Writer: Adrian Hodges
Director: Nick MurphyCast: Douglas Henshall (Professor Nick Cutter), James Murray (Stephen Hart), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor Temple), Hannah Spearritt (Abby Maitland), Ben Miller (James Lester), Juliet Aubrey (Helen Cutter), Lucy Brown (Jenny Lewis), Karl Theobald (Oliver Leek) & Naomi Bentley (Caroline)
Cutter and his team are trapped in an underground bunker, with Leek threatening to release captured animals, as Helen reveals her own agenda…If there's one thing Primeval proved during its second season, it's that it could lace episodes with compelling questions to keep casual viewers hooked, and adults intrigued. Sadly, this finale proves it can't answer them imaginatively. Not that I really expected it to -- going on past performances…
Episode 7 continues from last week's cliffhanger, with Cutter (Douglas Henshall) and Jenny (Lucy Brown) sharing a cell together in the bowels of a disused MOD bunker, prisoners of turncoat Leek (Karl Theobald) and devious Helen (Juliet Aubrey). Their team-mates Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts) and Abby (Hannah Spearritt) are also captive in their own cell nearby.
As we suspected, Leek and Helen have been collecting creatures for their own personal menagerie – although one of Leek's men also takes time out to release a Silurian Scorpion at a local beach. In one of the show's bread-and-butter sequences, the holidaymakers are soon attracting the subterranean creature's attention by beating the sand with spades, playing volleyball, and suchlike…
But the critter doesn't attack until a sunbather (who appears to have arrived through a time-anomaly himself; with his 80s-era ghetto-blaster blaring out Yazz's "The Only Way Is Up") attracts its attention and is promptly eaten – thus emptying the beach very quickly of more food.
Sneaky accomplice Caroline (Naomie Bentley) has reached the end of her usefulness to Leek, so he throws her into a cell with Connor and Abby. Dullard Connor fails to realize his girlfriend was part of the plan all this time (at first), but it gives Abby the chance for a quick cat-fight – in one of those unnecessary and silly scenes Primeval likes to throw-up every so often.
Meanwhile, Cutter admits to Jenny that he still feels affection for evil Helen, who is monitoring her ex-husband from a control room, and looks to be similarly smitten despite all that's happened between them… while Jenny reveals she's no longer engaged to her fiance. What happened there? Oh yeah, she walked out half-way through their engagement party a few weeks back! That'll do it.
Lester (Ben Miller) is busy pacing ARC, waiting for word from his AWOL team, before deciding to make a call to Stephen (James Murray) -- who is still convinced Lester is up to no good, thanks to Helen's influence. Regardless, Stephen can't let a giant scorpion kill innocent people, so he agrees to capture the creature by himself with no outside help from Lester's staff.
Helen meets with Cutter (as Jenny is transferred to Connor's cell), and reveals she got the "neural-implant" technology, to control the Future Predators, from the future, and hopes Cutter will help her control destiny by making "alterations" to timelines. She's obviously been inspired by how Claudia Brown "transformed" into Jenny Lewis after one innocent trip back in time. Cutter, ever the straight-laced idealist, is having none of it -- lest they accidentally wipe out humanity, or something equally catastrophic.
At the beach, Stephen arrives armed with a grappling hook and attracts the scorpion to the surface by making reverberations with a steel pole, before managing to attach it to a pier with his metal hook.
Connor, Abby, Jenny and Caroline are let out into an gloomy arena lit by floor spotlights, as a sabre-toothed tiger prowls around in front of them. Cutter is forced to watch on a monitor in the control room, as Leek delights in their imminent death. Nick screams at Helen to stop this barbaric act, and her better nature has her agree with him. But it's no use – Leek is out to prove he's the one in control.
Nick manages to disable the computer system (ahem, by throwing water on the keyboard) and forces Leek to re-route control through his palm-device – which was infected with a virus by Connor last week. As the system reboots, Leek finds the virus knocks out his security – opening all the animal cages. The sabre-toothed tiger, frightened by all the goings-on (and probably not Abby, who step forward to… punch it, I assume?), makes a hasty escape as the arena's main door opens.
Helen thinks she's made a connection with Cutter, by showing her softer side once again, but he reveals his declaration of love for her in his cell was just an act – as she suspected Leek would have them bugged. Leek has since run away, but a stray soldier makes a grab at Cutter's leg, giving Helen enough time to escape…
All the animals are now on the loose underground, but help should be on the way because the Anomaly Detector at ARC latches onto Leek's position (thanks to Connor's virus). At the bunker, the fearsome Future Predator is loose and circling Cutter as he tries to find Helen… as she herself contacts Stephen and feeds him false information about Cutter's death and how Lester has kidnapped her.
Elsewhere, Jenny leads Connor, Abby and Caroline down some corridors, armed with a rifle, as dino-pet Rex appears and points them in the direction of a ventilation shaft to the surface…
In the arena now, Cutter is facing certain death with the Future Predator, that inexplicably decides to stand inches from his face and not attack, before Cutter yanks out the neural-implant on its head – killing the beast instantly.
Leek reveals his presence, cynically applauding Cutter's triumph, but directs his attention to several other Future Predators crawling around the roof above them. Leek says he's going to become the most powerful man on the planet, by controlling the world's most dangerous predator. How's that for a stupid plan?
Stephen arrives to rescue Helen, as Leek gloats to Lester via a video-link about his grand scheme. Lester reveals that Connor's virus forwarded the contents of Leek's hard-drive to ARC, giving them all the details they need to trace his men, and stop any further releases of animals into the population. Leek is annoyed at the set-back, but decides to take out his frustration by letting Lester watch Cutter die…
However, Cutter has noticed an open electricity junction box on a wall and dashes across to cause a short-circuit. His sabotage causes the neural-implants on all the Future Predators to fry, allowing Cutter to escapes – leaving Leek alone to face the creatures by himself…
Stephen is with Helen, heading to the surface, when Cutter appears and tries to reason with his friend about Helen's diabolical scheme. Stephen is unsure what to believe (something that doesn't ring true, given what he knows about never-wrong Nick and hell-cat Helen), but Cutter manages to convince Helen to help him deal with the escaped creatures.
Helen suggests to ring the food alarm, as the creatures associate that sound with meal-time and should return to their cages. The alarm is sounded, and it seems to work. As the creatures return to their cages, Helen is attacked by a Deinonychus as she tries to leave through a door. Stephen saves her, by shooting the dinosaur, but it's then revealed the door can only be closed from the inside. Someone will have to go back inside, close the door to stop the animals leaving again, but face certain death at their claws…
Needless to say, heroic Cutter volunteers. But Stephen punches him to the floor and takes his place for this suicide mission. The door closes and Cutter can only watch through the door's porthole in horror as Stephen faces an assortment of hungry beasts – not thinking to use his gun? Helen uses the opportunity to skulk away, as she always does…
The denouement is at Stephen's funeral (with Abby wearing an inappropriately short skirt!), where Jenny asks Cutter if he'd like to go for a drink with her later, before Lester puts a dampener on things by mentioning another anomaly has been detected. We leave the season with the team in business-like mode, heading into their SUV to battle with more creatures… as attention turns to Stephen's grave…
Helen is there, placing an ammonite on his grave, and promising him that "things change", before we notice the graveyard is swarming with identical copies of the same soldier…
So there you have it. I find it disappointing that Primeval nicely developed a subplot throughout all this season's episodes, but the pay-off in this finale wasn't anything special, and just stupid.
It all falls apart under the slightest scrutiny: why did Helen and Leek capture all those animals, if Leek's dumb plan only really relied on him controlling the Future Predators? Did Leek really expect to become some kind of overlord just because he can puppeteer a few creatures?
I was hoping for more answers regarding Helen's mysterious nature, too. It was a good idea to have her determined to control destiny by altering the past and present, but how did that factor into helping Leek capture creatures? Well, that's assuming she did help, as we never saw any evidence for that. It seemed to be Leek and his armed soldiers who did everything.
Plus, there was still no answer to the long-standing question of how Helen can move around in time so easily! These anomalies seem very random (in both where they appear in the present-day and when they lead to), and I'd hoped for clarity on how Helen is able to go wherever and whenever she likes. If I truly believed the writers had an answer for this, I'd happily posit we'll find out in season 3, but I suspect creator-writer Adrian Hodges doesn't have an answer. Not yet, anyway. Might I suggest she has some gizmo from the future, that can create/manipulate anomalies? Just a thought.
Basically, the episode boiled down (once again) to sequences of running away from CGI. These moments are always good fun -- but rarely credible. Why wasn't the beach full of emergency services, or spectators, after an attack by a man-eating scorpion? Why are Future Predators so reticent to kill people that are an inch away from them? Why didn’t the escaped creatures attack each other? Why, or why, oh why?
As a family action-adventure series (aimed mostly at kids), Primeval's still quite fun. I like the cast (even if their characters are very two-dimensional), and the special-effects are often amazing for a TV show, but this second season made a clear bid to be taken more seriously... and failed to answer its own compelling questions. I feel a bit cheated.
It looks like season 3 (which has been commissioned by ITV) will focus on the ability to alter time, which throws up temporal problems I don’t expect Primeval to deal with effectively. For all its pretension of greatness this season (which undeniably improved things over its idiotic first season), I don't have faith in its ability to provide resolutions that make sense. Not after this finale, certainly.
Last year, Primeval was a show about a small group of people chasing creatures around. This year, we were led to believe there was something intelligent going on under the surface for the adults/parents. But it turned out to be a lame excuse for people to chase creatures around again.
Still -- it was all far better than season 1, so maybe third time's the charm?
22 February 2008
ITV1, 6.30 pm
