photo: fox
What Remains
Original Air Date: Oct 10, 2011
Tess – TwoCents Reviewer
tess@thetwocentscorp.com
At first you might feel rather disoriented… it’s like your life is a puzzle and you’re watching it slowly breaking in pieces right in front of your eyes. There’s nothing you can do to stop it and after a while you won’t even remember why you wanted to in the first place. That’s when your short time memory becomes fragile to the point of starting a cognitive retrocession that will take your mind back in time. Once there, the memories of your current present will be nothing but tales of an unforeseen future and the memories from decades ago will feel fresh.
On this brand new episode of Terra Nova you’re introduced to a virus that creates a restoring point in your brain and then resets your memory, taking your mind back to some point in the past.
Curious?
Establishing contact
Communication is imperative. When you’re trying to build a whole new society, there has to be communication or things just won’t work out. There are plenty of moments in history that prove exactly that point and one would think that the people from Terra Nova, being originally from 2149, would have even more experience than us when it comes to that.
Apparently they do understand the importance of keeping in touch, of talking, that being the reason why, after not being able to establish contact with one of the teams outside the safe zone, Taylor chooses to take Elizabeth and a few security people to make sure everything is fine.
Once they get there though, they find the door of the structure where the team was working wide open. When you have dinosaurs in your backyard, that’s definitely not a good sign. They immediately knew that something was wrong. I don’t think they were ready for the kind of wrong they were about to face though. They found three of the four people who were supposed to be working there but they showed signs of distress. If that wasn’t bad enough, once they started talking with the one that presented fewer symptoms and was better able to communicate, they realized that she didn’t remember Terra Nova and that the memories that were for her recent were from years ago.
If Elizabeth, being the genius that she is, wasn’t already thinking about a pathogen of some sort, the video log on the computer from the one missing person gave her all the clues she needed.
Next step? Finding a cure.
Quarantine
I am no scientist, but one would think that trying to figure out a way of dealing with a pathogen while fighting the first symptoms of contamination caused by that very same pathogen can be rather distracting.
That’s right, soon enough both Taylor and Elizabeth started showing signs of being contaminated. Luckily for them, Jim, still back at home dealing with a sick Zoe, didn’t feel at all comfortable with the silent answer coming from the other side of the line while trying to contact his wife. Not comfortable doesn’t actually being to cover his feelings, I would say, for he decided to approach Malcolm for his help and we all know that he wouldn’t do that unless someone’s life depended on it.
I do think Jim ended up regretting his decision though, for upon their arrival they find out that Elizabeth’s mind has being taken back to college time, which means, she was officially dating Malcolm. After being convinced by Malcolm that telling Elizabeth the whole story would only drive her crazy and wouldn’t allow her to focus her still bright mind on finding a cure, Jim leaves them to work and goes after Taylor.
Let’s just say that Taylor has seen better days and leaves Jim wishing for better days after their first encounter, after which Taylor leaves to explore the territory he believes to be Somalia. Truth to be told, it didn’t take him long to realize that he wasn’t where he thought he was for he crossed paths with a dinosaur. But you know Taylor, he is not the kind of guy to give up on looking for answers. And knowing that back when he was in Somalia he still had his wife and son with him, he is certainly not happy with the whole situation as he thinks they were taken from him.
Can you imagine his rage? Can you imagine his confusion after being told by Lt. Alicia Washington that Terra Nova was now his home? Can you imagine the feelings that led him to consider killing himself? This is Taylor we are talking about. If I were Alicia, I too would have shot him.
Answers
Back at the research post, Malcolm tried to kiss Elizabeth and Jim punched him, soon realizing that the scientist too was contaminated, leaving only his clean self and Elizabeth to figure the whole thing out. And they did… eventually. How? Pretty simple. Jim sneezed. After telling Elizabeth that he had gotten a cold from Zoe, her brain starts connecting the dots and she soon realizes that having a cold was what had stopped him from getting contaminated.
Tah dah, they found the cure!
Thoughts
I don’t know about you, but this episode felt rather… random. Where are the connections between the episodes? I think some would make this slightly more interesting.
And yet again, most of the time was spent studying, showing, analyzing relationships between characters. Where are the deeper meanings? Where are the unexpected consequences?
I am a bit disappointed. Such a great, original and fresh idea… I truly hope they find their way! I am not giving up on Terra Nova anytime soon and I hope they don’t either! There’s so much they can do! Yes, it’s easier said than done but hey, there are brilliant minds out there! Just listen!
Anyway, and changing to a positive note, even though it was random, I quite enjoyed the whole memory storyline thing for it allowed us to learn a bit more about the characters, at least about Taylor, who happens to be one of the biggest mysteries in Terra Nova. I just wished they had given more information. Just a little more would have been a lot more satisfying. But still, it’s a start! Oh, I also enjoyed seeing Mira again. Would love to learn more about her as well!
Speaking of Mira, don’t you think it’s weird that Skye is willing to help Josh get his girlfriend in Terra Nova? There must be a creepy plan behind all of this. Unless it’s all a big love cliché? Hopefully not! There are already enough of those in Terra Nova, don’t you think? I mean, the whole Malcolm/Elizabeth thing was a huge one.
What do you think? And, quoting Jim from the promo for next week’s episode, “what is Terra Nova really about?”
TheTwoCents 