Terra Nova/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Cliché Storm / Trope Overdosed
  • Complete Monster: Lucas, whose motives in no way excuse his behavior. He's hell-bent on destroying Terra Nova simply to one-up his father, who he blames for the death of his mother. More specifically, he casually threatens to murder Skye's mother if she doesn't obey him. He only gets worse in the finale.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Admit it, Nathaniel Taylor is the real protagonist of this show.
  • Iron Woobie: Taylor. His wife dies in what is suggested to be very poor circumstances (he was ready to commit suicide over the fact) which in turn causes a life-long hatred towards him by his son. And then Washington, someone implied to have helped him over his issues, gets killed during an attack on what now amounts to Taylor's life's work -- preserving humanity's future from really evil forces.
  • The Scrappy: Josh is overall considered pretty unlikable mainly from the pilot.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • Nathaniel Taylor having to kill his own mentor and banish his son for the good of the colony.
    • Washington's death. Taylor can barely hold himself together, especially when Zoe is trying to cheer him up by talking about the things the Washington taught her. Then she hugs him. Daawww.
    • To some extent, Kara's death. Nowhere near as wrenching as Washington's demise, not to mention completely off-screen, but it makes you feel bad for a character and actress who got maybe half-a-dozen actual lines of dialogue in the entire season and then promptly had the proverbial bridge dropped on her within seconds of finally arriving in Terra Nova.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Tasha. Sure, honey. Leave the armored ATV and run into the jungle at night where there are hungry carnivorous dinosaurs waiting to eat you. The other teenagers are pretty bad too makin' moonshine out where the predators are and all that. It was like a checklist for a slasher movie.
    • Josh is a pretty high contender too, almost to the point where "Rebel" becomes synonymous with "idiot."
      • Did Not Do the Research about what life will be like there. ("Allosaurus? That's a meat eater, right?")
      • Does not drink the fluid designed to acclimate his body to the new biosphere because it doesn't taste good.
      • Grabs a fruit because he's craving solid food but has no idea how to open it.
      • Distracted by the Sexy into going outside the walls (hey, remember that allosaurus you were scared of before?)
      • Drinks alcohol in a wild environment full of predators.
      • Of course, as far as the Terra Novans knew, that area was off limits for no reason. Skye only found out about it being "Slasher territory" (even if that isn't the real reason...) at the end of the first episode, and she's been there for years. It's not as if Josh can be expected to know what is and isn't off limits if she doesn't. Makes no sense that he doesn't get sick, though.
    • To be fair, this was all in the pilot. Having a near-death experience seems to have balanced Josh out a little.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Terra Nova is, to put it bluntly, a military dictatorship led solely by Commander Taylor. Not only does he make all political decisions, he also acts as judge, jury, and executioner in criminal matters. Yet the series treats this as pretty close to an ideal state. Jim even says that Commander Taylor's method of handling trials is much better than the judicial system back home, where the accused actually has rights.
  • Too Good to Last: Sorry.
    • At the same time, Netflix is in preliminary discussions to pick up the show. It did have very good DVR ratings during its run, after all.
  • X Meets Y: Lost meets The Lost World
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