Fox’s highly anticipated sci-fi series “Terra Nova” is still months away from becoming a series, but that doesn’t mean producers aren’t looking for ways to make it a hit.
Produced by Steven Spielberg, the show is set on a future Earth destroyed by overpopulation. Scientists discover a crack in the space-time continuum, which leads to a pre-historic era. Presented with a new, lush landscape, a military-lead colony heads to the past in hopes of giving humanity a fresh start.
At the recent Television Critics Association winter meetings, producers said that while the series sounds like it has a “Lost”-like backstory and mythology, it doesn’t and that they’re shooting for a wider audience.
“This has nothing to do with Lost for one major reason: It’s so made for a massively broad audience,” executive producer Alex Graves says. “Terra Nova, more than anything I’ve ever done in my life, is for everybody.”
One thing the show is looking at is the idea of second chances.
“They’re hoping to send people back to re-colonize Earth and give humanity a second chance,” executive producer Brannon Braga says. “What effect that has on the future, they’re hoping, is positive.”
“It’s about people starting over again in the same context that people are doing that today, it just happens to be in a more exotic locale,” Graves says. “It’s very much grounded in the accurate record that one imagines might’ve been possible.”
Adds Braga: “It is about a second chance for Earth, but Earth can only be saved if people can restore themselves and not bring with them the baggage they left behind.”
Fox will air a two-night, two-hour sneak preview of Terra Nova on Monday, May 23 and Tuesday, May 24.
Wait? The earth is overpopulated so they colonize Earth’s past? Wouldn’t that make more people? This is reminiscent of Phillip K. Dick book a crack in Space. I could see something like that working better because it’s an alternate Earth with lots of real estate. I thought from the title it would be an Earth 2 type of deal. Well there’s enough in there for me to give the pilot a go.
Not Brannon Braga again! If he can’t ruin this promising idea, I don’t know who can.
If it is based in the geologic past, prior to one of the 5 major extinction events ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Major_extinction_events ), then no, it would not make more people.