New Dinosaur Drama Still Nothing at All Like Avatar, Pinkie Swear

Hold on to your dinosaur butts: the Steven Spielberg-produced sci-fi show “Terra Nova” will make its debut over two nights in May, and the Super Bowl mid-game shows (the commercials) gave us our first look.

For the longest time, my joke for the worst, most Joe Sixpack idea for a screenplay ever was “swat teams fighting dinosaurs.” Then came 2005′s A Sound of Thunder, which added Ed Burns to the joke to make it one of the worst movies ever made. Of course, I had no idea that it was based on a short story from thirty years before I was born, so this terrible idea has been around forever.

The new version jumps headfirst (like Pete Rose) into FOX’s Friday Night Sci-Fi Red Ring of Death with a new twist on the plot. In 2149, all life on planet Earth is threatened with extinction, so a group of scientists and a random family head back to prehistoric times and start shooting dinosaurs with machine guns. You can watch the teaser commercial below, which makes it look like Avatarosaurus, but I’m guessing the dinosaur fights happen maybe once an episode, meaning “Terra Nova” is closer to “The Walking Dead” than Avatar. Are you ready for some boring discussions about fate? I am!