Nacho watches Terra Nova

[nacho]

I think it's important that the oldest daughter is a better dinosaur expert than anyone at Terra Nova. Maybe future Earth could send through a paleontologist next time?

Or is that one of those ologies people can't pronounce?

[nacho]

Haha! Back to Aeon Flux. There's a rival settlement bent on destroying Terra Nova. The "sixers" who broke away from the sixth batch of colonists and now want to kill the salty commander.

[nacho]

Ha! Well...it took 15 minutes (and one day show-time) for our main guy to get his badge and his gun. Despite the fact that every third colonist is a heavily armed marine.

[nacho]

Yay! First dino kill!

And the Red Shirt goes  *CRUNCH*

[nacho]

The sonic cannons are the coolest effect yet.

[nacho]

So after establishing that the Sixers are an evil enemy trying to fuck shit up, they save some Sixers and it seems more like they have a tenuous sort of truce and occasional gunboat diplomacy trading.

Or maybe it was just a one-off incident and everybody gives up easily.

[nacho]

Oh, okay. Instead of velociraptors we get nocturnal "slashers." So far just talked about.

I want some slasher action!

[nacho]

Second black guy!

He's a Sixer.

A dinosaur eats him after 40 seconds of screen time.

[nacho]

Slashers!

[nacho]

For the record, one of the group of kids is black. So there is a third one! We'll see if he makes it through the slasher attack, though.

[nacho]

Oh, and one of the girls in the group of kids is black, too. By Jim Crow standards, at least. She manages to avoid the somewhat alarming bug-eyed stereotypes of the other black kid.

Slasher attack is dragging out. They seem happy with just shaking the truck.

[nacho]

"Don't assume anything about slashers!" *ratatatatatatata*

[nacho]

Oh! And the leader of the Sixers is black.

I hate to keep drawing attention to the black thing but we've seen six black people. One for about a second, then the next one is a baddie, and one is the first dino casualty, and one is half spanish, and another one gets eaten by a dino and the other is a vague sort of cool-guy comic relief.

All the people who have died so far are black.

Half of the bad guys we've seen so far are black.

There are no blacks in authority at Terra Nova and, apparently, none over 16.

This seems lopsided to me... And I have a long rant somewhere inside of me about how mainstream sci-fi from the last decade has been a white's only club -- BSG being the most glaring example, where the reboot actually removes two major black characters from the 70's and replaces them with an old white man and a hot Korean-American.

[nacho]

Both black kids were severely wounded. The half-spanish girl is now a half chewed mess and the hipster black kid got his chest slashed open. Looks grim for them.

Breaking from the last 90 minutes, one of the white kids did get his foot chewed on. He seems fine, though.

[nacho]

In the Big Reveal, the Sixers are discussing the geometric rock art and we learn that it's Commander Hardbottom's missing son, who's gone insane and lives in the jungle trying to find "the answer." The answer to what, a Sixer asks helpfully, and Sixer Boss reveals that there's a plot -- what Terra Nova's really about. "Control the past and you control the future..."

Well...yeah. That's sort of a given when you colonize the past with a well armed force of freaks. Even the kids understood that, thus the whole paradox/parallel world exposition scene.

I guess there's something Even More Sinister(tm) going on.

Overall review: Laughably bad. I loved it! It's miles better than Falling Skies, and seems strangely aware of the fact that it's bad. Somehow, this awareness manages to be cute. I'm going to keep watching... If only to watch minorities get cut to ribbons by slashers each week.