The Dinosaur Box
Primeval. Dinotopia. Terra Nova. Primal. Did you know how many dinosaur TV dramas there are? Or that some of them are actually good? Switch on The Dinosaur Box with hosts Thomas Gomersall and Darby Knight as we sink our teeth into every paleo drama you've ever watched, and some you probably haven't too. Featuring detailed and (we hope) humourous breakdowns of characters, themes, production histories and of course, creatures, this is the podcast for anyone who loves dinosaurs, storytelling or any combination of the two.
The Dinosaur Box
Primal (S1): A Dark, Daring Dinomation
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
From the creator of Samurai Jack comes a dark, twisted, beautifully animated drama with not a single word of dialogue to speak of – full of dinosaurs, mammoths, cavemen, and a surprising throughline of compassion amidst the gore-spattered creature battles ... and Darby can't stand it! Find out why as we debate on this darling of new age paleo media, overly nitpick the ecology of a cartoon world where tyrannosaurs rub shoulders with literal witches, and force Tom to relive an old childhood trauma involving a giant, murderous, hideously animated beast, courtesy of another giant, murderous, hideously animated beast.
Find us on IG at: @dinosaurboxpodcast
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 Gomasol. And I'm your co-host, Derby Knight. Yeah, back from his little hiatus over the last two episodes. Although given those were both about Terra Nova, I'm imagining you're not too heartbroken about missing out on that.
SPEAKER_01Uh no, there's worse things in the world to miss. At least I didn't miss the primeval ones. I would have really disliked that.
SPEAKER_00No, don't worry, you're my man for the primeval episodes. You're not missing out on any of those.
SPEAKER_01Ah, excellent.
SPEAKER_00Although I should mention that will include New World, so don't thank me for that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'll hold my tongue.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, getting into today's episode, dear listeners, if you listen to our pilot episode, you'll already be familiar with our thesis, if you will, on the golden ages of paleo media. If you're not, basically the gist is that way back in ye old prehistoric days, between 1993 and 2011, there was just this glut of mostly well-received paleo movies, documentaries, TV dramas, etc., all coming out within a relatively short space of time between each other, starting, of course, with Jurassic Park and then being turbocharged by Walking with Dinosaurs. And now in the age of shows like Prehistoric Planet, Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous, and yes, even Netflix's Life on Our Planet, don't add us for that haters, we are arguably living through another one of those eras right now. Now, so far, all of the shows we've covered on this podcast have been from the last Golden Age. But today we're going to talk about a show from the new Golden Age that came out in 2019, and I would argue was very much the herald of this new Golden Age, in that it was both one of the very first paleo shows of this era and extremely well acclaimed, Primal. Not to be confused with that other dinosaur show we talk about that also begins with a P.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it can make for some quite confusing Googling if you get them the wrong way around.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just remember two letter difference between them. Alright, so Primal, also known as Gendi Tartakovsky's Primal, is an American adult animated television series created and directed by Gendy Tartukovsky for Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block, Adult Swim. Primal is set in an anachronistic prehistoric world in which dinosaurs, ice age mammals, and early hominids all coexist within a single time period, incorporating many elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, action, and adventure. The show revolves around the journey of Spear, a Neanderthal, and Fang, a uniquely intelligent female tyrannosaur, both of whom lose their families tragically in the opening episode and then join forces to survive their unforgiving environment together. The series is particularly notable for having no dialogue throughout its first season and only minimal dialogue in the second, in line with Tartakovsky's previous works like Samurai Jack. So when it comes to a lot of paleodramas from the new golden age, I don't tend to have much in the way of a history with them. Usually the story is that I stumbled across a trailer for them on YouTube and then decided to check them out on Wikipedia before watching them. And Primal is no exception in that regard. So I don't really have much to say about my background with this show. What about you, Darby?
SPEAKER_01Uh not too much either. I was familiar with Adult Swim and their sort of cartoon style through Metalocalypse, which is one of my all-time favourite animated shows. So I already quite liked my animation and seeing a YouTube trailer for an adult swim animation with dinosaurs in it, I pretty much jumped into the I should probably check this out category. And I think I tried to give it a watch just after it came out in 2019. I saw it had all these rave reviews and like 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and like everyone enjoying it across the board. But when I watched it, I think I got maybe halfway through the first series and just wasn't enjoying it. It wasn't what I expected.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so having watched it again in full now, has your opinion changed at all?
SPEAKER_01Um of all the things that I've watched or re-watched for this podcast, this is still by far my least favourite. It did have some enjoyable elements and moments, but overall I could still see exactly why I gave up the first time around.
SPEAKER_00Ooh, hot, hot, hot, hot take. Yeah. I I have a question for you. Because as I mentioned, the previous two episodes of this podcast were covering Terra Nova, which I would say so far is the worst show we've covered. Now I know that you've watched Terra Nova separately, even though you didn't cover it. Would you say this is worse than Terra Nova?
SPEAKER_01I'd say it suffered from very similar issues. It actually got me thinking of Terra Nova as I was approaching the end of the series, and I felt there was a real U-bend. Yeah. I felt there was a real U-bend of quality and enjoyment for me. I really enjoyed the first two episodes. It then slid downhill so much I got to like episode six or seven and thought, why the hell am I still watching this? And then the last two episodes actually piqued my interests again. So yeah, it was a real U-bend journey of enjoyment, I think, overall. Which is exactly what I found with Terra Nova.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I guess I can kind of see where you're coming from from there. So this really is your least favourite show, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_00Or well, your least favourite show so far, as The Simpsons memes go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll cover a lot of my gripes, I'm sure, as we go on.
SPEAKER_00Well, I for one really enjoyed it. I wouldn't say it connected with me quite as much as primeval or Jurassic World Cam Cretaceous on that really deep level. But on the whole, I think it was still pretty good. It definitely achieved what it set out to do, which is to create this really effective emotional experience with its animation. The closest thing I would have to a complaint about it is the ninth episode, The Night Feeder. But other than that, I'd say it really does deserve all the praise it gets. As of this recording, this show has already won three Emmys for outstanding achievement in animation, so it must be doing something right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's definitely got an enjoyable style and animated expressiveness. But there are a few elements I'd say that actually dampen the emotional storytelling.
SPEAKER_00Well, we'll get to that shortly, but first of all, let's talk a bit about the creator of this show, Gendy Tartukovsky. Because if you grew up watching cartoons in the late 90s and early 2000s, chances are you're already familiar with some of this guy's work. He got his start working on Batman the Animated Series and then worked for Cartoon Network, where he produced and co-directed several episodes of The Powerpuff Girls and created Dexter's Laboratory, which, fun fact, also kick-started the careers of several other future big names in animation, like Seth McFarlane of Family Guy Fame, and also Butch Hartman, who went on to create the Fairly Odd Parents. And then in 1999, he left Dexter's Laboratory to create Samurai Jack, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Programme in 2004, and was particularly influential on the show that Primal would become for two reasons. One, Gendy Tatakovsky's animation has a very distinctive visual style to it, which if you look back over his portfolio as it were, you'll notice first appeared in Samurai Jack, and then would be carried over into all his subsequent works, like the 2003 Star Wars Clone Wars series, the Hotel Transylvania movies, even though those were done in 3D animation, and of course Primal. In fact, incidentally, I noticed that the giant bats in Primal do bear something of a resemblance to the giant bats in Hotel Transylvania 2, except those ones weren't nearly as threatening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, again, probably a hot take, but I didn't find the bats in Primal threatening at all. So, interesting point there. Have you ever seen any of his other works just out of interest? Uh Dexter's Lab and the Powerpuff Girls used to be on way back when I was a kid, but apart from that, just snippets of the Clone Wars and Batman the animated series here and there on social media.
SPEAKER_00But the second and more important reason was because Samurai Jack was where he first started to really experiment with visual storytelling. Because often in that show, he would have long stretches with no dialogue, where all the characters' emotions were conveyed through their facial expressions, as well as a lot of quiet moments between the action scenes that were more brooding and reflective in nature. And that was one of the things he would get the most positive feedback on and what audiences really seemed to gravitate towards. So the idea for Primal came to him years before the show itself, ironically, as a children's show, with him doodling a drawing of a kid riding a dinosaur. But at the time it didn't really connect with him and he couldn't figure out where he wanted to take it. So he stuck it in a draw and worked on Samurai Jack instead. But as his career progressed and he started getting all this positive feedback about the Minimal dialogue and Samurai Jack, he started to think about creating a whole show with no dialogue using this dinosaur idea that he'd had and decided to make it an adult animation focusing on the relationship between a man and a dinosaur surviving this hostile world together. He also drew inspiration from the Conan the Barbarian pulp novels with the structure, as he liked the self-contained nature of those stories, and also from the revenant, which I think really shows in the more grissy survival elements of the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've not seen any Conan or Revenant stuff, but now that you mention it, I guess it does explain a lot of the action and violence choices that were made.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's something we ought to disclose to anyone who's not seen this show. It is stunningly violent. Like, usually within the first five minutes of each episode, there's something being decapitated or bitten in half or impaled with a spear in the most bloody way possible. So definitely not something to watch with the kids. And now enjoy this unfittingly whimsical musical break. So the premise of Primal Season 1 is a pretty simple one. Basically, it's about a caveman spear and a tyrannosaur fang. Notice I said tyrannosaur, not tyrannosaurus, for reasons we'll get to later, who form a bond of shared grief when their respective children are killed by a pack of what at first glance you'd assume to be Ceratosaurus based on their horn snouts and very similar coloration to the ones in the Jurassic Park franchise, but are in fact another fictional species of tyrannosaur. And then the rest of the show is a series of mostly self-contained episodic stories where they face off against various threats while gradually learning to trust and rely on each other. Now, even though I always knew I wanted to talk about Primal on this podcast, this is a show that for a long time I honestly had no clue how we were going to talk about it, mainly because of its lack of dialogue. I'm more used to analyzing shows and movies based in large part on what characters say. And here, of course, there's nothing like that to work with. In fact, arguably I'm still not 100% sure how to talk about it. So I may need to let you take the lead on a lot of this episode.
SPEAKER_01No, that's fine. Turns out I have a lot to say.
SPEAKER_00So where do you think we should start with this?
SPEAKER_01Perhaps with the two main characters of the show, they form a core component of all the themes and stories going forward.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd agree. In fact, that was very much by design because Gendi Tartukovsky said in an interview that he wanted to make the focus of the show about the relationship between Spear and Fank, because he felt like since he was already doing a story about a man and a dinosaur, audiences wouldn't take it seriously otherwise. Which, judging from some of the stuff you said off mic about the world building in this show, I think you would say was probably a smart decision on his part.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, even when things are going on that just really didn't take my fancy. And the core premise of those two characters and how they deal with it was the main remaining draw.
SPEAKER_00What do you want to say about their relationship, like how it even starts off?
SPEAKER_01I mean, well, the premise of man and dinosaur bonded together, fighting their way through the prehistoric world is great. I wasn't actually a massive fan of how it was set up, particularly for Spear. In the very first episode, you see Spear lose his wife and child to the Tyrannosaur attack, which I just saw that and thought, this is 2019. Is fridging really the only way to set up a tragic story for a male character still? I thought we were past that. What's fridging? It's a storytelling trope highlighted by a female journalist who noted a trend in fiction in which a female character or love interest is often killed off purely to motivate the male hero to go on a journey. The term came from an issue of the Green Lantern comics, where the Green Lantern got home to find the villain had murdered his partner and stuffed them in a fridge for him to find.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so it's the it's the Bruce Wayne story, basically.
SPEAKER_01Uh Bruce Wayne at least lost both his father and mother. But yeah. A lot of stories start off that way of the death of a female character purely to incite the male character to go on a journey of adventure, discovery, revenge, whatever it may be. And it's something that's gained increasing traction and awareness, particularly in the last 10-15 years as well, with the whole Me Too movement of yeah, that's not a suitable role for women to have in the majority of fiction. There should be other things.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Well, I didn't really have an issue with that, probably because I wasn't too familiar with this particular trope. But I mean, if you were Gendi and you were plotting this, how do you reckon you would have done the tragic setup for Spear? And while we're on that subject, do you feel like it works any better for Fang? Because she also loses her children to the same haunted Tyrannosaurs.
SPEAKER_01Fang, I didn't have as much of an issue with. I guess that's because it was very animalistic, and we know that animals do do that kind of thing to each other. But if it was me doing it for Spear, I would have I don't know, I saw Kingdom of the Planet of the H yesterday, and I think that did a very similar thing, but it set it up a lot better. Of there was a third party involved that triggered the main character to do something, and then there was a whole snowball effect of that causing uh antagonistic party to come in and murder people that they loved. But it wasn't just restricted to female characters, it was a whole settlement, it was their whole clan, so to speak, and the main character that the film followed just happened to be the only survivor. So I think Matt did a far better job of setting up a tragic story.
SPEAKER_00You know what? If that's your feeling on it, you might potentially like season two better because there are definitely elements of the idea you've just had there in terms of character development.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the final episode of this did pique my interest for a series two, and I guess the trajectory except for the story did offer more appeal to me than the majority of series one. So yeah, we'll have to see.
SPEAKER_00Well, getting back to the actual relationship between Spear and Fang, ignoring the fact that you weren't too keen on how the tragedy was set up for Spear, do you think it makes sense for them to sort of bond together? Because when I watched the first episode, as much as I could on some level understand why they would bond, just over shared tragedy. On the other hand, I kind of found myself asking, well, why is Fang following Spear after the death of her children? And the only sort of explanation I could really think of was twofold. Uh, one is because she saw him try and defend them from the horn tyrannosaurs and she did watch him ultimately kill them. And so maybe she was sort of acknowledging the fact that he did try to help defend them. The other one, which is quite well evidenced in the following episode, River of Snakes, is because I think she could see he was good at killing things, and so I feel like she was partially following him around for an easy meal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'd agree with that. She certainly would have cottoned on to his capabilities, but I guess also being a grieving mother, just any sort of company would have been welcomed at that point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I can see how that definitely works for Spear, because I think he especially could see the parallels between his own loss and Fangs. But I think it's also good that they really show this relationship does have a lot of bumps. Because when they first decide to form a partnership at the end of the first episode and then going into the second, there's not really a sense of them working together or for each other's benefit. They're just kind of happen to be hanging around each other, but they're still mainly just looking out for themselves. Like it's more the case of, as I mentioned earlier, Fang is really just following Spear around to steal his kills.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Fang in particular was just making the most of the usefulness of the close proximity of I'm nearby, you'll benefit me for now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they definitely come to blows quite a bit in that second episode, especially. But I think what brings them together in part is the fact that they both come to realize that they do make a good team when it comes to surviving against all these dangerous threats. Because they do both bring something to the partnership that the other can't provide. Like Spear, of course, is a lot more technological in his thinking. In the fourth episode, Terror under the Blood Moon, when he and Fang are trapped on top of a huge precipice, he uses the silk of a giant spider as a bungee cord, which Fang is quite visibly confused by at first, but she kind of goes along with it. But then on the other hand, Fang brings not just her strength as a dinosaur to it, but also she has a certain animal instinct that allows her to notice and detect things that Spear doesn't. Like, for instance, in the episode Plague of Madness, she and Spear come across a whole herd of slaughtered sauropods, and she doesn't even try to eat any of the bodies. Like she can smell something's wrong with this situation, and she's the first one to realise that they need to get out of there. I feel like she has a tendency to not pick a fight with things if she knows that they're more dangerous than she is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it definitely marries up the human intellect with the natural senses, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00But also from Spears' perspective, Fang gives him something to live for after the deaths of his family. Like she becomes such a close companion to him. I especially really like the scene in the two-part episode, Rage of the Eight Men and Center Prey, after Fang has been beaten senseless by this gorilla-like ape-man, in what I know is definitely one of your favorite episodes, not. After Spear manages to save her, he spends all of the next episode trying to nurse her back to health. And I like how they show how much effort he goes. Like he builds a whole sled for her out of bamboo because she can't walk, and he pushes her onto it and literally drags this 50-ton dinosaur miles and miles through the jungle just to get her to a safe place. I think that in a way is her giving him a chance to be nurturing in the way that he once was as a parent to his own children and his own family.
SPEAKER_01I think with Spear, he certainly felt a sense of I guess failure for not only losing his family to those tyrannosaurs, but also failing to stop them from taking her children as well. I think that drove him with some sort of pity and compassion. And it was when they were exploring these interactions between the two of them that the show was at its best.
SPEAKER_00What to you are some of the best moments in terms of that interaction between them?
SPEAKER_01I think it was mainly just a small moment, like them hunting together or even just chilling out and relaxing together. It was particularly in the final episode, I think, where it all really came together of Fang and being protective of Spear, Spear then soothing or trying to explain feelings and that things were okay for Fang to calm her down and that kind of thing. And I guess Fang also still being a little bit rebellious, like a dog that understands commands but still does its own thing anyway, like nicking a bit of food here and there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my favourite moment is after he's been pushing and heaving to get Fang onto the sled, he finally does it. And the first thing he does is like tenderly strokes the top of her head, just like, you okay? Just making sure that she's alright. I thought that was a really sweet moment. Because a lot of the time Spear, I think, is very stoic and very dark in his expressions. And it's the moments when he lets his guard down and allows himself to show emotional compassion. Those are the ones I think really stick out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they do. His face livens up as the series goes on, he does smile more and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00Speaking of Fang, what species of tyrannosaur do you think she is? Because looking at the size difference between her and Spirit, she's clearly not a T-Rex, in my view. She's too small to be one. So which of these smaller tyrannosaur species do you think she's likely to be?
SPEAKER_01I don't know, the first ones that sprang to mind, uh Gorgosaurus or Dasplitasaurus.
SPEAKER_00She's not quite right to be an Albertosaurus. Yeah, I was just gonna say she doesn't have the horny crests on her head that you find an Albertosaurus. One of those two would be the ones I would have suspected as well. Of course, it's entirely possible that she may just be a completely fictional species of tyrannosaur, because we know those exist in the primal universe. I think the other thing we'd absolutely have to talk about, and I especially want to come back to Fang on this, is the lack of dialogue in the show. Because this is definitely one of the most standout qualities of it, but it's one that I really had, as I said, I really had no clue how to talk about it. So what do you think it is that makes it such a big part of the appeal?
SPEAKER_01I think it's that you had to concentrate on what you see a lot more on what you hear. So you have to really pay attention to the characters' faces, their poses, their body language, what different parts of their body are doing, and use that to build an interruptive picture of what exactly is going on and how they're feeling. That scene you mentioned where he's building a sled and trying to care for it, I think that's where the visual expressiveness of the animation really hit its peak for me because it showed specific facial expressions of all his struggles and each individual effort that he made to try and move the sled, as well as focusing on his struggling body parts like his feet and our muscles to convey the willpower, the determination, and his struggle all really well. So I guess in that sense, it hones in and focuses a single sense to make you really use it. Yeah, and I guess that in in some ways makes the show more interactive.
SPEAKER_00I think also the sound effects and the music do a lot to really set tone. But honestly, most of the time you don't even really need that to convey what's going on. This is one of those shows where you could literally just turn the sound off and you'd still know exactly what was going on. I mean, my computer's sound system is not at its best at the moment, so I basically pretty much did watch it on mute.
SPEAKER_01Unfortunately, I didn't, and it was actually the sound effects I had a few issues with because I found there was quite a lot of repeated N OVU sounds, similar roars, similar screeches. Used for several different animals, and there wasn't that much variety or mixing compared to other shows.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I can kind of see where you're coming from. I thought, especially with Bang, a lot of the time when she would run, I was like, that that's just that's Matilda the T-Rex from Prehistoric Park, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01No, it made me think of some of the creatures from Jurassic Sight Club.
SPEAKER_00Oh, come on, it's not that bad.
SPEAKER_01That's what it reminded me of. There was just a lot of sounds in there that sounded like they were stock sounds or recorded animal noises where you could tell exactly what modern animal they were from. And I would have preferred a little bit more original mixing to give it a little bit more of original identity, but can't win everything.
SPEAKER_00Well, getting back to Fang, I especially want to talk about the way she expresses emotion. Because I think there's a pretty interesting contrast there between her and, for instance, Rex in Primeval. Because with Rex, as you know, the animators admitted that they didn't even really try to make him that reptilian in his expressions, because they felt that real lizards weren't cute enough what they were going for with him. So instead, they gave him a lot of bird and mammal-like traits. You mentioned in the episode we did on Primeval Series 1 that a lot of his movements and behavior is were based on his animator's cat. They also give him these big cute baby eyes. His call is based on a raccoon. He chirps and bobs his head like a bird. He's basically a puppy in lizard form. Whereas Fang, I feel, is very reptilian in the way she's designed and animated. Like she has the slip pupiled eyes of a snake or a crocodile. She doesn't really show many of the typical facial expressions you'd see in a mammal. And yet you can always tell very clearly what she's feeling at any given time. So I just want to get your opinion too. How do you think they're able to do that despite the fact they don't really make her very mammalian at all?
SPEAKER_01I think it all just comes down to the animation and posture again, because you have to concentrate on how she's holding her tail, whether she's crouching or fully standing on her legs, whether she's got her neck tucked in or pulled out or head held aloft. They can do a lot of things like that to help express exactly how she's feeling as a character.
SPEAKER_00I notice they rely a lot on close-ups of her eye and just the way it dilates or narrows. Like in River of Snakes, when she's dangling off the waterfall, you can really see the fear she's feeling there, even though it's literally just a circle with a straight line through it.
SPEAKER_01That's one of those things we always seem to be amazed by just how much you can do with just eyes. I guess is why they're known as the window to the soul.
SPEAKER_00I was also just thinking what you were saying about honing in on a specific sense. I think they really lean very heavily on the animation because Primal is a gorgeous show to look at. I really love how detailed it is and the colour scheme as well. For instance, when they're in the jungle a lot of the time, you see how the light falls across the trees and how it forms these shadows on the ground everywhere. Like if you've been in a real rainforest, you know that's very true to life.
SPEAKER_01The rainforest scenery was definitely, I think, the best. I found the deserty or just stony environment that's a little bit more boring, but I guess that's just a testament to just how lively and lush the tropical settings were.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say that serves to make you appreciate the more colourful backgrounds even more. I think that's part of the reason why the opening scene of Rage of the Eight Men is considered one of the best scenes in Primal. Because in this episode, Spirit Bang arrive at this oasis in the middle of the jungle. It's a beautiful place with a white sandy beach, there's a crystal clear pool with these multicoloured fish, there's a whole flock of beautiful pink butterflies, and it's just so gorgeous to look at. And also the lack of music as well really adds the mood because they just let the natural sound effects of the water and the birds and the insects bring this whole scene alive and convey the sense of tranquility to it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I did really like the start of that episode, not so much the rest of it, but definitely that Sidine.
SPEAKER_00I think you can really tell from this that Genji and his team were very experienced in this type of visual storytelling. Because I think a lesser animator would have really struggled with this a lot and probably would have chucked in the towel on the whole idea of making it dialogue-free. You can really see how he mastered his craft in this area from things like samurai Jack.
SPEAKER_01One interesting thing that I think we should add is my partner came down while I was watching a few of the episodes and commented on the lack of dialogue and how much she hated it. Oh really? Yeah, she didn't like how it wasn't telling you what was going on, so to speak. To her, it felt a little bit like too much guesswork to tell where the story was going or what was happening, or what exactly each character was going to do. So if she wasn't a massive fan of it in that regard.
SPEAKER_00Did she like the relationships more than she did the ones in primeval?
SPEAKER_01She didn't hang around long enough to really see enough or comment on those. She just said it was extremely weird. She didn't like it and went back upstairs. Not her cup of tea.
SPEAKER_00Well, speaking of something that's not yours, we haven't even gotten on to the violence yet.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that was one aspect I did take massive issue with. Not because it was there, but because of how much of it was there, I guess. This was something I struggled with because again, the TV show that I said Metalocalypse, right at the very beginning, is often ranked up there as one of the most violent animated shows of all time. And I've had absolutely no issue with the violence in that. But in this one, lots of it went on for so long or just so frequent, it felt like it was without purpose. And overall, the show could have used perhaps a more restraint and a less is more attitude to give it proper impact and meaning.
SPEAKER_00From the memories I have of watching Samurai Jack, I feel like maybe Gandhi was getting something out of his system from those days here, because that show technically always has a lot of cartoon violence, but there he couldn't show real blood because it was a kid's show. So most of the villains in Samurai Jack were robots who would bleed oil or electricity instead. So knowing that and seeing the level of gore and bloodshed in Primal, you're kind of like, Genji, are you working through something here, buddy?
SPEAKER_01Does blood turn you on? It does more than turn me on, Mr. Vader. It makes me come. There were certainly a lot of scenes where it just felt like it was a sizzle reel of different kill shots, just for the sake of showing them off, particularly with the ape massacre, the sauropod massacre, and then the ceratopsians that were, again, massacred in herds. To me, it just happened pretty much in every episode and to such a point that it detracted from the emotional storytelling as well. It was just such a jarring contrast from these touching, expressive character animations to here's a slow-mo of intestines bursting out of something or whatnot for three, four minutes straight, it felt like at times. It just took me out of it before it eventually rounded itself in the characters again.
SPEAKER_00I did feel watching it that there were moments where the emotional beats did take a backseat to the violence. And I felt like even when it did eventually get round to the more emotional moments, it wasn't really hitting me in the field as much as I think the show intended to. But I don't feel I took at much issue with the OTT violence as you did, because I think it helped they established it early on, like in the scene where Spear and Fang are fighting the horned tyrannosaurs, where she bites the face off one of them and Spear smashes its leg with a stone. I think because they made it clear that was a part of the show's DNA early on. To me, I feel it sort of numbs your brains a lot of the gore going forward. And at the very least, it's creative in its violence. Like again, going back to the eight-men massacre when Spear is feeding the shit out of them all. I do like how they sort of experimented with different types of gore, as it were, like the eight-man's jaw flying off as Spear smashes it, or him punching it so hard the guts fly out. Like I give them points for trying to make it inventive, or at least so shockingly out there that you can't look away.
SPEAKER_01I'd say what you say about the first episode, but I feel the main difference was the scale of they had two or three tyrannosaurs to fight. But then in later episodes, the numbers of animals they were up against, it just got ridiculous. So, yeah, the eight men, there was dozens upon dozens of them. There was a scene where they were being chased by like several hundred raptors. And then the most egregious one was the wild dogs, just after Fang was nursed back to health. Of Spear just stood there with some sort of prehistoric knuckle dusters on, one punch killing them. And these dozens upon dozens of wild dogs were just filing towards him like they were on some sort of conveyor belt. And it's like, this is just ridiculous. This isn't how real predators act. And it was moments like that that really killed any sort of threat of the adversary they were facing. Same thing with the giant bats, is they then just ended up dying so easily. It was like, okay, they're more a nuisance than an actual threat.
SPEAKER_00Well, I agree that the wild dogs didn't feel like too much of a threat, but to me that's because they were just too cute. Like I know that they gave them those glowing red eyes and they tried to make them very hyena-like, but they also gave them like these big cute fennec fox ears, and I'm like, oh, I don't want Spear and Fang to win this one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and no, it did in particular those episodes where they were just killing things in single blows, it created this, I think, contradiction that really bugged me throughout the series as well, in that some of the knocks and injuries that Spear and Fang took should have been fatal blows for them, let alone anything else. Particularly in episode two where Spear falls over that wall to fall and you see him smash his head several times, and then other times in the show something gets hit in the head once and then dies, and it's I felt like they had a very thick layer of plot armor on that just waved a lot of that off half the time.
SPEAKER_00I will agree with you with the waterfall scene, and I do agree that there are inconsistencies in what isn't isn't fatal in this show. But I think that also ties into another reason why I didn't take issue with the violence and prime was that I felt like it helped to keep the stakes high for Spur and Fang all the time, especially again the eight men episode where Fang is nearly beaten to death. It keeps you invested in whether or not they'll survive it because it feels like there's real risk to the world that they live in.
SPEAKER_01Again, that was another thing I didn't like is some of the beatings that Fang took there. I was like, yeah, she's she should be dead. And then it actually annoyed me that they've had a survive when I was like, any other animal in this show, and they'd be dead, but main character.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I did think, especially in the ending of the episode afterwards, when she joined Spear in fighting off the wild dogs. Five minutes ago, she was struggling to walk, and then suddenly she bursts out of that cave in full fighting form again. That was something I did take note of.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I want to say something else about it. As gory as the show is and as borderline gratuitous as it is, I feel like at the same time they knew when enough was enough, and that they knew when to draw a fight to a close or cut away from it. Like the wild dogs eventually do beat a retreat when Spear is fighting them, or in the eight-man fight scene, it cuts away to a shot of the full moon over sound effects of him massacring them. It tiptoes right up to the edge of that line, but then they pull it back just before it can overstep it. The only time I would say it did go too far for me is the scene in episode three, A Cold Death, when Spear and Fang are trying to bring down this mammoth and Spear bludgeons its eye out with a stone. Like, even by this show's Dana, that was really uncomfortable to watch for me. I was like, Fang, just break it next week and bring this to an end, please.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely the toe fine line. That one I didn't have noted as particularly bugging me more than the other ones, but I guess differing opinions on just where that line falls.
SPEAKER_00I also think that another reason the violence doesn't necessarily turn off a lot of critics and fans is because it's counterbalanced by a very strong theme of empathy. Like, given the setup of their characters, Spear and Fang's stories could so easily have been about vengeance and them taking their pain out on the rest of the world. But instead, it kind of makes the opposite point in the first episode, especially that revenge doesn't actually bring you peace from trauma. Because even though Spear and Fang do kill the Hawn Tyrannosaurs, it doesn't bring them any solace. They only begin to find that when they decide to team up and show empathy to each other. And it really pushes this theme of compassion and companionship that you see over and over again throughout the show.
SPEAKER_01Companionship, yes, and compassion for Fang, yes. But I don't feel like Spear and Fang really showed that to the wide world given the large groups of animals they mowed down along the way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I guess the show is quite selective in terms of who is deserving of empathy and who isn't. But even there, again, the example of the mammoth. I do like how even after they kill it in this really brutal way, Spear actually does seem quite remorseful. You feel like he's trying to sort of make the mammoth's very last seconds at least kind of a bit more peaceful. You see him stroking it as it dies, and then afterwards he and Fang just get on with butchering it. There's no celebration, they don't do a big victory dance or anything, they just did it to survive. But it doesn't mean Spear doesn't recognise that he was killing another sentient being in order to do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I did like that, but again, wondered why it didn't come up in later points. I don't know, I just felt a bit inconsistent, I think.
SPEAKER_00It's also this idea of how compassion brings out the best in others. Because, for instance, in the witches episode, Coven of the Damned, the main witch character, this little old lady witch called Lula, when she uses her magic to look into Spear and Fang's past and she sees how they lost children, as indeed she herself lost a child, that is what creates that empathy between them, which leads her to save Spear from being sacrificed in this blood magic ritual, which would suck out his life essence and turn him into a small child to be fostered by one of the witches. It's one of those things that you kind of have to see to really understand properly.
SPEAKER_01I saw what the episode was going for: an adversary becoming an ally or understanding the trauma that both the main characters have gone through, but I just hated the vessel by which they delivered that message.
SPEAKER_00What is it you didn't like? Did you just not like the fact that it was magic?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, pretty much. It was just the fact that it's like, yep, we're gonna have this magic being decided to hop through people's memories using portals they draw in the air. And I was like, Is there is there no better way for them to convey the trauma to each other and to come to an understanding? It felt like they're like, Yeah, we don't know how to show this, so we'll just throw magic in to do it.
SPEAKER_00I will say the relationship between Lula and her late child does feel a lot less sweet when you remember that that child was created by stealing another person's life essence.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is what I mean by you introduce the magic and then it leaves you with a lot of questions, but actually a little bit grazing if you think about them for too long.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there is a certain cognitive dissonance there. Now I understand that you also weren't a fan of the world building in this show, isn't that right, Darby?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the way it just built on that world that it set up in the particularly the first two episodes, it just got increasingly and increasingly frustrating, I feel. The very first episode, it was sort of what got me hooked. You know, prehistoric world with dinosaur and man living and struggling together, and that was what I was sold on and what I was down for. But then when the series went on, it just added new things and layers on top of that that they didn't establish as possible in those first two episodes. And that just really grounded at me. I was like, where does this come from? Why? Some of the things you had animals that were almost kaiju size, and then they'd introduce superpowered beings. Like in Rage of the Eight Med, you had a very Hulk-like gorilla thing from drinking some kind of serum. And then you got into the realm of magic Neolithic witches as well in later episodes, and I was just like, what the hell is this now? This isn't what I signed up for, and I just felt it deviated way too far from those first two episodes that I got on board with.
SPEAKER_00Honestly, I did not mind that at all. Like I actually really liked the randomness of the world building in Prime. Well, it's kind of like a dark version of the Flintstones, in that there is just no rule book for what you could encounter. I even liked the episode with the witches in that it was at least shaking up the formula so that not every threat was an animal, ignoring the fact that they transform into a giant wolf and crow at the end.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I still think the Flintstones did a far better job of sticking to what its original premise was. This one, I just like, all right, we now have this whole community of small people that can conjure portals and time travel or delve into people's memories or whatever. And I was just like, this is just far from the struggles of man and beast that I thought this show was about. And it was at that point I was like, do I dislike the show or do I genuinely hate it at this point? And I was like, why am I carrying on this?
SPEAKER_00Um well, I mean, for me, is I think what I liked about the randomness of it is that it really created this feeling of like Spear and Fan could just come across anything, and that there really was you really just had no clue what the next threat was going to be. And to me, at least that kind of added to the sense of exploration of the world and the sense of suspense almost because like there was just nothing that Genji couldn't throw at you.
SPEAKER_01But I think that lent into another one of my issues with it, is particularly in some of the later episodes, it did just feel like it fell into a monster of the week format, and it was just the main characters running away or reacting to whatever they came across. It didn't actually have as much growth, and it wasn't until again that very last episode that was like, okay, there's actually a story here that I feel invested in.
SPEAKER_00It's interesting you say that, because I mean primeval technically is quite monster the week, but you don't have a problem with the formula there.
SPEAKER_01No, but with each individual episode, you could see the character beats and arcs and changes. Whereas in this one, particularly in like I can't remember the title, but the one with the zombie R Gent Dinosaurus Plague of Madness. That's the one. It did just feel like they found it, it chased them, they stopped, it chased them again, and I just didn't get as much character beat out of some of those later episodes leading up to the final two.
SPEAKER_00Well, again, if that's an issue you have with season one, you may like season two more, because from what I have seen and heard, I think they do make it much more of a linear growth in the character journeys.
SPEAKER_01Interesting, but if that is something they've managed, then yeah, that is definitely more up my street.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we've gotten this far into the episode, and we haven't really said that much about the creatures in the show. So, Darby, any standouts you want to mention?
SPEAKER_01I think they nailed the general cartoon aesthetic for a lot of the prehistoric creatures that they included like Fang and the Ly Pluridon and the Ceratopsids. But I also think that a lot of the other creatures left a lot to be desired. There was more that stood out for the wrong reasons, I feel like oh yeah. There just seemed to be a lot of massive creatures in the show that bordered on kaiju territory for me, especially compared to the other dinosaurs and things. You had like a giant snake and river of snakes that looked like it could have swallowed an entire river itself almost. And then giant bats, giant spiders. And again, it all just left me a little bit brain frazzled if you're in a prehistoric world, why do you need these supersized other creatures?
SPEAKER_00Well, giant bugs is kind of an old trope in paleo fiction anyway. Um, but I don't know, I didn't feel the snake was Taiju sized personally, but I think it's because I I suspect, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the reason you felt that was because you were looking at Fang as a literal T-Rex, whereas I was looking at her as one of the smaller tyrannosaur species. And if you assume that she's a T-Rex, then the snake is proportionally all that much bigger if it's bigger than her. Whereas if she's one of the smaller tyrannosaurs, then the snake doesn't seem quite that kaiju sized, because you're not comparing it to something as big as a T-Rex, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01I think what didn't help is you had Spear there as well, who is human-sized, and we all know what human-sized is. So when you have a human, a dinosaur, and then a massive snake, it just made the snake feel stupidly big.
SPEAKER_00I thought the spider had a cool design, like this fat bloated abdomen, four fangs, and the mouth that spits web, although I will admit I did kind of take a bit of an issue with that particular feature. Like, why couldn't you just make it shoot web at its ass like a normal spider? Hey, you know how we always dreamed about having a house that comes out of our butts?
SPEAKER_01Uh what? It did have a great design, but I just felt why did it have to be that big to have it being able to like wrap up dinosaurs and things? It just feels way too massive for the rest of the world. Why is this not the dominant life form?
SPEAKER_00Just out of interest, do you take this same issue with other giant spiders like Shelob in Lord of the Rings and Aragog and Harry Potter?
SPEAKER_01No, because they were a lot more forward with their fantasy elements. Harry Potter, you had three-headed dogs and things from the very first film. And Lord of the Rings, you had the Nazgull wraiths and things like that. Whereas this, we were four episodes in, and this was showing that the giant snake wasn't a one-off. You've got giant bats and carry dinosaurs, you've got giant spiders that are even bigger than the bats, and it all just didn't really blend as well to the show as first got to know it in those first two episodes. I would have preferred if it was all sort of expectations set from the get-go, of like this is more of a fantasy world of prehistoric animals, not a prehistoric world with fantasy stuff then added in later on.
SPEAKER_00I think you mentioned off mic that you had a bit of an issue of the portrayal of the bat and the spider in terms of their behaviour as well, didn't you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because the bat seemed to be bringing food in for the spider, which I don't know, it was a concept that reminded me a little bit of are you familiar with the documentary series The Future is Wild?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the speculative episode there about spiders farming small mammals as a potential future evolutionary trajectory. It did sort of remind me of that, but on so many steroids that it felt unrealistic.
SPEAKER_00I don't really feel they're that comparable on the fact they both involve spiders, because like the spiders aren't being fed anything by anything else. But the counter-argument I'd make to that is that there was a very good analysis of primal done by the Unnatural History Channel on YouTube. And he did specifically mention the relationship between the bats and the spiders, which is basically that it's a form of mutualism in that the bats bring food to the spider as well as for themselves. And in return, the spider preserves its excess kills that the bats can then feed on in times of hardship. And there are actually mutualistic relationships between tarantulas and some kinds of frogs in that the tarantula protects the frog from predators, and the frog in return eats ants and other smaller things that would eat the tarantula's eggs.
SPEAKER_01I picked up those and mutualism, but I wasn't aware. That tarantula one. Again, that sounds very small and manageable for a frog and a tarantula, but I don't know. It was just the scale and size of the bats and the spider. You'd have to ask how many kills do the bats have to bring for a spider to have excess ones to preserve? Are they basically just raising entire ecosystems to sustain themselves? The animal behaviours just didn't feel natural or logical and just seemed to happen to facilitate a narrative. And that pulled me out of it even more. You just got lots of these large predators in such large collective numbers. You had giant bats going up against the hundred or so raptors, you had societies of what looked like several hundred eight men, and we've already talked about the wild dogs. And then they just all get mowed down in various different kill animations. And in ecosystems, you never find any predator at that kind of density. And it just I don't know, it was just too many mental gymnastics, I think, is what they were trying to show.
SPEAKER_00I feel like you're sort of approaching this from the wrong mindset here, and that you're sort of allowing the ecologist's brain to process this show as opposed to like it's a cartoon bro.
SPEAKER_01I know, but if you're going into that sort of prehistoric ecosystem setting, I think there is a fine line, yes, but you know exactly what audience is going to be tuning into it as well, or at least a certain subset of it. So I'm just one of those on that line.
SPEAKER_00Well, in fairness, in fairness, when I was younger, I really did not like Peter Jackson's King Kong to begin with, because I was also one of those kids who was complaining that it was ecologically inaccurate to have more predator species than herbivore species. It didn't really occur to me that it was probably just a small subsect of the total assemblage we were seeing, as the World of Kong book would later reveal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'd say one of the creatures that was the big standout for me was the mad sauropod in Plague of Madness. Basically, for those who haven't seen this episode, this sauropod is bitten by a smaller dinosaur carrying a disease, which transforms it into basically a zombie. Like it loses all its self-control, its flesh turns into this disgusting, bubbling, slimy mass that sloths off its skin and it goes crazy and starts massacring everything in sight to try and seemingly spread the disease. So kind of like the dodo in primeval on steroids. And that to me was probably the most terrifying creature in Primal, just because it was so driven by blind savagery. Like there's something about that that I just find very frightening. That's one of the reasons why I've never watched the 2010 Wolfman remake, because I was just scared shitless by the senseless violence in the trailer for that film.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sauropod for me, I think that was actually one of my least favourite creatures in the show, because it did just rely on visual terror over any real substance, I thought. Also, you said it's like some sort of disease that you have to bite to pass it on, but then it didn't make sense to me why it was just massacring everything else instead of just biting them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is something I wondered as well. Like, why wouldn't you leave at least some of them alive so you can then pass on the disease?
SPEAKER_01And then when the main characters discovered the sauropods, it didn't really do much beyond chase them. It didn't force them to be clever about bringing it down or anything. They basically just ran until it fell to its own demise.
SPEAKER_00I felt like that in a way was kind of what added to the terror aspect to me. The fact that this is something so huge and so relentless in coming after you that there is nothing you can do except try to outrun it, and there's no guarantee you can. And I think to me, on a personal level, it reminded me of something else I saw when I was a kid that frightened me for a quite similar reason. Have you ever seen the 1989 animated BFG movie?
SPEAKER_01I've seen snippets of it, but I don't recall much of it, to be honest.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so in that movie, they add a climaxic scene that was not in the book of the flesh lumpeter, the main man-eating giant, going after Sophie, the little girl. And the way they animate the giants is horrifying. They're just so bestial and so like I don't even know how to describe them, they're just hideous to look at. And to see this thing come rampading off this little girl, he corners her wherever she tries to run, he's smashing all her hiding places. He's just relentless. And that terrified me when I was a kid. And I've kind of felt a very similar vibe with the mad sauropods. That I'd say is the biggest reason why it was so frightening to me. Like it sort of invokes childhood trauma of watching the BFG.
SPEAKER_01I felt that the creature that was in the Unseen Killer episode was far more effective in building tension and terror. The knife creature.
SPEAKER_00See, that was actually my least favourite creature just because I felt it was too far-fetched, this creature that can move really fast and slice a ceratopsy in in half and all that sort of stuff. Like it just that felt like it was taking a bit too much in the way of Creative Liberty.
SPEAKER_01I felt that they'd shattered that way earlier, so that actually didn't bother me massively. It actually reminded me a bit of the future predator of Prime Evil.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, I'd say the Future Predator did it way better, personally.
SPEAKER_01It did it better. But that's what it reminded me of. The kills they showed it do were definitely too over the top. But I actually enjoyed the reveal at the end of when they did have it cornered and captured, it was just a normal creature rather than some infected or superpowered being. It was slightly more scary just seeing that there are lethal, normal creatures living out there that can terrorize you this much.
SPEAKER_00I do agree that keeping it unseen for most of the episode was a good choice. But to me, I felt it was overpowered, and also the fact that there was no explanation for it. Like with the Mad Sauropod, you could see why it was just so relentless. And with the Gorilla Eight Man in Rage of the Eight Men, it's the fact that he drank some sort of serum to turn him into a hawk-like being. So at least the issues, though, those episodes had, at least there was an explanation of sorts. There was here there was nothing, it was just a thing that could do this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it would have benefited by not showing it kill them, but just attack and just leave the corpses for the main characters to find and then ask questions about, and we'd ask questions about how it did it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but that's not what Gandhi was going for in this show. So now let's talk about the final episode of season one, Slave of the Scorpion. Because this is an interesting episode for a number of reasons. For one, it's the start of a much more serialized narrative that we'll see going into season two. You could say this is as much the first episode of season two as it is the final episode of season one. But another reason is because unusually for a primal episode, you actually liked this one, didn't you, Darby?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it felt like a lot of the components that the series had just gelled a lot better for me in this final episode compared to some of the other more episodic stories that they told in previous episodes.
SPEAKER_00So do you want to give a summary of what happens in this episode?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it starts off like most of the other episodes. It's just spear and fang, stalking, hunting, fishing. They're interrupted yet again by another big scary predator, a nicely detailed libruridon, I think, so some kind of plyosaur anyway. Except this time they find there is also another human being, a slave woman in head and wrist shackles, being chased by this predator. And once they deal with the predator, they try and comfort her, keep her company, and over the course of the episode, by sharing their lifestyles and different cultural aspects with each other, they start to form a bond with this woman who reveals her name to be Mira. She tells them about herself, her backstory, how she came from a tribe that was raided and enslaved by this new ominous unseen threat known as the Scorpion. And after they settle together as now a trio instead of just a duo we've come to know, the Scorpion's men abduct Mira again, and Fang and Spear fight to try and get her back, but are too slow to get to the coast and see a ship leaving with Mira on board.
SPEAKER_00Although not before she is first kidnapped separately by a group of eight men so that we can have one last sizzle wheel of smashed skulls and dismembered limbs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So getting into more detail, what is it about this episode that made you like it more than most of the others?
SPEAKER_01I think it was I think as a starting point, it was Spear and Fang. It sort of showed them now as an equilibrium in their relationship compared to how they were at the start, where they were bickering and fighting and still favouring themselves over each other to a certain extent. Whereas here you got to see that they're still independent, but also supportive of each other, so they were both fishing, hunting, doing their own thing, but really quick to jump in and protect each other as and when required. And throwing Mira into the mix added a new dimension in terms of growth and forging of bonds between the characters, despite them having different stances at first. Spear was a lot more trusting of the newcomer than Fang was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Fang is very much the jealous party in this. She's a lot less willing to accept Mira when she first arrives. And Spear quite a few times has to calm her down. And even then, she's still throwing little microaggressions at Mira, like she'll growl at her behind Spear's back. You get the feeling that she's gotten very settled into the dynamic of just her and Spear. And for most of this episode, she's not willing to accept someone else into it as well.
SPEAKER_01Which very much reminds you of those cats you get when their single partner brings home someone else and they're just like not sure of them and sort of testing the waters of whether they're gonna lash out or be aggressive or a threat or anything. But once they've decided, nah, they're fine, they curl right up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was reminded a little bit of a jealous pet watching Fang's interactions with Mira and how she tries to keep her and Spear apart at first. Like I noticed in the scenes where they're just sleeping together, Fang has her body curled around Spear, whereas Mira is sleeping apart from them, and I thought that was a pretty good visual representation of how she's quite possessive of Spear at this point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I got that too. But like all pets, it wasn't until Fang tasted Mira's cooking that she started to grow accepting of them much faster.
SPEAKER_00I imagine it also helped this was one of the less violent episodes, too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was comparatively restrained. Bar the opening with the piece or it wasn't really until the final two minutes that it really ran up to those normal levels. But it was less a highlight of kill shots as a, you know, they're trying to get through as many as possible to get Mira back. It felt like it had a lot more urgency and purpose, which made it more enjoyable compared to some of what we've seen so far.
SPEAKER_00I was talking to Alex Croney not that long ago, aka my co-host for the prehistoric park episode, who is also a massive primal fan, and he said that he felt Mira came along just at the right time to stop the show from becoming formulaic. Would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it did definitely just feel like creature of the week for most of the episodes prior to that, which is why I describe a show as a real U-bending quality. It started off intriguing and character-driven, did become just this monster of the week scenario. And it wasn't until this very final episode that it felt like it was getting down to a character-driven story again.
SPEAKER_00No, I would agree. I think this episode very much is a throwback to the first and second episode where it was just about relationship building. So, what do you think of Mira as a character? And what do you think she brings to the show and also the dynamic that we've already come to know between Spear and Fang?
SPEAKER_01I think she added in conflict between them in terms of being open to newcomers and strangers in the very violent and unforgiving world. So that's the one angle, but I think the other angle is Mira highlights just how much civilized growth Spear still has to do, as he's not discovered things yet, like using different herbs and plants for seasoning, building different weapons like bows and arrows and all sorts of little cognitive things like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the thing that really stands out to me is the fact that he doesn't really have a language, whereas Mira, we find does. There's a scene where she is trying for not the first time to tell him what her name is, and he just assumes it means she wants to share a leg of roast over Raptor. I thought that was a pretty good sign of the language barrier. And also, as you said, like, you know, he doesn't really understand certain core tenets of what we would consider civilization.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, as we've known his vocal repertoire, basically is different sorts of screaming and grunting at this point. Where Mira speaks with what we can recognise as the colloquial language, which thankfully in this case isn't English, which would have been jarring.
SPEAKER_00You know who it probably would have been jarring to? Middle Eastern viewers, because that's actually Arabic she's speaking.
SPEAKER_01That is one of the oldest languages, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, Spear's linguistic repertoire is basically just one word, which is Mira's name.
SPEAKER_01Quite an evocative way to have him finally speak, I think, because it just goes show how much he actually cares about this new person.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's another thing, because when you think about it, for Spear himself, the fact he's so open to Mira is just as much a big leap of faith for him as it is for her coming to trust him and Fang. Because most of the hominids he's already encountered in this show so far, like the eight men or the witches, have been pretty hostile.
SPEAKER_01I guess he recognises the helplessness and panic that she's experiencing. And based on what he's learned through Fang, that a stronger together mentality is probably what she needs and what they both need in order to survive.
SPEAKER_00It just reminded me a bit of a scene in Terror under the Blood Moon when he sees an eight-man trying to escape from the giant bats, and he falls and breaks his leg, and then Spear immediately runs out and gets him to safety. I think that's where you see the roots of why he is so willing to be open to mirrors. That, like you say, he does recognize when another sentient being is in danger. And there is that part of him that does have enough empathy to try and help them.
SPEAKER_01I guess that is a very human thing to separate him from a lot of the other animalistic creatures in the show.
SPEAKER_00Let's get back to what you think mirror really adds to the dynamic between Spur and Fang, especially like what it is that causes her to go from being an outsider to becoming a part of their in-group.
SPEAKER_01I think just over the course of the episodes, they sort of showed that they just had each other's backs. Mira dipped in to help with hunting, Fang dipped in to protect her from that giant dragonfly, and it was just all those little things that eventually built up this trust between them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a very much a reciprocal thing. Like Spear at first builds a fire and she plucks up enough courage to come close to it, and then later on she cooks for them for the first time. Like she throws a bunch of stuff into a tortoise shell and makes little stew, which, like you said, is what gets Fang to come over to accepting her. I'd say the real turning point in terms of her coming to trust them is when they free her from her slave bonds, like spear smashing the manacles off with a rock, and then Fang biting off the wooden collar. I really love that one, especially. That was a really great use of a tyrannosaur's jaws, I thought.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I thought that as well. And a great way to demonstrate Fang's accepted her is she lets him put a mouth near her, but she didn't bite her head off. She actually did something helpful.
SPEAKER_00I think the moment when they both unequivocally come to recognise her value to the group is the scene where they're by a river and Fang is chasing an overraptor, which gives her the slip because she trips over Spear. Spear tries to bring it down himself and fails. And then Mira is the one who kills it with the bow and arrow she's been putting together while they've been on the move.
SPEAKER_01And that's something that he definitely takes on board and learns from her because when she is kidnapped and they try and get her back, Spear doesn't just go for his spear, he grabs the bow and arrow and uses that. So he's learnt from her, is accepting of her new ways of thinking, and in that case, employed them over his own traditional methods to try and save her.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, on that subject, what did you think of the ending?
SPEAKER_01I think it was a good setup for continuing their stories. It gives them a new purpose and struggle to face. But I think the only thing that did bug me is I'm not sure how I feel about the introduction of more advanced cultures yet, with that level of technology, considering when they did introduce culture like the apes and the witches, it already felt too far-fetched from the prehistoric world that have been promised in the earliest episodes. That's basically almost like ancient Egypt levels of technology by the looks of things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, spoiler alert, kind of, you're gonna recognise a lot of those more advanced cultures the moment you see them. That horned figure with a sword that Mira draws in the sand when she's telling Spear the story of her enslavement is a pretty big clue.
SPEAKER_01That's what I thought when I saw it. I was like, okay, so we've got races making helmets and all kinds of armour and weapons and whatnot. So I was like, okay, where's this going?
SPEAKER_00So how are you feeling about eventually covering season two?
SPEAKER_01I can certainly give it a go from the sounds of things. It's gonna be potentially better storytelling, but whether they do hone in on some of those issues that I had with the first series remains to be seen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, season two makes some choices, shall we say? I'm not necessarily a fan of some of the decisions they make, but it'll be interesting to see how you react to it, given that, like I say, it's a lot less episodic. There is much more of a continual story that winds throughout the whole season.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah, all I'll have to do then is give it a watch and see what I think. So final thoughts on this? Uh series one certainly held promise and some enjoyment, but it did mar itself certainly at multiple points, and at some points it was its own worst enemy in terms of style and lack of restraint.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, like I say, I kind of take the opposite view. Like, I completely get why you have certain issues with it. I can absolutely see someone being turned off by all the violence, for instance, and I think the lack of dialogue is something that may be a bit of an acquired taste, as your partner's response demonstrated. But on the whole, I thought it was really strong. I thought the animation was beautiful, I thought the character interactions were some of the best stuff in the show. And like I say, I just really liked the whole mixed bag feeling of the world, of how there was just so many different creatures and so many different cultures that you could come across, and there was just no telling what the next one was going to be. So, on the whole, I actually really liked it. Without giving too much away, I think our feelings are gonna diverge in the other direction when we cover season two, but we'll get to that in good time. So, anyway, thank you for listening to this. Hope you enjoyed yourself, and we will see you on our next dig. Take care.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks everyone.