Primeval: New World Season 1, Episode 8 Thoughts (Spoilers)
I caught the eighth episode of Primeval: New World, "Truth", last night, and thought I'd offer my thoughts on the episode here on the blog. Given that there are major spoilers in the write-up below, I offer this entry under a cut to allow those who don't want to be spoiled about the episode to forego this entry if they so choose, and come back to it once they've seen the episode.
The eighth episode of the series was, to put it bluntly, somewhat interesting and yet disturbing at the same time, and was very much an episode that focused on Evan Cross (who else?). However, to start with, the plot of this one: A Pachycephalosaurus roams the harbourfront, terrifying the people at the glass-and-steel Olympic Village, leaving a trail of destruction. Dylan and Mac quickly tranquillise the creature, and it sneezes on Evan before passing out. They are surprised to encounter Ken Leeds with a military team in tow. Project Magnet is back to full operational strength, and Leeds is eager to be more involved. Leaving the job of returning it through the Anomaly to Leeds, Evan and Dylan return to Cross Photonics. Evan begins to hallucinate, believing that the Albertosaurus that killed his wife, Brooke, has returned. After triggering the evacuation code of the building, he begins to hunt for the creature, amidst flashbacks of Brooke's death and the frozen ARC soldier, in which he must face his demons.
The previous episode, "Babes in the Woods", was somewhat a talkie episode, but "Truth" changes that all around and serves quite nicely to be one to have a bit more action - even if the majority of the action did not centre around a dinosaur per sé, though a creature's actions triggered much of the plot. This episode started off with a bang, so to speak, with a Pachycephalosaurus smack dab in the middle of Vancouver's Olympic Village. It's fortunate for the most part that it's a man-sized herbivore rather than a man-eating T-Rex or worse, but the personal impact this small herbivore is about to have on the team is going to be profound. A "dinosaur phlegm" effect isn't as picturesque as a "butterfly" effect, but the episode takes the concept of unintended repercussions very seriously, and in many ways this episode has the feel of a bookend to the series opener, "The New World". "Truth" doesn't provide a lot of answers in an absolute sense, but definitely gives us a context for some of the questions that viewers have already asked and drops even further clues to those viewers paying some attention to the less obvious details that are found within.
Writer Gillian Horvath (with an able assist from Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens) gives us a solid, tight script, tight in more ways than one, as the personalities of the main cast, notably Evan and Mac Rendell, are wound to the breaking point in this story. This story isn't about dinosaurs at all, not even the Pachycephalosaurus that starts it all, so much as it's about secrets and lies coming out, and relationships. This is a story about what really drives Evan Cross, specifically the choices and mistakes he's made, which are likely to be about to tear his newly united team apart. Amanda Tapping directs her second episode of the series in this one, and does a really nice job of balancing the existing dynamics of Gillian Horvath's script with some great deliberately chosen sequences, and gives us a package that seems to indicate the show is starting to hit its stride (about time, after eight episodes!).
From the very first moments of the episode that started this series, "The New World", Evan Cross has been holding back secrets from his team, and not just the business about the ARC person on ice, but we really had no idea how big these secrets were and how much they've affected his actions until "Truth". Evan has always come across as emotionally scarred, has made some very poor (some would argue bad) decisions, but when it comes right down to it, he's really just an average person with all the flaws that come along with that being human. And he's a man whose curiosity got him and his then wife, Brooke, into all manner of trouble that has shaped his life since then. However, it just took some hallucinogenic dinosaur sneezing for him to show the truth of things to his teammates and friends. What made this episode memorable was not the revelations on Evan's part themselves, but how his friends reacted to his behaviours and the truths that came out. The emotional rollercoaster that Evan subjected them to was made more interesting in that despite all that was coming out, they still pulled through and fought to the bitter end to help Evan. While Dylan's leadership shone through somewhat here and I was pleased to see Mac's reactions at why he was chosen to work with the SPG, it was Ange who impressed me the most in this episode, from her initial reactions to Evan in the early part of the episode to her final comment to Dylan about matters at the end. Whether she's truly finished with Evan and Cross Photonics remains to be seen, but of all the characters, Ange went through the most (other than Mac).
I'm not going to say much here about the major reveal about who the ARC fellow was who saved Evan from the Albertosaurus in the actual flashback episodes, other than to state this had better be gone into in more detail in the final five episodes of this first season of Primeval: New World. The temporal paradoxes that have been raised here, based on who that person turned out to be, makes me think that "A Sound of Thunder" is coming very, very soon - and much (if all) of it is Evan's fault. I will say that Niall Matter (who plays Evan) did a great job playing the character under the hallucinatory influence, and came across as quite manic in his goals and desires. The flashbacks of the business with the attack by the Albertosaurus on Brooke Cross and the subsequent revelation of the ARC person's identity were handled really nicely, inserted at the right moments, and gave the episode a smooth flow in this regard.
I have to say something about Lt. Ken Leeds here. Even though he didn't play a large role in the episode, Leeds and the Canadian soldiers (working for Project Magnet, I assume) showed up here in the nick of time to help Evan out with the whole carrying firearms issue when the police stopped him (do tranquiliser weapons count as firearms?). He's taking on a more assertive role, in a sort of passive sense, but he's grown so much from the bumbling man we were introduced to in the first episode. Evan obviously doesn't trust him (perhaps for good reasons?), but I was glad to see that he left Mac to ensure that Lt. Leeds and his men got the Pachycephalosaurus back through the Anomaly.
When it comes down to it, "Truth" surprised me as an episode. This episode demonstrates quite well how this series has taken the original Primeval concept, and changed it, evolved it, into something more realistic. Sure, it still has its flaws and its problems, but after eight episodes, Primeval: New World is finally showing the promise and potential that it has to be great. The fans of the original show and those who are discovering the concept of what Primeval is all about for the first time with this show are hopefully going to be rewarded as the first season winds down with the final five episodes (though Canadian fans will not be seeing these five episodes until the 22nd of January, though there will be a Spacemas marathon on the 28th of December).
The eighth episode of the series was, to put it bluntly, somewhat interesting and yet disturbing at the same time, and was very much an episode that focused on Evan Cross (who else?). However, to start with, the plot of this one: A Pachycephalosaurus roams the harbourfront, terrifying the people at the glass-and-steel Olympic Village, leaving a trail of destruction. Dylan and Mac quickly tranquillise the creature, and it sneezes on Evan before passing out. They are surprised to encounter Ken Leeds with a military team in tow. Project Magnet is back to full operational strength, and Leeds is eager to be more involved. Leaving the job of returning it through the Anomaly to Leeds, Evan and Dylan return to Cross Photonics. Evan begins to hallucinate, believing that the Albertosaurus that killed his wife, Brooke, has returned. After triggering the evacuation code of the building, he begins to hunt for the creature, amidst flashbacks of Brooke's death and the frozen ARC soldier, in which he must face his demons.
The previous episode, "Babes in the Woods", was somewhat a talkie episode, but "Truth" changes that all around and serves quite nicely to be one to have a bit more action - even if the majority of the action did not centre around a dinosaur per sé, though a creature's actions triggered much of the plot. This episode started off with a bang, so to speak, with a Pachycephalosaurus smack dab in the middle of Vancouver's Olympic Village. It's fortunate for the most part that it's a man-sized herbivore rather than a man-eating T-Rex or worse, but the personal impact this small herbivore is about to have on the team is going to be profound. A "dinosaur phlegm" effect isn't as picturesque as a "butterfly" effect, but the episode takes the concept of unintended repercussions very seriously, and in many ways this episode has the feel of a bookend to the series opener, "The New World". "Truth" doesn't provide a lot of answers in an absolute sense, but definitely gives us a context for some of the questions that viewers have already asked and drops even further clues to those viewers paying some attention to the less obvious details that are found within.
Writer Gillian Horvath (with an able assist from Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens) gives us a solid, tight script, tight in more ways than one, as the personalities of the main cast, notably Evan and Mac Rendell, are wound to the breaking point in this story. This story isn't about dinosaurs at all, not even the Pachycephalosaurus that starts it all, so much as it's about secrets and lies coming out, and relationships. This is a story about what really drives Evan Cross, specifically the choices and mistakes he's made, which are likely to be about to tear his newly united team apart. Amanda Tapping directs her second episode of the series in this one, and does a really nice job of balancing the existing dynamics of Gillian Horvath's script with some great deliberately chosen sequences, and gives us a package that seems to indicate the show is starting to hit its stride (about time, after eight episodes!).
From the very first moments of the episode that started this series, "The New World", Evan Cross has been holding back secrets from his team, and not just the business about the ARC person on ice, but we really had no idea how big these secrets were and how much they've affected his actions until "Truth". Evan has always come across as emotionally scarred, has made some very poor (some would argue bad) decisions, but when it comes right down to it, he's really just an average person with all the flaws that come along with that being human. And he's a man whose curiosity got him and his then wife, Brooke, into all manner of trouble that has shaped his life since then. However, it just took some hallucinogenic dinosaur sneezing for him to show the truth of things to his teammates and friends. What made this episode memorable was not the revelations on Evan's part themselves, but how his friends reacted to his behaviours and the truths that came out. The emotional rollercoaster that Evan subjected them to was made more interesting in that despite all that was coming out, they still pulled through and fought to the bitter end to help Evan. While Dylan's leadership shone through somewhat here and I was pleased to see Mac's reactions at why he was chosen to work with the SPG, it was Ange who impressed me the most in this episode, from her initial reactions to Evan in the early part of the episode to her final comment to Dylan about matters at the end. Whether she's truly finished with Evan and Cross Photonics remains to be seen, but of all the characters, Ange went through the most (other than Mac).
I'm not going to say much here about the major reveal about who the ARC fellow was who saved Evan from the Albertosaurus in the actual flashback episodes, other than to state this had better be gone into in more detail in the final five episodes of this first season of Primeval: New World. The temporal paradoxes that have been raised here, based on who that person turned out to be, makes me think that "A Sound of Thunder" is coming very, very soon - and much (if all) of it is Evan's fault. I will say that Niall Matter (who plays Evan) did a great job playing the character under the hallucinatory influence, and came across as quite manic in his goals and desires. The flashbacks of the business with the attack by the Albertosaurus on Brooke Cross and the subsequent revelation of the ARC person's identity were handled really nicely, inserted at the right moments, and gave the episode a smooth flow in this regard.
I have to say something about Lt. Ken Leeds here. Even though he didn't play a large role in the episode, Leeds and the Canadian soldiers (working for Project Magnet, I assume) showed up here in the nick of time to help Evan out with the whole carrying firearms issue when the police stopped him (do tranquiliser weapons count as firearms?). He's taking on a more assertive role, in a sort of passive sense, but he's grown so much from the bumbling man we were introduced to in the first episode. Evan obviously doesn't trust him (perhaps for good reasons?), but I was glad to see that he left Mac to ensure that Lt. Leeds and his men got the Pachycephalosaurus back through the Anomaly.
When it comes down to it, "Truth" surprised me as an episode. This episode demonstrates quite well how this series has taken the original Primeval concept, and changed it, evolved it, into something more realistic. Sure, it still has its flaws and its problems, but after eight episodes, Primeval: New World is finally showing the promise and potential that it has to be great. The fans of the original show and those who are discovering the concept of what Primeval is all about for the first time with this show are hopefully going to be rewarded as the first season winds down with the final five episodes (though Canadian fans will not be seeing these five episodes until the 22nd of January, though there will be a Spacemas marathon on the 28th of December).