Primeval Series 1: Prime Paleo TV

It's back to the halcyon year of 2007 as Tom and Darby revisit Primeval Series 1 in all its nostalgic British sci-fi glory. Widely considered to be one of the best of the show, this is the series that did prehistoric wildlife in the modern world right the first time — Jurassic World: Dominion should have taken notes — helped in no small part by great characters, imaginative writing and a healthy dose of groundedness too. Relive the series that briefly popularised a Permian predator, turned a former pop star into an accomplished actress long before Lady Gaga, concludes with one of the most epic creature battles in paleo media, and somehow makes you sob your heart out for a conspiracy theorist fighting the urge to infect other people with a deadly parasite.

Find us on IG at: @dinosaurboxpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

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_04 0:23

And I'm your co-host, Darby Knight.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

And thankfully, Darby is still willing to be friends with me even after all the shit I said about Prehistoric Park in the last episode.

SPEAKER_04 0:31

Uh yeah, I think sun but fair would be a better choice of words.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Yeah, I'm sorry we couldn't do that one together, because I know you really love that series, but it's just that Alex was really adamant about doing a pre-historic park episode when I approached him about being a guest host. And also he was about to move to Dubai, so you know what can you do?

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Yeah, it's fair enough. I'm just happy it's still really popular with some people.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Well, you are at least getting to talk about the Impossible Picture show that came out directly after Prehistoric Park, so there is that.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Yeah, I think this is the one that people remember most over that one, considering it was considered one of the main rivals for Doctor Who back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Yes, indeed, dear listeners, because following our general overview of Primeval in the pilot episode, this is the first of what will be five episodes, specifically reviewing a particular series of the show. Further down the line, we will branch out into some of the other primeval content you may not know exists, like the original companion novels, and even some you probably wish didn't exist, like a certain spin-off. But right now we are kicking off our five episode series within a series on each series of primeval, starting of course with series one, as you do. So, since we already gave the premise of primeval as a whole in our pilot episode, for this one we're just going to get straight into the summary of the plot of series one. So, Darby, why don't you take this away?

SPEAKER_04 1:46

So the first episode starts off with a woman who we later learn to be Helen Cutter being chased through a supermarket car park by this monstrous creature that we don't recognise. And then we jump to about eight years later where we're introduced to Professor Nick Cutter and his research assistant Stephen Hart. And after being joined by a rather charismatic student called Connor Temple, Connor notifies them of another creature sighting and manages to twist Nick and Stephen's arm into going to investigate. At the same time, we meet another character, a zookeeper named Abby Maitland, who discovers a letter in her boss's papers detailing a strange lizard that someone's discovered nearby, which he decides to go and investigate to try and figure out what exactly it is. So while Abby is investigating this strange lizard and realizes that it's not a species that is known to science, Nick, Stephen, and Connor are getting ready to explore the forest of Dean where the creature sighting took place. And Nick is sort of ambushed by an interested government official called Claudia Brown, and they stumble across a cow strung halfway up a tree as if it was killed by a leopard in the middle of a forest in England, which raises a lot of eyebrows for these rather pragmatic scientists. Abby and the child that found the lizard are also exploring a nearby area of forest where it was found. And during everyone's exploration, Abby eventually meets up with the other team that's out there and they discover their first giant prehistoric creature. It's a Scutosaurus, which dates back some 280 million years back in the fossil record. And they explore the forest of Dean further and discover this ripping time sitting amongst the trees in the dark of night. From then on, the story really gets going. Claudia manages to persuade her boss to designate it an official secret, and it becomes a big research project under the official secrets act. The whole team that's discovered it ropes in to try and study and figure out what's going on, what's causing these creatures to come through, what's causing these writs in time and space in the first place. And this is something that they focus on for the rest of the series, uncovering the properties and characteristics of these new phenomena and all the threats that are coming along with them. All of this new information has got Cutter really thinking about his wife who disappeared eight years ago under suspiciously similar circumstances. And as he goes exploring the anomaly through the rest of the episode and learning about it, he discovers evidence that his wife was there and clues that seem to hint that Helen is dropping messages to him that she's in fact still alive and has returned.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Also, there's a love triangle between Abby Connor and Stephen, where Connor basically falls in love with Abby at first sight, but she doesn't really want him at first. But then they spend a lot of time together working on the team. He saves her from a Mosasaur, and about halfway through the series, he moves into her flat. They get to know each other really well, and by the end, she's like, eh, I guess I wouldn't kick him out of bed after all. So a lot of people consider series one to be one of, if not the best series of primeval. Ask most fans which is their favourite series of the show, and they will usually say it's either the first or the second one, which of course then leads into the reason of why. Like, why is this first series in particular so beloved? Now, personally, I think a big part of that is the novelty factor. As we said in the pilot episode, there really was not anything like this on British television back in 2007. So of course it would have felt really new and fresh to people.

SPEAKER_04 5:18

Yeah, I agree with the novelty. It sort of changed up the formula that we'd come to know from paleo documentaries and films. It was very easy to look at the trailer and go, oh, this is just Jurassic Park on TV, people running around with prehistoric animals, but then you sit down and watch it, and it's like there's a lot more thought as to what they're encountering, why these animals are here in the first place, and a lot more of the questions are focused on the anomalies and rips in time and space themselves rather than the actual creatures.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

And maybe this is bias or nostalgia goggles talking, but I have to say, watching it again over a decade later, I myself do still feel a lot about old freshness. Like I still remember that sensation of seeing it for the first time and thinking how new and exciting it was, even after all this time. It still has the power to create that feeling in me. But of course, novelty can only carry a thing so far, and the fact that Series 1 consistently ranks so highly among Primeval fans to this day would suggest that there is a lot more to it than that. So Darby, what would you say that thing is?

SPEAKER_04 6:14

I think as far as series go, especially the pilot episode, it was just really well done. I've seen a lot of other pilot episodes where they don't really set the series up anywhere near as well, or they rush through so many things that it just feels like it's flying through at a breakneck pace. But Prime Evil from the very first episode really hit the ground solidly with its footing. I'd say that the six episode series is very concise overall. Each episode really covers all the main plot and side plot points with each episode moving everything along and building very clearly on what came before, such as giving you information about the anomalies, such as them having magnetism, being able to move along fault lines like earthquakes and also open not just at ground level but also below water and in the air as well. And also it was really good at moving different story beats along, such as teasing Helen having survived, having certain characters know this information and others don't, create conflict that comes to a head in later episodes. So it just did really well, I feel, in carrying its story forward across each episode.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

While also managing to weave it in with its creature of the week formula, so alongside the ongoing drama, you also had a really solid standalone story in each episode. And I think primeval always managed to do it in a way where you never felt like one storyline was getting its due at the expense of the other. It always felt like they each got just the right amount of attention.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

Yeah, there was nothing that felt like filler.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

And I think also, as you brought up in the pilot episode, it was an interesting character study of how different people from different walks of life would respond to an unprecedented situation like this.

SPEAKER_04 7:48

Yes, yeah, it was. In terms of the characters themselves, there's a lot of different personalities coming across this phenomenon in the show, and it's really interesting to see the different viewpoints and responses that they have to the threats that these anomalies are bringing up. So our main protagonist, Professor Cutter, he's personally conflicted with the discovery, and he's in love with the idea of seeing these prehistoric animals and the scientific questions that are posed. But it's also already had a massive impact on his life without him knowing. And there's sort of this draw to him that he wants to uncover these answers to his personal questions, but he's also very anxious as to what the implications of answering all of these questions will be.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yeah, Douglas Henschel, who plays him, I think has a really rugged, pensive look to him. Like he's someone who's been through the mill in life and has come out a lot wiser and more thoughtful for it, and he really brings that to the situations they find themselves in.

SPEAKER_04 8:43

Yeah, he does. And likewise, Steven is also equally intrigued, but as the series goes on, he gets more anxious, not about the creatures themselves, but about the personal scars that they'll dredge up for him. But by complete contrast, Connor is absolutely starstruck by what he's come across. It's basically like all his dreams come true, and he wants all the glory of the discovery. But as the series went on, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

I do have to object to you calling Connor a glory hog derby. I really don't see where that comes from.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

I think it's more prominent in the pilot episode where he goes straight from we've discovered something to I'm gonna get the Nobel Prize for this. His ambition sort of ran away with him a bit.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Yeah, I guess there is that, but I feel like that was probably a version of Connor that they started off with, but then didn't really continue on for the rest of the series. Because as we will discuss later, there was a pretty big rewrite that happened around Connor's character during the production of series one. So it may be that that was kind of a holdover from a different version of him where maybe they were going for a more arrogant character. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

I think it was just part of his character journey as well, because particularly in the second episode where he drags Abby out to try and find an anomaly, just the two of them sort of prove themselves. He falters quite massively trying to do that and experiences severe repercussions from everyone else in the team. Um so that did take himself down quite severely, I think, from where he was.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah, but I I don't really feel that that stems from arrogance. I always felt like it stemmed from overexcitement and wanting to prove himself and just not necessarily making the best decisions about how to go about it because he's young. I actually think he's one of the most humble characters in the show. Like he just wants to prove to them, and especially Kata, that he's useful. I mean, like he says at the end of the second episode, I just want to help. So to me, it always felt like that was rooted in innocence rather than arrogance or wanting the glory.

SPEAKER_04 10:31

Yeah, I know, but I guess it's those naive tendencies rearing their head again. I guess he is just that little bit young and stupid, as people tend to be at that age.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Yeah, he's very much the green boy of the show to start with. Like it's all new and exciting and thrilling to him. And at first he's too caught up in that to really see the seriousness of it all. His arc in series one is about learning that there's a dark side to this, which he is very much taught the hard way in episode four, as we will discuss later on.

SPEAKER_04 10:56

And then you've got the government body themselves, Claudia, who's a fairly junior civil servant, is torn between supporting Cutter's team or supporting her government superiors, and that causes friction with both parties. And she's up against the mammoth undertaking it of trying to keep the response and work on this all under wraps and out of the public eye. So there's a lot of pressure on her shoulders to get this right.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

And I think what I also liked about this series in particular is that I feel it really delved into the nuts and bolts of dealing with a situation like this, in the sense that no one apart from arguably Cutter and I guess sometimes Connor seemed to have any real idea of what they're dealing with. One of the problems I had with prehistoric park is that everything went too smoothly for Nigel all the time. Like now and again there'd be the odd hiccup, but for the most part, he'd always get what he wanted way too easily, even though he was dealing with creatures and environments that no one had ever experienced before. Primeval doesn't have this problem. Here I feel like you really see just how out of their depth the team often are to begin with, even in spite of their expertise in their respective fields.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

Yeah, you do. Everything's almost turned on its head, and they have to really act on their feet to deal with different challenges that they didn't foresee. So in episode two, there's an even earlier anomaly that opens to the Carboniferous 300 million years ago. And in this episode, the team are struggling with giant spiders and a giant centipede called an Arthropleura. And to begin with, they accuse one of the creatures as being responsible for causing deaths and biting people in the London Underground, but they later learned that they were completely wrong on that assumption and it's something else. So yeah, they are the best that you have to experts, but unfortunately, they're still feeling their way through the dark.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

And I think that's also very evident in the way that they handle the anomalies themselves, too. There's this really ad hoc sense to it in that they don't really know when the next one's gonna come up, they don't know where it's gonna appear. It really highlights this sense of how they're just starting out and they really don't know how to respond to this. Like a lot of the time, they're just relying on sightings and posts on the internet, to the point where in the final episode, Claudia even brings up the fact that they're always playing catch up with these things, and they really need to up their game and find better ways to detect them.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

If we're gonna defend ourselves more effectively, then we've got to do something more than just react. We've got to discover why these anomalies are opening and then predict when the next one will appear.

SPEAKER_04 13:10

Yeah, there is a real sense of they're on the back foot with learning about these things. That I guess adds to the team's difficulties as well in trying to discern whether something is a real life anomaly or not, and whether something has come through it or not. It's like there's another later episode where they respond to a reported creature sighting and they get there and they find it's just this modern snake in a toilet. And especially as the series goes on, the importance is pressed of no, we need to be at the forefront and try and catch these things as they happen, not in retrospect.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Yeah, and I think that created a real sense of relatability to the characters, and then they didn't really know how to respond to it, and of course, neither did the audience. So there was a real sense of connection you could form with them.

SPEAKER_04 13:49

You got to see their honest, genuine reactions to the situation. So in some instances you got a sense of wonder from what they were discovering, and in other instances you saw how fearful they were of what they were dealing with, and you never know which way it was going to flip each week when a new episode came out. Is this gonna be life or death? Or is this gonna be something like Dodo's, for instance, which was a really big shift from the man-eating monster that they had the episode before?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

I think because there were no real audience expectations at this point, this first series really had a lot of carte blanche to experiment and do whatever they wanted with it. And what was really quite impressive was not just the ways in which they made use of that freedom, but also the ways in which they didn't. Because I feel like a lesser show under the same circumstances would have been tempted to go straight for spectacle and big Save the World scenarios in its first series, which is indeed what nearly happened in this one. There was an episode which they, in my opinion, very wisely scrapped that featured a Diplodocus coming into urban London and dropping giant parasites everywhere, Cloverfield style.

SPEAKER_04 14:48

Yeah, that sounds like they dialed everything up a little bit too far. If you're trying to keep a cover on the whole conspiracy angle of we don't want the public to know about this, a Diplodocus is the last animal that you'd want to feature, particularly in this early stage.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

But instead they kept it relatively restrained, and as much as a premise like this would allow, very grounded in reality. In fact, that was one of the things Adrian Hodges said he was really going for to try and distinguish primeval from Doctor Who to give it more of a sense of realism as opposed to sci-fi spectacle.

SPEAKER_04 15:18

Yeah, with Doctor Who, you get the massive sci-fi sets and gadgets and that, whereas in primeval, you literally just had people, walkie-talkies and guns, pretty much.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

And beyond that, I think as we mentioned in the pilot, most of the places where they had the anomalies open up were in places where they wouldn't be seen by most of the public. And even though they did very much play around with the types of prehistoric creatures they used and the scenarios they put them in, at the same time they never quite went the full hog with it in this first series. I feel like when they picked their creatures, they were really taking into account how well they could plausibly stay hidden from the public as much as anything else by virtue of their size and habits.

SPEAKER_04 15:54

Yeah, they really chose creatures that despite being out of place and out of time, they still could slip into the shadows of a modern environment. The Gorgonopsid, we see it in the very first episode, stalking through the forest and things. And then second episode, going back to the giant spiders, the team noticed that they stick to the darkness of the underground bunkers and they avoid light wherever they can. The Moses or just disappears beneath reservoirs where people can't see it lurking, and then the Pteranodon has all of the sky to look for roosts and prey, and most people wouldn't guess it was anything other than a really big bird, unless they knew otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

I think that's a bit of a stretch, but I do get what you mean. Like it can hide really high up in the clouds and everything like that.

SPEAKER_05 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

And also most of the creatures in series one are not that big as far as prehistoric animals go. The Mosasaur and Pteranodon are the two exceptions, but if you take them out of the equation, the biggest creatures are probably about the size of a rhino at most. So that means if you put them in the right places, they're less likely to be seen by the public. There's this real sense that the writers were always thinking of what they could do to make this secret operation stay secret in a way that felt believable. One of the little moments I really love in episode two is when Claudia says, There's been a lot of internet chatter, but we've got natural disbelief on our side. That I thought was such a clever line because it also adds a psychological layer to the team keeping this covered up. The fact that they can rely on the masses to simply not believe that something this crazy could be going on.

SPEAKER_04 17:17

Yeah, this is the era before Twitter. There was a time before Twitter. Oh, yes, times have changed.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Yeah, you're right there. I think it benefited from the fact that at the time it came out, social media was not the juggernaut that it is today. So, you know, people wouldn't necessarily be sharing videos of these things X million numbers of times.

SPEAKER_04 17:35

Or live stream it all as they catch it and it happens, you can't really keep it under apps.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Yeah, I think that would definitely be a difficult question to avoid if the show had come out today, or if it ever does come back, that is something that they would have to consider. Yeah. But at the same time, and I think I brought this up in the pilot episode too. I like how they also allowed themselves moments when the characters are just able to step back and appreciate how incredible this all is. Like really just taking the wonder of seeing prehistoric creatures alive for the first time.

SPEAKER_04 18:03

There's definitely a good number of moments of just sort of digesting the awe and scale of what they were dealing with and just enjoyment. I think the biggest one that comes to mind is cutter in the small office in episode four, just playing with a trillio of dodos, just being absolutely dazzled by both the liveliness and stupidity of them.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Yeah, it's things like that that I think really brought a real sense of fun to prime evil. Like it allowed you to have moments where you could just enjoy the creatures and the whole anomaly concept for their own sake, and it wasn't always just about the drama of them trying to maul people to death.

SPEAKER_04 18:36

Yeah, I don't think it would have really landed as well as it has with fans if it was just big thing comes through and attacks someone. You need a little bit more variety to keep it fresh and working.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Yeah, they really were good at shaking up the formula so that it never felt stale and boring. Because in a show like this, that could so very easily have been the case. And I think they were very wise to always be one step ahead of the audience in terms of expectations.

SPEAKER_04 18:58

It's one of those old adages of great storytelling is giving the audience what they don't know they want, and then they want more of it.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

That's such a that's such a great saying. I think that's such a perfect encapsulation of primeval as well. Like nobody I think because I think this is the thing, I don't think anybody going into it really thought it was going to be a success. I don't think anyone really had much faith in it to begin with. And then when it aired, suddenly people decided, oh wow, this dinosaur ship kind of rocks, and uh they all just really got into it and really wanted more of it. So yeah, I think that's a really great metaphor for primeval itself. Okay, so let's talk about the characters now because they more than anything else, I think, were what really helped Series 1 have that real sticking power with audiences and help them to connect with Primeval going forward. In fact, one of the most common complaints by fans about the terrible Canadian spin-off Primeval New World was that it didn't have any characters from the original show in it, except for Connor, who shows up in two episodes. Now, as much as I hate New World, even I'll admit that's not really a fair criticism since it was clearly never meant to be about those characters, but it speaks to just how integral they were to the appeal of the whole primeval franchise.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

Yeah, and even to this day, people are still annoyed that some of those characters didn't come back even later on in the series itself. It just goes show how attached they got to all of those that were introduced in that very first series.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

It's really a testament, I think, to the writing and the acting, because most of the cast at that point would not have been that well known to general audiences at the time, the only real exceptions being Ben Miller, who plays Lester, and especially Hannah Spirit, who plays Abbey. I remember the media coverage for series one really hyping up the fact that she was on board. She had already made a name for herself as a singer with S Club 7 in the late 90s and early 2000s, and of course she had done some acting on their companion TV shows and movies. But by the time the opportunity for Primeval came along, she'd kind of been out of the spotlight for a few years. S Club had had a pretty messy breakup back in 2003, and because of that, she'd decided to step back from the media for a while. And when she did decide to seriously pursue acting as a career, most of what she did before primeval was the odd side role, including infamously in Agent Cody Banks 2. They're going to need some backup on British intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

No wonder all the malls are they got all you kids working undercover.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

In fact, supposedly she almost didn't audition for the role of Abby because she'd never done anything this big before acting-wise, and she wasn't sure if she could do it. What changed her mind was the fact that Billy Piper, who likewise came from a singing background, had gotten the role of Rose Tyler in Doctor Who and had become such a big part of that show's success and appeal. So that was what gave her the confidence to go for it.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

It's one of those things, if you don't try, you never know. And luckily for her, she tried it, and now we all know that she can do it.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

By the way, quick tangent, Darby, you were living in the UK during S Club's heyday. Are you old enough to remember anything about it? I'm kind of curious as to how much of a presence it had in everyday life.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

Uh, it had great presence. We had to sing S Club songs and assemblies in primary school. And that doesn't seem to be restricted to just my primary school. So yeah, it was quite massive. Tons of kids enjoyed singing it. Teachers enjoyed getting kids to sing it. I remember on C BBC they used to be like S club TV shows. It was like, wise, just a fictional drama of the S Club members and their life in what was it, Miami or something. Not that I ever really watched it. It seemed a bit weird.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Yeah, I lived in London very briefly when I was five and six, and I vaguely remember hearing Reach Up for the Stars at a birthday party once, but that was the extent of my S-Club exposure. I honestly would never have known they even existed if Hannah Spirit hadn't been in primeval. That's how out of touch I was with mainstream pop culture back in 2007.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

I think Douglas Henschel as well was quite a big name they got attached to the show as the showrunners basically wrote the part with him in mind and offered it out. Oh definitely.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Oh, I didn't know that. Well, I mean I know he's become quite popular as a result of Primeval because now he's the lead man in Shetland, which is his big post-primeval success. But I didn't think he was that well known before Primeval.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

Yeah, he was, um, which is why I was quite a shame that he didn't stay for the full duration of the show, but we'll get onto that in later episodes. I think one of the big things that helped Primeval was a lot of the character relationships felt very realistic. They all gelled really well. Um Andrew Lee Potts said something along those lines in one of his interviews where he says that one of the things that showed him that Primeval was going to work was all of the chemistry that the cast had for each of their characters.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Yeah, and Hannah Spirit said in her memoir that the cast all became, to use a cliche here, like a family on set. Like they all go out clubbing or go into the pub after shooting. So I think there was this very real sense of these people are a team, and there's this real sense of camaraderie between them, especially between Carter and Stephen and Connor and Abby.

SPEAKER_04 23:50

You've sort of have these pairings in the show where you get to feel like, particularly with Cutter and Stephen, that they have known each other for as long as the show says they have. And with Connor and Abby, you can really see that they're thrown together at first, but they naturally grow to like each other as everything goes on.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

But at the same time, and again, this sort of feeds back into the idea that this team is just starting out, there is also a lot of friction between them and a lot of disagreement about how they should be dealing with these things, like when Katter and Steven are arguing with Claudia on how best to deal with a Pteranodon in episode five.

SPEAKER_04 24:21

Yeah, and that's one of the things that my partner picked up when I watched it with her for the first time. She said there was a lot of negative relationships in the show.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Oh really? What did she mean by negative relationships?

SPEAKER_04 24:32

I think she just meant by just all of the headbussing, I think is the best way to put it. Because particularly the first half of the series, there's just so much going on with everyone. We're trying to deal with this massive discovery they've made. Cutter, as we've already said, is personally conflicted with Helen coming back into his life, having to deal with the government, guessing in on this big scientific discovery that he's not particularly fond of their involvement. Abby has to deal with Connor early on, she's not particularly fond of him. And then you've got Lester, who just views everyone as an utter inconvenience. So I think I think it's a lot of people finding their feet with what they're dealing with. But I think that was just part of the show highlighting how different personalities are reacting to this new phenomenon, and it's showing how different people react to the unknown that it brings, and all the frictions and disagreements that come with it, depending on what walk of life you're from, your own life experience and that kind of thing. And it's sort of really developing fresh connections from there, I think, is how the first series goes, because you get to the end of the series and there's all these new chemistries that have been built as a result. You've got new romances forming, you've got a lot more trust, I think, between people that were clashing a lot more earlier on in the series, and people are working much more in tandem with trying to deal with this big issue.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

So speaking of relationships, we will get to Abby and Connor later in this episode. But for now, what I think we should really focus on is the one between Cutter and the two women in his life, his wife Helen and also Claudia. Because series one, arguably more so than any other series of primeval, is primarily about Cutter's story and character arc. Now, Darby, you are our resident cutter expert here, so I'm gonna let you take the floor on this one. Well, I wouldn't say I'm a cutter expert, but Well, you probably have more to say about this than I do, at least. Like I like Cutter as a character, but I was never personally that invested in his romantic relationships. I'm much more of an Abby and Connor stan, as you know.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

Yeah, he is certainly the person that I've thought the most about having watched the show at least two dozen times at this point. Oh, just that many? That's as many times as I can remember off the top of my head. So Cutter at the beginning of the series, after mourning Helen for the last eight years, discovers clues from her that she is still alive after they discover the first anomaly in the Forest of Dean, and from there, all of those scars and wounds from the last eight years are just dredged up for him again.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Yeah, I was really struck watching series one by how Douglas Henshaw emanates such pain in his eyes whenever Cutter's confronted by the memory of Helen. You can see he's definitely haunted by her disappearance.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

He's very torn as he's eager to find her again and get closure on what happened, but is also upset by the fact that she did it in the first place, that she just ran off, didn't share the truth with him, and yeah, leaving him fearing that actually getting the answers might be worse than not knowing. So he really does have a very strong, turbulent inner turmoil.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

I think with Cutter, there's a lot of regret on his part over Helen's disappearance because he admits that he wasn't a supportive husband to her while their marriage was breaking down. And I think he always kind of felt like he drove her away because of that. So when he finds out that she's still alive, resentful as he is at her letting him think she was dead all that time, I think there is also a part of him that is really hoping to reconcile with her and try and make up for the past, only to find out that the person she's become is not someone who's worth reconciling with.

SPEAKER_04 27:53

Yeah, when he discovers her again and actually sees her face to face in episode three, so he actually has to go through an anomaly just to have a conversation with her and find out what she's playing at, what's going on, why is she doing all of this? And that's when he discovers that she's not the same person that he lost eight years ago. She's become very apathetic, both to people in general and to his emotions when he questions her about why she didn't come back.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

She doesn't have any remorse about letting him think she was dead all that time. She's like, people grieve and then they move on. It happens all the time. Why should you be any different? She literally says that she doesn't see the point in apologizing.

SPEAKER_04 28:29

And then she had the gall to ask Nick to just drop everything and run away with her into the past and just told him to do the exact same thing to all his friends that she did to him, irrespective of the consequences.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Yeah, it is an interesting dichotomy between the two. Like she's become apathetic and cynical towards humanity from spending so much time away. Whereas with him, even though he is damaged and distrustful in his own way, he still has enough basic empathy to care about the people whose lives are being affected by the anomalies. And that is what stops him from running away with Helen to see the past. Even though I think he is definitely tempted, just from a purely scientific perspective, he has the morality to recognize that he has a responsibility to solve this problem for the sake of others, whereas she's effectively lost that morality through her years of travelling alone.

SPEAKER_04 29:14

Which has become quite denialist of yeah, species die, everything dies, it's just the way that it is.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Although that's it, I do think that this first series was probably the only time where they really gave Helen any sort of humanity. Because you do kind of believe her when she says that she is lonely and she does miss him and she wants some companionship going through the anomalies. It does make sense given that she's been on her own for eight years.

SPEAKER_03 29:37

You see, I don't want to be on my own anymore.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

And also considering that when he does sort of start to move on with Claudia, you can see she is visibly threatened by that.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

I feel like she is trying to entice Cutter for selfish reasons, purely because she doesn't want to be alone and she would only want to share it with him rather than anybody else. So she's purely playing on her own selfish impulses, I think, but being crafty with how she's trying to do that.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Yeah, Julia Aubrey, who plays her, I noticed is really good at conveying coldness in her eyes and especially her voice, such in a way where even where Helen is kind of acting friendly or even helpful, there's always a really sinister edge to it. Like she doesn't really mean it. But at the same time, even though he doesn't trust her, Cutter's never quite able to fully give up on her either. There's more than a few moments in this series, and to a lesser extent in the later ones, where you see he's still kind of willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, even when everyone else around him isn't. There's even a couple of moments where you wonder if maybe he's kind of starting to fall for her again, like that scene in the final episode where she invites herself to stay in his house again, and she's standing alluringly in the doorway of the old bedroom, like, hey, my top three buttons are undone. Um, and he leans into her and you almost think they're gonna kiss just then, but then at the last second he pulls away and says, No, I'm gonna sleep in the spare bedroom, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 30:56

I think that's a moment where he realizes that Helen is back, but he doesn't want what they had before, and that he wants something else, which is Claudia Brown. So Cutter first meets Claudia again while investigating the very first anomaly in the Forest of Dean, and they team up to search for decided creature. And over the course of the series, Cutter sort of realizes that Claudia is everything that Helen isn't. She's very empathetic and driven towards protecting and safeguarding people from the threats that are coming through the anomalies, and she is also having her own struggles with the magnitude of what they're contending with, which leads her to clash both with her boss and also with Nick. But after he helps save her from a near-death experience, it enlightens her to the fact that she actually quite likes his passion for the creatures and what they're trying to deal with. So Cutter is drawn to her empathy and strong-headedness, while Claudia is also drawn to Cutter when she learns to understand his unorthodox approach towards assessing and responding to the anomaly situations.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Yeah, that's interesting because when I was trying to think about what to say about Cutter and Claudia, I kind of wasn't really sure what it is that they were drawn to about each other. It's not as clear-cut as the Abby and Connor relationship. But I guess you're right, they are sort of drawn to something that was not present in their past relationships. That's something I'd never really considered before.

SPEAKER_04 32:20

I think it's particularly midway through the series where you have that interesting dichotomy of Cutter talks to Helen, realizes how apathetic and resistant to helping she is. She just wants to gallivant around the past. But when Claudia is trying to persuade Helen to help them at the same time, she's taken that very similar, we want you to do this so that we can help and protect people. We just want to keep people safe. And I think that is the point that Cutter realizes Claudia is more the person I want than Helen is. And particularly towards the end of the series, once Cutter and Claudia understand their actual feelings for each other, you see Cutter is considerably more upbeat and optimistic, even in the face of some of the greatest threats that they've seen so far.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

Yeah, Claudia's relationship with Cutter is, I think, very symbolic of him learning to trust people again and learning to let them get close to him again. She represents a chance for him to move on with life, which unfortunately is cruelly taken away later on, as we will discuss by the end of this episode. But before we move on, there is one more thing I do want to address here. It's that scene in episode five, which, as well written as the first series is, this is something I do feel was kind of something that came out of left field and was never really explained. In this episode, Claudia is trapped in a hotel by a swarm of carnivorous pterosaurs. And then out of nowhere, Helen suddenly appears and decides to rescue her. She takes her into a kitchen and then fills it with gas. Then Claudia escapes, and Helen lures the pterosaurs into the kitchen and explodes it with a metal cup she puts in a microwave. Which, by the way, this was the thing that taught me to never put metal objects in the microwave. Um primeval giving it important life lessons along the way. Exactly. Um, but I just kind of felt like this really didn't seem in character for Helen at all, and it was never explained why she did it. So I'm not quite sure what they were going for with that.

SPEAKER_04 34:09

I just suspected it might have been Helen playing some more mind games of Nick accusing her of lacking humanity in previous episodes. She was trying to appeal to him by showing some empathy, but yeah, that wasn't made entirely clear.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

It may have been an attempt by the writers to inject some humanity into Helen, having not really shown very much thus far. But it would have been much better if there had been some payoff to it.

SPEAKER_04 34:33

Yeah, definitely. Because earlier in the series she's just refused to help characters or deliberately deceive them, and then she won eighties for about five minutes and then is back to her old ways pretty much the next episode.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about creatures now.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

So ironically, as a lot of paleo fans, including us have pointed out, even though everyone refers to primeval as a dinosaur show, the first series actually doesn't have any true dinosaurs in it. That wouldn't happen until series two, episode one, with the raptors in the shopping centre. In series one, all of the creatures are either Paleozoic reptiles, pterosaurs, giant bugs, marine reptiles, birds, or mammals. Now we've already discussed the future predator at some length in the pilot, so we won't talk about it too much here. But one creature that we very much did not give his due coverage to in that episode is Rex, who is the little flying lizard from the Permian who Abby discovers in the first episode and who ends up becoming her pet in Universe and also the de facto mascot of the show in real life.

SPEAKER_04 35:46

Yes, Rex is a we'll try not to butcher this, Suelo Sorbus.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Is it not Siloosaurus?

SPEAKER_04 35:54

It might be. I can't remember how they pronounced it in the show.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

You know what? Let's just roll with it and hope Paleo Twitter doesn't cancel us, as I'm sure they already have for the prehistoric park episode. Yeah, sounds wise. So Rex is a Soloosaurus, which was an interesting choice because both of the other creatures in this first episode, the Scutosaurus and the Gorgonopsid, had previously appeared in the Walking Wid series, but Soloasaurus had not. And actually, I think this was the very first representation of this species in mainstream media. I mean, I'd certainly never heard of it before primeval, so that was an unusual choice, but definitely one that was very in keeping with primeval using the unknown species of the past.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

Yeah, he was definitely unique in terms of small cutesy creatures like for one thing being a reptile as opposed to a puppy or something like that. Yeah, he's not your standard fluffy companion, is he? Like you think a lot of the Disney companions, they're cats, they're dogs, they're mice.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Including copyright exempt mice, depending on which area you're taking them from.

SPEAKER_04 36:55

Yeah, that's true. Steamboat Willy all the way. The designers of Rex, instead of making him more reptilian, they decided to give him more mammalian characteristics based off of the animator's own pet cats to give him a bit more of a pet-like personality. And that's not the only other way they made Rex unique. We've already said that the show wasn't particularly striving for 100% paleontological accuracy. So while Rex's real life counterpart was only capable of gliding, in the show they decided to give him the powered flight, like a bird. He's all manners of things that you wouldn't generally think of when you think of a lizard. He's playful, he's far more intelligent and active than any primitive reptile was expected to be. He's more in tune with Abby's emotions and how other characters are feeling than a lot of her other pet reptiles. And you can really rely on him to come up and sort of investigate and try and comfort you like a golden retriever would.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yeah, despite what Abby says of him in that one scene in episode five.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

He's a lizard, not a golden retriever.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

He's very much the cute animal of the show and definitely the most merchandisable one. I think he had the most representation in all the primeval toys and trading cards and all that sort of stuff, didn't he?

SPEAKER_04 38:09

Yeah, I I can say we're recording this, and I have at least two pieces of Rex merchandise within eyeline. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

But I think what was clever about the choice of species with Rex is that he looks enough like a modern-day animal to plausibly pass for one. So when other characters come by Abby's flat and they see him, they don't automatically think that's a prehistoric animal. They just mistake him for just an unusual-looking lizard. It creates a nice sort of balance to the creatures in that not everything is big and or threatening. Unlike our next creature, which also made its debut in the first episode.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

Oh, yeah, the Gorgonopsid.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Yeah, do you maybe want to explain what this thing is for the uninitiated?

SPEAKER_04 38:51

So a gorgonopsid is a type of therapsid, an ancient lineage of reptile that had mammal-like characteristics, such as it was able to run more, it had a slightly higher body temperature, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

And saber-tooth as well, don't forget.

SPEAKER_04 39:07

Yeah, yeah, that's this Gorgonopsid's defining feature is they were one of the first saber-toothed predators to walk the planet.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

It's a bit of a thing among Paleo fans of who wore it better, the Gorgonopsids or the Sabre Toothed Cats.

SPEAKER_04 39:18

Or if you really want to throw a curveball in there, the modern-day saber-toothed deer.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

And of course, primeval's aesthetic being what it is, Darren Hawley also added his own personal touches to the design in the form of armoured skin and an extra pair of saber teeth.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

So yeah, the Gorgonopsid, I think, at the time it was introduced in primeval, it was a fairly obscure predator. Most people seem to gravitate towards the Cenozoic predators such as the sabre-toothed cat or the dinosaurs, but no one had ever really gone straight in with their paleomedia of showing a therapsid. So this was sort of the first mainstream appearance of a therapsid as the big bad of a show or property.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

Yeah, it made a real impression, I think, certainly on me, because this is actually my favourite creature in primeval, which is why I always thought it was a real shame that it only appeared in series one. Like looking back over some of the subsequent series, I feel like there were moments and episodes where it could have made a reappearance, i.e. the penultimate episode of series five. So it always felt like a missed opportunity to me that they didn't.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

Yeah, me too. I remember sitting there counting down the episodes of series five. It's like, okay, when's the Gorgonopsid gonna come back? When's it gonna come back? And sadly it just didn't come to be.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

Although, mind you, I do feel there were parts of its design that Darren Hawley reused for the Therophalians in series four, episode four, which makes sense since it's a related species.

SPEAKER_04 40:39

Yeah, they were basically just smaller, squatter versions of the Gorgonopsid with a little bit of added venom. The Therosophalian was actually one of the creatures that I really wanted in the show when I heard that it was coming back for a series four and five, so I'm glad we got it. Um but back to the Gorgonopsid, particularly when that was introduced at the very start, they didn't show you the whole thing straight away. And I think as a big bad creature goes as an introduction, that is the perfect one to get the audience to go, okay, what is that? What is going on? And then from then on, you don't really see the whole creature, or you only get glimpses of it until about halfway through the episode. So they sort of drip fed the audience that it's actually still out there with this big presence.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Yeah, it was very well paced how they did it. Like in the opening scene, they kept it mostly obscured in shadow, and then you would just hear its roars now and again in the forest. They don't even give it a name until Connor and Steven are tracking it, and Connor brings it up on his database of creatures.

SPEAKER_04 41:32

It's interesting that you say because we probably hear its roar more than we actually see it.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah, the sound editor for Primeval Lee Walpole described it as a combination of metal music, human voice, and animal. And I think when you listen back to it, it gives a real sense of personality to the Gorgonopsid, this real sense of this really balls-to-the-wall menacing creature.

SPEAKER_04 41:55

Oh yeah, and in in the years since we've had countless dinosaur projects come by that have given their animals massive roars, and the vast majority of them I think are just completely forgettable by comparison.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Yeah, it's the T-Rex raw in Jurassic Park and the Gorgonopsid Raw in Primeval. Those are the only ones I think really fall into the memorable part of the Venn diagram.

SPEAKER_04 42:16

There's also the T-Rex roars from Jurassic Fight Club, but that's memorable for other reasons. I think they also don't just sell it as a monster, they give it realistic behaviours throughout the episode as well. So you see it just walking by in some occasions, and then you actually see it stalking and ambushing its prey rather than just attacking outright.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

Although it does seem to have a pretty unrealistic fixation on hunting down this one kid who first brings Abby into the Forest of Dean to find out where Rex came from. Like, you know, it follows him to his house, it trashes his bedroom, and then it follows him to school as well.

SPEAKER_04 42:51

I don't know, I think I could forgive that because the Gorgonopsid has come through into a completely alien environment. All of the scents it's experiencing are completely novel, apart from this one kid who it's got the smell of blood for. So if it's sure of anything, that scent is a food source. I can understand why it would track his blood from the forest to his house and then try and ambush him again, which just happens to be at school nearby.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

Yeah, it's an interesting take, couldn't it? I never thought of it that way, but you should be an animal psychologist.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

So the only other sort of really, really big predator in the show, I think, is the Mosasaur. It was the first truly giant creature in the show. It was basically as long as a canal boat, and it had, I think, what you think is one of the best designs in terms of that primeval quirkiness that you say Darren Hawley's gone for.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Yeah, it's probably the most it was the most Gemma del Toro ish of the creatures in series one. I'm not even really quite sure how to describe it because it's just so out there. But um, why don't you take a shot at it?

SPEAKER_04 43:49

So the Mosasaur in the show, instead of sleeker skin or scales, it had more crocodilian like armour. And instead of its typical narrow crocodile like snow it had it Shorter, stockier, more dinosaur-like head, with small crests above the eyes, a little bit of shrink wrapping around the nose, and very prominent outward pointing teeth. In the particular episode that it features, it features coming back and forth through an anomaly that is moving. So it first appears within a swimming pool where it chomps down on a lifeguard, and then it disappears again through the anomaly and then crops up further down the line, this time in a recreational reservoir where it regurgitates the undigested remains of its previous victim, which added some interesting biology into the show as well.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

Yeah, although I do have to ask the question, how did they never make a bath toy of this thing? I mean, given all the primeval merchandise, this just seems like such an obvious thing to do. You think of those meter-long alligator pool toys they sell. Like, why couldn't they have made a Mosasaur version of that?

SPEAKER_04 44:50

To be honest, after what you saw it do to the lifeguard in the swimming pool, the children really want one in their bath.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Yeah, that's a good point. Um a good point. Although, like, purely thematically, it would have fit so well with the episode it's in, given that in that same episode, there's also an anomaly to its area that opens up in someone's house.

SPEAKER_04 45:09

Yeah, but thankfully it doesn't come through there, does it?

SPEAKER_02 45:11

So from Gorgonopsids and Mosasaurs, we then switch gear to a very different creature in episode four, which turns out to not only be one of the most innovative episodes of Primeval, but in some ways one of the most important of series one, particularly for Connor.

SPEAKER_04 45:27

So while investigating an anomaly, this group of dodos comes through and hijinks and general chickenery ensues. Yeah. You almost get a very cartoonish encounter with them as the dodo just run amok around a giant industrial kitchen, and the team have to try and round them up, like they're headless chickens, with whatever tools they can find.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Yeah, definitely one of the most comedic scenes. And also, like Rex, I think an interesting choice of creature in that this was one of the few species in series one that had likewise never appeared in the Walking Wid series. Like they never did a series about the Holocene and the species that have gone extinct within the age of man.

SPEAKER_04 46:07

Yeah, it was certainly the most recent creature. Everything else was much older. I think one of the most innovative twists they made with the Dodo was it wasn't the primary focus creature of that episode. They were essentially used as a red herring for a red herring.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Yeah, said twist being that these dodos actually carry parasites that take over their host brains and cause them to bite others to spread the disease, which is what then leads into the main tension of the episode.

SPEAKER_04 46:32

Yeah, unbeknownst to the team, one of the dodos managed to escape while they were rounding up the rest, and then ends up in the possession of two of Connor's conspiracy theorist uni friends called Tom and Duncan, who throughout the series have been suspicious of Connor. Connor first confides in them about the anomalies and they don't take him seriously and use the opportunity to play a prank on him and Abby. And then despite that, they realise that Connor is still obsessed with these things, that he's got all of these secrets that he's not sharing with them. So they end up following him and the anomaly team to this site where they discover the dodos, which is where they scoop up this loose dodo and take it home for themselves to try and figure out exactly what the conspiracy team Connor is part of are actually up to.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Side note, this was back when conspiracy theories were considered more of an amusing fringe quirk on the internet and not as a driving force in the downfall of Western democracy.

SPEAKER_04 47:23

Yeah, it seems that tin hats have now gone mainstream, haven't they?

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Yeah, wasn't life simpler back in 2007?

SPEAKER_04 47:30

So while researching the dodo in their own university apartment, we see the dodo they have start getting aggressive, and then the dodo decides to bite Tom. And from there we realise that Tom has actually become infected with these parasites that the dodo was carrying.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

And this I think was really one of the most clever twists in primeval. It introduced this idea of the creatures themselves may not always be a threat, but the diseases they carry can be. Uh, which, by the way, rings rather differently in a post-COVID world than it did in 2007.

SPEAKER_04 48:07

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

What makes it so effective, even though we don't really know this character, is just how much they focus on his suffering. Pretty much the whole latter part of this episode is just watching him die slowly and painfully because of the parasite. Because they established earlier in the episode that this is a parasite that ultimately kills its host. But there's also very much this ticking time bomb element to it as well, because you keep seeing the parasite take over his mind. They give him these creepy white walker eyes whenever that happens, and you never know when he's going to lose control and bite someone. So in that way, they really drive home the threat of disease, not just in how it affects the patient, but also the danger it poses to others.

SPEAKER_04 48:45

Yeah, the tension came from whether or not Tom would infect any other people before he succumbed to his infection, and it actually gave the first major character death after several mere misses in previous episodes.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

Yeah, it's interesting because I remember when I was a kid, I really hated Tom and Duncan because I felt like they were just a pair of dickheads interfering with Connor's life. But now I very much see them as tragic characters. You know, just these two dumb young guys who got caught up in something they should have stayed out of and which ultimately overwhelmed and destroyed them.

SPEAKER_04 49:15

I think they really drove home block characters like Claudian that were pushing, is like we need to keep this away from the general public because people are going to then do things with things they don't understand, and the fallout from that is going to result in people getting hurt or killed. So they are the tragic example of why they're trying to keep everything under wraps. And Connor really sees how he's losing his friends to this parasite and how it's taking over his behaviour and everything, and yet he just never gives up trying to pull them back so that they don't do anything they would regret before they end up dying. And you just see how much it breaks his heart to have to, for the sake of his friend being at peace, hold strong but also lie to their face and tell them you've been strong, you were right all along, just to try and alleviate some of that suffering.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

You know what really kills me about that scene? It's that one little tear that trickles down Connor's face when he's comforting Tom in his dying moment. It's just the perfect it's the perfect metaphor for the end of his innocence. This character who has been like the happy-go-lucky member of the team is just in tears over his friend's imminent death. It's one of the saddest moments of series one for sure. And it's very much also the beginning of Connor's maturation art. This is when he learns for the first time just how serious this situation could be.

SPEAKER_04 50:31

The great thing to come out of that scene as well is it also drives home Cutter's supporting nature for a student he didn't initially want. Cutter's the only one that goes to comfort Connor because he's the only other person there that knows what it's like to lose someone's the anomalies. But I don't think that's where the bond between them is really driven home.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

And I think that scene also shows just how strong a person Connor is. Like the fact that he chooses to carry on with only a little light persuasion from Cutter, even after watching his friend die in front of him.

SPEAKER_04 51:00

Yeah, and Casa just reminds him of like, no, you are knowledgeable, you are important here, we need you to do this. And Tom, yeah, he's gone, but he would want you to do this.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

Oh god, yeah. I'd forgotten how emotional that scene was. I'm gonna need a break before the next creature.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

So you can't be alone now. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Okay. Okay, I'm back now. So finally, let's move on to the stars of episode five of series one, the pterosaurs.

SPEAKER_04 51:31

Yeah, so in this episode, they actually feature two different species of pterosaurs. We've got the far more iconic and recognizable pteranodon, and then we also have the much smaller and obscure Agnurinathus, which is a tiny, almost bat-like pterosaur with a small, rounded head filled with teeth.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Yeah, and for everyone listening to this episode, I want you to keep in mind what we're about to say about the pteranodon in primeval, because this will be very relevant when we discuss the terrible spin-off primeval new world. And if you've watched both shows, you'll know what I mean by that.

SPEAKER_04 52:03

So in this episode, we open up with a golfer getting killed by something in the air, and when the team arrive, they discover this giant pterodon flying around and think it must be the culprit, and realize I need to bring this animal in before it flies further away into the city and potentially attacks more people.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

So let's get into this thing because this is a pretty unusual depiction of a pteranodon in paleo media. For one thing, it's one of the best creatures from a paleoaccuracy perspective. In fact, it was so accurate that even a professional paleontologist, David Hone, praised it for its realism, describing it as quote, beautiful and far better than the Jurassic Park effort.

SPEAKER_04 52:42

Yeah, I still think it is the gold standard for pteranodons in paleo media, especially with the pteranodons we got in Jurassic World, it's still head and shoulders above the depictions that have come out since.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

But also, spoiler alert, it didn't kill the golfer. So it's actually portrayed as a neutral, even harmless creature, which is the very big departure from typical depictions of it in paleo media. Generally, this is the go-to pterosaur for the flying antagonist. It's always the one that swoops down and attacks people, i.e., the Avery scene in Jurassic Part 3. But here they choose to give it a much more positive depiction. It's more portrayed as just an animal going about its business.

SPEAKER_04 53:19

Yeah, now they did a great job of capturing the pteranodon's behavior. You see it just soaring, circling around, looking for food. We also see it looking for roosts for surveying territory and habitats. It's not just going around hunting things, it's looking for other sources it needs, water, tall structures, and is behaving very animal-like compared to a lot of other pteranodons that you see in other forms of paleo media.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Yeah, even its coal is not that horrible screech you would get in most depictions. It's a much more pleasant, almost musical honk, kind of like a cross between a goose and an eagle.

SPEAKER_04 53:57

The episode does a really good job at setting up the false interpretation of what the characters think happened. We know that a gulf has been killed. We see the pteranodon chase down Connor. Claudia wants it killed, but Cutter, being the zoologist expert that he is, feels like there's something that didn't add up, as he knew the Pteranodon only ate fish and small lizards. They managed to take it down with a tranquilizer dye instead of killing it, and realize from Stephen taking a look at the creature's feces that there was no human remains in there. And that's when they have the realisation that the Tranodon didn't kill the golfer and it wasn't trying to kill Connor. It was going after Rex, the small Cirillosaurus, who Connor was with.

SPEAKER_02 54:38

Again, don't cancel us for saying that incorrectly.

SPEAKER_04 54:41

Yeah. But no, the Pteranodon was after Rex, not the humans.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

And I think that's another example of primeval being willing to break the mould and think outside the box in its storytelling. The fact that it took this animal that is generally depicted as a threat and instead turned it into a harmless red herring.

SPEAKER_05 54:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:58

So having cleared the Pteranodon's name, we are then introduced to the real culprits and the golfer's death, whose depiction kind of takes the opposite direction in terms of paleoaccuracy. I believe you have some thoughts on that, Darby.

SPEAKER_04 55:10

Yeah, it was the other end of the spectrum that takes creative license a little bit too far. The neuronathus were essentially a swarm of airborne piranhas drawn to the smell of blood. But there is just absolutely no evidence in the fossil record that a neuronathus would have behaved in this way. They were believed to be largely insectivorous, and we've never found them fossilized in massive swarms. So all of this behaviour is highly speculative on primeval's part.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Yeah, it was definitely the biggest stretch from a paleoaccuracy perspective in series one, apart from perhaps the most sort of design.

SPEAKER_04 55:46

But at least with a creature design, you can still see it act as you suspect it would have. But with behaviour, particularly, if something's doing something that doesn't really align with the paleo biology of the creature, it's sort of I think it's harder to buy into.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

Well, it is and it isn't. Like it is for us, but for general audiences who at most would probably have known this creature from the five minutes it was in walking with dinosaurs for, I think probably they might not necessarily have had a hard time believing this. I think that's always the dilemma when writing paleo fiction of how much do you lean into accuracy for your creatures. Personally, my view is that accuracy is great and is definitely something you should strive for. But at the end of the day, the story is what takes priority. So if you have to choose between accuracy and doing what best serves the story, accuracy by necessity kind of has to take a back seat.

SPEAKER_04 56:35

I don't know. I think there would have been a way to have paleoaccuracy in there but still keep the viciousness free from well how they were portrayed in walking with dinosaurs as eating parasites off the back of giant sauropods. I think an interesting scenario would be had a neuronathus come through into the present day, maybe speculate that they are specialized on eating these parasites off of giant animals, but we have a vacuum of those in the modern world, so potentially the neuronathus would be attacking the largest creatures they can and find humans and exploring them for parasites and particularly causing deaths by biting, trying to land, scratching on them, as opposed to being fallout flesh eaters. I think that might have been an interesting angle to take.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

There was a theory I remember reading years ago, I don't remember where I heard this from, but somebody made a post suggesting that maybe these aneurgnathus are not the ones we know of from the fossil record, but are ones that have evolved from eating insects off large dinosaurs to biting into the flesh of them, which then leads to this more carnivorous behavior. They also frame this as the reason why these pterosaurs, which from the fossil record we know were from the Jurassic, came through the same anomaly as the pteranodon, which is a Cretaceous pterosaur.

SPEAKER_04 57:49

Okay. That's interesting. Maybe then a better Monday analogy instead of piranha might then be vampire finch, uh, species of glacagus finch that when it's normal nuts and seeds and insects who's in short supply, they will take to biting larger mammals and that and just drinking the blood from them. Yeah, so despite being neuronathus and its few minor drawbacks, on the whole, first series gave us a really unique and colourful cast. Now there's no two creatures you could really look at and go, those are pretty much the same thing. Everything was distinct, everything had its own role in each episode. And again, there was no creatures there that you just thought, yeah, that's just a filler obstacle for the cast. Everything had purpose.

SPEAKER_02 58:30

Yeah, it's a real testament to just how creative and how wacky primeval always was. And I think that was always the thing. That made it so distinctive and so unique. So now we come to the part of the podcast where we talk about what else? Romance. Specifically, of course, the romance between Abby and Connor, which is not only one of the only plot lines that runs through all five series of primeval, but in my view at least, is far and away one of its strongest elements. I sometimes feel like you could cut out maybe 50% of the other stuff in this show, and it would still be really solid because you would still have this really beautiful moving love story.

SPEAKER_04 59:20

I don't know, it felt like a secondary storyline, I think, particularly during the first and second series. It wasn't really until the third that it sort of blooms into an integral part of the show's core.

SPEAKER_02 59:31

Well, the ironic thing is that this whole love story wasn't even meant to exist to begin with. The original plan was for Abby to get with Steven, and Connor, I don't think, was even being considered as a romantic partner for her. But then pretty much while they were filming the second episode, the writers noticed that Hannah's spirit had much better on-screen chemistry with Andrew Lee Parts than she did with James Murray, who played Stephen, which of course led to the two of them becoming a couple in real life. So they very wisely decided to rewrite the love story to center around Abby and Connor instead, so that Hannah and Andrew could channel their real-life romance into their performances. And Primeval is all the better for it. These two are just adorable together.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:11

Yeah, I think Abby and Connor made more sense from a character perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

In what way?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:17

Well, I think without that angle, Connor wouldn't really have been much more than just a team nerd and comic relief. It gave him the goal and something to strive for personally rather than just to do with the anomaly situation itself.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:30

Although, funnily enough, according to Hannah Spirit's memoir, at first she thought Andrew fancied Lucy Brown, who plays Claudia, as apparently he would often hang out with her around her trailer.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

I mean, that's understandable. I think a lot of us back in the day really liked Lucy Brown, or that's just some admission of mine.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

The only slight downside of that last-minute decision is that the love story doesn't really get much of a proper introduction. Like Abby and Connor don't even talk to each other in the first episode. The only time we get a hint of romance is the scene where Connor and Steven are tracking the Gorgonopsid, and kind of out of nowhere, he starts talking about how he felt he and Abby had something together. I suspect that was probably added after the fact in reshoot.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:10

Yeah, I think so. The only other thing it could be down to is Connor's naivety of that girl's pretty. Hopefully she likes me. Yeah, she likes me. Let's see if other people think she likes me.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

You know why else it's a shame that they didn't come to that realisation earlier? Because then they could have had a scene in the first episode where Connor sees Abby for the first time and they're just like, wow. You know, like that scene in Aladdin when he meets Jasmine in the marketplace for the first time.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:35

Yeah, I think that would have been perhaps too campy for the very first episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Yeah, but it would have been so cute.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:41

Maybe it depends how they executed it, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

Yeah, but anyway, it doesn't really matter because they more than make up for that lost time in the rest of the series going forward.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:51

Talking of Hannah Spirit and Andrew Lee Potts, this first series really is a testament to the strength of their chemistry at the time, because compared to the rest of the show from series two onwards, Abby and Connor don't actually have that many scenes together. Most of series one is focused on the creatures and on Cutter's story of finding Helen again and falling in love with Claudia. The Abby and Connor storyline takes up maybe a quarter of the total screen time. So for the most part, what's really doing the heavy lifting of convincing you that these two are, or rather at this point should be a couple, is the chemistry between the two actors.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:22

Yeah, and I think so as well. The few scenes they do have together, they gel really well. You can easily see why they learn more heavily on that in series two and beyond.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:32

By the way, on a side note about Hannah and Andrew, the magazines loved these two. Like outside of the show itself, I think this was probably the most publicized thing about Primeval. They were in so many photo shoots together, and they were very forthcoming about the details of their romance. Like when they moved in together, they talked all about how they were decorating their house and how many kids they wanted to have. They had a dog called Stanley, who was sort of their real-life rex. And then when they got engaged, OK magazine devoted about half a page to Andrew's proposal.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:01

Oh yeah, I was too caught up in trying to figure out what creature would hop up next week to read any of that, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

Yeah, so what happened was he took Hannah on holiday to Mallorca, having told everyone back home that he was going to propose to her. And he specifically wanted to do it on a boat at sunset at the end of the trip. But then on the day before it was scheduled, the boat got cancelled because of bad weather warnings. Luckily, the weather turned out alright on the day, and Andrew managed to book a replacement boat just in time. So they took this trip out on the med together to watch the sunset and enjoy some champagne. And then, completely on the spur of the moment, he threw down his camera, got down on one knee, and asked her to marry him right there and then. And then, of course, a party boat full of obnoxious ravers came along to spoil the mood. But luckily, Hannah had already said yes just before then, so it didn't matter.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:49

Uh, did it just in the nick of time, then by the sounds of things.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

Yeah, very uh, very Connor-esque, as it were. Yes. But anyway, getting into what happens between their characters in the show, i.e., the thing that really matters, it's very much a typical boy meets girl. Girl doesn't want boy at first story to begin with, because he falls in love with her pretty much at first sight. But for most of Series 1, she's only really interested in Steven, who in many ways is the polar opposite of Connor.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:17

Yeah, Steven's very much the gung-ho action man of the group. Connor is very much portrayed as the underdog and trying to get Abby.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

Yeah, although you've got to give it to Connor. He is not put off by that at all. Like, you can't really tell what he's more excited by, the anomalies or Abby. Like, maybe a little too excited in some ways. He's a bit too forward in his attempts at flirting. Famously, there's a scene in episode two where he and Abby are looking for an anomaly and she complains of being cold, and he says, We should huddle together for war. Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:51

Yeah, you can tell it's all still very new to him.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

He's trying his best, but he doesn't really quite know what the best is. And I know some people interpreted this as him being creepy, but again, kind of like what we were saying earlier, I always saw it as stemming from innocence, since he's clearly not very experienced with women. He does mention having a so-called girlfriend at the start of episode one, but then it turns out later she's just a pen pal in the Gambria. And I'm sorry, but the scene where he's moving into Abby's flat and then him asking her to kiss him, kind of to show off the Tom and Duncan, you can probably interpret that in a lot of different ways, but to me it was just so adorable and how awkward and lacking in social skills he was. Like, I don't care what anyone says, I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:31

Connor basically becomes her living human puppy from that point. He just sort of follows her around. And I don't think Abby's quite sure what to make of it either, as she makes clear that she's not interested but is still drawn to his inherent goodness.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:44

Yeah, and I think what's important to note here, and also kind of interesting for this type of love story, is that fundamentally these two don't start off in a bad place in their relationship. You think of all those fictional couples who start off hating each other or where one actively dislikes the other, and then they plot. Contrivance their way into falling in love. That's not the case here. There's this undercurrent of acceptance and tolerance to their relationship from the beginning, in that they both recognize and appreciate the good in one another. Like when Connor invites Abby to go looking for an anomaly together on their own in episode two, and he says to her, We're pals, right? She doesn't deny it. She doesn't say, like, no, back off you creep. You know, she actually smiles and nods, which I don't think is just because she's trying to be polite. And even though she's not that thrilled when he moves in with her later, she's never really that angry about it either, up until episode five, when he accidentally lets Rex escape from the flat. Although perhaps in some ways she should be, given that he's not the most considerate flatmate to begin with. Um but um yeah, she never shows any contempt for him in any way or for some of his geekier interests, like playing video games in his underwear. And I think it's because deep down she recognises his inherent goodness, even though she doesn't yet see him in a romantic light. So she's able to look at this through the lens of, oh, that's just who he is. This is part of the package with him, but it doesn't matter because his good traits outweigh the bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:02

There's certainly forgiveness of character flaws in there, isn't there? Kev, all things considered, yeah, he's a decent person.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:09

Yeah, it reminds me of this really brilliant quote by Guillermo del Toro where he said, I think love is about loving who the other person is exactly. If you need change, go away.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:18

Yeah, it's about accepting people, both uh clerks and flaws. No one's perfect. Normally the best relationships come out of those between imperfect people that help and support each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

The other component to their relationship at this stage in the show, which I think has really gone unremarked upon, is that when it really comes down to it, Connor puts Abby and her feelings first. There's no point where he tries to force a relationship between them. He makes the case sort of for himself as a romantic partner, like in episode three, where he says, I can do the action stuff too. I'm not just a massive intellect. But otherwise, he doesn't really try to sway Abby into choosing him. He presents his case and then he lets her make the decision herself in her own time.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:59

Yeah, he does. He just sort of drops hints here and there that he's interested, seeing if she'll take it, but he never tries to directly push anything with her.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:06

Yeah, he recognises that in order for this to work, they both need to want it. But also, even when she makes it clear to him at the end of episode two that she's more into Steven, he doesn't try to resist that. Like he accepts that that's the man she wants, and he's very gracious about it. And then similarly in episode five, when she does get really angry with him for the first time for letting Rex escape, he offers to move out of her flat. Because I think at the end of the day, what he really wants most of all is for her to be happy, even if that means not being with him, and that's what makes their relationship such a healthy one from the start. And this is how you can tell I watch way too many episodes of cinema therapy on YouTube.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:43

Yeah, he does prioritize friendship first, anything else is a bonus.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

Here's another reason why I really like this love story. I feel like it makes a really great case for small sensitive guys as romantic partners, because there's always been this trope in media which I really hate of over-romanticising a very specific type of man, you know, rich, handsome, six-pack abs, often pretty disrespectful of anyone weaker than him. Like even the ones who don't take all those boxes still broadly fall into that general category. And I think with that has come this very reductive idea that men who don't fit into this very narrow definition of what a man should be are somehow inherently weaker or less worthy of respect or romantic affections. You think of Twilight, for instance, where Stephanie Meyer is so openly contemptuous of any man who doesn't match up to the Jacobs and Edwards of her world. Like it doesn't matter if they're kind or sensitive or generous or whatever, as long as they don't look like they should be on the cover of GQ, their automatic write-offs.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:40

Yeah, I think that's something that's only got worse over time, particularly with the advent of all of the Marvel films where everybody is just spoked up to a ridiculous degree. You think back to that whole back catalogue, and there's no one like Connor or that kind of archetype in there that's really pushed as a really great person to focus on or aspire to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:59

Yeah, I feel like the closest we get to that in Marvel, at least if we're going way back, is Peter Parker and the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. Because I feel like those movies do genuinely frame him being this sweet intellectual goofball as a positive.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:12

Yeah, they do. And even if you look at wider superhero films from around that time, like Hugh Jackman in the original X-Men, he is nowhere near as ripped as he is come any of the later X-Men Marvel movies. There just seems to have been this massive push to pack on muscle with everyone that's being shown on screen.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:29

But even then, even in the case of Toby Maguire, Peter Parker, the main reason why he gets anywhere in life, including with Mary Jane, is because he becomes Spider-Man. So it's still kind of pushing this message of you don't really matter as a man unless you have power of some sort.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:45

Potentially, but that's one of the big character flaws and motivations of Spider-Man is trying to balance being Spider-Man as well as being your own person. So that is, I think, one half of the equation there, but not the whole equation.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:57

Yeah, you might be right there. I haven't seen those movies for quite a while, so I'm probably I may be forgetting some stuff. Um but with primeval, I feel like they really go all in on gentle, sensitive men as romantic partners. Because on the one hand, you've got the geek who, for all of his superficial flaws, is ultimately really caring and self-sacrificing and kind to the girl. And then you've got the hunky guy who just looks at her like, yeah, whatever. I guess we can fuck if you want. So it's basically telling girls to give other guys a chance, whereas a lot of media would tell them to not even give them a second look.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:30

Yeah, Steven, for all his virtues, doesn't have a great romantic track record either, but for a whole host of other reasons.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:36

Which begs the question, why did anyone ever ship Abby and Steven back in the day? Like people forget this now, but there was a time when everyone was really rooting for Abby to get with Steven over Connor. And I never ever understood why, because those two have no chemistry together. Like, none. Nada.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:52

Maybe it's just down to that social norm of that's just what people expect. People see the conventionally attractive people and think, oh, they're alike for that reason, so that's the logical thing to have.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

Yeah, my best guess really is that people just weren't used to sincere geek gets girl narratives back in 2007. I think what it also may have been is I think people sometimes mistake a guy wanting to protect a girl as him being in love with her, which is understandable in a way. You see this a lot in soppy romances, again, like Twilight, where the guy is overprotective or even controlling of the girl, but it's equated with him being in love with her. And in fairness, Steven is usually the first one to jump into protecting Abby when she's in danger, but he never really does anything more than that. There's no point where he ever seems to really want her romantically. Like even when Connor asks him for his opinion of Abby in the first episode, he just shrugs and says, She's okay, why? He never really tries that hard to build a relationship with her. He admits that he finds her attractive and he cares enough about her to protect her, but that's it.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:53

He does invite her for dinner and breakfast at one point, but there was never really any serious intent behind that. And he was also high on Arthropleura venom, so that affected his judgment slightly.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:05

Then it turns out that he had a girlfriend called Alison all along, which still doesn't seem to be quite enough to make Abby accept that they have no romantic future together. She still seems to kind of be in denial of that when she and Connor talk about it in the third episode. And I'm like, no, honey, Senpai's not gonna notice you, move on with the geek.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:21

Yeah, it's not really until the very end of the series where it finally sinks in that Stephen's not worth pursuing in that capacity.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:28

But Connor, on the other hand, really makes an effort to get to know Abby. He tries to spend time with her outside of work, like inviting her to look for an anomaly with him, which I kind of feel was his attempt at a first date as much as anything else. Yeah. And uh also him living with her for the latter half of the first series and beyond. I mean, in contrast, the only time Steven comes around to the flat, it's purely to inform her and Connor of a work-related issue. I think it's also yet another thing that Abby has in common with Connor, in that they're both people who are in love with someone who doesn't really want them back.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:00

That's a standard for love triangles, though, isn't it? They have to have the three sides. Well, I guess I guess Steven isn't pining after Connor. So yeah, maybe that doesn't work. Interesting plot twist if that was the case.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:13

Uh oh, you do not want to know how much slash fanfiction there is out there about the male characters and prime evil, my friend.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:19

Okay, moving swiftly on.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:21

Um but honestly, this whole fixation on Stabby, yes, that was the name of the ship in the online community, really annoyed me back in the day. Because it just felt like people were completely missing what the show was trying to say about romance, like just how much it was doing to build up Abby and Connor as the main couple. Which is why I was so pleased when the Abby and Steven ship sank without a trace when Hannah Spirit confirmed in a series 2 interview that Abby was done with Steven. Suddenly people were like, oh, actually she and Connor were the real deal all along. And I was like, Welcome aboard the combi ship, lads. I saved you all a seat.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:54

Yeah, that's understandable given one of the revelations at the very end of the first series, which we'll be getting to very shortly.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:02

Yeah, and thank God too, because if I had to read one more insipid fan comment about how cute Abby and Steven were and how they just have to get together in series two, I was literally gonna lose my shit. Like, where to miss the point, dumbasses. But in all seriousness, where do you think is the point in the first series where Abby stops having a love-hate relationship with Connor and starts maybe beginning to see him in a slightly more proto-romantic light?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:27

I think it is in that very last episode of the series where Abby's sort of distraught because at the zoo she works at, some animals have gone missing, her boss has gone missing, and Connor steps up to help her using some of his more geeky attributes, such as finding some blood, getting DNA sequences done to try and decipher what was there and what happened.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

Oh, I never said. The blood analysis came back from the lab. Most of it was from a lion, but some of it was from a bat.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:55

Bats get everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:58

Yeah, but that's a really weird DNA. They said they'd never seen anything like it before.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:03

You can see by that point they've really buried their differences, and Connor's showing his best self, and as a result of that, when he's in trouble, she steps up and tries to save him from another threat. You can see where they've really solidified themselves as a unit together.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:17

I always felt like it started at the end of episode five when he apologetically offers to move out of the flat, and she's like, Come on, you've got nowhere to go. You can stay with me as long as you do the washing up for a month. And like he just is so overjoyed to be allowed to stay with her, and she's like, you know what? I quite like having you around, actually. Now, granted, she shoots him down immediately afterwards by saying as a friend. But to me, that was always where I started to think, you know what, maybe she's starting to fall in love with him by this point, after all.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:45

Okay, yeah, and I can see that as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:57

So before we wrap this up, we need to talk about the final episode of series one. Because a lot of what happens in this episode is stuff that has far-reaching consequences for most of the show going forward from here.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:08

Okay, so to summarize, at this point in the series, Helen comes back to warn the rest of the team that about this ominous future predator that's made its way into the present. And even stranger, it's come through the same anomaly as the first episode that appears to have reopened to the Permian.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:23

You have a serious creature incursion, a highly evolved ambush predator, intelligent, adaptable, and ruthless.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:31

So the team investigate these sightings along with disappearances they believe are connected, and they find a nest of future predators that's managed to establish itself in the present, including a few offspring and a parent. They manage to kill the parent and decide to use the young future predators to try and hone in on where the future anomaly is within the Permian. But unknown to them, there was a second adult future predator in the present, which was the litter's mother that then chases them through the Permian and ends up attacking them right in the midst of the past. While they're under attack, an old adversary actually comes to their aid. One of the Gorgonopsids, which we saw in the very first episode, manages to saunter into the scene, attack the young future predators, and invoke the wrath of the mother predator. And we see a massive brawl between predators from the past and future duking out.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:24

Yeah, if primeval can be said to have iconic moments, this future predator gorgonopsid fight is definitely one of them.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:30

Yes, still the best creature on creature action we've really had in the entire show, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:35

Yeah, it's just so well choreographed, isn't it? Because like even though this future predator is moving at lightning speed the whole time, your eye never loses sight of what's going on. Like it slams down on the gorgonopsid's head with its front paws, it leaps on it, it gouges its eye out at one point, and then the gorgonopsid catches the predator's arm in its mouth, and it throws itself on its own back and crashes it beneath it. And then finally there's the victory roar at the end, which is just the cherry on the top. Let's play it again, because that is just the icing on the cake.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:06

So with the massive tussle over a decide to abandon the search for the future anomaly and just return to the present day.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:14

Unbeknownst to them, however, it turns out two of the baby future predators survived the agogonopsid attack and are now living free in the Permian. With consequences that we will discuss momentarily. So this is an important episode for a number of reasons, not least because it's our very first introduction to the future predator.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:37

Yeah, it opens a kind of Pandora's box. The show up until that point just focused on bringing prehistoric animals into the spotlight, but this really opens a whole new dimension in terms of unknown threats coming through the anomalies.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:51

Yeah, I feel like it really brought a new sense of tension to the show, and that now you knew there was this other threat that the anomalies pose, and one that you really didn't know what to expect. Like you didn't know when there was going to be a future creature come up, and if one did come up, you didn't know what the hell it was even going to be. And speaking of tension, I feel like the future predator achieved that the best of all the futuristic creatures. I really think it's worth talking about the exact techniques they used to build tension around it in this episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:17

Yeah, they didn't show the creature per se towards the beginning. They just gave you a few shots from the creature's point of view, which was this incredible alien visual representation of echolocation and sonar.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:29

And not only that, when you did see the creature for the first part of the episode or so, you only really ever saw its legs or its silhouette, or even in the one scene where you see the most of it before you see the whole face, where it's stalking Abby's boss through the elephant house at the zoo. You notice how the camera was only ever pointed at its back, so you never really saw what it looked like from the front. It's interesting you mentioned Alien as well, because that's the same sort of technique you see in movies like Alien, where they deliberately don't show you the monster in full to build tension.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:57

They show it slinking around on top of things, leaping from vantage points, stalking from the shadows. It gives this very dark, almost vampiric nature to it, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:08

Yeah, you know what? It's just reminding me. I watched the trailer for Last Voyage of the Demeter on YouTube a while back, which for those who don't know is an adaptation of one chapter from Dracula. And I'm just thinking about what you said and comparing it to the shots in that movie. They do very similar stuff of this very bat-like vampire stalking through this ship in the shadows, and you'd only see when you see the back of it a lot of the time. That reminds me a lot of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:32

Yeah, interesting. Bats, vampires, they just can't escape each other, can they?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:36

Tale as old as time, huh?

SPEAKER_04 1:21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:38

And what also makes it so scary is the fact they have absolutely no reference point for it at first, because it's from the future. So for most of this episode, it very much had the upper hand over them, especially since its main weapon is sonar. Plus, as Helen heavily implies, humans are its natural prey, so it's already used to hunting us. It already knows how to take us out, whereas we don't know how to do the same to it.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:58

It's only once they turn to technology to help them that they really start to get the jump on it. But even then it's not by much.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:04

This is also the episode where Cutter and Claudia's relationship really comes to a head.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:09

Yeah, it is. They just start to become a lot more honest with themselves about how they feel, and then start making that clear to each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:16

Well, more so honest with they themselves as people. Like they don't think they really necessarily make it clear to each other at first. You can tell they've recognized that they're in love in and of themselves, but I don't think they really make it public until right towards the end of the episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:30

No. I guess the only person to pick up on it properly is Helen.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:34

Yeah, they're really not shy about making it clear to her. There's the moment in the last episode where they have that passive aggressive conversation where Helen's like, bitch, you moving in on my man? And Claudia's like, yeah, you left him first, so fuck you.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:46

Yeah, in more PG terms, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:48

Here's my husband. You left him. Remember?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:52

And then at the end of the episode, just before they go into the Permian, that's when Claudia draws her lines with everyone and just goes up and kisses Cutter in front of the entire team and just solidifies her feelings and loyalty to him.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:05

Yeah, this is the point where it feels like they're both really ready to move on. They're really ready to take a next step with each other. Which is why it's particularly worth talking about what happens when they come back to the present from the Permian.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:16

Yeah, Helen really finds a way to skewer Cutter for what he and Claudia did in front of her and decides to reveal to Cutter in front of everyone that before she disappeared, she and Stephen were actually having an affair together behind his back.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:29

And this is where shit really hits the fan. I really like how well they reveal this affair. It's like when they get back, she's like, Oh, actually, you know what? I'm not staying, Nick. I'm going and I'm taking my boy Toy Stephen with me. And he's like, what? And it's like, oh, you didn't know? Oh, yeah. Oh dear.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:46

She knew that he didn't know and decided, yeah, I'll just twist that knife.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:49

Well, falling for one of your students is never a good idea, but um sometimes these things just happen, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:56

I really love Douglas Henshaw's acting in this scene as well. You see the shock on Cutter's face when he finds out that his best friend betrayed him eight years ago and lied about it all that time. You can see just how much of a bombshell it is. And then when he finally gains the ability to speak again and he says to Stephen, How could you keep that from me for so many years? You can just hear the rage in his voice.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:15

He was sort of the primary figure that Cutter lent on that entire time and relied on and trusted the most. And to find out that the foundations of that were completely fraudulent, he just got over losing Helen and now he's got another huge betrayal to deal with. Stephen does reject Helen fairly bluntly. He just straight up says, Now you're back, I forgot how much of a bitch you were, and then just shakes his head and walks away, but damage control was already out the window.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:40

Yeah, it sets up a lot of drama between Cutter and Stephen moving forward. Decided that he can just no longer really trust Stephen again in the way he used to.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:49

Yeah, in early episodes they were literally relying on each other for life and death, but that all just breaks down and ends up fracturing the entire team.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:58

Interesting how Abby doesn't seem too upset about it. There is a shot where after Helen reveals the affair, there's a close-up on Abby's face, and Hannah Spirit really is not giving that much emotion in it. And you'd think that after she's spent this whole time being like Senpai notice me, this would have more of an impact on her.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:14

I think after what happened in episode three, it's not all that surprising to her, given Steven failed to mention that he already had a girlfriend when he asked her out.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:22

Although not that that stopped all the stabby fans from writing fanfiction where she inexplicably forgives him for no fucking reason and just continues her complete non-romance with him.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:32

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:33

Some people like to live and die on those hills, don't they? Yeah, again, that all dropped off a cliff after the series 2 reveal of the fact that she was done with him. And then of course, let's talk about the last great reveal of this episode, shall we?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:45

Yeah, as if one rug pull from undercutter's feet wasn't enough, there is in fact a second one when he starts looking around for the Claudia, he realizes that she's nowhere to be seen. He asks everyone in his team where she is, but no one seems to have any recollection or knowledge of who she is or that she even existed. So as he's reeling from this revelation, Cutter realizes that with everything that happened in the Permian going wrong, future predators being loose, something's happened that's accidentally altered the timeline, and the world that he's come back to isn't the same as the one that he left. Something that we've done has changed the past and she's not here anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:25

Yeah, it's like the writers looked at this and were like, we could do with just one more knife in the heart for our main character here, couldn't we?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:31

They tried to choose the most devastating way for showing the dangers of changing things in the past. It was quite a subtle shift of like, yep, you only change evolution ever so slightly, but that has got far-reaching side effects. It might be at this point that Cutter realizes that he's romantically cursed and that any woman he loves is just going to be lost to the anomalies.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:51

And then the whole of series two is about him coming to grips with this and trying to work out what exactly all the changes have been to the timeline that he's now come back to.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:59

Yeah, it's very much a fresh new head scratcher, isn't it? Of like not just why are the anomalies happening, but what's changed within them on the other side.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:07

This is the show's first real cliffhanger, because at that point, that is when the episode ends, and then you had to wait a whole year to find out what happened afterwards. Fortunately, on this podcast, you only have to wait a few episodes. So if you want to find out what all these changes are, and if Cutter succeeds in figuring them all out, join us on the next primeval episode of this podcast. And until then, thank you for listening. Hope you've enjoyed yourself, and we will see you on our next dig. Take care.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:31

Yeah, thanks everyone. Take care.