||SPOILERS|| Did you decide to watch Primeval over Doctor Who this Easter? If you did, you got a bigger surprise, although you had to wade through an insipid half-hour before the trundling story shifted gears...Another anomaly opens in a London hospital (these things rarely cross the M25), unleashing several pudgy little dinosaurs called "Diictodon", that proceed to chew through walls and disrupt the building's power supply. The ARC team are dispatched to round up the critters, while devious Helen Cutter (Juliet Aubrey) plans an attack on ARC using her cloned soldiers and a duplicate of Cutter (Douglas Henshall, even more zombified.) Elsewhere, Evening News journalist Mick Harper (Ramon Tikaram), last seen in season 2's mammoth-on-the-motorway episode, returns with renewed determination to expose the existence of anomalies that spew primeval creatures...
The first half of episode 3 was typical Primeval silliness, with Cutter, Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts), Abby (Hannah Spearritt) and Becker (Ben Mansfield) chasing little creatures around a hospital that has bizarrely decided to close given the power disruptions. Cutter and Abby even find time to deliver a young woman's baby, rather than get her to any number of trained professionals that must be close by. Back at ARC, Jenny confides in Sarah (Laila Rouass) about fancying the dull-as-ditchwater Cutter. All very predictable, all very monotonous.
And it doesn't even mean very much, as the whole episode shifts focus at the halfway point after Helen gains access to ARC (thanks to her monotone Cutter Clone tricking everyone and opening the security gates), and assumes control of the building with her stocky clones. Still, it does mean we're given some unexpected insight into Helen's motivations, as she tells Cutter about witnessing the end of mankind and aims to stop it, believing an "artifact" she's retrieved will be vital in this aim. Said artifact resembles a long hexagon of wood (with anomaly-like "crystals" swirling around inside), and she wants her estranged husband to figure out what it is.
Y'know, she could have just asked -– although Cutter is worryingly philosophical about her apocalyptic warning. Helen may go about things in a strange way, but I'm actually behind her desire to save the planet, aren't you? She may get on better if she stops cloning henchmen (using future technology, we learn), quits skulking around like a troublesome villainess, zips up her cleavage, and just starts being straight about what she knows, and the problems we face. I can't imagine the guys at ARC being against saving the planet, can you?
Regardless, Helen's clones are soon passified by Connor broadcasting a mix-tape of Helen's voice telling them to stand down over the ARC intercom, but Cutter Clone has primed a bomb, so everyone's forced to evacuate the building after the explosion. However, Cutter can't let Helen die inside, so he heads back inside to rescue her amidst the smoke, only for her to turn a gun on him. And fire. Yes, we knew Douglas Henshall was leaving the show, but we had no idea just how soon. Helen vanishes (it's her party trick), and Connor finds Cutter sitting amongst the debris with the "artifact", just in time for a mumbling death scene.
So, a fairly decent twenty minutes to cap a mediocre start, resulting in the death of the show's lead. What's the betting Jason Flemyng's Danny Quinn will takeover? We can't possibly put up with chipmunk Connor as Alpha Male, can we? And what is the artifact, exactly? My guess? It's the thing that created these bothersome anomalies to begin with, surely. Or else a future-device that can manipulate them in some way.
Overall, I enjoyed this one enough to overlook its silly dialogue and dumber moments. The journalist storylines goes nowhere very fast, but it's a nice idea to sprinkled that throughout the series, and this episode was actually one of very few Primeval episodes that didn't rely on CGI monsters to keep you entertained –- which was refreshing. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to make Helen's goals so understandable, though –- but, then again, I can never remember why she's supposed to be the team's nemesis anyway. Does she even know? Oh well, just admire her chest and there'll be a dinosaur along in a minute...
11 April 2009
ITV1, 6.15pm
Writer: Mike Cullen
Director: Tony Mitchell
Cast: Douglas Henshall (Cutter), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor), Lucy Brown (Jenny), Hannah Spearritt (Abby), Juliet Aubrey (Helen), Ben Miller (Lester), Ben Mansfield (Becker), Laila Rouass (Sarah), Ruth Gemmell (Katherine Kavanagh), Ramon Tikaram (Mick Harper), Nina Toussaint-White (Melanie) & Tim Faraday (Replica Clone)
