Tonight, FOX is airing the season finale of Terra Nova, the network’s latest foray into science fiction. Does the TV series have a chance at returning for a second season or will it be cancelled instead?
On Terra Nova, our planet has been over-developed and is overcrowded. Mankind’s only chance for survival is to make use of a newly discovered fracture in time and try to colonize pre-historic Earth. The Shannon family is chosen to participate but they find their new home is far from paradise. The cast includes Jason O’Mara, Shelley Conn, Landon Liboiron, Allison Miller, Naomi Scott, Alana Mansour, Stephen Lang, and Christine Adams.
The TV show debuted on September 26th with a pair of installments. They attracted an average of a 3.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 9.22 million total viewers. It was third in its timeslots and held viewers through the two hours, a good indication that they’d be back the following week. And, they did return. The third episode drew about the same as the first two episodes.
Unfortunately, that didn’t last. Week three fell by 19% in the demo. Over the course of the season, the numbers have fluctuated quite a bit week to week, hitting a low of a 2.1 in the demo three times. Terra Nova currently averages a 2.5 in the all-important demo and 7.6 million viewers. It’s the seventh most-watched scripted series on the network, out of 14, and currently has a “C” on our season ratings report card. That’s not bad but certainly not a shoe-in for renewal either. It doesn’t help that the show is very expensive to produce.
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In September, FOX head Kevin Reilly said that, because of the additional production time needed, a decision would have to be made, “Before the first of the year, at the latest. We couldn’t wait until the spring and see how everything else plays out; otherwise, we would never be able to deliver the following year.”
That decision has now been delayed until sometime in 2012. O’Mara recently tweeted, “Decision to pick up #TerraNova for S2 deferred to New Year by @FOXBroadcasting. Everyone involved remains confident and optimistic.”
While this delay doesn’t mean that the show is history, the network isn’t in any hurry to give it a renewal. The network is most likely waiting to see how well new shows Alcatraz and Touch perform before making a commitment to a second season of Terra Nova. If it does gets renewed, depending on how long they wait to make a decision, the episodes may not be ready until mid-season. Given the budget and the ratings, it seems unlikely to get more than a 13 episode order, if it returns at all.
What do you think? Do you hope that Terra Nova gets renewed for a sophomore season or should it be cancelled to make way for something else?
Image courtesy FOX.
RENEW THE SHOW!
Renew it. Otherwise what will we have another stupid hospital show, buddy cop show, vapid sitcom, or reality garbage. This, at least is something DIFFERENT. Keep it.
CANCEL THIS EXPENSIVE SHOW FOX!
i think terra nova is an awesome show. it has a good story line, and keeps the viewer in suspense wondering whats going to happen next.
I love this show, and like most tv out there I DVR it and watch it at another time usually within a day or so just so that I can avoid the commercials. If they cancel this show and put another in it’s place I will DVR that as well. Jason O’Mara is fantastic and I am hoping that this show manages to hold on for another season.
keep it! it’s awesome!!!!!!
Good cast but the show itself is boring. Definitely needs more action and less drama. This is supposed to be a sci-fi action show and not a soap opera. Take a hint FOX, what has happened to most soaps on TV? Deserves renewel if they make the right changes! I will say the season finale was an improvement over most of the previous duller episodes.
I love the show. I waited for it to come on for months, have been watching it regularly (time slipped of course). It should be renewed. I don’t know how exec’s think they are actually getting realistic measurements of viewership if they are not accounting for web, streaming, recorded and time slipped viewing – even DOWNLOADS. If you are only worried about which neilson families are watching your show as it airs, you are missing 90 % of your viewers.
Please renew it.
We watched this until a few weeks ago, when it became obvious that nothing was happening that we cared about at all. We wanted to like this show, and gave it many more viewings than our “3 episode rule,” but things never got above tepid. We’re out. But if people really enjoyed it, it’s no skin off my nose if they keep it on. There are plenty of other things for us to watch.
You should’ve stuck around, things really came to a head in the two-hour finale!
What an awful show. Early in they said that it turns out that the past they went back to is not the same as the past they came from. That is how they can kill off dinosaurs and change the entire landscapes, bring back hi tech things and it NOT mess up the future they came from… BUT Now all of a sudden, his son is going to the future to meet with a faction that sent him back to control the past so they can control the future… Which /What future? And once again ALA Starship Troopers movies, they… Read more »
By control the future they mean that in the future they are running out of resources… by having control of the Terra Nova time line they will have control of the resources which they can bring back to THEIR future… seemed pretty clear to me… The things you seem to dislike the show for are rather irrelavant irrelevant… I don’t much care what the fence is made out of… Also… you realize they don’t have much metal left in the future to begin with, which is why they are trying to bring meteor ore back to the future… I actually… Read more »
Yeah, you’ve missed something. Like Jon said, it’s not about changing the past to control the future they came from. In fact, they made that clear in the first episode when they found the probe. They commented on the fact that they sent a probe back to the past but it never showed up in 2149. This played on the whole theory of alternate timelines. The dino past they are in will NOT lead to the same future timeline they came from. This also eliminates the problem of the grandfather paradox. It’s all been done quite nicely. I’ve had very… Read more »
I really hope that Terra Nova is getting a second chance. The actors are just now getting comfortable with their parts and it is awesome. Please don’t cancel the show.
I’m in my 40’s so i’ve seem alot of sci-fi.when I watched terra nova I got lost in watching
the episodes because if it is good then the time goes by fast which it did for me in terra nova.10 minutes was actually an hour.
RENEW TERRA NOVA!!
In this day of endless, boring reality series, Terra Nova is a refreshing chance to get away from it all. I sincerely hope that the network decides to renew this great series.
RENEW IT FOX ! There is so few good scifi shows out there as it is and with the not so scifi SYFY channel we need good programs like this. Most good scifi show have been cancelled as of late being replaced by stupid reality shows or stuck in bad time slots . We really need good programs like this one to continue.