Spielberg’s Terra Nova Delayed, TV’s Sci-Fi Wasteland Continues
Lost is gone, Battlestar Galactica is long gone, and for fans of science fiction the television landscape is quickly turning into a wasteland. If you’re looking for quality sci-fi programming, all we really have left is Doctor Who, and with the new season all but over even that’s about to be taken away from us. I use this lack of decent sci-fi programming to excuse my Stargate Universe viewership, but even I have sort of given up on shows like Eureka and I really don’t have the patience for Fringe.
So if you’re a sci-fi fanatic you’ve probably really been looking forward to Steven Spielberg’s upcoming series Terra Nova which sounds sort of like a serious version of Land of the Lost. If anyone can give quality sci-fi on TV a shot in the arm it’s Spielberg, and since it has dinosaurs, people might actually watch it. Or they would, if it was airing any time soon.
Unfortunately Fox announced today that Terra Nova has been delayed. It was originally announced as part of the 2010-2011 schedule but now they’ve pushed it all the way back to fall of 2011. The sci-fi wasteland that is television continues. Time to pick up Crusade on DVD.
Here’s the full press release explaining Terra Nova’s situation:
TERRA NOVA, the new family adventure drama series executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, Peter Chernin, Brannon Braga and David Fury, will preview in May 2011 on FOX prior to its series premiere in the fall.
Jason O’Mara (“Life on Mars”) has been cast in the lead role of JIM SHANNON, the patriarch of the show’s central family. As previously announced, Emmy Award winner Alex Graves (FRINGE) will direct the pilot, and Emmy Award-winning executive producer and director Jon Cassar (“24”) has joined the series as an executive producer and series director.
“TERRA NOVA will be one of the most visually stimulating and dramatically grand series to air on network television,” said Kevin Reilly, President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company. “It deserves to have an equally unique launch to distinguish that the show is unlike any other, and the spring promotional platform will give us the perfect opportunity to introduce this bold show to audiences.”
TERRA NOVA, an epic family adventure 85 million years in the making, follows an ordinary family embarking on an incredible journey back in time to prehistoric Earth as a small part of a massive experiment to save the human race. In the year 2149 the world is dying. The planet is overdeveloped, overcrowded and overpolluted. Knowing there is no way to reverse the damage to the planet, a coalition of scientists has managed to open up a fracture in the space-time continuum, creating a portal to prehistoric Earth. This doorway leads to an amazing world, one that allows for a last-ditch effort to save the human race…possibly changing the future by correcting the mistakes of the past.
The series centers on the Shannon family as they join the tenth pilgrimage of settlers to TERRA NOVA, the first colony of humans in this second chance for civilization. JIM SHANNON (O’Mara), a devoted father with a checkered past, guides his family – wife ELISABETH and children JOSH and MADDY – through this new land of limitless beauty, mystery and terror. In addition to blue skies, rolling rivers and lush vegetation, TERRA NOVA offers new opportunities and fresh beginnings to its recent arrivals, but the Shannons have brought with them a familial secret that may threaten their citizenship in this utopia. These adventurers soon discover that this healthy, vibrant world is not as idyllic as it initially appears. The areas surrounding TERRA NOVA are filled with dangerous dinosaurs and other prehistoric threats, as well as external forces that may be intent on destroying this new world before it begins.
TERRA NOVA is produced by 20th Century Fox Television, DreamWorks Television, Kapital Entertainment and Chernin Entertainment. Steven Spielberg, Peter Chernin, Brannon Braga, David Fury, Jon Cassar, Aaron Kaplan, Katherine Pope, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Craig Silverstein and Kelly Marcel serve as executive producers. Alex Graves will direct the pilot episode.
