Recap: Terra Nova,' Season 1, Episode 8, 'Vs.'

In "Terra Nova," Season 1, Episode 8, "Vs." a couple of mysteries lead one to the realization how both politically correct and thin the premise behind the entire series is. The episode begins with a dragonfly.

Spoilers follow.

The colonists find out that the Sixers are using an ancient form of a dragonfly with a microchip to convey messages from their spy in Terra Nova. One of the soldiers wounds the dragonfly and discovers the chip turning a rehearsal of a child's pageant celebrating something called "The Harvest Festival" which sounds like a 22nd century version of Thanksgiving, but really is a celebration of the day Taylor went through the time rift. Zoe is wearing a fake beard and is playing Taylor.

In the meantime, Jim, having interrogated the bartender who is suspected of being the Sixer spy, discovers the remains of a one-armed man buried near a tree. It soon becomes apparent that Taylor murdered him and that the prisoner helped. Taylor's son may have been involved as well.

The dragonfly is repaired and the signal is traced right to the Shannon household. Taylor locks Jim up as a suspect. Of course Taylor knows that Jim is not a spy and Jim knows that he knows it. Taylor tries to blackmail Jim into dropping the investigation over the remains. Jim does not back down and so Taylor fesses up.

It seems that the remains are of a general who first oversaw the project that sent Taylor to the prehistoric past. The general and Taylor's son were developing a way to make travel through the rift go both ways. The idea was to use the resources of Terra Nova to support the pollution-ravaged Earth. Taylor would have none of it. The general threw down on Taylor, but Taylor fired first. He buried the general in secret and exiled his son. It seems that the Sixers may be involved in the nefarious plot to exploit Terra Nova.

This lays bare how the premise behind the series is not only thing, but politically correct to the point of being offensive. Understanding that the Earth of the 22nd century is so polluted as to be well nigh uninhabitable, it would seem to one that the civilization of 150 or so years from now would have the technology to repair things. Nanites could be used to clean the pollution. Genetically engineered plants and fauna could be sown to replenish the planet. Terra Nova could be used, gingerly of course, to help in that process, by transplanting flora and so on.

But the premise of the show is that the billions on Earth in the future should be sacrificed so that a few hundred people can live carbon footprint-free lives among the dinosaurs. Thinking about that for more than five seconds shows how immoral that attitude really is.