I like dinos in films to be accurate when possible but not at the expense of entertainment.

When I want my dinos to be factually correct or as close as can be at this point in time, I will read a book or watch a good documentary.

Adam Khor

Kess73 wrote: »

But it is not a show about dinos though, it is a show that is being advertised as having dinos and other creatures in it.

The Jurassic Park trilogy had plenty in it that went against the grain in terms of what was known about various species at the time as well, but I was happy with that as it meant I got to see dinos on the big screen that looked pretty real.

Hell it is the same with some of the Ray Harryhausen films. Is The Valley Of Gwangi an accurate portrayal of an Allosaurus (or a Pteranodon)? Not even close but it is still an enjoyable watch.

Is One Million BC close to accurate? Nope and it is still an enjoyable watch, especially the young Raquel

I like dinos in films to be accurate when possible but not at the expense of entertainment.

When I want my dinos to be factually correct or as close as can be at this point in time, I will read a book or watch a good documentary.

Thank you!

Galvasean

Carnotaurus will be pleased to know he now has wrists:

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Carnotaurus will be pleased to know he now has wrists:

Cool, now he can slit his wrists out of depression for being bad CG haha seriously, this confirms my suspicion that the dinos in this show would look kinda fake.

I know I'll end up watching it anyways...:D

Adam Khor

http://www.thestar.com/article/1058198--video-terra-nova-brave-new-world-or-tyrannosaurus-wreck

An article about Terra Nova...

I don´t know you guys but the idea of heavily armed humans traveling back to the Cretaceous to ruin the world of dinosaurs makes me sick to my stomach. At least in Primeval it was the creatures coming to us...

Galvasean

I just cant see the logic in jumping back 85 million years.... It just seems like a terrible plan!

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

I just cant see the logic in jumping back 85 million years.... It just seems like a terrible plan!

Agreed. And now, I just wonder, if these guys caused an ecological catastrophe in the Cretaceous that somehow caused the extinction of our early placental ancestors, that would mean the entire History of life after the Cretaceous would be re-written and we probably wouldn´t have evolved- which means the time travelers wouldn´t have been born at all, meaning there was never any time travel to begin with... but then again, if there was no time travel, that would mean nothing of what I just said happened and we probably DID evolve after all... o-o But, if we did evolve, then we probably did travel to the past and changed everything anyways! Oh noes! :eek:

Galvasean

Time travels cause a split alternate reality. Problem solved.

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Time travels cause a split alternate reality. Problem solved.

Damn you, you ruined my Cycle of Doom :S

Galvasean

You'll have to excuse me. i have a tendency to defend gaping plotholes in movies.

Adam Khor

The series airs tonight in the US. There's this article on it that I found interesting; in it, Thomas Holtz says that the air in the Cretaceous, 85 million years ago, would actually be poisonous for humans to breathe (yet another reason why this is a bad idea XD) due to high CO2 concentration.

Jack Horner, by the way, is the scientific consultant once again (Spielberg's to blame), but at least he accepts that this is a work of fiction and that there's lots of room for imagination.
He says that the "Slashers/Acceraptor" will be a "scary dinosaur" and it seems that what makes it special is a blade or series of barbs on its tail that can cause serious injury (kinda like a dinosaur version of a scorpion/manticore?)

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/26/7973577-terra-nova-gives-dino-fans-something-new-to-chew-on

Kess73

Starts on Sky 1 next Monday night.

FreeAnd..

was pretty dissapointing to be honest - and yes alternate reality split (but hinting at more) ...dont think i'd bother watching it again and the dinos still look better in jurassic park

Adam Khor

FreeAnd.. wrote: »

was pretty dissapointing to be honest - and yes alternate reality split (but hinting at more) ...dont think i'd bother watching it again and the dinos still look better in jurassic park

Of course they do Wonder if someone will ever top Jurassic Park.

Galvasean

Just in from work. Gonna give what's left a go. Any use so far?