Terra Nova: Vs.

What Happened, Yo!:

-We discover that Mira's method of getting info about Terra Nova involves a bigger than normal, but not dinosaur-huge dinosaur.
-Taylor is interrogating Boylan, who claims to know nothing and that his only business with Mira was trading.
-It's almost time for the Harvest Festival and Zoe has landed the part of Commander Taylor in the kid's harvest play, which Maddy is overseeing.
-A drugged Boylan mistakes Jim for Taylor and tells him some cryptic thing about knowing about what's buried underneath the Pilgrim Tree. Jim finds a one-armed skeleton.
-Elizabeth is examining the skeleton.
-A soldier hits the dragonfly as it flies by the kid's rehearsing their show and Maddy finds that there's a microchip on it.
-Malcolm tells Taylor the dragonfly was like a prehistoric carrier pidgeon and tries to figure out how it's being controlled.
-Boylan is released and tells Jim he helped Taylor bury the body the night before he left the service and that's all he knows.
-Elizabeth finds through a time signature that the body apparently came between the second and third pilgrimage.
-Malcolm discovers the body and alerts Taylor. Jim claims a note led him to the body and that he suspects it was killed by a dinosaur. Taylor lets it go fornow.
-Malcolm hones in on the frequency used to control the dragonfly, fixes it's broken wing and releases it during the play to figure out where it was going.
-During the play, Jim and Elizabeth realize that Taylor's superior was a one-armed man who went missing around the same timeframe the man appeared. They deduce that he was probably coming to relieve Taylor of his command.
-The dragonfly goes to the Shannon's house, implying the spy is from there. Jim is arrested as the spy.
-Taylor tries to get him to drop the investigation but Jim won't and Taylor eventually tells him the truth.
-The people who sent the Sixers to Terra Nova want to drain it of it's resources, much like they ruined the future. They sent Taylor's son to work on two-way travel between Terra Nova and the future so this would be possible.
-Taylor found out and destroyed Lucas' research. A couple days later the general (also working with the guys from the future) appeared to relieve Taylor of command. Taylor won't relent, so he tries to kill him. Taylor kills the general first and banishes his son from Terra Nova. His son still carries on with his work and leaves equations for Taylor to find.
-Jim agrees to help Taylor fight and is released.
-Later it is implied that Taylor set the whole confrontation with Jim up.
-At the evening part of the Harvest Festival, Taylor welcomes a baby to Terra Nova and says how thankful he is for the colony.
-As fireworks go off, we see Lucas in the forest watching the fireworks.

I Liked This: This was a rather solid installment. We got a lot of answers this week and I liked them. The idea of corporations wanting to stripmine Terra Nova's resources is an interesting one, though I wonder if there's more to the story than what we heard. The whole mystery with the one-armed general was also well done (with the exception of one thing which I'll mention shortly), as was the latest development in the Jim/Taylor relationship. And Zoe playing Taylor in the play filled the adorable quota for the week.

But...: The dinosaur quoto this week went completely unfilled. They didn't even have other big prehistoric creatures to fill the void! Not even an establishing shot or a check in with that Anklyosaurus Zoe is supposed to be raising! What's up with that? On a more legitimate complaint note, though I liked the answers, I'm a bit disappointed in the manner we got them. I can accept that we basically got an info dump, with everything given in one monologue followed by one flashback, but I didn't feel that the show had earned that info dump, with the way the story was set up. Maybe if Taylor and Jim had had one more confrontation, before the arrest sequence, but oh well. And the fact that the play revealed the identity of the skeleton felt a bit too convenient for my tastes.

The Bottom Line: The answers could've been better delivered, but this was a rather solid episode of Terra Nova with plenty of answers, and a good way to start the lead-up to the forthcoming season finale. If only there were dinosaurs.

Grade: Awesome! (Good)

Memorable Moments

Dinosaur Scene Count: Zero!
Best Dinosaur Moment: None!
-I also think the "Harvest Festival" was Terra Nova's sneaky way of doing a Thanksgiving episode.
-They have to reveal the spy next week. Right?
-The soldier who hit the dragonfly claimed he was doing it because he thought it was scaring the children. Sure. The children.
-Next weeks episode looks to make up for these past couple dino-sparse weeks. Excellent.