Here's what you need to know; 8 years after his wife vanished without a trace, Scientist Nick Cutter finds himself drawn to the place of her disappearance by reports of a giant monster in the area, but what he and his fellow scientists, hunters and government agents find is something none of them could have imagined, something that challenges their very understanding of reality.
Since Thunderbirds is currently off the table, and I feel I've been lacking in posts, I am starting a new series of reviews. Not considering that I never finished series 9 of Doctor Who and Game of Thrones comes back at the end of the month, I went for yet another show I loved as a child, but one I'm rockier on, a little sci fi drama on ITV called Primeval, so let's dig in.
This episode starts out in a very interesting fashion, providing no context or background as a woman is chased though an ASDA car park by a Gornonopsid, it's admittedly a very intriguing opening for a new series, and as you'd expect, 10 year old me loved it. Looking back, the effects are pretty damn dated, more on that later, but the intrigue and mystery of the series is brilliantly established in this opening. As most TV series' do, this one focuses on several characters, Nick Cutter however is more or less the main character here, and he's cool; being a scientist in a very typical university teacher way, but his back story with his interest in archaeological 'anomalies' and his missing wife are pretty interesting, and at one point in the episode, when he begins to show his true intentions with these 'anomalies,' his character becomes a lot more interesting in my opinion. Stephen Hart is less interesting, serving as the hunter of the group, tracking down the Gorgon and having his little moment of badassary in a chase with him and the Gorgon. Connor Temple was always one of my favourite characters in the series, and now, as a young adult, I find I relate with him the most in this crew, a slightly weird, moderately sad little nerd who struggles with the ladies; only thing is he's a lot Wittier and funnier than me, another reason to like him though. He very quickly develops a crush on Abby Maitland, a cute zoologist and reptile expert who has her own reasons for being in the area, in addition to being cute, she's very smart with the reptiles, and her little side plot with the mysterious flying lizard, while largely forgotten about as the episode goes on, is a good introduction to her character. Really the characters who leave the smallest impression here are the government agents, Claudia Brown and James Lester, and even then, Lester is cynical and sarcastic, so I like him. Claudia is probably the flattest character here, not really contributing to the episode in a sizable way or having any interesting characteristics. Supporting characters are about as flat too, the soldier that accompanies Cutter towards the end of the episode is just a typical army veteran body guard, and the dumb dino loving kid, who is a recurring character in this episode, gets somewhat annoying as the episode goes on. A very interesting character however, who has no dialogue in the episode and only really appears twice in the whole episode, is Helen, Cutter's wife, her character and the story with her and Cutter is one of the most interesting stories in this episode, as both of them have their agenda, but while his is to find his missing wife, hers is more ambiguous, open to interpretation.
Primeval has a decent line up of characters, and the story on offer here is equally as decent, each character, to an extent, has their own story and goals, as you'd expect, but the overall story of this episode is a fascinating one, and it's one that I will try not to go into too much detail on, but I can't really not go on about the Anomalies. These things are awesome, and can best be described as portals, linking our time with another. Something that really lends to their coolness is their design, which is as mesmerising and divine as it is violent, basically looking like a floating cloud of broken glass, I'm sure that's a very deliberate choice given their nature of being holes in time, their interesting design various properties create a surprisingly grounded interpretation of what is essentially time travel, but the subject of anomalies brings us onto the effects. Let's be blunt, it's a TV show about dinosaurs, so, with the show coming up on 10 years old, how do the effects hold up, not well, the vast majority of the creatures here are CG, and while it has times of looking decent, it has its moments of looking utterly laughable, while it's an admittedly minor distraction to the interesting story and characters, it's definitely something that's noticeable, The Gorgonopsid is a good example of the effects not holding up, while Rex and the other creature still look decent for the most part. I also like the way the creatures are set up, Rex is adorable, and the reveal of the other big creature is done very well, the only one I really don't get is the Gorgonopsid, who is shown literally in the first few seconds of the episode, for the episode to then get all mysterious with this monster we've already seen is a bit weird, personally what I think would have been more interesting is if they were more reserved with the Gorgon, which would have made the very effective scene with Abby seeing the monster far more effective.
But overall, episode one of this series is very good, it sets up it's cool and interesting characters very well, and establishes a fantastic overall story of mystery and monsters with some really cool sciency stuff, the effects are a very mixed bag, and some of it has aged pretty poorly, but it's a minor distraction from this well done introduction to the series, Primeval episode 1 is definitely worth watching.
No comments:
Post a Comment