A breathless 80-minute gush about Primeval

In our pilot episode of The Dinosaur Box, Tom and Darby kick things off with a beloved paleo drama that ripped the boundaries of space and time to shreds. Taking a concept that could so easily not have worked, Primeval instead became the show that forced Doctor Who to share the late-2000s British sci-fi landscape with its colourful cast of characters, imaginative twists on its already imaginative premise, wackily weird creature designs that would make Tim Burton or Guillermo Del Toro applaud, and a surprisingly sweet, genuine love story (yes, for real). Come through the anomaly with us as we look back on the show that defined our childhoods as dinosaur nerds and made everyone watching think 'Hey, Brits can do good paleo fiction too."

Note: This episode was recorded before the release of ARK: the Animated Series and Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, hence why we refer to both of those shows in the future tense.

Find us on IG at: @dinosaurboxpodcast

Transcript

Podcast Preamble

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Dinosaur Box, the podcast where we dig up and study dinosaur TV shows to see what makes them thrive or go extinct. I'm your host, Thomas Gomersal.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

And I'm co-host Darby Knights.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

And thank you for tuning into this, our very first episode. This is our very first attempt at a podcast, and I think your first time recording anything like this, isn't that right, Darby?

SPEAKER_03 0:34

Uh pretty much. Yeah. Outside of work webinars, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Okay. How are you feeling about it?

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Oh, intrigued. Uh we'll see how we'll see how it goes. I may bugger it up, I may help it. Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

I think you're gonna be a real asset to this personally. I don't think you're gonna bugger it up.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Fingers crossed.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Yeah. All right. So, first of all, let's just give a bit of background as to who we are and what this podcast is. So, as you can probably tell just by the title of this, we are both massive paleontology stroke dinosaur nerds. Um, I was always into it ever since I was about five years old. In fact, I can actually trace the start of it to when I first watched Walking with Dinosaurs on TV back in 1999, in particular the scene where the mother T-Rex was feeding her young. And I've just been hooked ever since. So I went through the typical childhood phase of being obsessed with dinosaurs, and I'm one of those people who has never grown out of it. Um, and I'm sure you have a very similar story, right, Darby?

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Uh yeah, pretty much. But I think mine actually went back slightly earlier than walking with dinosaurs because I still got, I know, from when I was like barely out of the womb, just uh like cuddly kiddie stegosaurus that makes jingly noises and things. So that that was ingrained even before I discovered what television was.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

That is an adorable story. So, anyway, the reason why we know each other is because we actually both went to the University of Sheffield together where we both took a paleo biology module. Isn't that right, Darby? I assume you took one.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Yeah, that was pretty much the whole reason I chose to go to Sheffield, was that they had a paleo module. Oh, was it? Yeah, because when I was looking at universities, I was like, I wanted to do paleo, but then I was also into the conservation side as well. And the Sheffield course, you got to do both modules in the same year, which I didn't really find anywhere else. I was like, yeah, that's for that's for me.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Well, on a similar note, we then joined the same Natural History Society, which is actually where we first discovered that we were both paleo fans. I remember we were actually out on a walk in the Peak District and we stopped at a pub for drinks, and I was talking to a couple of others who were somewhat less interested in paleo about a particular show that Darby and I both enjoy, and then you overheard me talking about it and mentioned that you were also interested in it, and that's really kind of where it snowballed from that, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Although I didn't find this out until quite late in my university life because Derby is about two years below me. So he was in first year and I was in third year when this happened.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Yeah, I had a habit of hanging out with the older gang.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

So, leading on from that interest in paleo, I of course came to really love paleo fiction. Jurassic Park, obviously, was one of the big staples. And then, as I said, there was one paleo show in particular that Derby and I both really loved and really bonded over. And as I got older, I got more interested in storytelling in general, and like as it were, the inner workings of stories, so characters, structure, the backstories of stories, etc. So I'm really interested nowadays in how things all fit together or don't in some cases. Like basically what makes a story work or not work. And from the types of conversations we've had in the past, Derby, I would say you are too to some extent. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_03 3:50

Yeah, so I remember growing up being told that I need to read more. But because of my really specific interests, I was like, there's like next to nothing out there that really interests me to read. So I just sort of sat there thinking, you know what, I'll just write something myself and got into more of the story building and character development mechanics and all of that, and just had a stab at that.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Really? How old were you when that happened?

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Uh, I think I wrote my first full-length book when I was like 14. That was a slight Jurassic Park ripoff thing that is never gonna see the light of day, but yeah, I was like, there's not no paleo works out there, I may as well just write one myself.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Well, yeah, actually, funnily enough, I have a similar story except I read a fantasy novel when I was 14, which likewise will never see the light of day because it's incredibly generic. I think the best thing you could really say about it was the prose was passable for something written by a 14-year-old. Yeah, yeah. Um, as I got a bit older, particularly in the last few years, I found myself really wanting to see some more nuanced discussions about paleo fiction. Uh similar to what you were saying, Darby, it was that there was this kind of dearth of paleo fiction back when you were young. Nowadays, I'd say there's very much a dearth of discussions about paleo fiction. And I find that very noteworthy because if you look on the internet now, like do any sort of search on YouTube, you'll find a lot of nuanced discussions about other genres of fiction, so superhero movies, rom-coms, musicals, even. Uh, actually, funnily enough, it was a podcast discussing musicals in this manner that partially inspired this one, musical explaining for anyone who's interested. So that's my plug for them there. Um, but yeah, I mean, they go into so much detail about all these other different genres of fiction, different other films. There were whole YouTube videos out there just discussing one scene from The Devil Wears Prada, for instance. But you don't really see this at all for paleo fiction. And I just find that rather unusual given that you have it with all these other genres. I personally think it's because there's this still prevalent attitude in pop culture that paleo fiction is somehow a lesser genre. Do you think that's fair, Darby?

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Um, I wouldn't say a lesser genre, going by the success of recent Jurassic World films, but I guess it's sort of heavily monopolized in the general public eye. There's Jurassic Park and then nothing else, worth your time, pretty much, judging by some recent Dinosaur projects that have come out, 65 being the most notable one.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Oh god, yeah. I didn't bother going to see that because it's just it's one of those films where people universally agreed it was awful before they even saw it.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Yeah, but it did have some interesting aspects relating to this certain TV show that we bonded over that is still sort of feeding into paleo fiction like almost 20 years later.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Okay, well, we should do an episode about how this particular show is influencing the paleo zeitgeist after the fact. But yeah, it's an it's interesting really because when you think about it, the aspects of fiction that we very readily discuss when it comes to other genres are all equally applicable to paleo fiction. So it's really kind of unusual that there's never really been much nuanced discussion about the genre. Because all these things, characters, theming, story structure, you can all apply them to paleo fiction. So that's kind of what this podcast is about, really. It aims to apply these long overdue discussions to this genre. Now, specifically, this podcast is looking at paleodramas, that is to say, paleo fiction that first debuted on television and typically involves some form of serialized narrative. And we're going to be discussing and debating things like characters, storylines, themes, all the things I'd mentioned just now, through a more comprehensive lens than most online reviews. So we'll be looking at why these shows don't work or why they do work in quite a few cases, based on these different components. So every episode we will discuss a different show, usually one episode per season if that show had multiple seasons, as opposed to being cancelled after just one, which was a sadly common fate for a lot of paleo dramas and even documentaries. So although for this pilot episode, we're just giving a general overview of the show in question. But this is kind of an exception. Now, the reason why we're discussing TV dramas in particular is because there is a surprisingly large number of these, and we have watched several or at least one in great depth, and they vary a lot in quality in a way that I feel dinosaur movies tend not to. Mostly it's Jurassic Park and I would argue Disney's Dinosaur in the good category, and then a lot of crappy films in the other category, particularly as Derby mentioned, the infamous 65.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Yeah, there's not too many others that I think many people would be aware of, uh except maybe The Lamp Before Time.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that one.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

Yeah, yeah, it's quite a long-lived dinosaur series in its own right. Now it's easily over a dozen films. Most of them have gone straight to DVD, though.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yeah, very much a case of diminishing returns, from what I've seen and heard.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

Yeah. Yeah, I think once you get past the first five or six, it's just rinse-repeat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yeah. Now, as this is a podcast about paleo fiction, we will mostly not include documentaries. And as this is a podcast about TV dramas, we will also not be including cinematic films. However, we will sometimes make the odd exception here and there. So one of these days you might hear our thoughts on 65. So stay tuned. It might happen one day. Now, we should also just mention as a disclaimer that we are both biologists by university training. So we don't have any serious background in TV, screenwriting, theatre, etc. Although Derby, as he just said, definitely has some writing experience. And um, I personally have watched a lot of YouTube videos about storytelling and character development, which is why I know there's a lack of these things when it comes to paleo fiction. So because of that, we won't be discussing things that are specific to filmmaking, like say film theory or cinematography, that sort of thing, unless you have some insights to offer on that, Darby.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

I might have a few. I did work for a production company for a brief stint while at university. So I've got some knowledge of the process from script writing through to final cuts and all the rendering and the effects and that kind of thing. But it's it's very, very general, not deep.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yeah, I have to say one of the reasons I picked you to be the co-host for this podcast is the last time we had lunch together, I was really very, very impressed by how much introspection you were able to offer about these sorts of things, like the process of making television. So that's why I decided you'd be really invaluable for this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Yeah, yeah. I I tend to be a massive overthinker of everything. So yeah, I do tease anything apart. I read, watch, write, make. So yeah, I'm sure I'll be able to pick a few interesting nuanced things to tease apart and discuss.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Oh my god, where where were you all these years when I was a lonely paleo fan with no one to share my overthinking heart takes on?

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Probably the same, just sitting alone in a different bedroom somewhere else, as tends to be the case when you're growing up.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, it is a it is a bit of a lonely existence being a paleo fan, I find.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Yeah. All the things you want to talk to and about tend to be dead most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah. Um,

The Golden Age(s) of Paleo Media

SPEAKER_01 11:06

but actually, another reason why we're doing this podcast is that this is actually a really interesting time for one because we're currently living through what I would call a new golden age of paleo media. So, to summarize what I mean by that, a golden age for me is a period when a lot of mostly critically and commercially successful paleo movies, dramas, documentaries, etc., are released within a relatively short space of time between each other, on average, about one to two years. So obviously, the last one began with Jurassic Park in 1993, and then we had the Lost World Jurassic Park in 1997, and then things really kicked into gear with Walking with Dinosaurs in 1999, because in the wake of that, you just had this whole slew of spin-offs, sequels, things like Walking with Beasts, Walking with Monsters, the Nigel Marvin specials, etc., and also knockoffs by other studios, things like When Dinosaurs Roamed America. And uh I'm actually, am I missing anything, Derby? I'm sure I am.

SPEAKER_03 12:17

No, you have all the mockbusters as well that had often come out around that time. I think Carnosaur came out like a week before or after Jurassic Park in '93. Oh, yeah, yeah. Puppet working that it was just washed away by CGI in Jurassic Park.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Although the funny thing is, Jurassic Park originally was supposed to be a stop motion animation.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Yeah, it was. But yeah, the 90s saw loads of other things try and ride the bandwagon. The 1997 Godzilla with its mini Raptor Godzilla's trying to train really hard.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Actually, to be honest, I I never thought that film was that bad, but then again, I was 10 when I saw it, so that might be why.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Yeah, it's it's not that bad, but it's not trying to be a Godzilla film. It's trying to be more Jurassic Park-like.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Well, personally, as a paleo fan, I thought it was more enjoyable than the Monsterverse movies.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Uh no, I'm on the opposite. I was quite a fan of the first Godzilla and the second Godzilla. Not really a massive fan of the King Kong ones. I think they've just tried to jack him up too much to take on Godzilla. Yeah. And especially compared to Peter Jackson's King Kong. Oh, yes. Also falls under paleo fiction slightly.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

So then in 2007, we saw a real shift towards paleo dramas, specifically the show we're going to talk about in this episode, which carried that bat on for five series until 2011. And then by the time Terra Nova came along that same year, that was more or less the end of that golden age. There weren't many paleo movies being made apart from probably Ice Age sequels. Um, and the TV shows that were being made weren't doing very well commercially or critically either. Terra Nova being a prime example of that.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

When did Terra Nova come out again?

SPEAKER_01 13:57

2011.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Okay. Yeah, no, that was, I think, when everything just went completely dead. All the Jurassic Park 4 rumors had died down by that point because they didn't get picked up again until it was officially announced, I think, in 2013.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah, so as Darby said, there was kind of a lull for a while afterwards in Paleomedia. You had a few things crop up now and again, like the infamous Walking with Dinosaurs movie, and Pixar's the good dinosaur. But you didn't really see the sort of conveyor belt that you would during a golden age. It wasn't like they were making one thing after another once a year or once every two years, like they had been before. In fact, I didn't even really find there was that much of an upswing even in the immediate wake of Jurassic World coming out, did you?

SPEAKER_03 14:40

I'm trying to think back now. I don't think there was very much upswing in terms of TV shows, but I think there was certainly an upswing in terms of games. Because we had Jurassic World Evolution, and then there's been a load of independent dinosaur games that have all been set up and run on Steam and other gaming platforms.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

But nothing in terms of movies or TV shows, is what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Um none that spring into my mind.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

But then in 2019, we started to see a change because that was when Gendy Tartakovsky's Primal came out on Adult Swim, followed by Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous on Netflix in 2020, and then La Brea on NBC the year after that. And all three of those shows went on to be big commercial and or critical successes, running for at least three seasons. At the time of this recording, at some point we're meant to be getting Arc the Animated series, and there have been rumors of another Jurassic World animated series in the vein of Camp Cretaceous being in the works as well.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

Yeah, there's been another few movie announcements, haven't there? Off the back of that, there's supposed to be a dinosaur movie coming out with Anna Hathaway in it. Yeah, that's right.

unknown 15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one that's meant to be set in the 80s, which I think is kind of an interesting idea in and of itself. Because I was thinking this the other day, like in part because of things like Jurassic World Dominion and the show we're going to talk about today, having dinosaurs in the modern day world is not really so much of a novelty anymore. But what I think could be an interesting outlet for the genre to go down is prehistoric creatures in historically inspired eras. Although I personally think the 1980s is still a little bit too recent to really fit into that.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

But yeah, maybe I don't know, dinosaurs in ancient Egypt or ancient China or something like that, tied in with dragons.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Or one that I think would be interesting is saber-toothed cats and mammoths in the old west.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Yeah, no, that there was during the 60s they tried to do a load of Western dinosaur movies and they didn't turn out massively well, with the exception of the Valley of Guanji, I don't think.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

But it's not just dramas either. We're also seeing things really pick up on the documentary side of things. Derby will sing the praises of prehistoric planet till his dying day, no doubt.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

Yeah, it's the it's the closest we've come to remastered walking with dinosaurs pretty much. Just um all-encompassing the Blatanguer series on all life in the Lake Cretaceous, not just dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah, and now in the wake of that, we've got a whole slew of paleo documentaries coming down the pipeline. Tim Haynes of Walking with Dinosaurs Fame is producing one about the five mass extinctions called Surviving Earth. And Netflix released its own paleo documentary called Life on Our Planet. So in the face of all this, I would say with reasonable confidence that this is indeed another golden age we're living through. Would you agree, Darby?

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Yeah, from the responses I've seen to prehistoric planet, I'd say people are all grasping for it. People have wanted physical releases, soundtracks, toys, merchandise. So it'll be interesting to see what stamina that kind of enthusiasm has this time around.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

And I think it's also interesting how paleo fiction of the last couple of years has been pretty well received. Primal, I believe, I don't I'd have to check this for certain. Primal, I think, has a 100% or high 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What's interesting to me about this Golden Age is that it didn't necessarily start with one movie or TV show like the last one did, but rather it was the case where you had a collection of independently made things all coming out at around the same time and all being successful to some degree.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

Um yeah, Jurassic World came out in 2015. And then I think everything's been slowly greenlit following on from that independently, as if the whole paleo fiction industry was waiting to see how that worked out before committing to any other smaller independent projects, see what the appetite was.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Yeah, it's interesting because I knew I was never really convinced that Jurassic World did that much to really boost it, just because we didn't really see this slew of paleo content in the immediate aftermath like you did with the original Jurassic Park and with Walking with Dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_03 18:42

I'd say maybe it's more down to its continued success each Jurassic World films than a billion-dollar juggernaut. I think there is a lot more confidence there that people want dinosaur content or paleo content.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Hence why this is a brilliant time for a podcast like this.

unknown 18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Now I should just mention that not everything in a golden age is necessarily good. An example from this current one would probably be La Brea, which is just getting eviscerated by critics. Um I say probably because I haven't seen it yet, so this isn't really my own opinion. But as long as the majority of things are good and they come out in a concerted stretch, then it counts as a golden age.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

It's a golden age for production, not necessarily for quality.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah, it will be interesting to see whether or not this golden age lives up to the same standard as the last one.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Yeah, I think there's a reason we're still using the last one as a comparison bar. It did produce all the groundbreaking content and special effects and expectations that we're sort of going with now.

We finally start talking about Primeval

SPEAKER_01 19:39

So speaking of which, we've held you in suspense long enough. Let's talk about one very influential show, to us at least, from that last golden age, a personal favorite of ours, the best British dinosaur TV show that is not walking with dinosaurs, and in both of our humble opinions, the best dinosaur TV drama ever full stop, primeval. Alright, let's get straight into this. So, for those of you who have either never seen Primeval before or else haven't seen it since you were 15 or so, here is a brief summary of the premise a la Wikipedia with some of my own input added. Primeval is a British science fiction television drama produced by Impossible Pictures, created by Tim Haynes and Adrian Hodges. Primeval follows a team of scientists, principally evolutionary biology professor Nick Cutter, his student Connor Temple, and zoologist Abby Maitland, tasked by the government with investigating the appearance of temporal anomalies, i.e. time portals, across the United Kingdom through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present, as well as trying to stop the end of the world. It ran for five series on ITV and later on the UK pay channel Watch, and also had a terrible Canadian spin-off that shall go unmentioned for the rest of this episode. So, Darby, what is your history with Prime Evil? I've never actually asked you.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Um it was one of those sleeper things I think kind of snuck up on me, because I remember one day all the way back eons ago now in primary school, it must have been what 2007, I think. I must have just entered double digit numbers in terms of age. Um I was at an after-school babysitter's house who saw me looking at some dinosaur stuff, and they just sort of made conversation asking, Oh, have you been watching that new dinosaur show on ITV? And I was just sitting at like, what new dinosaur show? I'm really clued in on this kind of thing. And then they proceeded to describe it really poorly, and I had no idea what they were on about. And then it wasn't until a week or so yeah, I know it wasn't until a week or so later that I was at home, ITV was on for whatever reason, and then one of the series two trailers came on with all the money shots of Raptors in shopping centres and things, and then the pay. Dropped of like, oh my god, there is now this thing that I have to watch. And yeah, I watched series two as it aired, got the DVD for series one, and very quickly caught up. And the obsession's still here now, which is a testament to how much it impacted me at that point. How did you find out about Prime Evil?

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Yeah, well, um, the funny thing is, and uh well, it's definitely funny given how much of a super fan I am of the show now, but I actually was not that keen on watching it when I first saw the ads for it. I remember seeing it was the ads for the second episode of series one where it's the giant spiders in the London Underground. And a friend of mine also told me about the scene in series one, episode three, where the Mosasaur comes through the anomaly in the swimming pool and eats a lifeguard. And I wasn't that keen on watching, I think because I just felt the premise was a little too silly. It didn't help that my friend described it as a liploodon, which at the time everyone thought was the reptile equivalent of a blue whale. And I just thought getting that in a pool just seemed a bit too far-fetched. But then I decided to give it a try properly a few months later. So I looked it up on the internet. I I can't remember if I read about it on Wikipedia, but I definitely found a fan site that had screen caps and some clips of all of the episodes of series one. And I was, I just really was getting into it so much. Like I loved the premise, I was really enjoying the characters from what I was seeing of them. I think I even got around to reading some of the fan fiction before I'd even seen an episode properly. Um, so that started to reel me in. Then later that summer, I bought the DVD of series one and sat down to watch at my grandparents' house, and that was it. You know, I was just completely hooked from that point on. This show was literally my Harry Potter as a teenager, minus the transphobic creator. Um, in that I was just completely obsessed with it. I was on the internet every other day looking for any new traces, like what were the new creatures gonna be, who were the new characters gonna be, where was the story gonna go. I just remember sitting up in my bedroom on my laptop, seeing the brand new images for series two, and I was just in heaven. Like I was just like, oh, I can't wait, I can't wait. And it was again when series three came round. So, I mean, I was just completely mad about this show, but I didn't really know anybody else who was. First of all, I grew up in Hong Kong, where most people had never even heard of it to begin with. And even though I went to an international school with a lot of other Brits, most people I knew there never watched it either. And in fact, the only two who did made a point of letting me know how much they didn't like it. Hi, Alex and Ben from high school, if you're listening to this.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

Yeah, now I had something similar. It's like I just went to school and wanted to talk about it, but pretty much got the response of, oh, Doctor Who's on at the same time, why would you want to watch anything else? Yeah, that's a very clear, like let's let's not pit each other against each other, but I know very firmly where I'm sitting on that fence.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Yeah, I feel like for a lot of people, primeval was something to watch while you waited for Doctor Who to come back. For me, and I'm sure for you as well, it was very much the other way around.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Yeah, I never really liked Doctor Who, to be honest. I know that's gonna be a hot take, but yeah, I just never warmed to it. So yeah, it was primeval or nothing for a Saturday night.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Yeah, yeah, same for me too, as well. Um, so anyway, because of that, I was kind of dissuaded from ever talking to other people about it. And even when I did talk to other people about it post-high school, the most positive response I tended to get was something along the lines of, oh yeah, I sort of remember that show. It was okay. So I never really felt like I could talk to many people about it. I didn't think I was ever going to meet anyone who liked as much as I did. But then I went to university and ended up meeting two people with an interest in it. One was a guy in my year called Sam, whose interest in primeval I discovered while I was plastered at a Christmas party in second year. He just happened to mention it, and like I got this spark in my.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

Yeah, it well, similarly for me, it did sort of open my eyes as to the possibilities, I guess, because a lot of what I'd seen prior, it was either Jurassic Park or it was a documentary or sort of no in-between. But Primeval sort of opened the floodgates, I suppose, of just letting the animals loose in the real world, having fictionalized stories, real characters, playing around with time travel. So quite a novel way of actually getting animals to interact with people rather than just endless cloning.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Yeah, I very much look at primeval as kind of like the comparison bar by which I judge a lot of paleo media, not just in terms of the dinosaur and prehistoric creature content itself, but more just in terms of like how well do they do the characters, how well is the story crafted, how does it execute all of this? So, yeah, like I say, it has been an extremely formative and a very important influence in both of our lives.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Yeah, and continues to be.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Yeah,

The History of Primeval

SPEAKER_01 27:46

well, first of all, let's get into the history of the show. So earlier I mentioned that Primeval was co-created by Tim Haynes. Now, if you're interested in paleo media to even an nth of the degree that Darby and I are, you might already be familiar with that name because, as I also mentioned earlier, Tim Haynes was also the creator of Walking With Dinosaurs and its various sequels and spin-offs, a sort of expanded documentary universe, if you will, the MCU of prehistoric documentaries. So at the time that Tim Haynes was making the Walking With series, there weren't really any sci-fi shows on UK television. Doctor Who had been off the air for the better part of a decade or so. And he got the idea for using Walking With Dinosaur style effects in a TV drama. So he went to the BBC with this idea, and they wanted to do something well-known instead of an original idea. So they assigned him to co-produce an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, The Lost World, in 2001. And on that, he worked with a screenwriter called Adrian Hodges. And The Lost World did well enough to convince him that there was merit to making a dinosaur drama. So he started working on a show which at the time was called Cutter's Bestiary. And he very much wanted to do it in a modern urban setting rather than use the typical Lost World formula where people go to a plateau, an island, whatever, where there's dinosaurs. I think he described it as spotting dinosaurs from behind the supermarket shelf. So he worked on a couple of drafts with a different writer that didn't really go anywhere. And then a few years later, Adrian Hodgers was shopping around for a new project. So he went to the then head of the BBC and she was like, Oh, hey, your buddy Tim Haynes is working on something. Why don't you do this? So she hands him Cutter's bestiary. So he's like, okay, so he reunites with Tim Haynes, they rename it Primeval. Adrian Hodgers writes three scripts for it, they take it to the BBC, and then the Doctor Who revival comes along, and the BBC decides they don't want to do two sci-fi dramas at once. So by this point, they'd already been working on it for about four to five years, and now it looks like they're going to be thwarted at the last minute. But in a very fortunate twist of fate, Doctor Who was a big success. And with that, everyone else in the UK broadcasting world decided they wanted a piece of the nascent sci-fi trend that was occurring. So ITV, one of the BBC's main competitors, decided, hey, we'll take Primeval and the rest is history. Five series under their belt for it.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Yeah. Over the first hurdle, and then they were off to the

Why we're talking about this show.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

races.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

So, in terms of the shows that we will talk about on this podcast, Primeval is probably the one we're going to come back to the most, just because it's the one we know the best, and we do feel there are a lot of facets to it to discuss, many of them pretty under-discussed, which brings us to why we even feel the need to talk about this. Because even though by this point it has been well over a decade since it last aired, it is still a fairly beloved show. There are whole Twitter pages dedicated to this show, a lot of comments on YouTube videos about it saying, Oh, I wish it would come back. Some of them from really quite recently. And you sort of get the sense reading these fan pages and these social media pages, there's still a lot of appetite for primeval content. And we do feel there is a lot to talk about in terms of character development, story, etc., both for good and for ill. But there hasn't been a lot of reevaluation of the show since it ended in 2011, which is pretty strange given that most popular franchises do eventually go through some cycle of re-evaluation after a long time. But with this one, the fandom we feel has just kind of ground to a halt. There's a bit of a tendency to be overly dependent on new content, which is like waiting for rain in the desert. There was concept art for a never-made primeval cartoon that was posted on Twitter in 2017. And then when the show went up on Britbox, the UK streaming service in 2021, Radio Times did a full feature-length article about it, which is where a lot of my details on the history of it came from. But there's really not very much aside that.

SPEAKER_03 31:50

I was gonna say, I think the Britbox availability was sort of what upticks interest as well, because I know following COVID, when it was available, that was when I first came across active Facebook groups dedicated to it, mostly meme posting, as is the way now on Facebook. There were some other YouTube channels that were doing little bits here and there on Primeval, and then the Radio Times news article. So there is a little bit of activity going on from what I've seen, but it's nowhere near what it was in Primeval's heyday. So definitely worth trying to bring it back from extinction, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah, but the thing I've noticed about a lot of these YouTube channels and a lot of the memeage and all that stuff is that it's all very shallow takes on the show. It never really goes into any great depth or analysis. It's already just repeating a lot of the same old talking points and the same old conversations that have been had around it, like how paleontologically accurate the creatures were. You can probably find about a hundred videos on YouTube about that if you try. But my interest has always been a lot more comprehensive. I'm a lot more interested in breaking down the nitty-gritty of why the show worked, why the characters worked, why certain elements about it didn't work, because it was not a perfect show. It had flaws, even serious, serious ones. And we will get to those. So since there's not really anything new coming out except for every now and again, we're gonna try and bring new perspective to the old stuff. Like really look at the show through a more comprehensive lens than it has been otherwise. But for this episode, this is mainly just a gush piece where we talk about why we like the show and why we

Why this show works (when arguably it shouldn't have)

SPEAKER_01 33:20

think it works. Okay, so let's get into the real meat of things here. Why does this show work? Because in some ways it probably shouldn't have. I mean, from personal experience, I can say that many people would assume it doesn't just from the premise alone. So, Darby, why don't you kick this off? Why do you feel this show worked in spite of itself?

SPEAKER_03 33:47

I think it was the idea itself that sort of grabbed a lot of prehistoric animal flicks beforehands like Jurassic Park were either bringing the animals back from the dead into the present day or deliberately taking humans to a prehistoric time or location to go and see them. Whereas Primeva was like, there's these writs in time, these animals are coming through of their own accord. It's not humans doing anything with them, but they've got to deal with the consequences and try and figure out what's going on. So it was quite a novel way to approach it.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Yeah, I do agree. That was a very big component of why the show worked so well, because it was so new and fresh. There really was nothing like it on British television at the time. It really was not like Doctor Who at all, despite early and not remotely tiresome criticisms of it.

SPEAKER_03 34:30

Yeah, I know, as it was like, judging from what people have said, is there was a lot of feeling this was just a new Doctor Who mockbuster sort of thing of oh, we're gonna try and do Doctor Who but with dinosaurs, blah blah blah. But then when it actually hit screens and you actually watch it and realize how hard the world building in science is, it sort of comes at you as a new and fresh idea. It's not just that animals from past and future are just waltzing through the streets. They discuss in the show what it means in terms of physics and time and space and also how these anomalies act. There's a lot more focus on the scientific implications rather than just oh dinosaurs go rah.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Yeah, it was handled a lot more gracefully than Steven Spielberg did with his T-Rex in San Diego in The Lost World Jurassic Park. Um the thing I really value about Primeval was just how imaginative it was in taking a premise that could very easily have gotten tied very quickly and really putting new spins on it and creating these really imaginative scenarios. And this is why I think the modern setting really played to the show's strength because it was used very effectively, I felt, to create drama and heighten tension and solve problems in episodes. I mean, sometimes the creatures themselves found the modern setting work to their advantage. In series two, episode two, for instance, an anomaly opens up in an office block, and these worms from like the very deepest recesses of time, they come through and along with them comes this fog that they need to breathe. Now, in an outdoor setting, that fog would just dissipate and the worms would suffocate, and end of story. But because it's indoors, like an enclosed man-made environment, it's allowed to build up and it gives the worms an edge over the humans, not just because they can breathe in it, but because that humans can't really see their way through the fog that easily. So there's lots of scenes of that episode where humans are sucked into the fog, never to be seen again. Or if they do, they sort of emerge screaming and all bloodied before the worm drags them back down again. It's quite a spooky episode, that one. And that's an example, I think, of the modern setting being used very well.

SPEAKER_03 36:28

Yeah, I think that was one of the deeper aspects that I certainly appreciated upon re-watches is it wasn't just the animals themselves that came through to pose a threat. It was the environment seeping through between time and space as well. Like in episode two of the first series, they had a high oxygen atmosphere sweeping through as well as the creatures that led them to not be able to use certain weapons. And in further episodes, you had underwater anomalies that impacted water levels and water chemistry, and even parasites and infectious potential coming through. So it was very much the environment was as much as a threat as whatever predator walked through at the same time, which gave a lot of depth to what these anomalies actually are.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

I also really liked how the nature of anomalies made them a threat in that they could open up literally anywhere. Like they could open up in the London Underground, in someone's basement, in an office block, like I mentioned. So it really heightened the sense of tension. These things could open up anywhere, and there was really no safe place for them. But on top of that, I think the writers were quite clever in where they chose to have anomalies open up. So often they would put them in places where people wouldn't necessarily see them, like underwater, in an aircraft hangar, even in public places after hours. Like the example of the worms in the office block, people mistake the fog for a smoke from a fire. So most of them evacuate, except for a few people who are stuck in a meeting, and that's the drama of the scene is that the team has to go and rescue them. And then in series four, episode four, it's an anomaly opening up in a school after hours. So that created a sense of plausibility as to why people wouldn't notice these things so much.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

It also at the same time created a sense of all facets of society are sort of under threat as well, because you could have one pop up in a hospital, in a school, just anywhere that humans have touched still were under threat from things wandering through that shouldn't be there. So yeah, that really heightened the tension and threat level that they posed.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

I also really liked how there was a real sense of discovery in the show as well. Like they always were learning new things about the anomalies, too. Like one of the first things they find out about them is that they give off magnetic fields. In series two, they find out that anomalies give off signals similar to radio, which then leads them to great devices to help detect them when they open, as opposed to what they start off with, where they're just using a compass to see if there's one around. So there's a real sense of progression in this team. You see them learning new things and upping their game a lot more and becoming a lot more adept at their jobs because of it. And it creates a real sense of a journey that you go along with these characters.

SPEAKER_03 38:57

It was an interesting exercise in all the technology you used to combat these creatures as well, how to monitor the anomalies. A lot of it seems to be stooped in real science. There's a lot of physics phenomena in terms of magnetic fields and radio waves, which reminds me a lot of astrology and spacework as well. So yeah, I do like a lot of the little tidbits they use to try and base the technologies off.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

But I think what also gives this a lot more clout to it is the fact that this is a government-run operation. So it provides a sense of plausibility as to why the team were able to detect these things, why they're able to go in and do this. Like every episode, for instance, they always have a SWAT team go in with them. So it adds a sense of believability to how they're able to do these really quite unbelievable things because they have the backing of powerful people. I mean, in series two and three, they literally bring in a PR woman as a main character to help explain all this stuff away to the public with um varying degrees of believability, but it works within the show.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

Yeah, there is the government involvement, but there is a nice dichotomy as well of you've got the core group of characters who are a little bit more spontaneous in how they approach and deal with these things, but they're also still knowledgeable experts, but in a very different field. They are focused on the science and the animals, but they have the military support and backup. So you've got the two sort of factions working hand in hand, sometimes butting heads, sometimes getting on really well, trying to deal with this new phenomena.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

Which does create a lot of really great human drama as the show goes on.

SPEAKER_03 40:27

Yeah, no, there's a lot of interesting relationships that blossom and deteriorate as the series goes on as a result of all the cover-ups and creatures and everything that they're dealing with.

Creature Designs

SPEAKER_03 40:47

So, shall we talk about creature designs?

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is actually one of my favorite aspects of Prime Evil, to be honest. So, all of the creature designs in Primeval were done by Darren Hawley, who is a concept artist at Framestore, the effects company behind the Walking With franchise. He's also worked on various films like Thor Ragnarok, 10,000 BC, the Fantastic Beasts movies, and Mowgli Legend of the Jungle on Netflix. So if you want someone to blame for the Uncanny Valley creatures in that last film, he might be the one you're looking for. But one of the things that Tim Haynes said to him when he first approached him was basically, look, we're not aiming for scientific accuracy like we were in the Walking With series. Just go crazy, do whatever you want with the designs. And he really does. I mean, the thing I often say to people about the creatures in primeval is that this is what you would get if all the designs in the Walking With series were done by Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro. They are really uniquely stylized in a very unique blend of menacing and cartoony.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Uh what ones are cartoony? I can't think of any that really struck me as cartoony.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Well, it's more than just that he gives them the slightly exaggerated features, like you know, the extra saber teeth on the Gorgonopsid, the extra horns on the Caprasokus, the very literal dragon-like appearance of the Draco Rex, all those sorts of things.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Oh, yeah, so a little bit more feature elaboration rather than just going off of what the fossil record shows. So a lot more of the softer body features.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Yeah, but it's also just, like I say, the very sort of button-y or Del Toro-ish look to them, this very slightly shriveled, slightly creepy appearance to them, too. Especially Del Toro. Like, if you ever watched Pan's Labyrinth or The Shape of Water, or even that Pinocchio film he made for Netflix, you'll see what I mean. Incidentally, there's actually a monkey character in that last film that bears something of a resemblance to the camouflage beast in series three.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

Okay. Yeah, I've not seen any of those.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Watch them, they're all great movies.

SPEAKER_03 42:45

Okay. I think the nice thing about the designs was that even as a paleo nerd, you could tell what everything was. So everything was based off of real life, but taken in a more fantastical direction. But at the same time, they did also pay homage to a lot of paleo discoveries as well. Because I think Primeval was really the first mainstream media project to go with fully feathered raptors. Jurassic Park and many other things hadn't gone down that road yet, that they chose to do it and just took it to town in terms of flashing out the feathers, the colours, the quills, all of that kind of thing. But I think one of the big things that I took away from Primeval, particularly with the first series, was not only were the creature designs unique, straddling a line between their real-life counterparts and a little bit more creative liberty, but they also had the balls to do a whole first series without featuring any dinosaurs, which is normally a lot of paleo media's go-to threat. They focused a lot more on the unknown creatures people wouldn't be familiar with. And it was almost a thing of anticipation, just seeing what came through each week and how up to date it was, how niche they were going. There was never a sense of, oh, it's going to be another dinosaur. It was always fresh and kept you on your toes.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Yeah, that was something I really appreciated about Primeva as well. It mostly stayed away from the Dark cast of prehistoric creatures. And I just think it's really great and makes it a lot more interesting to have unknown creatures represented more.

SPEAKER_03 44:07

Yeah, there's a lot of other prehistoric animals out there that need a little bit of spotlight. So yeah, I think prime evil really did take strides to try and do that, particularly in the earlier series.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

And actually, if you look at the artwork for most of the creatures on Darren Hawley's website, you'll notice they really differ very little from the finished product in most cases. So that to me is a sign of just how much the showrunners really respected his artistic talent. Like they didn't feel the need to change very much. He was, I think, really quite an integral player into why the show feels so unique and interesting.

SPEAKER_03 44:37

Yeah, they really nailed the aesthetic they were going for, didn't they?

SPEAKER_01 44:41

So anyway, uh, Darby, what would you say are your favourite creatures just from a design perspective?

SPEAKER_03 44:48

Um, I'd say from a design perspective, I think the raptors I've mentioned were quite neat. That was the first time really seeing feathered dinosaurs on television for me. And they had a mix of like blue and black and white, grey mottling as well, and quills atop their head, which they used for expressing emotions. So that was, I think, probably one of the standout design from the earlier series. But then it was also quite nice to see other less recognizable species given the creative liberty treatment, like the Silurian scorpions, which were monstrously oversized, but that just made them feel a hundred times more threatening, even though they looked a lot like their real-life counterpart, they were more knobbly with hardened shells and ridges and veins that just sort of beefed them up to feel more threatening.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

I thought they were based mainly on modern whip scorpions, isn't that as opposed to a species from the fossil record?

SPEAKER_03 45:42

Yeah, it was an interesting case if they sort of took a mon species, threw it back in time, and turned it into a super predator for that era, which I guess that's another way of looking at the creative license of oh, we're bringing prehistoric things forward, perhaps we'll take a mod thing back and see how a more primitive form of it would look.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah, I I do agree. Those are both really great designs.

SPEAKER_03 46:02

What were your favorite creature designs across the series?

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Well, my favourites are the Dracorex from series three, episode six, and the Caprasuchus from series four, episode two. The Dracorex I really like because it fits really well into the theme of series three, which is the anomalies influencing mythology and the development of myths of dragons. So Dracorex's name actually means Dragon King, and they really hype that up in the design. They give it much longer horns than the real animal, they give it a more draconine snout. It's even got these little sails on its back like wings. I mean, it doesn't look like the real animal, but it does look really interesting and unique. And then the Caprosuchus. I like this one because, again, it's sort of playing on a name, or in this case, nickname of the species in the design. Uh, Caprosuccus's nickname is Boar Croc, because when it was discovered, its teeth reminded paleontologists of the tusks of a boar. But what the design in Primeval does is it gives it a pair of extra horns on the side of its head, make it look like a warthog. And so that I thought was a really fantastic design. These two to me are the most Tim Burton-y designs in Primeval. And I think that's one of the things that makes it really stand out, which is how weird and out there and quirky it was willing to be. And I think the design is really a personification of that.

SPEAKER_03 47:18

Yeah, and the cat brassukos were certainly my favourite from the series four from a design perspective. It definitely looked primeval, for lack of a better word.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

And of course,

The Future Predator

SPEAKER_01 47:27

as well as the prehistoric prejudice, Darren Hawley also designed the next really interesting aspect of primeval, which is the futuristic ones. So the logic of this was, according to Adrian Hodges, if anomalies can go to the past, why shouldn't they go to the future as well? And as far as Darren Hawley was concerned, one creature in particular was very much his baby on that. So, Darby, do you want to introduce us to our show's villain, as it were? Primeval's Darek, effectively.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

Yeah, it wasn't any creature known from the fossil record, and it really sort of threw all the characters off what they'd known so far, because they'd only dealt with prehistoric creatures, but then they were thrown something from the future, and it was the future predator. Which was sort of a great ape-like, giant, futuristic bat predator that had got large arms instead of wings and hunted based off of a really fine-tuned sonar that could detect heartbeats and all sorts of other micro noises, and it had super speed, primary levels of intelligence, and was a really difficult creature for them to figure out, let alone deal with.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

Yeah, it had this really great, really creepy design where it was this scrawny, almost emaciated thing with grey hairless skin, like a dog with mange, and it crawled around its knuckles like a gorilla, and it had this head like a deformed human skull with no eyes, no lips, and this one giant nostril in the center. Kind of like a terrestrial version of the Xenomorph from Alien.

SPEAKER_03 48:58

Yeah, they were like, okay, you've seen prehistoric animals, now this is our thing. It became their poster boy pretty much from the get-go, it was introduced. And I know, particularly in the early series, everyone was sort of waiting to see how and when it came back, which it did numerous times. But yeah, it's still one of those designs that still influences things even up to today.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

Yes, and we will get to that in just a minute. Um I want to bring up a fairly well-known tweet by Guillermadoro about monster design, where he said, quote, like a piece of art, a glance at a monster should tell you its story, its purpose, and what it represents. And I think this applies very well to the future predator because to me, I view it as kind of a personification of fear and death. Like I say, it has that very skull-like head, this emaciated skeletal body, those exposed teeth with no lips.

SPEAKER_03 49:47

Yeah, this design is certainly very death-like and almost a point where you think the thing was malnourished, which doesn't paint a very pretty picture of how easy it is to survive in the future and the other horrible things may be in store of this is what you have to be like to survive as an animal.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

The lack of eyes is also really effective because, like the xenomorph, it creates this unnerving feeling because humans are naturally inclined to look at eyes. So anything without eyes is inherently repulsive to us, but it also heightens the sense of fear because it tells you that this is a creature that doesn't rely on sight, but instead on a sense that humans are less familiar with and less adept at using. And also the fact that it is from the future creates a feeling of unfamiliarity and scariness.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

Yeah, it brought with it a very strong sense of foreboding of not only is it here, but what is it like where it

Did A Quiet Place rip off the future predator?

SPEAKER_03 50:35

came from.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

And if we're going to talk about the future predator's influence on other creature designs, then we also need to bring up a certain discussion that has emerged around it ever since the release of a little film you may have heard of called A Quiet Place. Namely the theory that the concept and design of the aliens in that film was inspired by or ripped off from, depending on who you ask, that of the future predator. What are your thoughts on this, Darby?

SPEAKER_03 50:59

I've seen pictures of the creature and not watch the films mainly because I saw the premise, saw what the animals were, and thought that is a ripoff. I'm just going to be disappointed by them. They do look very future predatory-like. They've got the four spindly limbs, they're very quick, they rely on sound, got those nasty skull-shaped heads. So for me, it's like it's like someone's changed up the homework and try to make it different enough for you not to make a connection. But for those that know, we can still see it.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Yeah, I mean, I guess you could imagine the creature designers of a quiet place or John Kresensky or whoever it was, deciding to lift the future predator design for their aliens, thinking that primeval wasn't well known enough for mainstream audiences to notice. So I do get where people are coming from from this, but looking at it objectively, I just feel there's no real definitive evidence to prove this thing. Like nobody involved in the making of a quiet place has ever publicly confirmed the future predator as a source of inspiration for the aliens. The whole idea there's any plagiarism or ripoff involved is just purely conjecture.

SPEAKER_03 52:01

Yeah, it may just be a case of as sometimes happens in media, just convergent evolution of ideas.

SPEAKER_01 52:07

Oh, I like that. Good paleobiology name drop there.

SPEAKER_03 52:10

Oh yeah. But yeah, no, I mean the flip side is that if they did make a quiet place and they just used the future predators now as some sort of like distantly related primeval spin-off, just future predators in rural America causing havoc, I would have just eaten the whole thing up.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

You mean if a quiet place was like a Walking Dead style spin-off of primeval?

SPEAKER_03 52:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah, I I probably would have too, just because you know nowadays we're just so starved of primeval content.

SPEAKER_02 52:36

Yeah.

Characters

SPEAKER_01 52:37

Anyway, we've bubbled on about creatures long enough. Let's talk about human characters now. So I feel like a lot of paleo fiction, up until fairly recently, has tended to get its priorities wrong when it comes to creatures versus characters. Generally, the focus has tended to be much more on creatures and in particular creature effects, as you put it, Derby dinosaurs go ra. Whereas the human characters are these one-dimensional cardboard cutouts who exist mainly just to be audience avatars, as opposed to characters in their own right. You saw it a lot in many of the early stop-motion Paleo B movies from the 20th century, and sadly it continues to rear its ugly head today in the form of the Jurassic World movies. But my motto for judging paleo fiction is some people like dinosaurs, more people like a good story and characters. The creatures themselves are good for drawing the audiences in, but what people really stick around for is the human drama. Now, thankfully, these days we're starting to see this a bit more in paleo fiction with shows like Primal and surprisingly Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous of all things. But Primeval was one of the at the time rare examples of paleo fiction that managed to thread the needle gracefully between creature action and having really likable and mostly well-written human characters, too.

SPEAKER_03 53:56

Yeah, I think Mel was one of the really big pushes, particularly for the first series, of just this really big character focus. It wasn't just people running around or running away from things or fighting everything. It was actually thought as to how different characters and personalities would react to what was going on.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

It was quite an interesting character study in and of itself as to how people would react to such an unprecedented situation. That's something I think is really worth talking about when we talk about series one in particular. Now, Primeval had a lot of characters, many of whom came and went as they were written out of the show or cast members left or whatever. And we could and likely will talk about most of them as this podcast goes on. But for this episode, we're just going to focus on what are arguably the main three characters, the three most popular and the three most important. Nick Cutter, Connor Temple, and Abby Maitland.

Nick Cutter

SPEAKER_01 54:44

Now, Darby, I feel like you know Cutter better than I do. So I'm going to let you take the lead on his character profile.

SPEAKER_03 54:50

Sure. So Professor Nick Cutter is our primary protagonist when we start the series. He's a professor in paleontology and evolutionary biology, which, given the events going on with creatures from the past coming through, makes him the natural expert and leader of the team that he puts together for dealing with this. It adds a lot of, I think, authenticity as well to the perspectives and viewpoints and actions that he takes as a result because he has a real grasp of pre-history, which a lot of people in government getting into this really don't have. He's the member that sort of has the most passion for the study of life and nature and what bonds between them, and Joy's trying to fit the pieces of evolution together and the anomalies themselves, allowing to see his life's work alive.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

Yeah, there's that really great scene in the very first episode where he's showing Connor the coelacanth fossil and explaining how it was supposedly meant to be extinct since the end of the Cretaceous, and then suddenly one showed up in the Indian Ocean in the 1930s, and he says to him, Darwin provides most of the answers.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

It's the pieces that don't fit that interest me.

SPEAKER_03 55:58

Yeah, he sort of loves and is equally worried by the situation going on as well, such as him complimenting the raptor that tried to kill him as beautiful but not friendly.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

I think kind of as a product of him being an academic first and an action man second, he has the sense of someone who was thrown into a leadership role rather than choosing it just by virtue of having the right qualifications and background for the situation. As one of the characters says in series one, he may be a little unconventional in his methods, but he's the closest thing we've got to an expert, which by the way, I feel is way more justification than most shows of this type would give for roping in a civilian for a top secret government cover-up.

SPEAKER_03 56:35

Yeah, I think that is one of his real driving forces of he's doing what he loves more than he wants to lead people through it. He does take on that leadership role as the series progresses. He learns to open up and work with people that he really gets on with and is actually quite hostile to those that he doesn't. And there's this real divide between the group that he nurtures and cares for and is leading through this, but also this other group that he views as more of a nuisance than a help.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

I really like how they make Cutter's intellect a real big part of his character. Like he actually utilizes and relies on his scientific knowledge a lot to solve problems. He's not just there to spout facts and ideas, he actually uses it in the story. He's often one of two characters who is among the first to make some new observation about the anomalies or about the creatures. Example that jumps to mind there is series two, episode four, when they're looking for a creature in the sewers. And first of all, they hear this whale-like singing, and then they find a piece of skin that's been shed off like a seal does on a rock. And so that's what makes him realize that this might be some sort of marine mammal that they're looking for. And that in turn informs the story later on because then they have to decide well, do they need to actually just search the water, or is this one of those marine mammals that can leave the water like a seal? Which, as we find out later, it actually is. So it's a really good example of a scientist's skill and understanding being used to drive the story.

SPEAKER_03 57:55

Yeah, it is. And yeah, and that particular episode is very really butt's head with government points of view. So it also explores the lack of understanding and willingness of other parties to follow his hunches as well. Because he he is using appropriate scientific knowledge to try and figure things out, but is getting pushback from the powers that be, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Which is something scientists today would know nothing about.

SPEAKER_03 58:19

Uh we know all about it, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 58:21

Yeah, I'm sure you've seen Don't Look Up. But talking about what you were saying about how sometimes Cutter goes off on his own hunches, that is true, but I also do think that he's an informed risk taker. He wasn't a going all guns blazing kind of guy. He would try and assess the situation properly and then decide whether it was worth taking a risk or not. Like in series one episode five, he stops a pteranodon from being shot because he's not convinced it was responsible for killing a golfer and because killing it could unnecessarily disrupt history or pre-history, I should say. Like he could switch to act first and worry about the rest later mode, but only when it was absolutely necessary. And that I think was another thing that made him really valuable as a leader.

SPEAKER_03 59:02

Yeah, he sort of assessed the situation first before deciding the appropriate course of action. It wasn't just we've got something big and bad on the loose, let's hunt it down. It was trying to make sense of why it was there, what it was potentially likely to do, how to potentially lure it back with as minimal disruption in her as possible, and trying to take a more calculated approach to everything.

SPEAKER_01 59:24

Unlike some characters later on.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

Yeah, yeah, there'll be lots to say later on on that front. He also has a personal connection to this as well, considering that his wife disappeared eight years prior without any trace or explanation. And as the series goes on, he sort of uncovers answers to the mystery of what happened to her.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

Yeah, it gives him a more personal and relatable reason to be involved in this other than just dinosaurs cool. And speaking of which, let's talk about Cutter's relationships. So, one of the things that happens quite early on in the series is Cutter finds out that his wife Helen, who he had presumed dead for eight years, was actually alive the whole time and has been travelling through the anomalies all this time. And it brings up a lot of resentment and a lot of hurt and anger that she let him believe she was dead all those years.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

Yeah, Cutter sort of learns to move on with himself and get past what Helen's done and who she's become and sort of embrace his new present and let go of the past.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

But then on the flip side is the fact that Cutter does learn to open up to people, and I think he does become, particularly to the younger members of the team, he does very much become a father figure in many respects.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:31

Yeah, he does. He sort of treats them as one sort of family group, and he's strong-willed, he's resilient with whatever they face, and he's also firm and fair if they do play up or muck up or do something wrong. But then if something goes wrong for them as a group, he tends to self-inflict the blame on himself rather than on them. So he does try and protect them from antagonizing forces wherever he can. Connor, when he accepts him as a student, um well, initially it's reluctantly, but when he like willingly takes him on as a student, he encourages him to think proactively outside the box about problems, listens to the observations he makes and what they mean, and nurtures him to eventually become the technical, prehistorical round expert of the team

Connor Temple

SPEAKER_03 1:01:16

almost.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

Speaking of which, let's talk about Connor, because he's definitely mine, and I think a lot of people's favourite character in the show, albeit somewhat belatedly for some people I know. Like I know there were people who didn't want him that much in the first series, but then came to really love him in the second one. So, as you say, he is Cutter's graduate student. So he also likewise comes from a paleontology background. He's incredibly knowledge about the creatures to an extent that even Cutter isn't. I mean, one of the first things we learn about him is he has this database of prehistoric creatures that he's been putting together since he was 14. He's usually the first one to idea creature. He's very much set up as the geek of the team at first. Like he's very quirky, he plays video games in his underwear, he dresses appallingly. My apologies, Cotton Department. They give him these fingerless gloves and a silly port pie hat that apparently someone thought wasn't gratuitous and unnecessary, mercifully absent in series four and five.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

No, no, I thought Connor's fashion was sort of a nice part of his character. I always enjoy seeing what he'd be wearing each week, particularly in the early series.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

I guess it did lend to the geek imagery they were going for. There was there was a really great review of Prime Evil done by Charlie Brooker, who most people know nowadays as the creator of Black Mirror. And in his section on Connor, he said, quote, he's supposed to be an archetypal nerd, but since the actor who plays him is clearly a bit too handsome for this, they've achieved the effect instead by giving him greasy hair and a laptop obsession.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:41

He is very much the comic relief nerd of the show, but ultimately grows to become much more than that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:47

Yeah, I think a lot of shows like this, this type of character would just be the gig, just the guy who spouts facts and who we're all supposed to laugh at for making inappropriate Star Wars and Marvel references at precisely the wrong time. I think one of the cutest scenes in it, in the skeoky way, is the scene when Abby, and we'll get to his relationship with Abby later, is teaching him to chat up women. And it's going pretty well at first. They're doing a little role-playing thing, and then he says completely seriously.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:13

Who do you think of when in a fight between Wolverine and Spider-Man?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:18

I said flirty, not nerdy.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:19

Which he correctly that's back at her with that's entry-level comic book nerd, which you know you can't dispute in this day and age.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:26

But Connor's a lot more than that. He's the character who with probably the most complexity to him, other than Cutter. And of all of them, he is the one with the most of an arc.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

He says in the very first episode that he's not very outdoors, he he's more just laptop and logistics, but come later series, you can see that he's really shed that view of himself. By series two, you see he's comfortable with his role in the team, and you're egging him on as the show goes on in his relationship with Abbey Building and also how he's developing and building things throughout the series that are of a benefit to the entire team. I think he's one of like only three characters that is in every single episode of the show. So he has quite a lot of screen time and growth, and a lot happened to him over the course of the five series.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:08

And a big reason why he's so many people's favourite is because from beginning to end, he is just the most lovable guy you could ever imagine. Like he's so excited about this whole thing, to the point of not taking it seriously enough in the early episodes. In fact, in an interview, Douglas Henshaw, the actor who plays Cutter, describes Connor as being like a big Labrador puppy, which I think is a very apt description for him in the early series, especially.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

Yeah, no, I think the Labrador puppy thing is accurate because, particularly through the first show, he is just trying to follow events happening with the anomalies as best he can because he's just so excited and infused by it. So excited that he doesn't necessarily respect the gravitas of it of keeping it under wraps, which has repercussions later on.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:51

But I think that's kind of why people relate to him because he's imperfect and because he does have these flaws that almost derive from his attributes. I think he very much fits into the character archetype of adorable nerd, like someone who is socially awkward, but he's just really lovable for it. It's kind of like when I watch the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, and I'm just like, oh, damn it, Toby Maguire. Why have you got to be so fucking cute all the time?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:14

Yeah, it's a fine line, isn't it? You want them to be charismatic and liked, but not too sort of unlikable, so to speak. But I I guess that was sort of but they didn't play into the full nerd stereotype. He did have a charisma about him as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:29

Which I feel stems from the fact that he's just such a nice guy through and through. Like he's not selfish or mean spirited in any way. He always sees the best in people and tries to help in any way he can. And even though he is very much the underdog and does have a lot of shit happen to him in the show, he always stays true to who he is, which is just this fundamentally sweet natured person. There's a real genuineness to him that I don't feel you always see in a lot of real people, never mind fictional ones. A lot of it, I think, is the actor playing him, Andrew Lee Potts, who just has this natural. Youthful charm to him that is so incredibly endearing. By his own admission, he improvised his performance a lot and put a lot of his own personality into Connor. To the point where, if you ever watch him in interviews or as I did one time, meet him at Comic Cons, it's really very hard to tell where the actor ends and the character begins.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:17

I guess that adds to, well, the genuine flair that he's highlighted as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:21

But he can also be really brave when it comes to it. Like one of his most iconic scenes in the first series is when he and Abby are attacked by a Mosasaur on the shores of a reservoir, and he actually pushes her to the side and then fights it off with an orc. So he can actually be really brave and show genuine courage when the situation calls for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:40

Yeah, he's not just a nerd that is all talk and no walk. He does stand up for people and himself when he needs to.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:47

I also like how, similarly to Cutter, I think they really used Connor as a way to showcase the value of intellect. Like they really make Connor's intellect and expertise, a virtue in the story. In series three, for instance, he discovers kind of by accident that when you pass electricity through anomalies, they lock, as they call it, which means that creatures can't pass through them. And he then uses his observations in the field to create the technology the team uses to help improve their skills in dealing with the anomalies. So in this case, he creates an anomaly locking device. He's also the one who creates the aforementioned anomaly detector. He also puts his painterological knowledge to good use as well. So that makes him a really good counterpart to Cutter, especially from series two onwards. They form a really good dynamic and a really close student-mentor relationship with each other.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:38

It almost develops into a sort of unconditional trust, as Connor's the person Cutter goes to when he wants something done under the radar, because he knows that he can trust him. And Connor also goes to confide in Cutter if there's something that he wants to talk about that he doesn't want anyone else to know or overhear. So they do have this almost castine relationship with them both.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:57

But

Abby Maitland

SPEAKER_01 1:07:58

then, of course, the other big relationship in Connor's life, and arguably one of the main drivers of Rizark as a character, is the one he has with Abby. So shall we talk about her?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:07

Yeah. Abby is sort of the apple of Connor's eye, I think, from the very first episode. She's this level-headed, tough, and independent woman who doesn't take any sort of rubbish from anyone. She works at a local zoo and stumbles across a strange creature that someone's found, which leads her to the crossing path with Cutter and Connor and that at the Forest of Dean anomaly site, where she proves to them and also herself that her inferences and knowledge about animal behaviour are actually really useful to them, such as advising them not to spook a scootosaurus by staying within its field of vision.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

Yeah. She's offering a perspective on living creatures, whereas the others come from a background of dealing with fossilized ones.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:49

And she's the empathetic animal lover of the show who goes to great lengths to protect the creatures that come through. And she's the most comfortable dealing with them up close and personal, more so than the rest of the team.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:01

She shows a lot more empathy than anyone else does, really. Like she knows at the end of the day they're just animals lost in a world they don't really understand. Something that really jumps to mind for me is the scene in series three, episode seven, where the team encounters the Dracorex that's obviously wounded and it's dying. And then one of her team members, he says, if it's going to die, it's going to die in its own world. And Abby, I can't trust, is it's not going to die. That really, I think, demonstrates how much more invested she is in the creatures than I'd say many of her other team members are.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:32

She's very much more comfortable, I think, with the creatures at the start, more than the people, but that quickly grows and changes. She grows quite fond of other team members. But I think one of my criticisms of Abby in series one is she is more of just, I think, a love triangle member than a fully fledged character. And it's not until later on in the series that she grows into a stronger character in her own right. And I know that's a criticism that has been levelled at series one for quite a while, I think, is the portrayal of Abby in particular.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:01

You know, I was thinking about this a bit lately. Nowadays, a lot of quote-unquote strong female characters have kind of become parodies of the trope in that their badassery is the only trait they have, and they don't have vulnerability or dimensionality outside of that. You see it in characters like She-Hulk and Captain Marvel, for instance. And I feel like Abby could so very easily have fallen into that same trap, being this very independent, tough girl who we didn't mention this earlier. She's really into martial arts and she's got some of the best firearm skills in the team. And she doesn't put a very great deal of importance on romance, at least at first. And yet she never does become that sort of character. So I'm just wondering what you feel it is about her that keeps her from ever becoming, like I say, almost a mockery of a strong female character.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:45

I think it comes back to what we've said is her real passion and driver is the animals and how they're taken care of. So she shows that she does have this big heart and is caring, which really takes a lot of her, as you say, badassery skills and moments of trying to protect animals and also people she cares about, as there's there's an emotional core to all of the things that she's doing. It's not just I'm going to do martial arts and be badass for the sake of looking cool. It's, you know, that she's got an emotional driver behind it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:15

Going back kind of to what you were saying about how people sort of viewed Abby as just part of a love triangle. I do feel that one, I don't know if you would call this a criticism per se, but one thing I do think is noteworthy is that her character arc in the show is more romantic. It's more about her learning to love Connor and it's less character-driven because she's pretty much self-actualised from the start. She knows what she likes, she knows kind of what she wants in life. She arguably doesn't really need to change in the way that someone like Connor does to begin with. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:48

Um, I think she is a bit more of a flat character, but in that she's part of Connor's story arc, she is one of the people that changes him for the better over the course of the show. She becomes his sort of human anchor, I think, because particularly with Connor, we see him grow, we see him develop from the student into one of the real innovators within the anomaly team, but he almost sort of loses himself to that point, and it's his connection with her that headers him back to what's important to him as a person. So I think she is a very important point of contact and wisdom for him.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:26

I mean, I think if we're looking at Abby's arc as a more of a romantic one, then I guess it probably could have benefited from giving her a reason to need a romantic partner in her life. Like she doesn't really seem to have any friends outside of the anomaly team, but that's never framed as a problem or even brought up. She doesn't seem to be lonely or missing anything in her life. But for what it is, it's done pretty well, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:46

So alongside her love of animals and making sure they're well taken care of, another big part of her arc in the show is her relationship with Connor.

Abby x Connor love story

SPEAKER_01 1:13:01

Yeah, I mean, we won't go into too much detail about it here because quite frankly, that deserves a whole series of podcast episodes, which is why, whenever we discuss a particular series of primeval, we will chronicle how it develops within each series. But I will say this for now, full disclosure, this is quite literally, no word of irony, my absolute favorite love story in all of fiction, in part because it was the very first love story I ever really got into as a kid. Like I'd never been into fictional romances before I watched Primeval, but then there I am watching this show in 2007 as a 13-year-old boy. And I'm watching these two on screen together, seeing their chemistry for the first time. And I came away from that thinking, wow, what an incredible love story. And I really wanted to see them get together so badly. These two were the first couple I ever shipped, and this was very much my gateway into couple shipping in other TV shows and movies. Was that your experience at all, Darby?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:54

Um, not quite. I think I was there more for the creatures and the overall science more than the love story. But yeah, every show sort of needs, well, at that point in time had to have some sort of romantic angle. And I think these two were a nice contrast to what was going on between Cutter and Helen, where the anomalies had actually driven them apart. But for Connor and Abby, it was something that brought them closer together over time.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:19

Yeah, and what made it really work so well was the fact it was written around the real life relationship between Andrew Lee Potts and Hannah Spirit, the actress who plays Abby, which is why the chemistry between them feels so natural.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:31

Yeah, they briefly dated before Hann't they, and then they rekindled that during the show. And I think, particularly going into the acting, that really helped elevate that dimension of the character relationship between the both of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:43

I mean, this is a show with dinosaurs and futuristic bat monsters and parasites that crawl under people's skin and hijack their brains. And you wouldn't think a sweet, tender love story would be a big part of that. But actually, for me, and I think a lot of people, that was just as, if not more central to the appeal of primeval than the creatures and the action and all that stuff. Like even my horrible cynical housemate at Uni said that the one thing he genuinely really liked about Primeval was the love story. And in fact, by the end, I was watching the show primarily for that and not for the creatures.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:14

Yeah, it was, I think the fact that they managed to build it up so well over the earlier series is that that's what you felt was in the most jeopardy, particularly in the later series, is oh god, they spent so much time building this and getting together, and now all of a sudden there's this new threat that's threatening to break it all down. So that really became one of the most, I think, peril-inducing parts of the show, particularly later on.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:37

It was never smooth sailing for them. But what was really great was seeing how they managed to pull through. It really goes to show how the real strength of Primeval was the human characters.

Tone and Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 1:15:46

And the final thing I want to say about why I think Primeval works so well is that it was very much a show for all tastes. It was a family show. Anyone could watch it, kids could enjoy it, adults could enjoy it because it knew how to balance tone. You know, it had these dark moments for sure, but it also knew when to bring in lighter, more whimsical moments. I mean, I'm just thinking back to the very first episode. There's a sense of mystery when they go into the forest of Dean, they see the evidence of these creatures, you know, these tracks, this truck that's been ripped open, a dead cow in a tree. And then also on the other side, you've got Abby finding this lizard wrex that she's never seen before. But there's also a sense of whimsy in there as well. The sense of, oh, what are we going to discover? It's kind of like a giant Easter egg hunt almost. That's that sounded way more infantile than it actually is. But there's that sense of discovery and the joy of that as much as there is a sense of mystique and danger.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:37

Yeah, I think that they did a good job of building the atmosphere of a scene, so you knew whether it was going to be dramatic or comedic. And I think the actors that they got in to play the roles also helped feed into establishing that balance because you had very drama-oriented actors alongside people with a very comedic background as well, sort of playing off each other. So you didn't know if they were going to come out with some dramatic piece of wisdom or a comedic waved hand. So they tried to strike a balance, I think, in all departments of keeping it dramatic but family-friendly and comedic at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:14

Yeah, the comedy of primeval, I think, is something that is kind of an under-to-discuss section of it. I think one of the best examples of that is the character of James Lester, who is played by a very well-known comedian in the UK called Ben Miller. He's the government liaison to the Anomaly team, uh, the M of Primeval, as it were. Um, and actually, I do see a lot of similarities between him and Ray Fines in the Daniel Craig Bond movies. Um, but he's a really great character just because he's one of these boss characters who just has so much disdain for the people beneath him in a really funny way. Adrian Hodges said that he was his favourite character to write for just because he would come up with these really snarky one-liners for him. Like, there's a really great scene in series two, episode six, where a mammoth comes on to the M25 and one of his aides says to him, Oh, it's a Colombian mammoth, sir. It's a hairless species.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:06

And his quote was, I don't care if it shaved its legs and got a bikini wax, it's on a motorway in broad daylight.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:13

Ah, yeah, Leicester was always an amusing one. He did grow less disdained by everyone around him, but it was always funny to see what he'd come out with to describe the current affairs of what was going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:23

And it never took itself too seriously either. So it was really good for family viewing. There was something in it for everyone. To quote again that Charlie Brooker review, it was dinosaurs for the kids, couple of hunks for mum, and a barely legal girl for dad.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:37

Yeah, if you boil it down to those essential elements, that's pretty much what it was. But it it all meshed together and had layers of depth that I think people haven't really appreciated. But there is definitely a lot there to discuss.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:49

Okay, so that concludes our broad overview of Prime Evil, the first of many episodes we'll be making about this show for this podcast. We hope we've convinced you all it's a show worth watching. If we have, you can either watch it by subscribing to Brit Box, or you can find every episode for free on Dailymotion. So we highly recommend you to watch it if you haven't already. As I say, we will have another episode on it again before too long, and we'll also be reviewing plenty of other paleodramas in between. But until then, thank you very much for listening. Hope you enjoyed yourself, and we will see you on our next dig. Take care.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:23

Yeah, take care.