New on TV: Terra Nova

It's 2149, and Earth is screwed. Population growth, pollution, whatever, it's clear that the planet is not going to be able to sustain life - at least human life - for much longer. At some point in the relatively recent past, a hole in space-time was discovered that allows people to be sent back 85 million years on to a parallel Earth. The idea, apparently, is that this new Earth will serve as a lifeboat for at least a segment of humanity.

That's where the Shannon family comes in. They've been selected for the 11th pilgrimage (mom is a doctor), but there's wrinkle; dad is in prison thanks to his assault on a police officer who discovered that the family had an illegal third child. Mom is apparently more resourceful than first thought, as she engineers a lame escape for her husband and lays down enough bribes to get him through the portal - with their third child.

Terra Nova is run in a quasi-military camp style, led the no-nonsense commander who founded the colony as the very first pilgrim. But there's trouble in the past, as a group of people from the sixth pilgrimage - know as Sixers - split off from Terra Nova and are actively trying to thwart it. They live in the jungle, steal supplies and energy as needed, etc. They also have a belief - not stated explicitly but suggested via comments as subtle as a jackhammer - that this new Earth is actually the old Earth, and the Terra Nova settlement is a ploy made by various people back in 2149 to gain or maintain power.

The Shannons, for their part, get mixed up in this pretty quickly when the dad saves the life of the commander, leading him to a favored spot on the commander's security team. The dad has also been a captive of the Sixers, and is beginning to suspect there's more here than meets the eye. There is also a variety of family drama - a son who resents his dad for being away, a daughter who's already caught the eye of a solider, and none of it is all that interesting.

In fact, this write up is, I think, at least as interesting as the show, a condition I ascribe to the lack of dinosaurs. Oh, there's at least one dino per episode - and there was one episode where a flock of flying dinos attack the Terra Novans, as they've built their settlement on the dino's nesting ground - but the real draw for watching this show isn't to see what bits they've ripped off from Lost or how problematically on the nose it was for them to cast the Marine commander from Avatar as the Terra Nova commander. I want to see dinosaurs, lots of them, preferably fighting each other. That would be at least as interesting as the whole thing with the Sixers (which I think they've tipped too early) and much more interesting than the family dynamics stuff.

Bottom line, I'm a little disappointed with the show, and the ratings suggest that I'm not alone. My thinking: more dinos, more ratings. Make it happen, Fox.