Fox strands Terra Nova residents in the distant past...

 Just when Terra Nova was starting to get interesting, Fox today announced that they were canceling the ambitious, but flawed, show. I watched every episode, feeling obligated to support the kind of show I wanted to see more of, even if it took them awhile to get rolling.The Shannon's react to news that Terra Nova has been canceled.

I should have known better than to get interested in a big-budget science-fiction television series, especially one on one of the big-four networks. The list of shows that I enjoyed for a brief run before they met their early demise is vast and goes back to the 1970's. Some of the shows were actually great and deserved more attention (Firefly, Jericho, The Event); others were not as good as I would have wanted them to be, but were still fun and ambitious (The Dollhouse, Surface). Terra Nova is in that latter group. There was a lot to love about the back-to-the-land-of-dinosaurs eco-fable, but they writers and producers wasted too many early episodes on side stories and one-off events. Had they jumped right into the larger conspiracy they may have been able to hold on to the above-average audience numbers that watched the premier. As it is, I wonder if the cancellation marks the end of ambitious, big-budget science-fiction on the networks at least for a while.