Primeval – Episode 6 – Review

Series 1 comes to a close with a few new anomalies – in the script.

Synopsis

Claudia confronts Cutter about Helen. She is confused that Helen saved her life in the previous episode and she cannot get a straight answer from Cutter as to whether he loves Helen or not. Claudia isn’t feeling well because she’s been having nightmares.

The anomaly in the Forest of Dean reopens and something escapes. Shortly thereafter, one of the lions at Abbey’s zoo disappears.

Helen appears to Stephen and asks him to arrange a meeting with Cutter and Lester. Her demeanor with Stephen indicates something more than friendly relations between them.

Conner has had some blood found at the lion cage analyzed and it contains bat blood with strange DNA.

Helen reveals to Cutter that a super-predator with human intelligence, from the future, had arrived through an anomaly in the Permian and followed her back to the present. This time she apparently wants to stay and moves back in with Cutter. Cutter allows this but he clearly has reservations about her and doesn’t succumb to her advances.

Conner tells Stephen about the bat blood and the missing lion. Stephen rushes to the zoo to protect Abbey. There, they are attacked by the creature, but Capt. Ryan arrives and runs the creature off.

Cutter explains to Captain Ryan that this creature should be killed on sight. Unlike the creatures from the past, this creature posses no threat to history if they kill it. This makes Capt. Ryan happy.

They hunt it into the woods and it starts to pick off the soldiers with ease. The creature moves with incredible speed and leaves no trail. Conner deduces that it uses sound to echolocate and goes back to the car to get an oscilloscope to track the creature.

The creature attacks Conner and Abbey distracts it, saving his life. Stephen, in turn, shoots the creature, saving Abbey’s life. Wounded, but not slowed down, the creature escapes.

Using the oscilloscope, they track the creature to its lair, where they discover a litter of babies, and the dead bodies of people the creature is feeding to the babies. The creature attacks to defend the babies and cutter grabs one and runs into the greenhouse. When the creature follows, he shoots out the windows. The sound of shattering glass “blinds” the creature and Cutter puts a bullet into its brain.

Cutter argues (successfully) to Lester that they need to take the babies back to the Permian so it can lead them to the anomaly into the future. There, they must setup a permanent defense against anything else coming through the anomaly. Lester grudgingly agrees.

Cutter, Helen, Capt. Ryan, some soldiers and the baby creatures head back to the Permian. Before they leave, Claudia gives Cutter a big farewell kiss in front of everyone.

In the Permian, they setup camp. Helen snaps a few pictures, then hands Cutter her camera and poses for him. He snaps the photo and realizes that they are the people who left the camp, the camera and the dead body of a man behind. Apparently the last time the anomaly appeared in the present, it was further in the Permian future.

Conner gets a call from the lab, the creature Cutter killed was male. There might be another creature. No sooner is this said something fast and nearly invisible rushes into the anomaly.

Cutter is getting everyone to break camp when the creature arrives and it starts to rip the soldiers apart. It starts to kill Capt. Ryan but a Gorgonopsid arrives and attacks the creature. A fight between the beast ensues and when it is over, the baby creatures have apparently been killed and/or eaten by the Gorgonopsid and the adult creature is dead.

Capt. Ryan, critically wounded, realizes that it was his body they found on their last trip and dies. Cutter and Helen, the only survivors, bury the dead. Helen wants to stay to find the future anomaly. Cutter realizes all along that all she’s been after is a way to find the future anomaly. He convinces her to go back.

When they arrive, she has a new bombshell for him. Since he won’t go with her, she reveals that, 8 years ago, she and Stephen had been having an affair. She asks Stephen to come with her. Stephen refuses, telling Helen he’d forgotten what a bitch she could be. Helen leaves. The betrayal has hit Cutter hard, but the worst is yet to come. He realizes Claudia is missing.

No one else knows who she is.

History has been changed.

End of series.

Analysis

I enjoy this series, but it’s a guilty pleasure. It’s got nothing to do stellar writing and everything to do with scenes like the gorgonopsid and the future creature battling.

There have been so many badly patched up plot holes that they managed to pull a magician-like redirection on me. I completely and utterly did not see the whole, “The camp and dead bodies in the Permian are us” scenario. It should have been as obvious as could be but, because some many other things were poorly fleshed out, I just assumed the identity of the dead body was being glossed over as part of the mystery of Helen.

Despite the fact that it almost-sort-of tied up the loose ends from the first episode, this story still had a certain feel of “Blimey! We’ve been given a second season! Quick, re-write the ending of episode 6 to allow us to continue! Oh, and we need to write Claudia out, too.”

Still, there was some sign that the writers planned the ending all along. Episode 2’s mention of Stephen’s girlfriend returning, but then going away makes sense in that he was referring to Helen.

Cutter and crew are still too lenient on Helen. They simply don’t spend enough time trying to get her to answer questions. It’s obvious she knows more about the anomalies than she is revealing yet they just don’t seem to be trying to get answers.

The use of an oscilloscope to locate the creature was just maddening. That’s not to say an oscilloscope cannot be used to measure sound waves, but, the unit Conner retrieved from the car didn’t really look to be equipped for sound.

Claudia’s disappearance is more troubling. I haven’t heard anything about whether actress Lucy Brown will be returning next year or not, but her non-existence gives them plenty of opportunity to drop another actress into that roll on the team without awkward questions: they can place a new character Cutter doesn’t recognize but everyone else has been working with for months. It could add a whole new angle to the budding romance between Cutter and Claudia. What if in this new reality, he’d been getting equally close with her replacement? (Hopefully, it’s not a man.)

What’s really disturbing though is the “premonition” that she had. She saw herself distorted like an anomaly in the mirror. What did it mean? Was her nonexistence predestined? If it was predestined, why wasn’t she gone already. What happened in the Permian appeared to be exactly what needed to happen to achieve their own past.

It was also very ham-fisted when they finally mentioned that killing one of the creatures from the past might affect the future. You’d think if they’d been thinking about Claudia’s disappearance since the beginning they’d have laid the groundwork in an earlier episode.

Could there be more? It still seems quite odd that Helen arrived just to save Claudia in the last episode. Perhaps she needed her alive for some reason? Perhaps when she returns at the end of this episode it wasn’t just to cause a falling out between Cutter and Stephen. Perhaps she was verifying the Claudia was gone. Helen has shown that she knows where the anomalies will appear and can use them. Why couldn’t she locate the future anomaly in the Permian? is it possible that there’s more than one Helen? We know that the anomalies don’t have to remain linear. Each of Helen’s appearances might not be chronological to our frame of reference.

If future anomalies are also opening into the past, wouldn’t time be being ripped apart by even more incursions that aren’t being contained by Cutter’s team? Instead, the only influence on time we’ve seen has been in this episode, and clearly Helen was manipulating the outcome of this story from square one.

I’d like to think there’s a terribly clever explanation to all this, but I’m still convinced it’s just sloppy writing. Still, I’m looking forward to the next series. Ten months until the next series, though! It’s interminable. At least Doctor Who starts in a couple weeks.

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