Terra Nova cancelled? I can't say I'm surprised

So Steven Spielberg’s expensive sci-fi drama Terra Nova has been cancelled after just one disappointing season. Just minutes into the first episode, I knew the series could not last. I was amazed that anyone connected with Lost could have had any creative input in this show. To describe Terra Nova as “white bread” would be doing a disservice to baked goods. The casting on the series was completely uninspired and unimaginative. Jason O’Mara seems to be Spielberg’s go-to guy, I’m not exactly sure why. As a supporting actor, O’Mara is fine. But as a leading man, I have no interest in him whatsoever.

Terra Nova presented an opportunity to go in a different direction. What a shame that Spielberg and his team didn’t take it. I mean, would it really have been such a stretch to have a woman paying the role of Commander Nathaniel Taylor, the camp boss? Would it? Actresses such as Juliet Stevenson, the Oscar-nominated Janet McNeer or Josette Simon would have all been far more compelling to watch than Stephen Lang. And what a trip it would have been to have an actress of Marion Cottilard’s caliber playing the lead!

I have not seen such a bland group of characters in a TV show for longer than I care to remember. There was not a single character you cared about - a fatal flaw in any new series. And I took real exception to the female characters. For me, watching Terra Nova was like going through a time warp back to 1954. Even the women in Mad Men are more progressive than this lot.

I can’t understand that a man with Spielberg’s experience doesn’t seem to understand that we’re tired of seeing such cookie-cutter characters - the lantern-jawed hero, the pin-up teen. The series felt like a cynical ploy to appeal to the lucrative “family quadrant” - tweens, teens, mums and dads. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the idea had been floated before a focus group before a script was written.

I just can’t understand that with such huge resources, a man like Spielberg could have got a series so very, very wrong. And I find it interesting that after some forty years in the business, Diablo Cody is the only female writer Spielberg has collaborated with (on The United States of Tara). I don’t think the two are entirely unconnected.