Writers: Ben Court & Caroline Ip
Director: Andrew Gunn
Cast: Douglas Henshall (Professor Nick Cutter), Hannah Spearritt (Abby Maitland), James Murray (Stephen Hart), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor Temple), Karl Theobald (Oliver Leek), Ben Miller (James Lester), Naomi Bentley (Caroline Steel), Lucy Brown (Jenny Lewis), Juliet Aubrey (Helen Cutter) & Mabel Rogers (Taylor)
Director: Andrew Gunn
Cast: Douglas Henshall (Professor Nick Cutter), Hannah Spearritt (Abby Maitland), James Murray (Stephen Hart), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor Temple), Karl Theobald (Oliver Leek), Ben Miller (James Lester), Naomi Bentley (Caroline Steel), Lucy Brown (Jenny Lewis), Juliet Aubrey (Helen Cutter) & Mabel Rogers (Taylor)
Cutter and Stephen venture through an anomaly to rescue a little girl, but become trapped in a desert of giant scorpions…"If we tread lightly, we should be okay…"
-- Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall)
It's abundantly clear this second season has improved on the tepid first. While there are still characterisation issues and lapses into formula, Primeval is delivering an hour of monster mayhem I'm not ashamed to admit I'm enjoying.
This fifth episode, written by Ben Court and Caroline Ip (who adapted 2001's The Hole), opens with a little girl called Taylor (Mabel Rogers) following her dog Scrap down a tunnel where a sparkling anomaly lurks – finding herself transported to a stormy, featureless desert…
At the ARC, Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts) is puzzled to find his Anomaly Detection Device has been infiltrated by spy-ware and they've lost the signal on the latest anomaly. Cutter (Douglas Henshall) suspects it's the work of the men they've been noticing lurking around their operations recently.
Cutter's actually right, as office hand Oliver Leek (Karl Theobald) arrives at the tunnel anomaly with his armed-response team, headed by "The Cleaner", and watches as they march through the anomaly for an hour-long mission ahead of the ARC crew. Arriving on the other side (in scenes that reminded me of Stargate), the unit spot the missing girl Taylor on some rocks a short distance away, but The Cleaner orders his men to ignore her and continue with their mission. Whatever that is!
It doesn't matter, as the men are soon embroiled in a gunfight with a menace lurking beneath the sand – with only hosepipe-like tentacles breaking the surface. Taylor watches on from her rocky safety, as the men are seemingly wiped out by the subterranean creatures.
Away from the action, the episode also continues the maddeningly vague subplot for Helen Cutter (Juliet Aubrey), who we now know is pulling Leek's strings. She's returned to the present day to use Stephen's (James Murray) shower – although the series is still annoyingly tight-lipped about how Helen can so easily flit around in time, using the anomalies as revolving doors! No matter, her appearance here only serves two purposes: to lay a seed of doubt in Stephen's mind, by suggesting Lester has a "hidden agenda"; and to treat the male viewers to a shower scene.
Jenny (Lucy Brown) improbably arrives at ARC from her engagement party, still dressed in a killer white dress, merely because she heard another anomaly has been detected. She must have a very understanding fiancé, particularly as we know Jenny's involvement in missions never amounts to much, beyond smouldering in power suits and dresses… as she does once again here.
The team belatedly find the anomaly and Connor drives a remote-controlled buggy through it as reconnaissance. That makes perfect sense (considering some time periods might not have breathable atmospheres), although they've never before shown any interest in testing the ground in this manner. Regardless, the buggy's video feed spots Taylor, still stranded on her rocks, and Cutter decides to go through to rescue her.
If there's one thing I really appreciated about this episode, it's the location shooting. The series often uses foreign locations to double as the distance past/future, but it’s usually only for a few shots or a quick sequence. Here, Primeval finally bases the majority of an episode in the past, as Cutter and Stephen venture through to the sweltering desert of rolling sand dunes.
They quickly find high-tech equipment, the remains of Leek's soldiers – who Cutter discovers were slaughtered by a creature under the sand, after reviewing video footage through some goggles. As if on cue, the scorpions attack, burrowing through the sand in echoes of Tremors, as Cutter and Stephen run for safety to some rocks where Taylor awaits them.
Unfortunately, and it had to happen sometime on this show, the anomaly closes, trapping Cutter, Stephen and Taylor in prehistory with little water and ravenous scorpions circling the sand around them.
In the present, there's another fairly listless subplot for Connor and Abby (Hannah Spearritt), revolving around Connor trying to dump girlfriend Caroline (Naomie Bentley) by text message. Despite agreeing with Abby that ending a relationship that way would be callous, he does so anyway… and Caroline exacts revenge at their flat by swatting pet dinosaur Rex with a tennis racquet!
Connor and Abby also have some tension-relieving fun by chasing a giant centipede through a restaurant into a plastic ball pool, after being made leaders of the ARC team now that Cutter and Stephen have been lost in the past. As Lester (Ben Miller) puts it, it's like letting "Daphne and Scrappy" takeover the Scooby Gang – which was a good analogy!
Back in the past, Taylor reveals herself to be quite irritating and mouthy, as she's taken with Cutter and Stephen along the rocks, in the vague hope that another anomaly will reopen sometime soon. Eventually, Cutter's hand-held anomaly detector begins to bleep, but a badly-timed sandstorm hits and they're forced to take cover.
When the storm subsides, Cutter goes to recover his dropped detector from the sand and comes face-to-face with the sole survivor of Leek's team: The Cleaner he ran into last week. Held at gunpoint, Cutter is forced to handover their detector and water supply, although he manages to turn the tables by forcing The Cleaner to shoot the sand a few times – alerting a sand scorpion to their presence, and watching as it attacks The Cleaner.
Forced to walk across the sand themselves to get to another anomaly that has opened, Stephen is attacked by a scorpion and half-dragged into the sand. Taylor has the bright idea of stomping the ground, which draws the attention of another scorpion… and the two creatures rise out of the sand to fight one another for the food, meaning Stephen is dropped to the floor.
In the obligatory "stupid moment" of the episode; Cutter, Stephen and Taylor find a shell from one of the scorpions and decide to use it as a sled… sliding down a dune, out of harms way, towards a new anomaly. After going through, they arrive in a forest and discovering a palaeolithic tent, where a loin-clothed human appears carrying a spear – only to be amusingly punched to the floor by Cutter. But things aren’t quite what they seem, as Abby and Connor arrive, and it's made clear they've luckily returned to a present day theme park called "Lost World".
After returning Taylor to her step-dad Stephen – and promising the little girl she can join their team when she leaves school (I wonder if that will come true?) – Cutter returns to his office with the incriminating goggles that belonged to one of Leek's soldiers, only to have them stolen when he turns his back for a second! Meanwhile, Abby and Connor return home to find their flat has been wrecked and Rex is missing…
Like I said, I had a lot of fun with this episode. The season's recurring plots were touched upon quite nicely (although Helen and Naomie aren't really being utilized very well), and the episode contained plenty of what Primeval does best: incident and special-effects. The scorpions were fantastic creations, and the location shooting really makes Primeval stand out – particularly when compared to the resolutely British-set Doctor Who.
Of course, the characters are never much more than dolls to be put in harm's way, with the actors continually upstaged by the effects… but Primeval has never claimed to be anything but a pure action-adventure show. It failed dismally last year because the plots were dull/repetitive and its mythology was riddled with holes -- but steps have been taken to correct many of the mistakes now. I'm still irked by Helen Cutter's puzzling role in the show, and it's difficult for Primeval to break its basic story template most weeks, but I'm just happy it's increased the fun-factor...
Writers Ben Court and Caroline Ip certainly know how to craft a thrilling adventure -- clearly inspired by Tremors, with a few nods to Stargate -- and their episode benefits from staging the adventure in the past for once. After a comment I made recently about cavemen never wandering through anomalies into the present, I was even excited to see Cutter and his team stumble upon homo erectus in the past… and felt a bit let down when it turned out to be a bluff! Maybe one day these anomalies won't just target ancient wildernesses full of giant beasts…
Overall, a fine piece of escapist action; brimming with confrontations and given life with excellent effects and invaluable location shooting. There are the usual plot-holes, humdrum subplots, and shallow characterisations… but it's never boring and it kept me pleasantly entertained.
9 February 2008
ITV1, 7.20 pm
