BRANNON BRAGA “TERRA NOVA” INTERVIEW
By Abbie Bernstein
Fox’s new science-fiction drama TERRA NOVA, premiering at 8 PM on Monday Sept. 26, has impeccable science-fiction credentials. First of all, it combines time travel, a dystopian future and a dinosaur-filled past. The premise is that in 2049, natural resources are almost non-existent. However, an occasionally recurring time portal has opened, allowing small groups of people to travel eighty-five million years into the past, when there was edible food, drinkable water, breathable air - and the aforementioned dinosaurs. The Shannon family - father Jim (Jason O’Mara, a time-travel veteran from his recent starring gig on LIFE ON MARS), mother Elizabeth (Shelley Conn) and their three children are part of the most recent pilgrimage to the settlement known as Terra Nova. Jim soon comes to clash with the Terra Nova’s military commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang, the villainous Col Quaritch of AVATAR).
Behind the scenes, TERRA NOVA has an equally solid pedigree. Steven Spielberg, who knows a thing or two about putting prehistoric reptiles on the screen, is one of the executive producers. Two other executive producers are show runners Brannon Braga and Rene Echevarria. Braga and Echevarra met while both were writers on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. Braga subsequently became a producer on that series and moved on to STAR TREK: VOYAGER and STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, while Echevarria was a producer on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. More recently, Braga was an executive producer on 24, where he worked with another of TERRA NOVA’s producers, director Jon Cassar.
At a party thrown by Fox for TV journalists, Braga takes time to talk about his new job exploring the near future and the distant past. He’s very candid, responding to a reporter’s request with, “I’ll answer anything you want.”
Okay, for starters, who came up with the original concept for TERRA NOVA and what drew Braga to the project? “A British woman named Kelly Marcel had the original concept,” Braga relates. “She developed it with a writer named Craig Silverstein, and Craig was not able to move beyond the initial script, because he was trying to get NIKITA on the air - you can’t do two things at once, so that’s when I got involved. To me, having done so much TV science fiction, the key is to not repeat yourself. The themes [of TERRA NOVA] are familiar, but to do the actual plots and characters, creating a visual and science fiction concept and environment that feels fresh is always something I’m looking for.”
According to Braga, we will see some narrative innovations in how humans cope with the thunder lizards in the neighborhood. “There are some very dangerous monsters. What’s interesting is, the technology they’ve developed is mostly non-lethal. The philosophy they have in TERRA NOVA is not to kill any animal that you don’t have to. So you’ll see some really cool futuristic weaponry like sonic cannons, to drive away the dinosaurs and huge tranq discs to knock them out if you can. But there are bullets, too, because sometimes the non-lethal stuff doesn’t work.”
There are also tiny terrors - i.e., prehistoric germs - to worry about. These cause, Braga says, “Huge problems. In the pilot, there’s reference made to a terrible plague that occurred with some early settlers, where a lot of people died. They’re dealing with not just dinosaurs; it’s an ecosystem of all sorts of critters, including viruses.”
How exactly does the time portal work and what can be brought back through it in addition to people? “When they dilate the time portal,” Braga reports, “it can only stay open for eighteen minutes. [It can accommodate] as much as you can get through and that will fit. So a lot of the stuff they build, they have to build there [in Terra Nova].”
What kind of materials exist in the past that the characters can use as building tools? “Well, within reason, trees and meteoric iron. One of the first metals ever used by humans came from meteor pits. So there’s a meteoric iron quarry that they’ve developed and stuff like that.”
The time portal goes back to one era, and one era only, at least at the beginning of the series. “They don’t know why, but that’s where it goes,” Braga explains. “There’s tons of fun to have with that [time travel] stuff, believe me. It’s not going to be the focus, but we can’t ignore that there is time travel in the show, and there are going to be unexpected twists and turns as the series goes on: The concept is that the particle accelerator that they’re using to expand the portal needs so much power that it needs several months to recycle. And then, metaphorically, when the people do come to town, the next pilgrimage, it’s like new people come into the frontier town.”
The back-to-the-prehistoric period travelers come back to a time millions of years before the Ice Age. Does this mean any advances they make will be wiped out and humanity will have to start over, dooming itself to the mess we see in 2049?
Braga is reassuring on this issue. “Again, remember, they have millions if not tens of millions of years to prepare for catastrophic events. And they do come from the future, so they have a lot of technology, far beyond our understanding, that they’re going to employ. Like maybe they can shoot down an asteroid [that could cause an ice age] with no problem. Remember, they’re from a hundred and fifty years in the future.”
TERRA NOVA is filmed in Australia, which provides a wide variety of terrain for the production. “You’ll see everything,” Braga promises. “In the first few episodes, you’ll see open plains - we build this giant town on open plains - you’ll see dense jungle, you’ll see water. In the series, you’ll see everything, we’re going to use everything.”
Having most of the producers and writing staff on one side of the Pacific Ocean and the actual production team on the other, in a different hemisphere, is something of a challenge. However, Braga says, “Our biggest challenge in doing this show week to week is, how do you do a show with this scope and maintain that level of quality and scope on a weekly basis? And the way we did that was, we hired a really talented visual effects supervisor, Kevin Blank, who has invented new technologies to show off the super-high-quality effects in a short amount of time without breaking the bank and yet aren’t cheap, don’t get me wrong. And then we also have incredibly talented production designers, who built a town. We built Terra Nova. We didn’t build all of Terra Nova, but we built a good chunk of it. So when you’re there, you feel like you’re there. And so it was like, if we’re going to make a colony, we have to really make it. You can’t cheat it - it’s got to be there, in the world.”
The non-human cast - i.e., the dinosaurs - are “going to look great,” Braga says. Despite Spielberg’s involvement, we won’t be seeing any repurposed footage from any of the JURASSIC PARK films. Braga explains, “Not only is this obviously a different studio, I don’t think Universal would be thrilled with the idea of giving up [the effects footage],” he laughs. “But we don’t want this to be like JURASSIC PARK. We want to set it apart and that wasn’t difficult, because it’s really a very different premise.”
What’s the division of responsibility like among TERRA NOVA’s multiple producers? Braga relates, “Rene and I share responsibilities in the writing of the show and the post-production of the show. That’s done in Los Angeles. Rene and I started off on STAR TREK together almost together, and - I’d hate to say that either of us is better at one thing, but I think I’m a conceptual guy, I tend to gravitate toward high concepts and interesting story ideas. Rene is really strong with character, and he always was, since the day I met him. He’s been instrumental in bringing these characters to life on a weekly basis. We worked on the pilot together and we wrote the third episode together, but then we have been assigning the writing staff scripts and have been overseeing those things. Because there comes a point where you really don’t have time to sit and take yourself out of the process and write scripts. You may be involved in rewriting and developing, but there are a lot of other things we have to do. We have a very talented group of writers. They’re writing the episodes. Jon [Cassar, who directs many episodes] is more often in Australia and he’s in charge of the physical production of the show and getting it made. One could argue that Jon probably has the more physically strenuous part of the job, and that’s basically how it boils down.”
How is it working with industry heavyweight Spielberg? “I love it,” Braga enthuses. “I’ve been very lucky to work with some really great people, and working with someone like Steven Spielberg is something that I dreamed about as a kid. Honestly. I love collaborating. And to collaborate with these people, all the better.”
There’s an obvious question about the casting of TERRA NOVA’s leading actors. With O’Mara having just been on another time paradox TV show and Lang etched in people’s minds as a gruff commander in surroundings reminiscent of primeval Earth, did anybody wonder if those past associations might be distracting for the audience? Braga says, “Not really. We did discuss that and we did discuss Stephen’s affiliation with AVATAR and this has elements that could be construed as similar, but the truth is, we cast the right actors for the roles and once you see it, any concerns will go out the window. I don’t see how casting one of the leads from the biggest movie in history is in any way a negative thing. It’s hard for me to imagine,” he laughs.
Will there be guest actors and guest characters? “Of course. The colony is full of people, so part of the fabric of the show is all of the colonists who are there, people we meet and the conflicts we have with them, so absolutely, [there will be] a lot of guest stars.”
Braga is also happy to answer a few questions about his older projects, such as whether 24 would have ended differently if it had been known at the time that a big-screen version would not happen right away, if at all. Braga says that wouldn’t have changed anything. “The way we ended 24 had nothing to do with setting up the movie. We had no idea what the movie was going to be at that point. And by the way, I have no idea what the movie is going to be about, if there is going to be one. I can only tell you as a fan, I hope there’s a 24 movie.”
What are Braga’s personal feelings about TERRA NOVA? “My feelings on the essence of the show is that the show is very much what we set out to do, what we’ve talked about ad nauseam, but it’s still true. It’s a family adventure show with aspirational humanistic themes, but also a hell of a lot of danger and intrigue. It’s a family adventure. And that’s what we’re doing week to week. It’s really a great show. It’s an original show in terms of its elements and concepts that is also a familiar show that hasn’t been around in awhile, and that’s a show about a functional family, a family who like each other, a family who want to be whole again and that’s one of my favorite things about it. It’s kind of an old-fashioned show, done with postmodern technology, all the latest and greatest techniques and special effects, but it’s just a postmodern version of SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON.”
By Abbie Bernstein
Entertainment Reporter
Buzzy Multimedia - Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books…Funny Shirts!
