Time travel is solution in Fox's 'Terra Nova' - Tulsa World

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The world is so overcrowded that a two-child policy must be brutally enforced. The air is toxic and there are almost no animals or plants left. The only way to save the people is to go back in time - about 85 million years - and start over, knowing what they know now.

Welcome to "Terra Nova," folks. Welcome home.

This latest "lost"-like adventure, coming to Fox on Monday by the likes of executive producer Steven Spielberg, explores the "what if" premise - how can we rebuild civilization after we have destroyed our own world and not make the same mistakes again.

The answer: Pilgrimages to the past - to a barricaded colony called Terra Nova, complete with man-eating dinosaurs and sinister undertones. It seems there is more than one kind of danger in this paradise.

Ireland-born actor Jason O'Mara plays Jim Shannon, head of a family selected for the 10th pilgrimage, who jeopardizes their shot at leaving their dying world. He's a former Chicago cop with a questionable past, a family that doesn't exactly meet the criteria for transport and an attitude that may cause him problems in their new world.

"I think his primary goal is to protect his family and ensure that they thrive and survive in this place," said O'Mara in a recent teleconference. "He's also been sort of, whether he likes it or not, been made the sheriff of this frontier town."

As such, Shannon has to play by the rules set down by Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang), the first pioneer and leader of the settlement. But that doesn't stop him from raising questions that "sort of affect the very fabric of Terra Nova's society...."

"He has to go kind of along with what Taylor does and says and sometimes he has reservations," said the actor, who made his United States' television debut in Spielberg's miniseries "Band of Brothers." "... There is also a kind of partnership and a friendship that is emerging between Taylor and Shannon. I really enjoy kind of the subtleties and the little relationship beefs that we have between all the characters on the show. I believe, it's quite unusual."

For the pilot, which was set to air last May and was delayed by production problems, Brisbane, Australia and computer-generated effects stand in for Chicago and the Australian Outback provides the set for Terra Nova.

"It has been a very challenging shooting this show," said O'Mara, 39, a stage and TV star in both Ireland and England.

"We're outside for a lot of this. The Australian Outback can be quite unforgiving."

Although the production has been fraught with knee-deep mud, heat and critters, there have been no medical emergencies with the cast.

"There are a lot of snakes. I don't know how poisonous it was but I had a toad crawl across my boots just last week (Australia is home to the venomous cane toads), which was really kind of cool actually, but we're really out there. We're there in the rain forest and on location and exposed to the elements for better or worse."

Each episode requires up to eight or nine days of production, he explained. The schedule often calls for work six days a week. The goal here is to make a series that will appeal to a broad audience, he explained.

"There are futuristic effects, dinosaur effects, all sorts of things going on but one of the earlier scripts very much read as a genre piece," said the actor. "We're trying to create something that's a little bit bigger than that.

"It's not just for a niche audience: this isn't 'Battlestar Galactica.' It's not 'Star Trek.' This is not necessarily for sci-fi fans out there even though I think sci-fi fans will get a lot out of it.

"This kind of has that all-inclusive look and feel of a true Steven Spielberg production where people are going to 'E.T.' for the cinematic experience not because it's just about a boy's relationship with his alien who comes down from space."

The series also tries to cover all age ranges. At its center is the happily married couple Jim Shannon and his wife Elisabeth, a trauma surgeon) and their three children.

"They're a very lucky family," said O'Mara, has made guest appearances on "CSI; Miami," "The Closer," "Men in Trees" and 'Criminal Minds." "They're one in a million. They've managed to escape this dying world and get this second chance in this sort of Utopia, this beautiful place that has been sold to them.... as just the most beautiful place imaginable.

"However once the Shannon family gets there, you realize - and it doesn't take too long - you scratch the surface and you realize there is something else going on here. There are splinter groups, splinter factions challenging Taylor's rule. You also find out that there are people close to Taylor who have become estranged and might even be plotting against him and his sort of rule, for want of a better word, as commander of Terra Nova."

And then there are the dinosaurs. Plenty of them. Many of them man-eaters. Although, some aren't.

Like an oncoming train, in the path crossing of man vs. dino, the dino always wins as is evidenced in the two-hour pilot episode.

"Dinosaurs do kill people. We don't kill dinosaurs because they're animals and we are as humane as possible when we try to corral and wrangle the local wildlife... They, however do not have the same control with us... " said O'Mara, who also stared in the U.S TV series "Life on Mars," "The Agency" and "In Justice."

"I can reveal that one of the characters that you will have come to know and, hopefully love, will die by the end of the first season."

TERRA NOVA

Where: Fox, channel 23, cable 5