Is the planet Terra Nova in Matter of Life and Death really the planet Meta, as some fans have come to believe?
BYRNE: No. They put all the Meta stuff into the first episode, Breakaway, which was being shot while I was writing Matter of Life and Death. There was a strong pull to make each episode a stand-alone story because the series would have been selling in syndication, and we didn’t have a clue in what order the shows would be screened. If I had been told to follow on with Meta, then I would have used Meta. Instead, I created Terra Nova, and there seemed to be some reason to do that, to actually get away from Meta. Had I been wrong to do that, Christopher Penfold or someone would have surely told me I was wrong. MUIR: What do you remember about working on that particular story? BYRNE: I spent a long time with Charles Crichton [episode director] putting this into a shooting script in the most maddening form of detail. It was kind of a primer in filmmaking, and if there had been flaws that kind of stood out, Charles would be the one to spot them.; I was really at the mercy of superior experie
