Primeval – Cut Down – Series 3, Episode 3 – Review (Spoilers)

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I didn’t see that coming.

Synopsis

The story opens with Helen drilling her Clone Troopers and demonstrating that they are mindless zombies by having one kill himself.

A reporter who has been unsuccessfully on the trail of the anomaly story stakes out the ARC in the hopes of getting the biggest story of all time.

An anomaly opens in a London hospital, Cutter, Conner, Abby and Becker go to investigate. The reporter follows them.

Inside the hospital, a small anomaly has opened and a hatching of baby Diictodons have come through and are chewing through the hospital’s wiring. Posing as a doctor, the reporter nearly captures one of the creatures after he locks Cutter and Abby into an operating room with a pregnant mother and the anomaly.

Back at the ARC, Helen reveals her secret weapon. She has cloned Cutter and uses him to infiltrate the ARC and shut down its defenses. The Clone Troopers move in, plant explosives and capture the remaining members of the team.

After Abby births the baby, Becker frees Cutter and the anomaly closes, leaving two diictodons that were captured by Abby and Conner. The return to the ARC, where they are all quickly captured by Helen and her boys.

Helen reveals to Cutter her motives. The future has been destroyed and it was the ARC that bred the super predators that destroyed the world. She has decided to destroy the ARC and stop Cutter’s work to save the world. However, she thinks Cutter knows the secret of the artifact both she and Lester’s boss, Caroline Steel, were trying to retrieve from the future. Cutter feigns knowledge of the artifact to stall for time.

Back in their cell, Becker helps everyone escape and then he and Conner try to the PA system to play a faked recording of Helen’s voice. They’ve determined that she has voice control over the soldiers and plan to broadcast new orders to them.

The plan works and the soldiers stand down, Helen commands Cutter’s clone to destroy the building. The clones are not mentally the same as the original and Helen considers them to be “living machines”. While Helen escapes, Cutter tries desperately to convince his clone that he is a real person and should not give up his life. Although he cannot convince him to abandon his programming, the clone gives Cutter a chance to escape.

Everyone gets out except Helen and Cutter goes back into the burning building to save her. He finds her unconscious and hides the artifact before he wakes her up to save her. What he doesn’t expect is that Helen is as determined as ever to stop the destruction of the world and she fatally shoots Cutter and then escapes.

Conner re-enters the building to save Cutter but finds him dying. Cutter shows him the artifact and tells him he has to carry on without him. Cutter dies in Conner’s arms.

Analysis

Things are obviously changing in the series. It’s no more mystery now about the cop from the last episode – he is undoubtedly going to come join the team in Cutter’s absence. Will the ARC be rebuilt? Should it? With all the workers walking around the place, none of them seem to do anything. Will Lester’s new boss and her hidden agenda prevent them from rebuilding. Will our team become rebel good guys, hiding from the law, just like the A-Team?

I do like one thing the writer has done in the episode. Helen has been increasingly appearing to be the over-the-top diabolical crazy villain that appears to want to take over the world. If we can take things at face value, now it would appear that her agenda is to save the world. She simply differs with Cutter over our place in the grand scheme of things. Can we be agents of change in the future for good or must we face the future and accept it meekly?

Amusingly, Cutter is on the wrong side of that argument, but one wonders why Helen cares? Being that she’s seen the depth of time for herself, she must also understand that nothing can last forever – including herself, and while she might be able to change the future, she can never live long enough to guarantee that it continues to lead to a future she desires.

Still, it’s nice to see Helen slightly less one-dimensional. It’s a pity she’s obviously not read any time travel fiction, or watched Doctor Who or she’d realize that history isn’t always right. The predators won’t have been created by the ARC (although the might escape from there) they’ll be released somehow by the very artifact that she took to ARC, meaning, ultimately that she will be culpable in the downfall of man through her own actions to save it. History is probably wrong because of some ill-informed journalism by the reporter who is dogging the team now.

I’ve had my misgivings about the make-up of the team for some time, and Cutter’s death doesn’t bode well for the future. Consider the first series team, A Paleontologist (Cutter), a second Paleontologist with big game hunting experience (Stephen), a third paleontology student with some computer skills (Conner), a zoologist (Abby) and two mandarins (Lester and Claudia.) Not exactly a crack squad of experts, but at least they were there because they were Johnny-on-the-spot.

Series 2 gets difficult. Conner certainly seems to have changed his specialty, now seemingly an electronics whiz, but apart from the Claudia/Jenny fiasco, the team remains much the same. Basically unqualified to investigate temporal phenomena, despite the vast resources of the ARC, the team has added no experts in physics, for example, or any other field that might help.

Now, we’ve added Dr. Page, who, as professor of mythology is… sorry… worthless, and we’ve lost Cutter, the brains of the outfit. They’re going to bring back that cop, who, while perhaps handy in a firefight, will be worthless at figuring out anything about the anomalies.

It doesn’t bode well.

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  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk Simon Wood

    Hmmm. Just watched this.

    I can’t quite believe that’s it for Cutter. I think it might just be another way of giving him a bit of a break from filming (as you noted last week) and he’ll be back Owen Harper style (perhaps some shift in the timestream at the end of the series, like the one that eliminated Claudia Brown).

    I agree about your comments on the make up of the team, and I think the problems are of the producers’ making. They couldn’t have stuck with the bunch-of-misfits but right-people-in-the-right-place for subsequent series. Instead they used a naff plot device to create an instant high-tech outfit without creating the appropriate professionals and specialists that would have inevitably been recruited to such an establishment. Now they’re tearing it down again (though it does look like they may have patched it up for the next episode).

    This series feels like there’s a bit more of a sense of purpose, but whatever it is I suspect that it’s probably not very interesting.

  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk One-Ten

    Hmmm. Just watched this.

    I can’t quite believe that’s it for Cutter. I think it might just be another way of giving him a bit of a break from filming (as you noted last week) and he’ll be back Owen Harper style (perhaps some shift in the timestream at the end of the series, like the one that eliminated Claudia Brown).

    I agree about your comments on the make up of the team, and I think the problems are of the producers’ making. They couldn’t have stuck with the bunch-of-misfits but right-people-in-the-right-place for subsequent series. Instead they used a naff plot device to create an instant high-tech outfit without creating the appropriate professionals and specialists that would have inevitably been recruited to such an establishment. Now they’re tearing it down again (though it does look like they may have patched it up for the next episode).

    This series feels like there’s a bit more of a sense of purpose, but whatever it is I suspect that it’s probably not very interesting.

  • http://lonelocust.com Lone Locust

    I should perhaps clarify my use of the term “writers”. I’m not being strictly correct. I have an tendency, which is not right, to attribute the producers of British shows as the “the writers” because, as it quite often in shows like this, it’s really one or more writers that brings to show to life and often assume the duties of producer – Russell T. Davies comes to mind. While many episodes are written by different writers, I do feel that the overall hand and pen of the writer/producers is stamped on all major plot points – team composition, change in timelines, death of characters, etc.

    Did you notice that Cutter had a haircut this episode? And so did his clone! What are the odds!?

    Here’s a thought that hit me after I wrote the post – not really important I suppose but, Helen is all that is left of our universe.

    All this time, the show has been Cutter, Cutter, Cutter. Cutter started out in our universe (at least, I felt like that was our world) and then he got shifted to an alternate timeline. The new world just never seemed quite right. But now with Cutter gone, we’ve lost our last link to our own reality – except, perhaps, Helen.

    The show really was our shared journey with Cutter into a new world, and now we’ve been cast adrift. I feel strangely alienated.

  • http://lonelocust.com Gridman

    I should perhaps clarify my use of the term “writers”. I’m not being strictly correct. I have an tendency, which is not right, to attribute the producers of British shows as the “the writers” because, as it quite often in shows like this, it’s really one or more writers that brings to show to life and often assume the duties of producer – Russell T. Davies comes to mind. While many episodes are written by different writers, I do feel that the overall hand and pen of the writer/producers is stamped on all major plot points – team composition, change in timelines, death of characters, etc.

    Did you notice that Cutter had a haircut this episode? And so did his clone! What are the odds!?

    Here’s a thought that hit me after I wrote the post – not really important I suppose but, Helen is all that is left of our universe.

    All this time, the show has been Cutter, Cutter, Cutter. Cutter started out in our universe (at least, I felt like that was our world) and then he got shifted to an alternate timeline. The new world just never seemed quite right. But now with Cutter gone, we’ve lost our last link to our own reality – except, perhaps, Helen.

    The show really was our shared journey with Cutter into a new world, and now we’ve been cast adrift. I feel strangely alienated.

  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk Simon Wood

    I don’t know any (current) writers and I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect there’s a distinction to be made between the individual freelance writer who successfully pitches an episode, and the writers/producers(/script editors) who tell her what to include and do the re-rewrites afterwards. It’s the latter that I think we’re both talking about.

    It occurred to me that Cutter might have had a haircut but then I though perhaps he just hadn’t washed it. All the same, I think one of them had shaved more recently (I forget which).

    And so much for my theory about manipulating the time stream; Helen has confessed to future-cloning. I really thought it had been implied at the send of series 2, but I must have just made it up.

  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk One-Ten

    I don’t know any (current) writers and I have no inside knowledge, but I suspect there’s a distinction to be made between the individual freelance writer who successfully pitches an episode, and the writers/producers(/script editors) who tell her what to include and do the re-rewrites afterwards. It’s the latter that I think we’re both talking about.

    It occurred to me that Cutter might have had a haircut but then I though perhaps he just hadn’t washed it. All the same, I think one of them had shaved more recently (I forget which).

    And so much for my theory about manipulating the time stream; Helen has confessed to future-cloning. I really thought it had been implied at the send of series 2, but I must have just made it up.

  • http://lonelocust.com Lone Locust

    Actually, I think she did imply that. If I recall correctly, she was talking to Steven’s grave and saying something like, “anything is possible” just as the clone troopers came out.

    One could easily imply that she meant “with time travel, anything is possible” and indeed, that’s true…

  • http://lonelocust.com Gridman

    Actually, I think she did imply that. If I recall correctly, she was talking to Steven’s grave and saying something like, “anything is possible” just as the clone troopers came out.

    One could easily imply that she meant “with time travel, anything is possible” and indeed, that’s true…

  • nyima

    so faR, i have only watched thru Season 3, episode 4.

    BUT, what happened to Cutter’s clone as “Cutter” (?) original rushed in to save Helen and try to hide the artifact? If he was accounted for, I must have missed it. I keep thinking that
    Cutter Original and Cutter Clone may have switched outfits, and Helen merely shot the Cutter Clone (well, with quite a newly developed personality! ready and able to self-sacrifice). I did not see Clone accounted for. Is Cutter Original hiding in the shadows waiting to re-appear?

  • nyima

    so faR, i have only watched thru Season 3, episode 4.

    BUT, what happened to Cutter’s clone as “Cutter” (?) original rushed in to save Helen and try to hide the artifact? If he was accounted for, I must have missed it. I keep thinking that
    Cutter Original and Cutter Clone may have switched outfits, and Helen merely shot the Cutter Clone (well, with quite a newly developed personality! ready and able to self-sacrifice). I did not see Clone accounted for. Is Cutter Original hiding in the shadows waiting to re-appear?