Hire A Bloody Physicist
Lately I’ve been watching Primeval, and really, for the most part, its rubbish. The general plot is the rifts are opening up in time and dinosaurs are wandering through and are either consuming people or creating general havoc. A group of people are trying to stop the dinos and figure out what’s going on. Basically, it’s family sci-fi with special effects taken from those Dinosaur programmes and very similar conceptually to Torchwood. And like Torchwood, those employed in saving the earth are a bit incompetent.
Don’t expect interesting characters. The lead is male TV lead archetype #3, the smartest in the programme with angst issues surrounding him not-so-missing-because-she-crops up-in-every-episode wife. We have the very good looking, very good at shooting things and handling the action lab tech, the wears completely impractical street clothes all the times and played by an ex member of S Club 7 zoo keeper, the every geek stereotype rolled into one geek boy and the supposedly in charge but exists solely to fall in love with the lead civil servant.
But there is hope. There’s amoral civil servant dude, who gets to spend the entire time slagging off the other characters efforts and generally being an magnificent bastard, the missing wife who shows up every now and again and acts in her own interests which sometimes involves saving the day and other times screwing them all over, and competent military guy, who is competent at is job and doesn’t say much - he’s my favourite character.
The special effects aren’t up to the same standard as Doctor Who, the dialogue in the first episode is awful, two of the three female characters seem to exist only to be love interests and get rescued from perilous situations. And worse, they’re ridiculously bad at saving the earth. For example, they have rifts appearing in time and who are they taking their advice on time from, a palaeontologist. For the love of things sacred and my sanity, hire a freaking physicist!
However, by the sixth (and final episode) the show does seem to find its feet. For the first time instead of just using a dinosaur the show creates its own monster (from the future), and it’s effective, the zookeeper finally puts on some practical clothes and the show is a bit more ambitious and takes on the Grandfather paradox. So, I think I may just tune in next season.
Don’t expect interesting characters. The lead is male TV lead archetype #3, the smartest in the programme with angst issues surrounding him not-so-missing-because-she-crops up-in-every-episode wife. We have the very good looking, very good at shooting things and handling the action lab tech, the wears completely impractical street clothes all the times and played by an ex member of S Club 7 zoo keeper, the every geek stereotype rolled into one geek boy and the supposedly in charge but exists solely to fall in love with the lead civil servant.
But there is hope. There’s amoral civil servant dude, who gets to spend the entire time slagging off the other characters efforts and generally being an magnificent bastard, the missing wife who shows up every now and again and acts in her own interests which sometimes involves saving the day and other times screwing them all over, and competent military guy, who is competent at is job and doesn’t say much - he’s my favourite character.
The special effects aren’t up to the same standard as Doctor Who, the dialogue in the first episode is awful, two of the three female characters seem to exist only to be love interests and get rescued from perilous situations. And worse, they’re ridiculously bad at saving the earth. For example, they have rifts appearing in time and who are they taking their advice on time from, a palaeontologist. For the love of things sacred and my sanity, hire a freaking physicist!
However, by the sixth (and final episode) the show does seem to find its feet. For the first time instead of just using a dinosaur the show creates its own monster (from the future), and it’s effective, the zookeeper finally puts on some practical clothes and the show is a bit more ambitious and takes on the Grandfather paradox. So, I think I may just tune in next season.