Angry Birds

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A couple of Terra Novians (Terra Novites? Terra Novigonians?) on a supply run are attacked and killed by some sort of new pterosaur that Terra Nova has never seen before. Even worse, the screechy creatures are preventing Jim and Elizabeth from having sex! The other thing preventing them from doing the Terra Nasty is the fact that just a couple of days after arriving, they seem to be practically running the place. How did Terra Nova survive without them?

Anyway, the colony figures out that all the eggshells they found when they were digging their geothermal well years ago hatched these pterosaurs, who are coming back in the millions to spawn. So it’s great that in this big plan to go back in time and recolonize the earth in a more planet-friendly way that it occurred to no scientist that a crapload of eggshells equals some sort of hatching ground. Jim goes out and captures a couple of the killer dinobirds (this happens off-screen) so Elizabeth can stare at 3D computer models to synthesize a pheromone so that the birdosaurs can be led away to a new breeding ground. She’s doing this old squeeze Malcolm, who requested Elizabeth’s presence there, which Jim decides is not because she’s an amazing doctor who graduated first in her class at Earth Medical School or whatever, but because he wants to get into her pants. So the doctors figure out the pheromone and Jim and Taylor take it out into the jungle successfully luring the dinobirds away. THIS ALSO HAPPENS OFF-SCREEN.

What does happen on-screen are the two stupid teenagers at home worrying more about their new crushes than Zoe, who gets left in the living room with a menacing dinobird, which is known to eat the faces off armed security forces but Josh defeats it by kicking it. Oh, and then Jim and Elizabeth have sex, which is what longtime Terra Nova fans have been waiting for.

There’s an odd lack of action in this episode.

Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He wants to know why Terra Nova has touch-screen hologram computer defense systems, but what amounts to a gappy log fence surrounding the colony. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.

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We open with lightning and rain in the middle of the night with a supply rover making its way through the woods, with the soldiers complaining as soldiers have done for -- well, I guess about eighty-five million years now -- about the food in the mess hall. Maybe if they were paying a little more attention, they wouldn't have hit something and gotten a flat tire. They check in with Terra Nova, and then set about examining the damage, at least until they're freaked out by rustling noises in the trees above them. They're attacked from above, so right away the fact that some more humans are getting eaten cheers me immensely.

The day, the kids are in survival training with a Lieut. Washington in the kind of role that I thought was legally mandated to go to Michelle Rodriguez, showing them how to make fire and identify north. Actually, Maddie -- her soldier-boy crush is there -- knows how to identify north, based on the moss on the trees, so then it's time to learn to eat beetle grubs. That earns an "Ew!" from Zoe, and Washington is all, "You find yourself low on provisions and starving, you won't be saying 'Ew.' You'll be saying 'Mm-mmm.'" You know what? I might eat them, if I were starving. But I'm confident I would still be saying "Ew." Anyway, after survival training, Washington sends Josh out on latrine-scrubbing duty as punishment for sneaking out to go get drunk with his stupid friends, and Maddie gives him the gears over it.

Back at the house, the Shannons are painting -- Zoe's playing with a plant that looks like a cross between a Venus Flytrap and a boa constrictor, like HOW IS THIS CHILD STILL ALIVE -- and having one of those asinine conversations about color, with Elizabeth saying she's never seen this particular hue. Because Maddie has to display what a scientific genius she is in every scene, she talks about how it's because it's a natural pigment. Oh, of course. They're bringing back all kinds of technology from 2149, but let's make sure they use all organic paint. And then Josh comes home, and he presumably smells like shit and he responds by making big-head jokes about Maddie.

It's bedtime, and Jim and Elizabeth are desperately trying to get Zoe to sleep on her own so they can have sex. I mean, they don't tell Zoe that's the reason, but that's the reason. Soon enough, they're making out, but there's some sort of animal screeching outside. Elizabeth sends Jim to check it out, and he doesn't bother putting on a shirt because maybe the tiny pterodactyl perched on the fence will be intimidated by the six-pack he manages to still have after two years in a prison where they didn't even bother to make sure prisoners could breathe properly. Anyway, he shoos it away but by the time he gets back, Zoe is cuddling in Elizabeth's arms, so no sex for them tonight, I HOPE.

So the day, Taylor and his new best buddy Jim are going to check out on the supply run that never got in, and Jim goes to get a medic to take with them. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is in the infirmary and runs into an old friend, Malcolm Wallace, the chief science officer here. He's surprised to see her, and seems even more surprised to see Jim when Jim comes in looking for a medic. Of course, Elizabeth says she'll go, even though you'd figure colony rules would preclude both parents of kids making a potentially dangerous run like this.

Out looking for the supply rover, Jim wants to talk to Taylor about why the Sixers want him dead, but Taylor's not super interested in discussing it, and says he tries not to take it personally: "Eveyrbody's got their reasons," he says. Um, it's NOT NORMAL FOR EVERYBODY TO WANT TO KILL YOU. What does concern Taylor is that he thinks the Sixers have someone on the inside, and he wants Jim to find out who: "I'm just a soldier. You're a lawman. I figure you'd have a nose for this kind of thing."

And then they find the supply vehicle, with three dead soldiers, faces seemingly eaten off. Whoever did this to them, it wasn't Sixers (who are totally going to turn out to be good guys anyway).

So Josh and Skye (also apparently on latrine-cleaning duty) are wandering through the market, and I'm sure the other patrons appreciate the strong shit smell, and they have some ugly-fish kebabs. Then Josh picks up a guitar and strums out a little amateur blues, so this guy offers to sell it for sixty-five Terrabucks, which he then whittles down to sixty, plus the pick he carved from a carno's tooth -- not the same one that chewed off both his legs. Josh checks with Skye to figure out if sixty is a lot, and she says, "Kinda," especially since I thought this was kind of a commune where everyone is provided for.

Over in the infirmary, Elizabeth examines the bodies of the supply guys and all she can figure so far is that they were attacked from above. Cop Jim finds some kind of claw or talon, and Taylor cracks the whip to find out what did this, tonight, meaning Elizabeth has to stay late. And that means Jim's going to have to look after the kids for supper tonight, setting up a stereotypical, "Dad is useless in the kitchen and looking after the kids" scene, and Maddie steps in to make dinner, and also fluster her dad by asking how she knows if a boy likes her.

When Elizabeth gets back, he pretends that everything went great, despite the fact that he forgot to give Zoe a bath. She's still marveling about running into Malcolm, and "what are the odds" and all that, but considering how few people actually seem to live in Terra Nova, once they've done the pilgrimage, the odds seem pretty good. Jim's jealous of course, and wants to know if they ever dated (and let's be clear that "dating" is not what he really wants to know about). She eventually admits to dating him for "half a minute" so he starts hounding her about who broke it off, and she's coy.

And instead of Jim going to give Zoe a bath while Elizabeth rests up after a long day at work, Elizabeth does it while he waits for her to come in and have sex with him. Which she eventually does, but of course the screechy birdosaur is back. Jim goes back outside, this time with Josh, where they find that there's a bunch more birdosaurs now. Josh throws a rock at one of them, and the birdosaurs attack him, which, can you blame them? Jim and Josh hustle back inside. "I think we just found out what killed those men," says Josh.

The day, Malcolm is fixing Jim up, although you think that Jim's own DOCTOR WIFE would have done that LAST NIGHT, while Jim explains about the birds ("reptiles," corrects Malcolm) that attacked. Malcolm says it seems to be a breed of pterosaur he's never come across. He wants a science team on it. "No protocols today, Malcolm, until I know what these things are and why they're attacking my people," says Taylor. Malcolm whines about his research teams in the field, but Taylor says they'll research another day, and he ends the discussion.

Malcolm stomps off, and Taylor says he's a good man, despite constantly pushing his need for "science" and whatnot. Jim wants to know what the recruitment process is, by which he means, "How is it that there's another guy here who my wife used to have sex with?" Taylor doesn't think it's weird that the guy who's here because he broke out of jail and then punched his way through the time fracture is concerned about the recruitment process, so he explains that personnel requests come from department heads. Usually department heads are looking for résumés, sometimes a specific person. Elizabeth, for example, was on top of very short list, submitted by Malcolm himself, which means Malcolm's surprise at seeing her there was faked, throwing his motives into suspicion.

Meanwhile, Malcolm is hitting on Elizabeth pretty hard, reminiscing about her optimism on humanity, which is what inspired him to back in the time fracture in the first place. "I know you were brought here as a doctor, but I also know how passionate you are about research," he says, and here she'll get the chance to do a whole lot of both.

Josh heads back to the market, trying to trade some of his terrible music and a baseball cap, but Legless Buddy has his eye on the platinum necklace around Josh's neck. Josh gets all weird about it and tucks it away, saying it's not for sale. His genius new girlfriend figures out that it's from his old girlfriend, and her reward for that is being forced to listen to him blather on about missing her. "She's kind of like you," he says, and Skye appears to be young enough to take that as a compliment and not at all weird.

Meanwhile, the birdosaurs are massing on the fence, and then start dive-bombing the colonists. One extra does a particularly impressive flop when one of them comes nowhere near him, and everyone takes shelter under the tables. The aftermath: thirty-six injured, none fatally. Malcolm blah-blahs about migrations, which is his way of saying this is just the first wave.

In Taylor's office, Washington uses a touch-screen hologram computer screen's thermal vision to determine that there are millions of the birds in the tree canopy. Then she uses sonic blasts to scatter a few of them. I marvel at the technology they're using while still having a gap-filled log fence that doesn't keep all the dangerous dinosaurs out.

Anyway, Taylor remembers digging for geothermal well when they set up Terra Nova, and finding thousands and thousands of eggshells, which is part of the reason why they built there: the eggshells were what made the soil fertile. And now our intrepid scientists have figured out what's going on: They're coming back to spawn. "We built Terra Nova on their breeding ground!"

Malcolm and Elizabeth tell Taylor that they need a live specimen to figure out how to fight them, just because, OK? Two preferably, a male and a female. So of COURSE that's Jim, who gets briefed by Malcolm, which gives Jim the chance to needle Malcolm about how Malcolm clearly wasn't expecting to see Jim in Terra Nova. Jim says Malcolm wants another chance with her. Malcolm angrily says his wife's the best person for the job, which is true anyway. "I hope I'm wrong about you, Malcolm. I really do," says Jim, who is clearly hoping for an excuse to punch him. And then he has to act all manly and invite the science guy on the hunt with him. "Didn't think so," he says, when Malcolm doesn't respond.

So after all that, we don't even see the hunt, but Jim's successful, and the doctors wind up coming up with some kind of pheromone thing to lure the birdosaurs away from Terra Nova. Jesus, how did anyone ever get anything done in Terra Nova before the Shannons showed up?

Anyway, the boy who likes Maddie gets himself assigned to guard their house (which is how you know if a boy likes you, Jim tells his daughter, all of a sudden cool with his daughter being the target of attention from boys.)

And here come the angry birds! They rise out of the forest like smoke. In the lab, the doctors work to make the pheromones. Oh, and Skye is for some reason at the Shannons' place now (Josh makes a lame excuse about needing her there to help with his sisters, both of whom are smarter than he is), and she bets him sixty Terrabucks that they don't survive the birdosaur attack, so THANKS for your shining optimism, Skye! Josh has a different concern: "That's a lame-ass bet. If you win, you can't collect," he says. The birdosaurs are banging on the door, and then it sounds like one is in the air vent. Fingers crossed for some Shannon stew!

In the lab, Malcolm and Elizabeth have done whatever it is they need to do, so it's Jim's turn to be the hero. Meanwhile, back at the house, everyone just STARES at the vent, and then it pops open. The birdosaurs fly out, knocking over Maddie's crush and knocking him out. They drag him into the bedroom, but leave ZOE in the living room. For god's sake, you two! She takes cover under a footstool or something, and is lured out when she hears her dad on the walkie-talkie. A birdosaur lands on the ground and squawks at her, presumably as a prelude to biting her face off, and then Josh defeats it just by kicking it.

Human testosterone pill Taylor yells, "Come on, you miserable sons of bitches, come on!" and he and Jim take the barrel o' pheromone out of the compound and off on its journey. In the Shannon house, the sound of the birdosaurs eventually vanishes.

So apparently, it worked, and Skye wants to give Josh his 60 Terrabucks, but he demurs, and she gives him a kiss on the cheek and goes to check on her roommates.

And then Jim and Taylor return, with Elizabeth, Malcolm and Washington (who seems to have stashed a massive supply of eye makeup) anxiously waiting to see who comes out of the personnel carrier. Jim and Taylor both do, although they're both a little bit scraped up. Taylor grosses everyone out by talking about how loud they are having sex (er, the birdosaurs, not Jim and him), and then Malcolm apparently has named them Malcolmus pterosaur and everyone rolls their eyes, deservedly so.

Then the Shannons go home, find their kids conked out from all the excitement, and they go into their bedroom to have sex, and I think the kids are lucky their parents bothered to slide the door shut.

Daniel is a writer with a wife and daughter in Newfoundland. With each passing episode, he's rooting more and more for the flora and the fauna of Terra Nova. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.

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