Abby Meta - Part 14. Episode 3.1
Series 3, episode 1
Cutter calls Abby late at night to tell her there’s an anomaly. Abby goes into Connor’s room, and calls him but he doesn’t wake up. She nips down to the kitchen, grabs a box of salad leaves, and goes back up to throw them over Connor’s face. Then goes back downstairs to tell Rex to go and get his breakfast. It’s definitely back to showing these two as the fun, comedy characters, but on a practical note, it would surely have been quicker for her to simply go over and shake Connor awake properly the first time, rather than going up and down the stairs three times when they were in a hurry?
When Abby and Connor arrive at the museum they are both carrying tranquiliser guns. Did they go via the ARC to pick them up, or are they taking them home now, so as to be able to get to a site faster if they are called out of hours? It seems unlikely they would be allowed to take them home, so either they went via the ARC, or perhaps their preferred weapons had been packed and brought for them in the cars, and they picked them up when they arrived at the museum, which seems a more sensible arrangement.
Cutter introduces them to Becker, and tells them, “He’s here to protect us, so do as he says. Unless I think he’s wrong.” Abby glances at Connor with a slightly surprised look, but they don’t comment. This scene establishes something of the pecking order within the team, and it seems that Connor and Abby are still almost at the bottom of it (the only people who seem to at all answer to them are the random soldiers, and that is only when Becker isn’t around to contradict them).
There is a brief amusing exchange between Abby and Connor as they walk through the museum, the joke mostly being at Connor’s expense about his fear of museums, but then it’s all serious when they find a dead body. Abby is the one who identifies it is an animal kill, although she offers no suggestions about what type of animal. Back in 2.3 she identified the marks of a big cat attack with ease, so it’s odd that she seems to have no idea what did it here. Perhaps it is simply that she needs more time (and better light) to examine the body before she can draw any more detailed conclusions.
When they find Sarah (again), Abby is the one who gets straight to the point and asks what she saw. Abby then runs off to investigate the open loading bay doors, and reports tracks, biped and quadruped, but again is no more specific as to what kind of animal it might be. Apparently in Stephen’s absence, Abby is now the resident tracker. Quite where or when she gained these skills is unknown.
Abby and Cutter go off after the creature, but after a while Abby loses the trail. Her comment that Stephen would have known what to do seems strange and out of character, and almost entirely designed simply to show Cutter’s reaction. Abby doesn’t normally waste time wishing for things that she knows she can’t have, especially in a potentially dangerous creature related situation. Perhaps she is still adjusting to taking on some of what were previously Stephen’s responsibilities, and knows that she is not matching up to his standard. Even if that were so, however, it’s not like Abby to say it out loud in those terms.
A short while after that they find a body in the street, and Abby shows remarkably little reaction as she pronounces him dead. I know they’re trying to track down the creature, but surely one of them ought to have put a call in to Jenny that there is a body to be dealt with before it attracts attention and causes a public panic? Cutter finds a tooth and passes it to Abby, and she identifies it as a crocodile. Becker joins them as they head off again, this time towards the river (let’s not even ask why Becker wasn’t with them to begin with, once they knew a large and dangerous creature was out roaming the streets).
Abby notices anomalous behaviour now they suspect it’s a crocodile - crocs normally drag their victims into water, and it is walking on two legs. This conversation seems mostly designed to provide Cutter with enough information to identify the creature as a pristichampus, but it does show Abby making use of the available evidence to help put the pieces together. She then predicts that it will soon come out of the river because it’s too cold - a prediction that proves to be accurate.
Abby, Cutter, Jenny, Becker and Becker’s soldiers arrive at a restaurant/conference centre type place to find scenes of chaos, and Becker tells them if the first tranquiliser dart doesn’t put the creature down they will have to use live rounds. Abby doesn’t look happy, and glances at Cutter to see his reaction, but neither of them comment or object.
Abby and Cutter chase the creature upstairs while Becker and his men are helping Jenny to evacuate the building. It’s tempting to suggest they go off alone on purpose to make sure they get to the creature first and have chance to try using tranquilisers and non-lethal methods.
Abby doesn’t appear to be having a good day at all here. Cutter dives to push a random civilian out of the creature’s way, while Abby points her tranquiliser gun at it. The next moment she has put the gun down, and is throwing a chair at the creature to distract it from Cutter and the woman, and then picks up the gun again when the crocodile turns around to focus on her. When Abby finally does shoot it, she misses, and almost hits Cutter. Then things get even stranger, when she apparently drops the gun, kicks the croc, and then hides under a table (because a thin table cloth is exactly what you want between you and the jaws of a pissed off giant crocodile!). Cutter manages to distract it and Abby grabs the gun again and starts to reload it, but by the time she has done that, Cutter has already dived out of the window with the civilian, and the croc has fallen after him.
This scene seems largely designed to give Cutter his heroic moment with the insane window leap, but the way the writers went about it seems particularly nonsensical, with Abby’s failure to shoot it when she had the chance right at the start, and the conspicuous absence of any of the soldiers who had entered the building with them. Perhaps we can argue that she opted for the chair throwing distraction rather than shooting it because she knew it would take time for the tranquiliser to take effect, and thought that Cutter and the civilian were in imminent danger.
Abby repeatedly claims that the creature is injured and too cold, and that it wants to go back home. A reasonable assumption, as it turns out, when it leads them back to the museum. When Sarah suggests bowing to it, Abby adds that if it doesn’t think they are a threat, it might not attack. A rather worrying claim, considering that it has already killed at least two people, and maybe others that they don’t know about. Nevertheless, Cutter trusts the two women, and they are proven correct when the crocodile leaves through the anomaly without attacking anyone.
Why they didn’t just back out of the way and let it get to the anomaly unhindered is another question entirely, but let’s not go there, eh?
When Abby learns of Sarah’s ‘curse’ joke on Connor, she smiles, and tells Sarah not to tell Connor that she made it up. Not yet, anyway. It’s too good an opportunity to make fun of him.
Link to part 13 - episode 2.7
Link to part 15 - episode 3.2