Somedays I'm astonished by the power of social networking. Yesterday was such a day. I complained about the level of writing on Terra Nova, hunted down the showrunners and writers on Twitter, and spread the word about them amongst my fellow writing peeps with an interest in scifi. And I got followed back. I actually yelped when I found out, in a public place. Any embarrassment I should have felt was tempered by the sheer awesomeness of the event. This was way cooler than my infamous Twitter imbroglio with Bob Parsons, the CEO of GoDaddy (still a class A dick by the way).

Anyway.

Since there's a slim chance I might have the ear of people who have an important influence on the writing on Terra Nova, I can't pass up the opportunity to restructure my complaints into (hopefully) constructive advice. Below this post are my qualifications or lack thereof for giving unasked for advice. The other caveat that any potential fellow griper should note is that showrunners for TV shows usually will not and cannot read story ideas or unagented spec scripts thrown at them by random fans. I'm keeping my advice free of specific story ideas.

Terra Nova is hated by nerds

I'm a nerd. I grew up on a heavy diet of Star Trek, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, and all things Spielberg. I have a well-developed sense of nerd culture (I have a degree in computer science and I write an unhealthy amount of SF gorram it). I enjoyed the first episode of Terra Nova. It had a snappy pace, some intriguing characters, a promising premise, a fantastic lead in Jason O'Mara, decent fictional science, and oh yeah, DINOSAURS. It didn't blow me away immediately (like say Firefly or LOST or Battlestar Galactica or Mad Men or The Walking Dead), but I'm willing to let a series simmer and develop if it has promise (like any of the Stargates. Love Stargate. Still mourning SGU. I loathe you with all my being @Syfy--you're like a crooked, backstabbing crack dealer. *sigh* I digress).

The second episode featured masses of swarming pterodactyls. I immediately went to a Hitchcockian place. On top of that, the pterodactyls were breeding, and there was a subplot about the parents trying to get some "alone time" (the walls in that house are just waaaay to thin IMO). It was a lot of unsexy sex, but kudos on the science stuff.

The third episode made me angry. I yelled at the TV about five minutes in (or whenever it was that Zoe gave daddy a cold). You should not be able to solve an episodic puzzle five minutes in. It's just wrong, and insults the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80. On top of that, probably the most common scifi trope is the virus episode. The best scifi shows manage to avoid it, but it always creeps into the more budget ones--just not in the third frakking episode. If you're going to go that route, you've got to hide it at least in the second half of season two somewhere.

I will keep watching however. Why? Well I want to support scifi on network TV come hell or high water. I need to atone for my lack of watching Fringe (I'm kind of burnt out on heavily mythologized series). I want to make sure we never have another Firefly incident. I despise 99% of reality TV, especially talent competitions in all their incarnations (30 seconds of any of that makes me want to scratch out my eyes with a blunt instrument). I can't stand the plethora of procedural crime dramas. Seriously, aliens judging us on our TV transmissions alone would assume that most of the population is either a perp, a victim, or an investigator. Scripted TV *needs* more diversity (in many senses). And finally, one of my many current writing projects is a scifi TV concept--I'd like to keep the hope alive that I might actually have a shot at getting a development deal.

But Nerds aren't the target demo

This is the problem. All my griping is moot. I did a quick and unscientific scan of Twitter to see what people were saying about Terra Nova. Nerds hate it, and non-nerds love it. Nerds think the plots are simplistic and aimed at ten-year-olds. Nerds pick apart little details and fixated on specific flaws. In contrast, non-nerds seem to revel in the awe gosh-ness and novelty of it. They think it's complex and original. They are satisfied by the big picture--the broadly drawn strokes. And there's the epiphany. To non-nerds, all those retreaded tropes ARE new to them. The show IS aimed at ten-year-olds (or at least a general family audience). We nerds and geeks are faced with a scifi show that was not made for us.

And that's why Terra Nova has legs

One of that things that gets discussed frequently in nerd culture is how to broaden the culture (mainly so that the things we cherish stay around longer). I've obsessed over it, many have. It seemed an unsolvable problem. The real problem is that we looked outside ourselves, blaming all sorts of other things (dumbass network execs at FOX in particular for the utter sin of canceling Firefly, quite possibly the awesomest SF show to ever grace a TV screen). But it was us. We are perhaps our own enemy. We're picky, we demand some semblance of scientific accuracy, and we're extremely sophisticated viewers. We are not interested in the goings-on inside the tanning salons of New Jersey. We could give a crap about dancing C list "celebrities". Bread and circuses will not do for us. We crave well-crafted stories and characters with depth, the truly novel, and most importantly, an optimistic view of the future tainted by twisting fractal-like threads of conflict deftly woven into and through every lovingly scripted episode. We just never realized we're a tiny fraction of the viewing public.

Terra Nova seems to have employed a successful formula for capturing the attention and hearts of the majority TV viewership, the people who enjoy House and CSI and Law and Order. The people who would have watched Star Trek:TNG twenty years ago (which was definitely a gateway drug to deeper SF for many). This, undoubtedly, was what was intended.

But nerds are still an asset

Okay, so we're not who the show is for--but it doesn't have to be that way. Nerds will hang on long after others have left they party. They happily run blogs and wikis about their favorite shows, and arguably, they bring added value to the shows by providing in-depth analysis, curating links and media, and keeping discussions going, which elevates the shows in the pop culture pantheon--all for free/gratis to both the more casual fan and the showrunners. Nerds are unintentional marketing machines.

So how can Terra Nova be "fixed"?

Dear Terra Nova writers: nerds are sophisticated viewers, so we need sophisticated stories and characters. We've seen every trope at least five times,

1. so don't go there. If you vaguely recall a similar plot line in some other show, Google it. Find the show in question. Watch it. Now write something different, or at least put a really fresh twist on the thing. Also bookmark TVTropes and visit often.

We like well-functioning, original plots, but we like characters more.

2. Make characters worth our while.

Stephen Lang's character going bat-shit commando? It was a little cheesily executed, but I'm willing to go with you there. It was an interesting pay-off, and made me wonder about his stability as a leader. In short, it got me thinking about who he was. Josh being a whiny teen? Not so much. If there was any justice in the universe, he would have been dino food in the pilot. His actions were pretty much darwin award-worthy.

3. Take the characters further. The best characters always write themselves (Sheldon on TBBT is a good example--or Niles Crane, or any of the characters on Roseanne). Almost always on TV this is from a synergy between excellent actors and writers. With characters like this, you could throw them into a totally absurd, alien situation, and know exactly how they'd react and what they'd say. Jason O'Mara is doing good things with the lead character and Maddy has promise, but the mom character (yeah sorry, her name is not cemented in my brain because she's not particularly memorable) needs help. Zoe is woefully underdeveloped, but I think the kid actor could go interesting places with the character. Josh has some depth, but he has some severe Wesleyitis. Kill him off or make him sympathetic. If he cared more about his sisters for instance (at the expense of his father), I'd care more about him.

4. Don't waste the premise. This is a large scale, but familiar "people in a box" premise (rent "Cube" for the ultimate version of this). This premise has inherent conflict. People are forced to survive together. They may be odd bedfellows. Well they get along or founder? Exploit this source of conflict more (and not just with the sixers--in the family itself, in the community compound, etc). Amp it up to eleven. Make it more Jamestown and less Gilligan's Island.

5. You've got friggin DINOS! Use them, but don't overuse them--not just because CGI costs a lot of money to do right, but showing them in every episode makes them less scary and alien. They're not all predators, but those that are, are a serious threat to humans. Being preyed upon is a natural human fear that we can all relate to. It's a fabulous source of tension--but as in horror movies, mere sounds, suggestions, and physical traces, are scarier that showing whole ghosts and creatures. Dinos should always be present, but on the fringe of perception, always threatening, always darwinian.

6. Make it count. I know this is family oriented, but people should be dying, and not just the red shirts. Death is part of life after all, but story-wise, it raises the stakes. Even Little House on the Prairie had characters die off.

7. Make me care about the protagonist family. Why these guys? Why now? A story should start where things get interesting, and similarly, the characters that the audience sees the show through should have some significant role in the overall story. This can be a deep-arc thing, but we should see bits of it early on. All I've got three episodes in is that Jim is a rule-breaking rule-enforcer, which suggests that he has what it takes to be a catalyst for change (particularly in authority) within the colony. That's a real thin suggestion though, and doesn't tell me anything about why his family is significant and why we're spending some much time with them and not him. Think about how LOST focused (or not) on particular characters. It was all about the deep-arc character significance, and it was damn engrossing.

8. Don't gyp on the science. Terra Nova hasn't really failed yet here, but don't let it happen! If you're about to stray into technobabble territory where you're making too much shit up, you have non-technical characters to fall back on. Use those characters to make the story more visceral, more humane. The show setting also dictates that it has to be more faithful to reality than is typical for SF on TV. All the paleontology, geology, climatology, biology narrative is readily available, so don't be afraid of consulting with actual scientists (which I suspect is already done) or at least liberally using Google.

9. Make it fun. This is for everybody, not just nerds. Amp up the interpersonal humor between characters (especially in small moments) but don't force it. Don't get jokey or elaborate. And please, no all-musical episodes.

Thank you.

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My qualifications or lack thereof:

-- I've written a ridiculous number of short stories, most of which are speculative. I don't know everything and I'm certainly not the best out there, but I'm in the process of honing my sense of story--what works and what doesn't. I'm completely obsessed about story and character right now.

-- I had a column on physics from 2006 to 2008. 72 articles. Yuppers.

-- I wrote a spec script for Stargate Atlantis, entered a horror script in Project Greenlight, and actually have a writing credit on IMDB. Not a lot of professional cred, but more than the average arm-chair critic.

-- I worked in a bookstore for four years. I call this my honorary literature degree. Most stories are bad or meh, but then there is the sublime 1% -- the stuff that makes life worth living. I might be a snob for wanting every writer to aim there, but you might as well try as not.

-- I learned to read before I could walk. I've been programming since I was seven years old. I had a box of circuitry parts under my bed. I drew reams of architectural floorplans. My barbies exclusively found themselves taking difficult college classes. My degree specialty is "Virtual Reality". I am not kidding. I have always loved math and science. I am nerd. I am geek. Hear me roar.