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EXCLUSIVE: While Terra Nova star Jason O’Mara took to Twitter moments after Fox cancelled Terra Nova and has been rallying fan support ever since, his co-lead on the show Stephen Lang had not commented on the issue until now. Here is Lang’s reaction to the cancellation in his own words. Meanwhile Terra Nova producer 20th Century Fox TV, which had been on the verge of hiring a new showrunner for Season 2 when Fox pulled the plug, is in talks with Netflix about possibly picking up the pre-historic drama.
“Terra Nova is analogous to the Hubble Space Telescope. Within weeks of a much publicized and ballyhooed launch in 1990, the Hubble was found to have a serious flaw. Yet even with an improperly ground mirror the Hubble delivered extraordinary images. When the flaw was corrected the Hubble delivered images of transcendent beauty and value for many years. So too Terra Nova. Even in it’s flawed first season each episode was full of marvelous moments and beautiful images. With correction, and given the chance, Terra Nova can and will deliver seasons of transcendent images and story-telling. Failing to renew Terra Nova is shortsighted, as myopic as it would have been to scrap the Hubble. Terra Nova is the Hubble Telescope of television.” – Stephen Lang
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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They spent over 1 billion to fix the Hubble. Good luck getting that kind of money from netflix.
If agents/producers don’t go past page 10 of a script if it doesn’t wow them, why should we give Tera Nova any more lifelines? 13 episodes and months of rewrites/re-shoots/corrections was more than the ten pages most of us could hope to get in this town. Not saying he isn’t correct or ungrateful, just saying be happy to have been given what you’ve been given and let a dead horse lie with the others in the TV graveyard. Big names, budgets, and effects will always lose out to quality, no matter how passionate one is about a project.
Lang’s Hubble argument is elegant. Have felt this way about many cancelled series. Can’t say I saw more than a couple of Terra Nova episodes, but early cancellation sadly increases the odds that I’ll never catch up on it. That said, happy that 20th TV is talking to Netflix. Rally the fans online, and good luck! I love a good TV resurrection story.
Is he serious? What a joke.
Hiring Braga was the kiss de la muerte for Terra Nova; a new showrunner is sorely needed but the show still is true family fun and Lang was a treat to watch, I hope the show will be saved by Netflix now that ‘flix is rolling in extra dough after breaking up with Starz.
Terra Nova and Arrested Development are the tricked out motorcyles Netflix will be flaunting after divorcing trashy Starz.
“Terra Nova is the Hubble telescope of television”. What a kook.
Stephen, I love ya, but the show was not that great. For some reason, the powers that be thought that family-oriented has to mean relentlessly cheesy.
I look forward to seeing you better projects.
[quote]Why not give every show another chance? Because think of all the other shows that wouldn’t get their chances as a result, the ones that maybe are good right from the beginning?[/quote]
Yes why shouldn’t they cancel actual TV shows and lead way to even more reality crap to go in it’s place..
If everyone wasn’t so brainwashed with reality TV then shows might actually have a chance.
Couldn’t agree with you more…
So I’m confused… is he saying Terra Nova is like the Hubble Telescope?
I <3 Stephen Lang.
And I <3 Terra Nova.
I would sign up for Netflix if they picked up the show.
Mr. Lang is totally correct, that some things can be adjusted to make it a lot better (better writers, certainly), and Terra Nova was by NO means a failure to begin with. Lots of people watched it, liked it, and the show made a profit. I felt the acting was fine, the scenery was beautiful, and the dinosaurs were good enough. It’s television, for God’s sake, not my whole existence, not meant to be a virtual experience, not life or death. I don’t live and breathe for television programming, don’t spend 100 hours a week in front of the tube, over-analyzing every damn flaw in every program known to man. Just for an hour or two, I like some escapism and Terra Nova (and Stephen Lang) did that for me just fine. I really don’t care what other people think. If you don’t like it, just go watch something else already. No need to get your knickers in a knot.
So I thank Mr. Lang for his lovely words, as he is very much in tune with what fans of the show feel. All you Negative Nancies can go sit on a bunch of tacks. Viva la Terra Nova!
Say it, Stephen. Networks are too quick to bail on scripted format. Terra Nova can be salvaged and, if it was making money and the sets are still up, why not try? Bring in more compelling stories and more dinosaurs and make some must see t.v.
Stephen Lang, Jason O’Mara, and Allison Miller are doing a bang up job and more focus should be on them.
Sorry Lang. But for a Spielberg-produced show, unbelivably the dinosaurs looked horrible and the sorylines were somewhat laughable.
Oh, please. If Spielberg was actually fully involved in the show, you wouldn’t have much to complain about. If he was fully involved in everything that’s had his name on it over the last year, he’d be dead from exhaustion. All he probably did was invest in the idea up front, then wave his magic wand a few times. Sort of like an Abrams series.
I enjoyed the show and hoped for better writing to pull it out next season. I was not giving up on it. Like DeeJay above, I don’t need high art or clever nuance, just some pleasant entertainment is fine. Ditch the teenage angst subplot and find him something interesting to do. Same for Alcatraz. Just give me a couple of reasons to like these people and care what happens to any of them. And you can shove 90% of Reality TV.
Yes there has been hundreds of good shows that were cancelled before their time. Either time for the show ti mature or time for the audience to grow. There is a problem with todays TV and that is reality TV. Minimum amount of money maximum amount of profit, and horrible viewing. Terra Nova was a great show and I do wish it gets another chance with someone else.
There are sci-fi programmes and then there are intelligent serials that are set in a sci-fi landscape. I think of BSG and Star Trek (all versions), which presented entertainment and at the same time, relatively coherent worlds with philosophies, values and political debates that made viewers think about their own 20th-21st C lives. In TN the concept of greedy corporations wreaking a planet and sucking its resources for profit, and buying mercenaries to help, and of ordinary people fighting back against that and for a second chance had real lessons and potential. I wish the producers well in selling it to a film company who recognises that potential.
Not buying all versions of Star Trek. Voyager was mediocre, and that’s being kind. Hmmm…gee…who was running that version of the Star Trek legacy??? I can’t recall. I know it was alliterative.
What a pretentious answer.
I think terra nova was a shinking ship to begin with. Think about it. Do those people really think they can live among dinosaurs from 65 million+ years ago? What do they expect to do? Live in hatmony with ancient animals without killing them? And don’t the writers know that there is a major extinction event coming that will ultimately wipe out 95% of all living things on earth? Pretty pictures..lousy research, lousy acting, lousy network, lousy planning for the future.
The show takes place 85 million years in the past, 20 million further back than the Great Catastrophe. If humankind takes root, they have 20 million years to advance and leave the planet. Man has been civilized with technology in our timeline for just a blink of an eye compared to that.
Besides, if you have even bothered to watch the show, you’d know that they were sent back along an ALTERNATE timeline. Which means the major extinction event that happened 65 million years ago in ours, may not happen at all where (when) they are.
So yes, research was done and explained. Can’t help people not paying attention. They didn’t linger on it; if they had, some of you would’ve complained about that, too. If it was because you were bored, and it wasn’t your cup of tea, so be it. But some arguments have no merit.
I think terra nova was a shinking ship to begin with. Think about it. Do those people really think they can live among dinosaurs from 65 million+ years ago? What do they expect to do? Live in hatmony with ancient animals without killing them? And don’t the writers know that there is a major extinction event coming that will ultimately wipe out 95% of all living things on earth? Pretty pictures..lousy research, lousy acting, lousy network, lousy planning for the future. And if those people start killing the animals they ultimatey kill everything that we know of. And furthermore,putting those people so far in the “past” (time is not real just a reference point we humans created) will not solve the issues that plagued the future because if they continue to bring people to that time period without changes in thinking, and learning from their mistakes, they are doomed to repeat their mistakes.
The sci-fi trappings didn’t help that the stories weren’t compelling, and seemed like re-treads.
For some reason, I imagine that statement being pecked out on a keyboard with a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels close by.
Mr. Lang is a talented writer and speaker. I am sure his words were chosen carefully in an attempt to describe how he feels about his show. If there’s a half-empty bottle of JD nearby, it’s probably because he now feels his words were wasted on people who wouldn’t know a good analogy from a tomato sandwich.
It is nice to know that both he and Jason O’Mara have both come out in support of Terra Nova and that they care about what happens to it, especially since neither one of them have to. Their careers are established, and neither one of them has to worry about getting work in the future. But hundreds of other cast and crew are probably depending on this show to support themselves, and millions of people loved watching it every week. So I applaud Mr. Lang. Again. He never ceases to impress me.
Like the show or not — it is nice to see him stand up for it.
I don’t understand how this show failed. It had thirteen executive producers.
It’s funny because it’s true.
And each one was probably working with a different set of writers
What I didn’t understand is how the British show Primeval managed dinosaurs and other creatures every week yet on Terra Nova the dinos were few and far between. I think a lot of people tuned in for the dinosaurs, and were bored by some of the other stuff.
Stephen Lang was fantastic. I really liked the pilot. By episode 8 or 9 the show started to become a chore or feel like an obligation to work, because I kept having the hope that it would get better. There were some okay episodes, but not enough, especially considering they had such a long period of pre-production to get the show right.
I admit I did like the finale a lot, and I loved any scenes that took place in the “future.” Which is probably not the feeling I should have gotten; the idea is to be excited by the scenes in the old civilization – not things that happen elsewhere!
I will agree it was a beautiful looking show, though.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much they could do to improve the show enough to get the audience back. Unfortunately in this day and age, in most cases, if the audience leaves, they never come back, even if the show gets a lot “better.”
And I don’t think Primeval had anywhere near the budget. If TN comes back for a second season they should get the Primeval effects team on board.
Terra Nova isn’t the Hubble. It’s the Pinto…