If mythological creatures are manifestations of anomalies, are haunted houses, also?
Synopsis
14 years ago a magnificent house stands empty. Teenagers break in, but they don’t get out.
Back in the present, Cutter has used the data from Dr. Page’s research to build a new model of the anomalies, with it, he is able to make a prediction of a location for an anomaly. Jenny, Conner and Abby go to investigate. The site is the same house, still abandoned and now in disrepair. Something is still in the house, something fast and able to camouflage itself at will.
Adding to the mystery, a hard-nosed copper tries to keep the ARC team from researching the house.
Meanwhile, Helen steals Dr. Page’s access pass to the ARC and sends one of her clone troopers to steal Cutter’s clothes. The intruder is detected and killed. Cutter begins to get a glimmer when he recognizes the dead man as the same guy who was killed in the Silurian desert in series 2. And why does he want Cutter’s clothes?
Abby discovers a little girl who is feeding the creature back at the house. The girl does it so the creature won’t eat the neighborhood pets – or people.
A showdown happens at the house, just as an anomaly opens and, at first, the creature finally goes home – then it decides to come back and kill people, so the cop pops a few caps in its ass.
Analysis
There’s a lot going on in this episode, little of it good.
But first, let’s digress for a few moments and discuss brilliance. Brilliance is tough for some writers – perhaps most writers – because, by definition, brilliant people are difficult to follow for the average person. It follows that, if the writer cannot think brilliantly, it would be difficult to put thoughts in the head of a brilliant character. Difficult, but not impossible. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is a classic example. Holmes’ brilliance is apparent in his almost magical ability to discern things others cannot see, but ultimately, they are explained as reasonable and understandable manifestations of human capabilities, used more effectively.
Sadly, Dr. Cutter’s character isn’t done this justice. The writer’s have confused preternatural clarity of vision with “anything unexplained thing Cutter says must be brilliant because it doesn’t make sense.”
Case and point, his new 3D model of the anomalies is just idiotic. What does it represent? Are we really supposed to believe that bending a few plastic rods around the room yields a meaningful model? What are the X, Y and Z axes in that sculpture? Surely, if time and location are factored in, it would have to have four (or more) dimensions, something that would have to be done in a computer to conceptualize. Certainly a three-dimension model would be wholly inadequate. The writer’s throw a bone to the audience when Jenny asks if it couldn’t be done on a computer. I suppose that was their way of justifying the real-world model, trying to stave off critics like me, but Cutter’s reply shows they gave the concept of the model no thought at all, they just wanted to give him a set-piece to brood over visually. (Another writers’ short-cut for portraying brilliance.)
New rule at the ARC: All employees must be shown a picture of Helen Cutter as a condition of their employment. (Obviously, they don’t have that rule, but I think they should.)
Even after Dr. Page’s badge is stolen and used to infiltrate the ARC, it doesn’t appear that (a) she either put two and two together and realized the woman that knocked her over was the pickpocket that stole her pass or (b) anyone at the ARC was remotely interested in how her pass ended up in the bad guy’s hands.
Cutter even deduces that Helen was the culprit, but doesn’t bother to show her picture to Page after the fact. Sloppy. Really sloppy. I hope that doesn’t mean Dr. Page will encounter Helen again and still not know who she is, thus allowing other needless plot complications.
Let’s turn our attention to the anomaly in this episode. Cutter’s model “predicted” this anomaly, but not when it would arrive – or so they stated. Did his model predict that it would reoccur? That would have been something worth mentioning.
We’re given no information about where this anomaly is connected to, but it seems reasonable to assume that the creature was a future-creature. At times, it seemed to speak English. Certainly, I thought I heard whispery sounds that were like, “not time yet” presumably referring to the return of the anomaly. This would imply that the creature was intelligent in the human meaning of the word. If so, it was pretty dumb and animalistic in its behavior. Surely an intelligent creature could do a much better job of hiding and waiting for the anomaly to return. Being lured out like a trained animal by the little girl to get food was completely foolish.
Here’s another problem with Primeval – the things from future seem to be intelligent and menacing. The bat creatures were once even described as possibly the predators that evolved to prey on humans. In the last episode, we saw them slaughter a squad of soldiers who were on a “suicide mission” to the future. Was anyone else unconvinced by that? One unprepared squad of soldiers might be wiped out, but these creatures aren’t immune to our technological weapons. Bullets kill them, and we’ve got lots better weapons than bullets. They aren’t a credible threat, unless, of course, you’re a writer and you’re not going to let the human characters win by making them not try their best.
What about this cop? He’s obviously been setup as a future character. Will he be ally, foe or wild card that Helen doesn’t know about that ultimately saves the day?
At the end of the episode, Helen succeeds in stealing Cutter’s DNA. What ever could she want that for? Wasn’t it clever of her to risk so much, steal Page’s pass, send one of her minions (to his death) into the very heart of the high-security ARC just to get Cutter’s shirt to get some DNA, when all she had to do was slip into his unprotected home and get some out of his his brush? (Couldn’t she have done that during the day and had even less chance of getting caught?
I’ve got to stop know, my head hurts.
I’m not going to defend the episode, but I’m going to offer the writer the benefit of the doubt. I’m not a particular fan of James Moran either, his episodes of both Torchwood and Doctor Who were so-so. It’s just that I think the big three dimensional thing looked much better than yet another slick-but-nonsense 3D model.
Suppose Moran wrote that the sculpture thing is an interface for a multi-dimensional computer model. The position of each node in real 3D space is mapped onto a (or multiple) representation of space-time. In realising the episode maybe they chucked the idea because they didn’t have the time or budget to show the actual computer programme. Can’t blame the writer for that.
Basically, I want to defend it for not being yet another screenshot of some completely unusable but pretty computer graphic. It is true, though, that details like the dialogue you mention may arise from the realities of production rather than any original intention on the writer’s part.
It wasn’t obvious to me that the cop was going to become a recurring character but we need some more wild cards. Helen in the first series was wonderfully unpredictable – you didn’t know what her agenda was until right at the end. Now she’s just straight “bad” we need another adventurer who has no agenda but their own.
No Ben Miller in this episode. Does that fact you haven’t commented on this (I didn’t notice until the end) mean he is superfluous? Or was his absence the reason the whole thing felt rather stale?
I’m not going to defend the episode, but I’m going to offer the writer the benefit of the doubt. I’m not a particular fan of James Moran either, his episodes of both Torchwood and Doctor Who were so-so. It’s just that I think the big three dimensional thing looked much better than yet another slick-but-nonsense 3D model.
Suppose Moran wrote that the sculpture thing is an interface for a multi-dimensional computer model. The position of each node in real 3D space is mapped onto a (or multiple) representation of space-time. In realising the episode maybe they chucked the idea because they didn’t have the time or budget to show the actual computer programme. Can’t blame the writer for that.
Basically, I want to defend it for not being yet another screenshot of some completely unusable but pretty computer graphic. It is true, though, that details like the dialogue you mention may arise from the realities of production rather than any original intention on the writer’s part.
It wasn’t obvious to me that the cop was going to become a recurring character but we need some more wild cards. Helen in the first series was wonderfully unpredictable – you didn’t know what her agenda was until right at the end. Now she’s just straight “bad” we need another adventurer who has no agenda but their own.
No Ben Miller in this episode. Does that fact you haven’t commented on this (I didn’t notice until the end) mean he is superfluous? Or was his absence the reason the whole thing felt rather stale?
Actually, I didn’t really notice Ben Miller’s absence, but… what I did notice is that this episode felt like a budget-stretcher, with only half the cast being used at any given time – Cutter, Page and new military guy (has he got a name?) being there, but superfluous. Can you actually imagine Dr. I’ve-Got-To-Do-Everything Cutter staying behind in the lab and not going out to investigate a potential anomaly? Totally out of character with every previous episode.
I’m guessing that one of the next episodes will “short” Abby, Conner and Jen-audia. (Or should that be Clanny?) I gather this is a 10-episode series to stretch it out enough for a second DVD release, that could be why they need to pad a bit.
The fact that they took the effort to film the post-crisis scene with the cop talking to his superior explaining he was quitting and he’d “turn something up” as a new job, seemed like a setup for his return. Also, the fact that they spent a lot of time establishing he is a top marksman seems wasteful if they’re not going to use him again.
Agreed about Helen, before she was manipulative with an unknown agenda, now she has really become a two-dimensional “evil” villain… all she needs is a mustache to twirl. Her agenda is still unknown (or is it because their is no clear goal in the writers’ heads?) but now her motives seem just driven by evil or mischief.
A friend of mine came over to the house last night, just shortly after I’d written my post, so he hadn’t had time to see it yet. Almost the first thing he said was, “Did you not review this episode because you haven’t watched it yet or was it because it was the worst episode they’ve ever done?”
Actually, it was neither, I was just completely non-plussed.
Actually, I didn’t really notice Ben Miller’s absence, but… what I did notice is that this episode felt like a budget-stretcher, with only half the cast being used at any given time – Cutter, Page and new military guy (has he got a name?) being there, but superfluous. Can you actually imagine Dr. I’ve-Got-To-Do-Everything Cutter staying behind in the lab and not going out to investigate a potential anomaly? Totally out of character with every previous episode.
I’m guessing that one of the next episodes will “short” Abby, Conner and Jen-audia. (Or should that be Clanny?) I gather this is a 10-episode series to stretch it out enough for a second DVD release, that could be why they need to pad a bit.
The fact that they took the effort to film the post-crisis scene with the cop talking to his superior explaining he was quitting and he’d “turn something up” as a new job, seemed like a setup for his return. Also, the fact that they spent a lot of time establishing he is a top marksman seems wasteful if they’re not going to use him again.
Agreed about Helen, before she was manipulative with an unknown agenda, now she has really become a two-dimensional “evil” villain… all she needs is a mustache to twirl. Her agenda is still unknown (or is it because their is no clear goal in the writers’ heads?) but now her motives seem just driven by evil or mischief.
A friend of mine came over to the house last night, just shortly after I’d written my post, so he hadn’t had time to see it yet. Almost the first thing he said was, “Did you not review this episode because you haven’t watched it yet or was it because it was the worst episode they’ve ever done?”
Actually, it was neither, I was just completely non-plussed.
I’m sure you’re right about the cop, although on reflection I don’t think he’s going to be much of a wild card. Regrettably he’s too dull to have a hidden agenda.
I take your point about Helen’s agenda still being unknown in the details, but it has been made clear in no uncertain terms that it’s headed in your basic take-over-all-of-time direction.
Previously there was something rather attractive about her misanthropic but carefree adventuress character, living an albeit lonely high-life in her eras of choice. I think her character, then and (such as it is) now, is essentially as different as Jendia and Clanny.
I’m sure you’re right about the cop, although on reflection I don’t think he’s going to be much of a wild card. Regrettably he’s too dull to have a hidden agenda.
I take your point about Helen’s agenda still being unknown in the details, but it has been made clear in no uncertain terms that it’s headed in your basic take-over-all-of-time direction.
Previously there was something rather attractive about her misanthropic but carefree adventuress character, living an albeit lonely high-life in her eras of choice. I think her character, then and (such as it is) now, is essentially as different as Jendia and Clanny.