This week’s Terra Nova episode ‘The Runaway’ was good. Not great, but good. It has some really nice action, expanded on the season long plot arc, gave us some questions, and answered some lingering ones.
Guards at a watchtower see something running through the woods. After a brief chase, which involves a number of guards apparently leaving their post for some unfathomable reason, they come across a runaway little girl Sixer called Leah Marcos. She’s taken back to the colony where Taylor looks her over and has Elisabeth check her out. Leah gives them all a story that she sticks with for pretty much the whole episode, that she was abused (mentally and possibly physically), starved, and scared. She is housed with the Shannons, of course, and they immediately bring her into the fold and even give her a cute little yellow dress. Things are going so well, of course nothing else is going to happen.
Little Leah is actually a spy for Mira and infiltrated the colony in order to steal some sort of glazed tortoise shell-looking container that was tucked away in a box in someone’s pod that use to belong to Mira. When Taylor, really ticked off at this point for being made to look like a fool, and Jim, genuinely hurt by her deception after accepting her into his home, interrogate her, she gives yet another story that her brother was being held by Mira. The only way to ensure his safety was to do whatever Mira wanted her to, which in this case was to go on a mini-Hudson Hawk adventure. Jim goes out to investigate and find Sam (Leah’s brother) only to be felled by what appears to be The Sixers’ favorite weapon: snares.
Jim is brought in front of Mira and through their tension filled back and forth we learn that Terra Nova is not all that it seems, which we kind of already knew, but nice of them to finally get to it. Jim also learns that Mira has apparently been in contact with 2149 and Taylor is making some very powerful enemies back there. It is her job, basically, to take him out.
Leah is the weak link in ‘The Runaway.’ It isn’t the acting of the little girl playing her or the general plot that brings her onto the show in the first place that bothers me. It’s everything else. The way that every action she takes or involves her in any way is completely predictable down to the theft at the beginning of the third act.
Everything else outside the Leah arc works remarkably well. The interplay between Elisabeth and Maddy at the infirmary was a good way to bring the show back to its central theme of the family dynamic. Seeing Maddy’s courtship play out was sweet as well, as static and organized as it was. I especially enjoyed Jim’s speech:
“You do remember that I carry gun, have a quick temper.”
I can’t say I would have any different reaction to any guy trying to “court” my daughter. It is always refreshing seeing such relatable things happen amidst such unbelievable settings.
The plot is thickening between Taylor and Mira. After Jim is captured while searching for Leah’s brother, we find out that Taylor isn’t so much the bad guy he’s been made out to be. Apparently he’s upset some powerful people on the other side of the portal by maintaining the idea that Terra Nova was a way to start over. It seems the powers that be have other ideas. We don’t find out what those are, but it does keep the plot from becoming stale.
The most interesting part of ‘The Runaway’ is at the very end. Taylor asks Jim if Mira told him anything that he should know about, something that he doesn’t already know. Now, Mira told Jim a whole mess of stuff that if I were Taylor, I’d want to know about. At the least, Jim’s newly discovered information should have led to some pointed questions between him and Taylor.
Jim’s silence to the question makes me wonder if he is planning on a little detective work of his own to see who, if anyone, is telling him the truth.
– James Zappie
