Let's give Terra Nova a pass on it being a show that described ITSELF as "Lost meets Jurassic Park". OK, so the temporal whatjamacallit let's them live in dinosaur land and because one of the idiots from Star Trek: Voyager (Brannon Braga) is the showrunner, it's vaguely explained with some technobabble that may or may not become critically important at some later juncture...
But let's examine the idiocy of the show itself, beyond the premise. Now we have our people from 2149 living 85 million years in the past, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth... because dinosaurs are cool! Now, the problem of the week in episode 1x07 is that a meteor went BOOM and caused an EMP - amazingly, this is actually something that even relatively small meteors can do! It's happened a few times and has taken down power grids etc.
This seems to be relatively common knowledge as both Colonel Badass and Data (the brainbox daughter of the protagonist) almost immediately identify it. The first problem we encounter is that while the EMP is created by the meteor "exploding" in an air burst above the ground, the remains still hit the ground and cause a "sonic shock" (presumably, a regular shockwave wouldn't be science fictiony enough). Now, as the barrier for Terra Nova is just wooden bars with great big gaps - this means everyone has to hit the ground... a solid barrier would at least have mitigated that and prevented any dangerous high speed projectiles being hurled into people.
The second - and more obvious problem - is that LITERALLY EVERYTHING has a computer chip in it. EVEN THEIR GUNS! This is a period which had a considerably higher level of meteor activity and yet they didn't think about this? Oh but they might have back-ups, you say! They do! Phew, problem solved! Oh, wait - no. The EMP is capable of slagging ANY circuit in range - active or otherwise... oh, they're kind of fucked then... Oh! No, of course not - they've got a machine to make replacements! Thank goodness all of Terra Nova hasn't been reduced to a pre-electronic age! Wait, what's that? The machine that makes replacement chips itself requires one that was melted by the EMP?! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Hilariously - and for the purposes of dramatic convenience - there is one guy in the whole colony that can fix microchips that have melted. It's the evil Ozzie bartender! Quite how he's supposed to fix something that has presumably melted is never explained - these days, if a CPU breaks... it's pretty much done and these are chips from 150 years into the future (and hence presumably even smaller and more complex), it seems unlikely that even a trivial problem could be fixed - least of all by a guy in a bar with no tools.
But the whole situation is made even MORE ridiculous when we have Colonel Badass pronounce that their perimeter - which is apparently will with microchipped landmines... OK... - is down and that any number of beasties could charge through the barrier like it wasn't there... NO FUCKING KIDDING! If only you came from the future and could somehow make... some kind of METAL WALL! Seriously, what is WITH these people? They've brought through dozens, if not hundreds of lovely prefab buildings, enough weapons and vehicle to supply a small army and a state of the art medical facility and as revealed in this very episode, the sum total of ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE (oh, don't worry - THAT was shielded from the EMP!).
Yet, at some point during the planning of this second chance for humanity someone thought they'd just skimp on the walls and just have a bunch of logs a full grown man could fit through - or a dinosaur the size of a full grown man! Oops! In fact, Colonel Badass actually decides that as they're down to a useless barrier and harsh language, they need another line of defence - which turns out to be a big ditch that they fill with petrol or some such and ignite with flaming arrows (naturally when handed a compound bow, Timecop knows EXACTLY how to use it - because... well, because he's a main character damnit! Having one of the minor supporting characters who actually might have been trained to use a bow is stupid!). Hey, you know what would be sensible? Maybe if you hadn't waited until the last minute to dig a ditch to stop the hundreds of different species of 40 tonne beasties that run around all over this place!
Of course, the EVIL Sixers use the crippling stupidity of the Terra Novans to try and get the magical box of McGuffin because the Spineosaurus was just a distraction while the Sixers sneak in to get the McGuffin. They go on to exposition that this surgical strike was clearly the result of a mole - not just the fact the box was in a cupboard and in the most obvious location possible. Which rather begs the question - the mole clearly knew exactly where the McGuffin was - it was easy to get to and there was no one guarding it... it seems a regular occurrence for kids to sneak out of the colony, so you'd assume that as it's essentially just locked in a stationary cupboard the mole could just break in and sneak it out - no need for a potentially dangerous diversion or surgical strike.
Idiotic.
