Primeval – Season 2 – Episode 1 – Review

Primeval is back for its second series. Last time, we were left on a cliffhanger, where Prof Cutter, having fallen in love with Claudia Brown, returns from the Permian to discover that time has change, and Claudia no longer exists.

How could they “fix” that one? Find out after the jump.

Synopsis – with spoilers

Cutter realizes that time has changed and desperately tries to go back into the anomaly, but he is held back and the anomaly closes, trapping him forever in this new, alternate timeline.

Despite the fact that everyone has been dealing with temporal anomalies and the possibilities of altering time, no one believes Cutter. They take him back to the Anomaly Research Center (ARC), an ultramodern facility that didn’t exist in Cutter’s home world.

Cutter convinces Conner that things have changed, but before the idea can be explored, and anomaly opens in a bowling alley inside a shopping mall. Late-Cretaceous theropods (“Raptors”) come through and slaughter the security guards. The ARC team are dispatched. (The ARC team being Cutter, Stephen, Conner, Abby and not any of the armed and trained soldiers who work at the ARC.)

Inside the mall, Cutter eventually convinces the other team members that time has been changed. Cutter and Stephen discuss the revelation that Stephen slept with Cutter’s wife, and it appears, momentarily, that Cutter might have intentionally tried to let the raptor kill Stephen. In the end, they come to the realization that it was a misunderstanding, and things are good between them again. Meanwhile Conner shoots Abby with a tranquilizer dart by mistake.

It turns out that three raptors have come through, two adults and a baby. They tranquilize one adult and the baby, and thinking that it is a family unit, use the baby as bait for the third. The third eats the baby, disproving their theory. There’s a pointless and ridiculous motorcycle chase through the mall and the third raptor is finally brought down by Conner.

The two remaining raptors are taken, by Cutter alone, back into the Cretaceous anomaly, where Cutter has decided to stay behind. Stephen followed him through, thinking he might pull this type of stunt, and convinces him to go back. Who knows how much worse who could make time?

On the way back, the anomaly starts to close, Cutter makes it through, but Stephen is trapped by a raptor and is being pulled back. In the nick of time, the anomaly closes severing the head of the raptor.

Back at the ARC, Cutter is introduced to their newest team member, a PR specialist named Jennifer Lewis. The name is changed, but Cutter instantly recognizes her as Claudia Brown.

Analysis
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

This episode was terribly disappointing to me. The time-has-changed cliffhanger has effectively allowed the series’ makers start with a clean slate. We didn’t have a cool headquarters last year? OK, this year we’ve got one, no explanation needed. Cutter and Claudia’s romance moving too fast? No problem, just wipe out that character and make a new one with the same actress. It feels like one of those series where they decide to “fix” the show by doing a massive format change at the beginning of the second year. Those never work, at least, none that I can recall have. They’ve now altered our common frame of reference just enough that they can pull any bad plot device they want out of their butts and pass it off as “differences in the timeline.” That’s sloppy writing.

A further part that I don’t like is that, in this episode, the new world isn’t explored enough. No human, let alone a scientist like Cutter, could possibly curtail his/her curiosity enough to just “shut up and go along for the ride.” Virtually the entire story takes place, after-hours, in an empty mall – we don’t get any glimpse of the new world except for the ARC. And the events of said story are really nothing, although we do establish that the characters themselves (so far) seem to be about the same as in the previous timeline, but even that could change in an instant. There’s no consistency required! We could find out next week that Conner has a wife, or some other similarly unlikely development.

Given the paucity of the story, I’m not going to bother picking it apart, but I will question the fact that only Cutter and his 3 assistants went to the mall, yet the ARC seemed to be teeming with troops and scientists all dedicated to researching the anomalies. Where the hell were they during this story?

No, no, no. This won’t do at all. If you’re going to build the ARC, you have to use it.

Writers: You’ve made a terrible mistake. As improbable as it would be, fix time and return us to the original timeline before it is too late. You may have jumped the shark already.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

6 thoughts on “Primeval – Season 2 – Episode 1 – Review”

  1. The show seems to have deteriorated faster than Douglas Henshall’s hairstyle. Perhaps without the distraction of Lucy Brown I was able to focus on the idiotic reactions of… well, of everyone (besides ARC sending four people to respond to loose raptors, everyone else leaving the unconscious Abby) and the anomalous anomalies (how come they suck every piece of metal through except the huge trolley and the metal gun on it)?

    It’s only a couple of months since I watched series 1, but I remember it as being highly entertaining. This ain’t.

  2. The show seems to have deteriorated faster than Douglas Henshall’s hairstyle. Perhaps without the distraction of Lucy Brown I was able to focus on the idiotic reactions of… well, of everyone (besides ARC sending four people to respond to loose raptors, everyone else leaving the unconscious Abby) and the anomalous anomalies (how come they suck every piece of metal through except the huge trolley and the metal gun on it)?

    It’s only a couple of months since I watched series 1, but I remember it as being highly entertaining. This ain’t.

  3. I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms, but now that you mention it, perhaps the delightful Ms. Brown has been casting a rose-colored light over the show.

    Pity her new character is bound to be antithetical to Cutter, just to give him something else to agonize about.

  4. I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms, but now that you mention it, perhaps the delightful Ms. Brown has been casting a rose-colored light over the show.

    Pity her new character is bound to be antithetical to Cutter, just to give him something else to agonize about.

  5. Thinking about it – and I hesitate to say this, because it’s an awfully harsh thing to say about anyone – but the team were about as competent as Torchwood in this.

  6. Thinking about it – and I hesitate to say this, because it’s an awfully harsh thing to say about anyone – but the team were about as competent as Torchwood in this.

Comments are closed.