I seem to have found a schedule of getting these out just after the next episode has aired. I've got to try and be better about that. I'm of two minds about this episode, neither of which are particularly sane minds.
On the one side we have a pretty good look at law in Terra Nova, on the other we have a baby dinosaur. First, the halfway decent part. I like that we got to see how the law works in the colony. It's a system that relies on Taylor as the absolute leader who passes judgement. With only the few hundred people that they have, this system seems to work. As Terra Nova expands and more people arrive from the future, there is no way that one man can carry that kind of burden on top of running everything. I really liked the argument that Jim and Elisabeth had about the pros and cons of this type of system. It was good do see a dissenting opinion from one of our heroes and it's the first time our main couple has actually really popped. It is much more compelling to see them at odds instead of lovey-dovey all the time. Especially since it was argument borne from character instead of arbitrary drama.
We also see cracks in the system with the false confession. Taylor sentences a man to exile because he thought he was covering for his wife. If Elisabeth hadn't planted the seeds that he could have falsely confessed, nothing more would have been thought about the murder and the real killer would have gotten away with it. I couldn't help but wonder throughout the episode about how these laws were put into place in the first place, and how that's probably a lot more interesting than what we are seeing now that they are already implemented.
This particular storyline illustrated one of my favorite aspects of science fiction. Sci-fi may be genre to itself but it can also mutant into any genre it wants. I think that's what drew me so strongly to Star Trek: The Next Generation as a kid. One week could be a medical mystery, the next week could be a whodunit, the week after that could be an action adventure on a planet, then a political commentary, then a epic space battle, then a horrifying alien monster, I could go on. You watch a cop show, a doctor show, a legal show, you get the same thing every week. So this week we got a murder mystery out of Terra Nova. Not a terribly good one, but I like that they are embracing the mutability that sci-fi offers.
Now onto the other side of the episode, baby dinosaur. This whole plot was so, so, so, so unnecessary. It was like the Maddy plot about wanting to be a doctor, but at least that gave us some character insight. This gave us nothing. Dinosaur egg is in trouble, Elisabeth uses her super doctor skills to save it, Zoe wants to keep it. Seriously. They even had her say, "Can we keep it?" So the Shannons are adopting a baby ankylosaurus. This really felt like they needed to pad the episode. It mostly just made me mad whenever they went back to it.
On the Josh side, he makes another monumentally stupid mistake. Why would he ever agree to do a favor for Mira, no questions asked. He knows the she is suppose to be the enemy. Her favor could be kill Taylor, kill your Dad, turn off the gate defenses, any number of horrible things. Josh barely hesitates. I know things are bad in 2149, which Josh lays out for Skye. That was nice moment, it made him seem less like a douche and more noble that it's not really about getting his girlfriend to him but getting her away from there. It was also good to see him argue with Jim and make good points, such good points that Jim relents. And then, he agrees to Mira's terms and destroys any goodwill he built up. I'd like to think he plans to tell his father exactly what Mira wants when she asks, but that supposes he has some smarts which we haven't seen as yet.
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