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So this episode of Terra Nova opens with the Tigers and the Rangers tied at three in the top of the tenth inning. Neftali Feliz gets Ryan Rayburn to swing for the second strike but then throws two straight balls for the leadoff walk. That brings up Jhonny Peralta with one on and none out. Peralta bunts to get Rayburn over to second, but Alex Avila pops out (Rayburn barely gets back to second to avoid the double-play) and then Andy Dirks grounds out to end the inning.
Eventually I start to think, “Wait a minute, this is much too exciting to be Terra Nova” and I look for a Canadian channel that might be showing it, and I come across City TV, and it looks like Taylor has a knife to Jim’s throat and making threats about how his family better be back at Terra Nova. Then he punches Jim in the face, so it looks like I joined the episode at just the right time.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Malcolm are trying to figure something out about some kind of virus that from what I’ve seen mainly makes people want to murder Jim, which doesn’t sound so bad. Malcolm starts to come on to Elizabeth, just as Jim shows up in time to demonstrate what a big man he is, and Malcolm survives a Jim-punching because Elizabeth says he’s infected.
Then Jim needs Malcolm’s help with some guy’s body or something, and they almost but not quite get eaten by a little dinosaur, and then Jim winds up knocking Malcolm out and blames the virus for it.
And now Elizabeth has forgotten she’s married to Jim, and ONCE AGAIN I FAIL TO SEE THE PROBLEM HERE and for some reason that I probably missed in the first half, he doesn’t just tell her, but then she figures it out.
Oh, and then Elizabeth figures the pills Jim is taking for his cold are what’s keeping him from getting immune, but then it turns out it’s the cold itself, and then to help Elizabeth, Jim jams his tongue down her throat to give her the cold and save her life.
Meanwhile, Taylor has made his way back to Terra Nova, and he wants to know where his wife is, and Washington has to explain that she’s gone, which makes Taylor almost slit his own throat but Washington saves him by shooting him. Which is good, because the Shannons can’t go away for five minutes without Maddie getting herself caught up in a hostage situation.
And Jim’s working in a bar now, I guess, and his boss is working for the Sixers (bringing supplies), who become very interested in the son of the new sheriff, especially since he wants to bring his girlfriend back to 85 million years ago too.
Anwyay, it’s all resolved until week.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He thinks Terra Nova would be much improved if the first thirty minutes was a baseball game in extra innings. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We're in a lonely outpost where a man is on the floor spouting gibberish and chasing an iridescent green beetle around a lab. He follows it outside, past a lab where we hear muffled yells and cries. Outside, he seems surprised and amazed by the jungle -- and by the huge dinosaur that sizes him up like he's a hot wing. One snap of the dinosaur's mouth -- well, we don't see what happens, but I do kinda wish that every episode opened with someone being eaten by a dinosaur. Not for real! Just for pretend, on the show.
So: Elizabeth has to head out to an outpost where the research team hasn't been heard from in 72 hours. Jim's worried, she's not, but he's mainly being a dink because Mark is "coming a-courting" tonight for Maddie and Elizabeth thinks it's sweet even though he thinks it's weird. Just before she gets in the rover with Taylor, she realizes that she took her wedding ring off before surgery and left it at work, and asks him to pick it up for her. And they're off, with Jim feeling like he has a small penis because Malcolm -- chief science officer and former Elizabeth-boner -- has his own rover and he doesn't. Come on, he's been there what, a week? And he's already sheriff. It usually takes me ages just to get new business cards.
When the team arrives at the outpost, the gate is open, even though it shouldn't be. There's also evidence of ovisaurs chewing on the power cable, so the team moves in, weapons leveled. They find the lab in disarray, and Elizabeth finds notes that say: "Do not leave the building!" and "This is NOT a dream!" and "Renew Sports Illustrated subscription!" They also find a room with two delirious people strapped down as well as a woman who describes running through a snowstorm to get there. She asks Elizabeth if she's with the Red Cross. "I guess I must have missed the blizzard," says Taylor, but Elizabeth says the woman seems to think she's in Detroit in October 2137, coldest winter on record, with food riots, and she has no idea she's on Terra Nova. Elizabeth figure she's got some kind of dissociative disorder and the other two who are strapped down are more advanced. She also finds the video log of the guy who got eaten by the dinosaur at the beginning. He's the head researcher there, and he's describing pathogens causing the loss of short- and long-term memory. He knows he has to tell someone about the pathogen, but can't remember who. Taylor sends men out to find the scientist, and wants to know if they've been exposed and if Elizabeth can fix it. The answers are "probably" and "I'll try."
Meanwhile, Jim is picking up her wedding ring. "You didn't have to cut anyone open, did ya?" he jokes, and the hospital administrator looks at him like he's the most disgusting man on the planet. Jim Shannon: Makin' friends wherever he goes! Maddie shows up at the hospital with Zoe, who's sick. "I need Mommy," she says, and Maddie warns her dad not to catch the cold and he says he won't.
So now it's dark and Josh is playing his guitar with Skye and her friends while they drink to the meteors they see in the sky. Skye compliments his guitar playing and puts her hand on his thigh. He seems to be of mixed feelings about this.
Back at the outpost, Taylor tells Elizabeth they found the researcher's boots, so she thinks he's out there barefoot. "No, his boots were still in them," says Taylor. He could have told her that right off. Instead he was vague about what happened so she could set him up for that line, as one would do.
Anyway, they're under quarantine, so Elizabeth calls Jim on the "Vid Command" to let him know she's going to be a while, and he jokes that she's just doing this to avoid being around when Mark shows up. Oh, and now he's sneezing because he got the cold from Zoe, and Elizabeth orders him to bed with plenty of fluids. After she signs off, she says, "'Zoe.' Who's Zoe?" Now that's fast-acting pathogen!
Oh God, spare us the awkward first date with Maddie and Mark where they make small talk and Jim hovers nearby. After Mark leaves, Maddie thinks it was disastrous, so Jim shares a heart-warming story about what a wreck he was on the first date with Elizabeth, and manages not to gross out his daughter by sharing whether he tapped that or not.
So Jim checks in with Washington, concerned that they haven't heard back yet. Washington says the whole POINT of them being out there is the communications problems, and she doesn't want Jim heading out half-cocked because of the quarantine, which Jim didn't even know about.
He wants to borrow Malcolm's rover, which should work because Jim's so damn nice to Malcolm all the time, and Malcolm refuses until manipulative Jim tells him it's because Elizabeth's in trouble. Malcolm didn't know about the quarantine either, and is going to complain to Washington, but then decides to ride to the outpost too. Jim's not having it, but Malcolm won't budge: "This is a medical emergency. What are you going to do, sneeze them back to health?" snaps Malcolm, which was pretty funny. Jim has a huge sneeze, and the way they're really hammering this cold home for us is pretty annoying, since we know what it's going to mean.
Then there's Josh, lying around on a hammock. Do these guys ever do any work? Skye comes out, which is great because he wanted to talk to her (but not so much that he got his ass off the hammock). He wonders if they shouldn't report the calculations to anyone. "To who?" she asks, and he forgets what he was even talking about because she's so pretty, and then they kiss, and he pulls away and starts with, "You know I like you..." and it's all downhill from there because of how he left things with his girlfriend. He figures Skye must hate him, and she says she doesn't, which doesn't make any sense. But she DOES know a guy who might be able to help him. Uh -- like the way guys in prison deal with missing their girlfriends?
Jim and Malcolm arrive at the outpost, and find ovisaurs chewing on the cable. "It's the nickel, it's like catnip for them," Malcolm explains. They make their way into the outpost, where they hear repeated transmissions from Washington, who's none too pleased to see that Jim disobeyed an order not to go out there, and he's a complete dick about it too, cutting off the transmission to go look for everyone. Elizabeth comes in and shoots Jim with some sort of sonic rifle, which breaks his facemask. He appears to have no idea who he is, and then Malcolm takes off his own mask, which is idiotic, but it does mean that Elizabeth collapses into Malcolm's arms because she recognizes him. Malcolm makes a great show of holding his arms away from Elizabeth, hoping to prevent Mark from whaling on him. Good luck with that!
After the commercial break, Malcolm tells Jim that she's lost all memory of the last twenty or so years. She's back in university, and they've just started dating, and Jim is chagrined to learn that she's back in the honeymoon phase with this guy. Malcolm says it's a pathogen, and the final stage of the disease is full-on catatonia. Jim wants to know if Malcolm can cure it, and he says he can if her cognitive mind is still functioning. "We just need to bring her up to the present as fast as possible," says Malcolm. No problem! Jim wants to introduce himself as her husband, but Malcolm wants to take it slowly. Jim makes the not-unreasonable point that Malcolm is saying that it's OK to tell her its twenty years later than she thinks it is plus they've gone back in time eighty-five million years, but a husband and kids will throw her off. But hey, anything to heighten the supposed emotional payoff later, right? Obviously Malcolm knows best about how to deal with this pathogen that he's never ever seen before. So Malcolm introduces Jim, and he and Elizabeth cordially shake hands. Seriously, though, if Malcolm can convince her of the "it's 20 years later" thing, wouldn't it be natural for her to want to know if she and Malcolm are still together?
Anyway, Skye brings Josh down to a bar and introduces him to Tom, who is a "man who can get things," because someone has obviously been watching The Shawshank Redemption too many times. Josh wants to get a message through to 2149 and Tom says it's expensive, and Josh says he'd have time to work off a debt and then Tom says something that with the combination of his accent and the fact I can't turn on the closed captioning on my television I can't decipher at all, but it seems important because there's a musical stinger after it. Tom knows that Josh is the sheriff's son, so he wants to know if Josh can be trusted to keep secrets. Somehow Josh angles that into getting a job at the bar. Is that how it works? "I don't know if I can trust you, so please start hanging around me and my operation as much as possible."
Anyway, Malcolm explains the time travel to Elizabeth, who isn't buying any of it, so Jim picks up the clunky tablet computer they have which includes Elizabeth's own video log of her describing the disease. And her first reaction is "I look so old," which is annoying not only because WORRY ABOUT THE DISEASE PLUS YOU LOOK AMAZING, and also because she didn't seem to notice that her college boyfriend had aged twenty years overnight as well. So either Malcolm looked forty years old in college or they could have thought this through a little better.
Then the power goes out, and some backup power comes on, and Jim goes outside, hopefully to be eaten by the ovisaurs. Something runs past him outside. Having not managed to get eaten, Jim goes back inside where he finds Brady the soldier unconscious and power lines severed, and he goes stalking through the darkened corridors. Looking up through some kind of tunnel that leads up to the outside (for easy access for dangerous dinosaurs?) he sees Taylor, who fires a sonic blast at Jim, knocking him on his ass. I have to say I'm enjoying the way Jim keeps getting shot at this episode. Taylor steps on Jim and warns that if Jim moves, he'll blow his head off.
So Taylor finds Jim's ID and wants to know exactly what Terra Nova is. "It's a code name, isn't it? Is that what you call this operation? Terra Nova?" Taylor thinks he's in Somalia circa 2138, and that this is some sort of psi-ops operation, and Jim may be "Russo-Chinee." He wants to know where his wife and son are. He's babbling about experiments, and he's going to find his family in Terra Nova or come back and slit every throat in sight. Then he punches out Jim, so he's got that going for him.
Looks like the station scientists were experimenting with gene therapy, not a pathogen. Malcolm says that would have to go through him, which means someone's trying to hide it from him. Malcolm decides to start hitting on Elizabeth, suddenly regressing back to university himself, and Jim has recovered in time to pull Malcolm off her and is only prevented from killing Malcolm by Elizabeth screaming that Malcolm is infected. He tells them about Taylor losing his mind only they can't very well get in touch with Terra Nova to warn them, because the communication system is down. Plus their computers use a RIDICULOUS font that looks almost like hieroglyphics, which has to be great for efficiency. Also, why isn't Jim infected? Malcolm and Jim were both exposed at the same time, and anyone who has seen a television show before knows now why Jim's sneezing has been emphasized.
Jim wants to bring Brady into the infirmary so Elizabeth can check him out, and then decides to bring Malcolm so that he and Elizabeth don't wind up having sex.
Back in Terra Nova, Mark shows up at the Shannon household and Maddie has forgotten about the second date, which Maddie assumed he knew was cancelled because her parents are missing. That's actually why he came to see if she's all right. She's freaking out a little, worried that maybe the Sixers got her parents, but dingbat Mark says it wasn't the Sixers, so his new girlfriend starts pressing him for information.
Meanwhile, Taylor's tootling across the jungle in some sort of motorcycle ATV thing, and gets a kick out of the huge dinosaur crossing his path. "No way," he says, and then drives BETWEEN ITS LEGS. Taylor probably shaves with a samurai sword.
Jim and Malcolm are moving Brady's body, with Jim giving Malcolm crap for flashing back to his university days (essentially, "How dare you get this apparently highly contagious pathogen! Or gene therapy or whatever"). Malcolm then flashes back again and has no idea who Jim is, and then they narrowly avoid getting eaten by an ovisaur crawling down a hole. They bolt for a nearby room with a door, leaving poor Brady
"Those are the ugliest dogs I've ever seen," says Malcolm, who then hopes that the dinosaur will eat Brady and leave them alone. Instead, Jim chops the power lines inside the room, causing the (apparently liquid?) nickel to come spraying out, driving the ovisaur crazy, so they open the door and the dinosaur charges past them to get at the nickel. They close the door behind them, and then Malcolm freaks out a little bit so Jim punches him in the face, knocking him out cold.
Great idea, asshole! Except Elizabeth could use his help to find a way to combat the gene therapy, and Jim gives her a pep talk that makes her feel like they already knew each other, and are more than just acquaintances, but also friends. Now you're getting somewhere!
So they start going through the staff's files to find out who was doing the gene therapy to try to figure out how to counteract it. Jim says he's learned a few things about computer hacking from Maddie his daughter, and so Elizabeth asks if he's married as well, and Jim is all, "It's complicated." "Isn't it always," she agrees.
Taylor's made his way to Terra Nova, and then smears some mud on his face -- the better to hunt man, the most dangerous game! And I know Taylor's a badass, but he still manages to sneak into the compound rather easily.
Back at the outpost, Jim's found the files of Dr. Douglas Joslyn, whose medical file reveals he has the gene for Gorman's disease, which is like Alzheimer's but worse. So he was likely looking for a cure by manipulating the memory gene but wound up blocking the neural pathways and blah-blah-blah instead. The virus was just the delivery system. Elizabeth is starting to freak out because she's had the disease for thirty-nine hours and catatonia can happen as early as thirty-six hours. So we work fast, says Jim, rather sensibly.
Elizabeth then finds some of her own notes: names written down on this translucent stuff people appear to use for paper here. "If I wrote them down it must be because they're important to me and I was afraid I was going to forget," she says. And this is how I learn they're spelling it Maddy! "That's your daughter's name," she says. Then she finds Zoe, and then Jim. "Your husband," he says. And hey, he's got her ring! She doesn't remember, but he says he will. "What happens if we both forget?" she says, and he tells her that what he feels for her is more than just a memory. You hear that? Jim's love is too strong to be affected by viral gene therapy! Also, by implication, he's saying Elizabeth's love isn't as strong. Anyway, he's not infected, and Elizabeth is again wondering way not, so he sneezes out gets out the root Malcolm gave him to chew on, so Elizabeth figures it must have some medicinal quality that's protecting him.
Back at Terra Nova, Maddy and Mark are going to see Lieut. Washington to find out what's going on with her parents. Zoe's been left alone (but with a couple of guards posted to the house, even though Mark doesn't want Maddy saying anything about that because he really doesn't have permission to do that).
Anyway, there's no answer, so Maddy goes storming in, Mark trailing. An angry Washington orders them out, but Maddy won't listen, and even Mark is supporting her, which is how he ends up with Taylor's knife at his throat.
Washington calmly tells Taylor that he's sick, that the war has been over for a decade, that they won. She tells him that Mark is one of his men. "What is this place?" he asks, after Washington tells him that he's leading their second chance in Terra Nova. "This is home," she says. Then where's his wife? He wants to know, and if you're not peeing your pants just a little bit about having to make sure Taylor knows his wife is dead, than you're not paying attention. "Nayani's dead? Why would I want to remember that?" says Taylor, and he puts his knife to his own throat but Washington quickly draws her sonic weapon and fires, knocking Taylor to the floor.
Back at the outpost, Elizabeth has finished analyzing the root (Jim discovers, to his chagrin, that the cold remedy he's been chomping on has traces of animal dung) but there's nothing in there that would account for its immunity-granting powers. Then Jim sneezes again and Elizabeth realizes that it's the cold virus itself that's counteracting the memory pathogen virus. She blah-blahs about manufacturing a treatment and instead he just kisses her. "You feel sick yet?" and she says not quite yet so they start making out instead of manufacturing a cure.
But everything's fine now. Elizabeth is back at Terra Nova to greet Taylor, waking up and fully aware of where he is again. So did Jim French-kiss him or did Elizabeth? Apparently Elizabeth has made a vaccine. Taylor sits up and addresses Washington: "You shot me," he says. She says yes. "Good job," he says. Heh.
Nearby in the infirmary, Malcolm also looks better, except for the headache he has. Then he and Elizabeth share a smile, almost like he KNOWS it wasn't a headache but the Neanderthal his old girlfriend married.
Over at the Shannon household, Jim is being crabby about his kids having friends over. "Don't mind me," he says to Josh and Skye, for some reason, as they chat in the kitchen, after finding Mark and Maddy talking elsewhere. So he goes to see Zoe, who's feeling better. She's got some homemade stuffed dinosaurs. "I'm teaching them how to walk," she says after Elizabeth comes in, and the three of them do some family bonding.
Elsewhere, Tom the shifty bartender skulks through the jungle to meet the Sixers. He hands over his pack, which contains medicine, a power cell. "No ammo?" says Mira. He says Taylor would lock him up if he knew he was doing business with the Sixers, and if Taylor knew Tom was bringing them ammo, he'd be shot. Anyway she trades him for the wild sorghum that he says makes "the finest hooch." But there's one other thing: the time they make contact with 2149, there's a kid who wants to get a message through. He wants to buy his girlfriend's way through the portal. "The kid? He's our new sheriff's son," says Tom. Mira takes notice. "It's an opportunity. One I plan to take advantage of," she says. I guess it's supposed to sound ominous, but since it still seems like they're setting the Sixers up to be the real good guys, it's not going to make me start biting my fingernails.
Daniel is a writer with a wife and daughter in Newfoundland. He's got a fever, and the only prescription is more dinosaur attacks. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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