…Oh, I remember, all right. Specifically, I remember an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Conundrum” in which the crew members mysteriously develop amnesia, but retain personality and functional abilities. Does that sound an awful lot like “What Remains” to you? Considering producer Brannon Braga’s involvement, it’s not surprising that the show would be recycling old Star Trek plots, and second-tier ones at that. But if Terra Nova is going to steal plots off of old Star Trek episodes, why can’t they borrow from good ones?

Anyway, “What Remains” serves up the same somewhat bland, non-threatening pseudo sci-fi fare that, three weeks in, I’ve already come to expect from this show. Scientists at one of Terra Nova’s outposts suddenly go bonkers; when Malcolm, Taylor, and Elisabeth investigate, they find one guy eaten and the other two living, quite literally, in the past. Then the trio find their own memories slipping, but with the aid of Jim -- who is rendered immune by a cold virus, evidently -- they figure out that one of the scientists had been conducting unauthorized genetic engineering experiments, apparently using a viral vector, which has gone rogue, and over the course of a few hours they develop a cure because they’re just that smart. Also, Jim gets to deck Malcolm, which he has obviously been aching to do since at least last week, so yay Jim, I guess.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Skye makes her move on an uninterested Josh, who is still pining for Kara back home. Being a selfless sort, or very possibly a Sixer spy, she promptly acts (evidently) against her own best interests and offers to take Josh to the Man with the Plan -- a bartender named Joe or Tom or something otherwise innocuous who may be in communication with 2149 and may be able to bring Kara to Terra Nova… for a price. Cue the Tense Music of Teen Torment and Divided Loyalties!

There were several things I really liked about this episode. The first was Player of the Game Stephen Lang’s portrayal of Taylor; the additional insight we got into his character -- he flashed back to a time when he was being psychologically tortured in Somalia -- was interesting, welcome, and very well-acted. His entire confrontation with his second-in-command, Alicia “Wash” Washington (Simone Kessell), whom I love more with each passing episode (spoiler: her streak of awesomeness will continue for at least another week!), actually managed to be genuinely, legitimately tense, particularly when she admitted that his wife was dead and he said something like “Why would I want to live, then” and raised the knife to his own throat and then she TOTALLY SHOT HIS ASS and I was like OH NO YOU DIDN’T and she was all YOU BET I DID AND I’D DO IT AGAIN, SUGAR. Love those two.

I was also amused by some of the Jim/Elisabeth interplay, particularly when she remembered Malcolm, but not Jim, and insisted on addressing Jim as “Jack.” Ha and ha. I was a bit confused about why Malcolm and Elisabeth both flashed back precisely 20 years -- to med school or possibly undergrad -- but the female scientist at the beginning thought she was in 2137, or only 12 years in the past. That made no logical sense. And speaking of things that don’t make sense, I have never, ever heard of an everyday cold virus (which is apparently what Jim had -- Elisabeth was able to whip up a cure for it right quick, anyway, suggesting she’d seen it, or something like it, before, although this is SuperScienceBeth we’re talking about so who can tell) preventing neurological disease. The only infectious neurological diseases I’ve heard of are pretty hard to get, and the incubation period tends to be more than a few hours. Also, someone losing 20 years of memory and having it fully restored with no permanent damage? Unlikely in the extreme, I would think.

But then, we don’t watch this show for the science, do we? (If we did, we would cry and cry and cry. Every week.) We watch it for the silly, non-threatening plots and the pretty, pretty scenery and Shirtless!O’Mara, which we didn’t get to see this week because Stupid Jim kept his clothes on for some reason. In these respects, Terra Nova continues to meet expectations, although it doesn’t, and probably won’t, exceed them.

At least it’s better than V.

The Checklist

Private Bland gets his ass kicked:	Check. This is getting to be a regular thing with him so I thought I’d add it to the checklist this week.
Taylor does something simultaneously badass and stupid:	Oh, he does a bunch of dumb things this week, notably driving underneath a dinosaur (which was actually kind of funny). Not sure if that counts, though, since he wasn’t in his right mind when it happened.
Shirtless!O’Mara:	Regrettably, no.
Someone gets eaten by a dinosaur:	Check.

 
   -- Kate Nagy