By Mark HadleyMonday 7 Nov 2011TV and StreamingReading Time: 3 minutes
Terra Nova
Rating: M
Distributor: Network TEN
Release Date: Sundays, 8:30 PM
It seems that only the United States has the money to realize some of the boldest ideas science fiction can suggest.
Create a television series that walks in the footsteps of the wildly successful and equally expensive Jurassic Park franchise? At an average of $4 million US an episode, that would be Terra Nova.
Terra Nova begins in the world of 2149 where environmental disasters have scarred the planet. Jim Shannon (Jason O’Mara), a police detective decides along with his surgeon wife Dr. Elisabeth Shannon (Shelly Conn) to flout the law and conceive a third child. Jim is sentenced to life in prison for their crime, while scientists invite Elisabeth to help colonise a new ‘Jurassic’ earth discovered on the other side of a one-way fracture in time. The Shannon’s conceive a bold plan to escape to the past along with their children and begin a new life in an untainted world. When they arrive they discover that the colonists there have brought more problems than their human technology with them.
Terra Nova is a Jurassic antidote to the suggestion that ‘getting back to nature’ will result in a better world. Even if science were able to somehow help us break back into the Garden of Eden we would find that our sinfulness would sour the sweetest air. No surprise, it turns out the real threats to the Shannons are not the dinosaurs but the envious outsiders, the pressures on Jim and Elisabeth’s relationship, and their children’s disrespect for rules.
Q & A
Rating: CC
Distributor: ABC1
Release Date: Mondays, 9:35 PM
There’s a lot to be said about Q&A regarding the program’s ability to connect the opinions of the masses with the politicians who are supposed to represent them. The question remains, though, how representative are the thoughts that grab centre-stage?
For those of you yet to see an episode, Q&A is an exercise in mediated democracy. ABC stalwart Tony Jones chairs a panel of politicians, writers, social commentators and … well anyone that fits the demographic of the topic under discussion. If we’re talking about Gen-Y it’s a 20-something business success. Gay marriage? Then make room for homosexual comedian Josh Thomas. Politics and religion? Welcome aboard Jim Wallace from The Australian Christian Lobby. The panel then attempts to give their best answers to the questions posed by a studio audience, as well as those emailed, SMS-ed and tweeted by its national audience.
It’s the live nature of the debate that lifts Q&A above the fairly predictable question-answer-debate-question format that characterizes studio-audience shows of this sort. A large number of questions are submitted in real time thanks to the digital interaction. There is also a constant stream of Twitter comments scrolling across the bottom of the screen, providing a public commentary on the answers provided by panelists – think the infamous ‘worm’ graphic used in political debates, but with words. However it’s these last observations that show both the weakness and the opportunity Q&A represents.
Read enough of the opinions scrolling across the bottom of the screen and you’ll realize that Q&A has a very young, pretty shallow audience. They’re mainly a collection of reactions rather than responses. Given the dependency on technology it’s probably safe to say that Q&A does a good job of presenting the opinions of a very small sector of society that’s caught on to how Twitter and video chats work, and are likely to sit in front of the TV with a computer. But are you a Christian who falls into that category? Then here’s the opportunity: one quick observation from God’s perspective can land in front of hundreds of thousands of eyeballs and skew the way they see an issue.