Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse… Primeval – Series 3, Episode 6, Review (Spoilers)

Can no one put two and two together?

Synopsis

Quinn and Becker test the ARC’s security, unknown to them, Christine Johnson and her soldiers watch everything through concealed surveillance cameras.

Meanwhile, Conner and Page continue to study the artifact. Page gets the idea of passing a laser through it, and, after various attempts, the artifact projects a 3D image of something that looks very much like Cutter’s modern-art piece of an anomaly map. Christine sees this and launches a takeover of the ARC.

Quinn discovers one of the cameras and they realize the game is up. Becker helps Quinn, Conner, Abby and Page, along with the artifact, escape to a safe house Lester has arranged, just as Christine’s people take over the ARC and assume command.

Lester is fired and Becker is taken into Christine’s team.

At the safe house, there’s a mystery. It hasn’t been used in years, since before the war. It was a research base for a group of scientists working on a top secret project, who left the place as if they expected to come back, but never did.

Conner discovers the dead body of one of the scientists in a nearby bunker, trapped in a small observation room. His coded diary, which Page easily decodes, ends on the note, “oh no they’re back” or something like that.

With nothing better to do, everyone gets dressed up in period costumes and dances the afternoon away. Unbeknownst to them, and anomaly opens up right in the very bunker where they found the dead scientist and the area is now swarming with Terror Birds.

The anomaly detector at the ARC alerts Christine and her staff, and a team are dispatched. Meanwhile, our heroes battle it out, unarmed against the ferocious birds.

Christine’s team is killed by the birds, but Quinn manages to lure them back into the anomaly, which conveniently closes.

Due to some unguarded words spoken by Christine to Becker, who recorded her, the minister has her removed and Lester is put back in charge of the ARC.

All’s well that ends well, as the episode closes with a rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

(Oh, and Abby’s little brother holds a poker party while she’s out and looses Rex in a hand of poker.)

Analysis

Do I have to start every analysis section with the sentence, “There’s a lot wrong with the episode?”

So, let’s dwell on the good for a moment or two. It was a bit of an action-packed story, which. on that level, was rather entertaining.

So much for the good part.

Ignoring all the stuff going on with political intrigue and costume drama, does no one on the ARC staff have enough of a brain to realize that the safe house having an anomaly cannot possibly be a coincidence?!?!?! Is is not obvious that scientists either died because of the anomaly – or went through it, never (yet) to return? Does it not seem very, very, very, very, very suspicious to them that this was an laboratory working on top secret defense projects and yet nobody ever apparently bothered to even check up on them and clean up the food left on the tables? Or that this is a safehouse from Lester’s Ministry?!?!?!?The same people who brought you Christine Johnson – who knows more about the anomalies than the ARC people?

Hello! Even in this corner of the universe, 2+2=4, and yet no one mentioned any notion that there could be a connection between the safehouse and the anomalies, or the scientific research and the anomalies. This might even be the source of the anomalies to begin with.

Instead we get a heartwarming return of Lester and lots of applause and a musical interlude. What’s up with that?

Next week looks even better, a medieval knight and a dragon. (No, I’m not making that up.)