Primeval: Season Three, Episode One
A quick recap of Primeval's first two seasons. A team in Britain, based in London, have discovered Anomalies, rips in space/time. Creatures can and have come through; usually prehistoric, but some from Earth's future as well. The team identifies and contains these Incursions.
The team currently consists of Nick Cutter, a evolutionary scientist, Connor Temple, his former student and now the project's go-to tech guy, Abby Maitland, a zoologist specialising in lizards and animal behaviour, Jenny Lewis, their PR manager, and James Lester, their long-suffering Home Office boss. Former members of the team are Stephen Hart, Nick's right hand man, and Captain Tom Ryan, their military minder. Both were killed, separately, in Creature attacks. Their main opponent is Helen Cutter, Nick's wife. She left him to explore the Anomalies and currently has some rather apocalyptic views on evolution.
Tom Ryan's death was relatively early on in what's known as the ARC project - Anomaly Research Centre - but Stephen's death is very fresh.
So. On to Season Three.
In the British Museum in London, in a warehouse-looking room, a woman approaches a very large piece showing four Egyptian-looking statues holding hands and forming a square.
The woman wanders past it, ticking something off on a clipboard. There's a noise behind her, which she briefly considers investigating but then dismisses.
As she leaves, an Anomaly springs to life in the centre of the piece and something vaguely crocodilian sticks its head out to roar menacingly. The Anomaly almost immediately closes.
Well done, credits, for showing us a new cast member before she's even been on screen. Way to ruin the tension.
At the ARC Lester is walking a new soldier called Becker around. How come Becker's name isn't in the credits? I am offended on his behalf. Scowl.
Becker is going to be the team's new minder as well as overall security head. He doesn't quite believe what they do - "You detect Anomalies and fight dinosaurs, when necessary(!)" - but Lester is mostly unperturbed.
Becker says he's been fully briefed. Surely that would include video footage of Anomalies and dinosaurs, even if it's just to say "DON'T GO NEAR THESE!!!" (I can actually picture Connor making a 'Welcome to the ARC!' pack with 'helpful' sheets like that.) Anyway, why is Becker so disbelieving?
Lester then says something almost nice about the team. "You'll be dealing with a highly strung and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do. Your job is to stop them getting themselves killed." He also warns Becker that Cutter won't like him and will in fact make his job as difficult as possible, on purpose.
"We can't afford another Stephen Hart. Clear?"
"Crystal clear, sir."
He then basically abandons Becker in the middle of the Control room. Nice orientation lecture, Lester.
Back at the museum, a guide is giving a lecture about Egypt, specifically about Anubis. She's going into quite a lot of gory detail considering her audience looks like they're about six.
The woman from earlier clearly disapproves of her story as well, clearing her throat from behind. The guide hurriedly brushes her group off and chases her.
The non-guide woman is called Marion and is the guide woman's boss. Guide wants something from her, but Marion is firm. The guide - who is, of course, Sarah - wants to study the Sun Cage, the large four-part piece, but Marion refuses to let her.
"With respect, Sarah, the greatest Egyptologists of the twentieth century decoded those hieroglyphics decades ago. And they were much more qualified than you."
"And some of those translations have never made sense. All I'm asking to to let me check it out for myself."
"Sorry. This exhibition is closed. It's moving on."
Nick is at the ARC, trying and failing not to think of Stephen. He doesn't seem to have cut his hair since the last series.
Jenny wakes him out of his trance to suggest he should go home.
"You can't take this personally, you know. No one blames you."
"For what?"
"For what happened to Stephen."
I have a little problem with the timing here. Jenny's dialogue suggests, at least to me, that not much time has gone past. So does Lester's dialogue with Becker, which implies that Becker was hired as a direct result of Stephen's death. Nick's hair, on the other hand, says that quite a while - two or three months, I'd guess - have passed. Insight, anyone?
Nick agrees that it was Helen's fault, but he feels guilty because "I should have stopped her. That's my job."
Jenny tells him he can't change the past.
"You don't know the half of it, Claudia Brown."
More amused than angry, Jenny heads off, pausing to invite him to get something to eat.
At the museum Marion carefully covers the Sun Cage in dust sheets. As she walks away the Anomaly reopens, visible through the sheets. She wanders over to look and is eaten.
Nick and Jenny, smiling and laughing, are interrupted on their way out by the Anomaly Alert. Nick calls Abby to tell her to meet them at the British Museum.
Abby calls Connor to get him up. When that doesn't work, she scatters vegetables of some kind over him and calls Rex to have a feed. Personally, just the veg would have woken me up...
Also, it's a different flat than last year, and both Connor and Abby have got hair cuts. Unlike Nick. This is my least favourite hair on both of them. I quite like Nick's, though his was nice short too...
Anyway, back to the actual episode.
Several soldiers march into the Museum. Nick, Jenny and Becker, all dressed in dark shades, are at the back of the group.
Connor and Abby dash up behind them. Look, Connor's got a gun! Good on you.
"Connor Temple, Abby Maitland, this is Captain Becker. He's here to protect us, so do as he says...unless I think he's wrong. This way."
The group head down an exhibit corridor. Connor regales them with a story of how he used to think everything came to life at night so he hid one night when he was eight. Nothing really happened, though; he just got locked in a toilet for three hours, leaving him with a lingering fear of museums. He's got over the fear of toilets, at least.
Nick finds Marion's body. She's remarkably unchewed.
Connor jumpily checks a corridor with Abby and a soldier escort. Nick and the others are in another when they hear a door close. Everyone converges on Sarah, who was blamelessly going about her business and is understandably startled to see many soldiers pointing weapons at her.
She introduces herself as Dr Page. She thinks they're thieves; Nick corrects her. "Actually, I'm a Professor."
"I've never seen a professor with a gun before."
"Yeah, it's a pretty specialised field."
Sarah turns when he walks past her and sees Marion's body. It was literally right behind them. Sarah takes off in fear and everyone chases her.
She makes it to the huge warehouse-like room holding the Sun Cage. The Anomaly is still active and she walks towards it, entranced.
Something makes a very loud noise and she backs up quickly. It's the crocodilian thing. Sarah attempts to hold it off with a pole.
The others hear her screaming and pelt towards her.
A delivery man raises the door from outside. Crocodilian sees the door and heads out, just as the team burst in at the other end of the room.
Nick sees the Anomaly before he sees Sarah. She's in shock and doesn't answer when he asks if she's ok.
Abby has more luck - "What did you see?"
"Ammut. I saw the goddess Ammut."
Nick agrees she saw something, but probably not a goddess. Abby has found the tracks outside. Jenny adds to Sarah's confusion - "I've got to get back to the ARC."
"The Ark?!"
"Not that one."
Jenny heads back to the ARC and tells Becker to secure the area. Nick goes with Abby to hunt the Creature. He leaves Connor to see when the Anomaly goes to and what the Sun Cage is. How does he know it's called a Sun Cage?
Connor attempts to cheer Sarah up. "I bet I can read your mind - You wanna know who we are, what the ARC is, and what the big flickering thing behind me is, right?"
Sarah wasn't thinking any of those things.
At the ARC, Lester takes a call from Christine Johnson. Christine, according to herself, is the new liaison between the military and the ARC, which seems weird as she's neither military nor ARC personnel. She needs to see him for a briefing. Lester attempts to fob her off, but she wants her way and tells him she'll see him in an hour.
Jenny hurries in as Christine hangs up on Lester. Jenny tells him about the Incursion. He is Not Happy.
"There was an eyewitness, a young woman at the museum."
"Well, you know. Have her shot and dispose of her body discreetly. - Just kidding."
'Kidding' isn't a very Lester word, is it? I'd expect something more high brow from him...
Somewhere in London Abby and Nick are still tracking the Creature.
Becker seals the room. Connor asks Sarah about the hieroglyphs on the Sun Cage. Sarah's been working on it, but she really doesn't know yet. If only Marion had let her finish - she probably would have been eaten instead.
"I'm sorry. Was she a friend?"
"Oh, no, not at all. But, you know, given the choice, I wouldn't want her dead."
I like Sarah.
Nick and Abby find blood on a railing.
Becker paces around randomly.
Connor opens a tool box. A - spanner? I'm not great at tools, sorry - flies out, caught in the magnetic field. As it flies in, it takes the breast off one of the figures.
The piece of breast lands near Connor, who immediately disavows all responsibility.
Sarah, unimpressed, tells him the Sun Cage is cursed. Anyone who touches it is doomed for life. How do they move it around, then?
Connor attempts to wipe his hand off. Sarah insincerely apologises for not telling him earlier; Becker echoes her "Bad luck." Connor sits down miserably.
And promptly knocks over a vase, smashing it to bits.
Abby's lost the trail. She thinks Stephen could have found it. Nick is momentarily slowed by the mention, but shakes it off to call Connor. The Anomaly is 55 million years old, putting it in the Eocene era. Nick agrees, gives him the characteristics they've noticed and tells him to find some suspects.
A traffic warden tickets a car. The Creature promptly tries to eat him, setting off a car alarm as it goes. Abby hears it and she and Nick head after it.
Why are Becker and all his men standing around the (relatively) safe museum, and none of them with Nick and Abby? I know the Anomaly might spit out more Creatures, but surely he could have spared one for the others? That does not seem like keeping them alive no matter what!
Oh, wait. Becker goes to join them. I partially take it back.
"Tell him I'm coming."
"...Action Man said he's coming."
Sarah spontaneously retranslates some hieroglyphs to prove that Anomalies were about in Ancient Egypt. The Sun Cage was used to hold the Anomalies.
Connor spontaneously has a breakthrough and gets all the soldiers to pull the Sun Cage a few inches.
The Anomaly moves with it.
It's made from magnetite, the most magnetic stone that naturally occurs on Earth.
Connor is trying to figure out what this means when a Creature jumps half-way through and grabs his belt, trying to tug him through. He grabs the nearest thing for support - a gun the nearest soldier is holding. "Whatever you do, don't pull that trigger!"
Sarah almost hits it with a cat statue but can't bring herself to do it. She lets Connor hang around while she finds a two-by-four instead. The Creature drops Connor and his soldier opens fire, joined by the others now that Connor's not in much danger anymore.
"You nearly let it eat me!"
"That cat is priceless."
"So am I!"
Creatures attempt to break through one corner of the Cage and are driven back. Connor decides they should block the thing up.
Nick and Abby find the traffic warden dead. Becker pulls up as Nick finds a tooth from the Creature; Abby identifies it as Crocodilian and they head for the river.
Becker has a really funny run. Something is just completely hilarious about it, I don't know what exactly...
The Creature wanders into the river. Nick and the others are just behind it, too late to see. Abby and Becker point out the problems with its' behaviour; crocodiles don't kill on land, and they don't walk on two legs.
Nick calls Connor, who's just figuring out what the Creature is. He finds it in his database, but Nick has got there ahead of him. It's Pristichampus.
If I were Connor, I'd be just a little peed off that Nick told me to figure this out and then came up with the right answer, and still made me look it up! However, I'm not, and he isn't peed off.
Abby points out that Pristi won't stay in the river for ever; it'll come ashore for warmth and food.
What a lovely shot of the Thames.
Lester has made it to Whitehall. He's stopped at the security gate, but Christine arrives and tells the guards to let him through. Hmm, wonder if she had them stop him on purpose to give her power - Lester repays her by quite legitimately leaving her proffered hand hanging, as he's busy picking back up the things he had to take out of his pockets for the scanner. Good on you, Lester.
Christine wants to help him anyway she can and is eager to hear everything about the ARC, until a soldier steps into the other end of the corridor. She immediately blows Lester off and has him escorted from the building.
The soldier has failed his mission, which was to retrieve a - thing. Christine is Not Happy. The soldier's team actually got their hands on it, but then they were eaten by Predators. Only this one guy made it back. The flashback makes it clear that this took place in some kind of post-apocalyptic city.
Christine calls it an Artefact.
Nick and the others are watching the Thames. Nick spots Pristi on the other side of the river, ambling up some steps.
Back at the museum, Connor is unhappy about how long it's taking to build the barricade. Sarah suggests the forklift.
"Forklift. Why didn't you say that before?"
"Connor, I've been attacked by prehistoric monsters. I'm...I'm staring at a gateway to a prehistoric past. I really wasn't thinking 'forklift'."
Another Pristi tries to break through. Connor attacks it with a floodlight. The electricity and the magnetite combine to lock the Anomaly.
"That's never happened before...usually the magnetic pull sucks anything metallic straight through. It's the electric current. It must have done something to it. - OK, I'll figure it out later..."
It only lasts a moment though.
Nick's team, now including Jenny and some extra soldiers, track the Pristi down just as it starts rampaging through a cafe. Becker chooses right now to tell Nick he plans on using live rounds if the first tranq doesn't take it down.
The team chase the Pristi, which has managed to get itself into a lift and gone up several stories. Nick and Abby leave Jenny to deal with the traumatised survivors and run upstairs.
Pristi wanders past someone playing the piano and attacks a hapless cleaning lady.
Nick dives her out of the way just in time. Abby's tranquiliser doesn't work, so - she hides under a table? Might have worked better if the Pristi hadn't seen you go in there, Abby.
Nick, on the other side of the room, smashes a window and then yells and throws things to get Pristi's attention. Once he has it, he ties a fire hose around his waist, grabs the cleaner and jumps out the window and over the balcony. Pristi follows and smushes itself on the ground. Nick's hose is short enough to leave them dangling in mid-air.
A now-concussed Pristi wanders around and eventually makes it back to the river.
Connor has just declared his barricade unknockdownable when Nick calls to tell him Pristi is on its way home. Connor groans as he now has to unbarricade his barricade.
"I am so cursed."
To be fair to Connor, who could sit back and order the soldiers around, and to Sarah, who's still a civilian with no part in the operation, they both muck in and help tear it back down again.
Pristi wanders back through the museum. It comes through into the warehouse from the wrong entrance - the barricade on that side is still standing, as Connor had assumed it would come back in the way it left.
Nick and the others arrive back and Nick yells for Connor to get out of the way. Instead of backing up towards them, Connor catches a chain overhead and climbs up the barricade. This doesn't work out very well as it's too far away to bear his weight and he's left dangling above Pristi's head.
Becker and Nick discuss shooting Pristi.
"Don't shoot it."
"It's my job to keep you alive."
Sarah comes up with a new solution; the team should bow, as Pristi was treated as a god. Abby agrees that being non-threatening is probably the way to go. Becker isn't happy, but he does it.
Pristi scrambles back into the Anomaly, which immediately collapses. Connor drops from his chain and lands on his back.
"That's got to be the end of the curse now, right?"
"Here's hoping."
"The curse?"
"I made it up..."
"Don't tell him yet."
"Course not."
Nick helps Connor up. Connor suggests Stephen would have liked this Anomaly. Nick thinks he'd probably have liked Sarah, too.
Back at the ARC, Nick sets Connor on the trail of the locking device. Sarah, trailing after them, is a little overwhelmed at the Control room.
Lester arrives to insult Nick and then gets down to business. Namely, recruiting Sarah.
"You should fit right in, then...Dr Page, you can't say anything about what you saw today. Do I need to repeat myself? Or should I have you arrested for your own protection?"
Sarah chases Connor into a lab. Nick and Lester are talking on the other side of a see-through screen.
Sarah is still a little overwhelmed;
"I can't believe I saw Ammut. Well, what the Egyptians thought was Ammut. A genuine living legend..."
The word 'legend' triggers a realisation for Nick as he figures out that many manifestations in history could be the results of Anomalies depositing Creatures in strange time periods. He immediately shanghais Sarah into starting research, hoping they can start to chart past Anomalies and maybe get a handle on where they're going to open next.
"OK...I'm on."
"Great news. I feel safer already."
Nick wants the Sun Cage pulled from public display, but it's already on its way to a new display in Pyongyang.
Cleaner Clones march into a building, setting up shop in a disused room. Helen follows them. Casually, she passes the Artefact off to a Clone for safe keeping.
"Put that somewhere safe until I work out what it is."
Helen was in the post-apocalyptic city and saw the soldiers being killed. Once the area was clear she retrieved the Artefact. Won't Christine be unhappy.
The team currently consists of Nick Cutter, a evolutionary scientist, Connor Temple, his former student and now the project's go-to tech guy, Abby Maitland, a zoologist specialising in lizards and animal behaviour, Jenny Lewis, their PR manager, and James Lester, their long-suffering Home Office boss. Former members of the team are Stephen Hart, Nick's right hand man, and Captain Tom Ryan, their military minder. Both were killed, separately, in Creature attacks. Their main opponent is Helen Cutter, Nick's wife. She left him to explore the Anomalies and currently has some rather apocalyptic views on evolution.
Tom Ryan's death was relatively early on in what's known as the ARC project - Anomaly Research Centre - but Stephen's death is very fresh.
So. On to Season Three.
In the British Museum in London, in a warehouse-looking room, a woman approaches a very large piece showing four Egyptian-looking statues holding hands and forming a square.
The woman wanders past it, ticking something off on a clipboard. There's a noise behind her, which she briefly considers investigating but then dismisses.
As she leaves, an Anomaly springs to life in the centre of the piece and something vaguely crocodilian sticks its head out to roar menacingly. The Anomaly almost immediately closes.
Well done, credits, for showing us a new cast member before she's even been on screen. Way to ruin the tension.
At the ARC Lester is walking a new soldier called Becker around. How come Becker's name isn't in the credits? I am offended on his behalf. Scowl.
Becker is going to be the team's new minder as well as overall security head. He doesn't quite believe what they do - "You detect Anomalies and fight dinosaurs, when necessary(!)" - but Lester is mostly unperturbed.
Becker says he's been fully briefed. Surely that would include video footage of Anomalies and dinosaurs, even if it's just to say "DON'T GO NEAR THESE!!!" (I can actually picture Connor making a 'Welcome to the ARC!' pack with 'helpful' sheets like that.) Anyway, why is Becker so disbelieving?
Lester then says something almost nice about the team. "You'll be dealing with a highly strung and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do. Your job is to stop them getting themselves killed." He also warns Becker that Cutter won't like him and will in fact make his job as difficult as possible, on purpose.
"We can't afford another Stephen Hart. Clear?"
"Crystal clear, sir."
He then basically abandons Becker in the middle of the Control room. Nice orientation lecture, Lester.
Back at the museum, a guide is giving a lecture about Egypt, specifically about Anubis. She's going into quite a lot of gory detail considering her audience looks like they're about six.
The woman from earlier clearly disapproves of her story as well, clearing her throat from behind. The guide hurriedly brushes her group off and chases her.
The non-guide woman is called Marion and is the guide woman's boss. Guide wants something from her, but Marion is firm. The guide - who is, of course, Sarah - wants to study the Sun Cage, the large four-part piece, but Marion refuses to let her.
"With respect, Sarah, the greatest Egyptologists of the twentieth century decoded those hieroglyphics decades ago. And they were much more qualified than you."
"And some of those translations have never made sense. All I'm asking to to let me check it out for myself."
"Sorry. This exhibition is closed. It's moving on."
Nick is at the ARC, trying and failing not to think of Stephen. He doesn't seem to have cut his hair since the last series.
Jenny wakes him out of his trance to suggest he should go home.
"You can't take this personally, you know. No one blames you."
"For what?"
"For what happened to Stephen."
I have a little problem with the timing here. Jenny's dialogue suggests, at least to me, that not much time has gone past. So does Lester's dialogue with Becker, which implies that Becker was hired as a direct result of Stephen's death. Nick's hair, on the other hand, says that quite a while - two or three months, I'd guess - have passed. Insight, anyone?
Nick agrees that it was Helen's fault, but he feels guilty because "I should have stopped her. That's my job."
Jenny tells him he can't change the past.
"You don't know the half of it, Claudia Brown."
More amused than angry, Jenny heads off, pausing to invite him to get something to eat.
At the museum Marion carefully covers the Sun Cage in dust sheets. As she walks away the Anomaly reopens, visible through the sheets. She wanders over to look and is eaten.
Nick and Jenny, smiling and laughing, are interrupted on their way out by the Anomaly Alert. Nick calls Abby to tell her to meet them at the British Museum.
Abby calls Connor to get him up. When that doesn't work, she scatters vegetables of some kind over him and calls Rex to have a feed. Personally, just the veg would have woken me up...
Also, it's a different flat than last year, and both Connor and Abby have got hair cuts. Unlike Nick. This is my least favourite hair on both of them. I quite like Nick's, though his was nice short too...
Anyway, back to the actual episode.
Several soldiers march into the Museum. Nick, Jenny and Becker, all dressed in dark shades, are at the back of the group.
Connor and Abby dash up behind them. Look, Connor's got a gun! Good on you.
"Connor Temple, Abby Maitland, this is Captain Becker. He's here to protect us, so do as he says...unless I think he's wrong. This way."
The group head down an exhibit corridor. Connor regales them with a story of how he used to think everything came to life at night so he hid one night when he was eight. Nothing really happened, though; he just got locked in a toilet for three hours, leaving him with a lingering fear of museums. He's got over the fear of toilets, at least.
Nick finds Marion's body. She's remarkably unchewed.
Connor jumpily checks a corridor with Abby and a soldier escort. Nick and the others are in another when they hear a door close. Everyone converges on Sarah, who was blamelessly going about her business and is understandably startled to see many soldiers pointing weapons at her.
She introduces herself as Dr Page. She thinks they're thieves; Nick corrects her. "Actually, I'm a Professor."
"I've never seen a professor with a gun before."
"Yeah, it's a pretty specialised field."
Sarah turns when he walks past her and sees Marion's body. It was literally right behind them. Sarah takes off in fear and everyone chases her.
She makes it to the huge warehouse-like room holding the Sun Cage. The Anomaly is still active and she walks towards it, entranced.
Something makes a very loud noise and she backs up quickly. It's the crocodilian thing. Sarah attempts to hold it off with a pole.
The others hear her screaming and pelt towards her.
A delivery man raises the door from outside. Crocodilian sees the door and heads out, just as the team burst in at the other end of the room.
Nick sees the Anomaly before he sees Sarah. She's in shock and doesn't answer when he asks if she's ok.
Abby has more luck - "What did you see?"
"Ammut. I saw the goddess Ammut."
Nick agrees she saw something, but probably not a goddess. Abby has found the tracks outside. Jenny adds to Sarah's confusion - "I've got to get back to the ARC."
"The Ark?!"
"Not that one."
Jenny heads back to the ARC and tells Becker to secure the area. Nick goes with Abby to hunt the Creature. He leaves Connor to see when the Anomaly goes to and what the Sun Cage is. How does he know it's called a Sun Cage?
Connor attempts to cheer Sarah up. "I bet I can read your mind - You wanna know who we are, what the ARC is, and what the big flickering thing behind me is, right?"
Sarah wasn't thinking any of those things.
At the ARC, Lester takes a call from Christine Johnson. Christine, according to herself, is the new liaison between the military and the ARC, which seems weird as she's neither military nor ARC personnel. She needs to see him for a briefing. Lester attempts to fob her off, but she wants her way and tells him she'll see him in an hour.
Jenny hurries in as Christine hangs up on Lester. Jenny tells him about the Incursion. He is Not Happy.
"There was an eyewitness, a young woman at the museum."
"Well, you know. Have her shot and dispose of her body discreetly. - Just kidding."
'Kidding' isn't a very Lester word, is it? I'd expect something more high brow from him...
Somewhere in London Abby and Nick are still tracking the Creature.
Becker seals the room. Connor asks Sarah about the hieroglyphs on the Sun Cage. Sarah's been working on it, but she really doesn't know yet. If only Marion had let her finish - she probably would have been eaten instead.
"I'm sorry. Was she a friend?"
"Oh, no, not at all. But, you know, given the choice, I wouldn't want her dead."
I like Sarah.
Nick and Abby find blood on a railing.
Becker paces around randomly.
Connor opens a tool box. A - spanner? I'm not great at tools, sorry - flies out, caught in the magnetic field. As it flies in, it takes the breast off one of the figures.
The piece of breast lands near Connor, who immediately disavows all responsibility.
Sarah, unimpressed, tells him the Sun Cage is cursed. Anyone who touches it is doomed for life. How do they move it around, then?
Connor attempts to wipe his hand off. Sarah insincerely apologises for not telling him earlier; Becker echoes her "Bad luck." Connor sits down miserably.
And promptly knocks over a vase, smashing it to bits.
Abby's lost the trail. She thinks Stephen could have found it. Nick is momentarily slowed by the mention, but shakes it off to call Connor. The Anomaly is 55 million years old, putting it in the Eocene era. Nick agrees, gives him the characteristics they've noticed and tells him to find some suspects.
A traffic warden tickets a car. The Creature promptly tries to eat him, setting off a car alarm as it goes. Abby hears it and she and Nick head after it.
Why are Becker and all his men standing around the (relatively) safe museum, and none of them with Nick and Abby? I know the Anomaly might spit out more Creatures, but surely he could have spared one for the others? That does not seem like keeping them alive no matter what!
Oh, wait. Becker goes to join them. I partially take it back.
"Tell him I'm coming."
"...Action Man said he's coming."
Sarah spontaneously retranslates some hieroglyphs to prove that Anomalies were about in Ancient Egypt. The Sun Cage was used to hold the Anomalies.
Connor spontaneously has a breakthrough and gets all the soldiers to pull the Sun Cage a few inches.
The Anomaly moves with it.
It's made from magnetite, the most magnetic stone that naturally occurs on Earth.
Connor is trying to figure out what this means when a Creature jumps half-way through and grabs his belt, trying to tug him through. He grabs the nearest thing for support - a gun the nearest soldier is holding. "Whatever you do, don't pull that trigger!"
Sarah almost hits it with a cat statue but can't bring herself to do it. She lets Connor hang around while she finds a two-by-four instead. The Creature drops Connor and his soldier opens fire, joined by the others now that Connor's not in much danger anymore.
"You nearly let it eat me!"
"That cat is priceless."
"So am I!"
Creatures attempt to break through one corner of the Cage and are driven back. Connor decides they should block the thing up.
Nick and Abby find the traffic warden dead. Becker pulls up as Nick finds a tooth from the Creature; Abby identifies it as Crocodilian and they head for the river.
Becker has a really funny run. Something is just completely hilarious about it, I don't know what exactly...
The Creature wanders into the river. Nick and the others are just behind it, too late to see. Abby and Becker point out the problems with its' behaviour; crocodiles don't kill on land, and they don't walk on two legs.
Nick calls Connor, who's just figuring out what the Creature is. He finds it in his database, but Nick has got there ahead of him. It's Pristichampus.
If I were Connor, I'd be just a little peed off that Nick told me to figure this out and then came up with the right answer, and still made me look it up! However, I'm not, and he isn't peed off.
Abby points out that Pristi won't stay in the river for ever; it'll come ashore for warmth and food.
What a lovely shot of the Thames.
Lester has made it to Whitehall. He's stopped at the security gate, but Christine arrives and tells the guards to let him through. Hmm, wonder if she had them stop him on purpose to give her power - Lester repays her by quite legitimately leaving her proffered hand hanging, as he's busy picking back up the things he had to take out of his pockets for the scanner. Good on you, Lester.
Christine wants to help him anyway she can and is eager to hear everything about the ARC, until a soldier steps into the other end of the corridor. She immediately blows Lester off and has him escorted from the building.
The soldier has failed his mission, which was to retrieve a - thing. Christine is Not Happy. The soldier's team actually got their hands on it, but then they were eaten by Predators. Only this one guy made it back. The flashback makes it clear that this took place in some kind of post-apocalyptic city.
Christine calls it an Artefact.
Nick and the others are watching the Thames. Nick spots Pristi on the other side of the river, ambling up some steps.
Back at the museum, Connor is unhappy about how long it's taking to build the barricade. Sarah suggests the forklift.
"Forklift. Why didn't you say that before?"
"Connor, I've been attacked by prehistoric monsters. I'm...I'm staring at a gateway to a prehistoric past. I really wasn't thinking 'forklift'."
Another Pristi tries to break through. Connor attacks it with a floodlight. The electricity and the magnetite combine to lock the Anomaly.
"That's never happened before...usually the magnetic pull sucks anything metallic straight through. It's the electric current. It must have done something to it. - OK, I'll figure it out later..."
It only lasts a moment though.
Nick's team, now including Jenny and some extra soldiers, track the Pristi down just as it starts rampaging through a cafe. Becker chooses right now to tell Nick he plans on using live rounds if the first tranq doesn't take it down.
The team chase the Pristi, which has managed to get itself into a lift and gone up several stories. Nick and Abby leave Jenny to deal with the traumatised survivors and run upstairs.
Pristi wanders past someone playing the piano and attacks a hapless cleaning lady.
Nick dives her out of the way just in time. Abby's tranquiliser doesn't work, so - she hides under a table? Might have worked better if the Pristi hadn't seen you go in there, Abby.
Nick, on the other side of the room, smashes a window and then yells and throws things to get Pristi's attention. Once he has it, he ties a fire hose around his waist, grabs the cleaner and jumps out the window and over the balcony. Pristi follows and smushes itself on the ground. Nick's hose is short enough to leave them dangling in mid-air.
A now-concussed Pristi wanders around and eventually makes it back to the river.
Connor has just declared his barricade unknockdownable when Nick calls to tell him Pristi is on its way home. Connor groans as he now has to unbarricade his barricade.
"I am so cursed."
To be fair to Connor, who could sit back and order the soldiers around, and to Sarah, who's still a civilian with no part in the operation, they both muck in and help tear it back down again.
Pristi wanders back through the museum. It comes through into the warehouse from the wrong entrance - the barricade on that side is still standing, as Connor had assumed it would come back in the way it left.
Nick and the others arrive back and Nick yells for Connor to get out of the way. Instead of backing up towards them, Connor catches a chain overhead and climbs up the barricade. This doesn't work out very well as it's too far away to bear his weight and he's left dangling above Pristi's head.
Becker and Nick discuss shooting Pristi.
"Don't shoot it."
"It's my job to keep you alive."
Sarah comes up with a new solution; the team should bow, as Pristi was treated as a god. Abby agrees that being non-threatening is probably the way to go. Becker isn't happy, but he does it.
Pristi scrambles back into the Anomaly, which immediately collapses. Connor drops from his chain and lands on his back.
"That's got to be the end of the curse now, right?"
"Here's hoping."
"The curse?"
"I made it up..."
"Don't tell him yet."
"Course not."
Nick helps Connor up. Connor suggests Stephen would have liked this Anomaly. Nick thinks he'd probably have liked Sarah, too.
Back at the ARC, Nick sets Connor on the trail of the locking device. Sarah, trailing after them, is a little overwhelmed at the Control room.
Lester arrives to insult Nick and then gets down to business. Namely, recruiting Sarah.
"You should fit right in, then...Dr Page, you can't say anything about what you saw today. Do I need to repeat myself? Or should I have you arrested for your own protection?"
Sarah chases Connor into a lab. Nick and Lester are talking on the other side of a see-through screen.
Sarah is still a little overwhelmed;
"I can't believe I saw Ammut. Well, what the Egyptians thought was Ammut. A genuine living legend..."
The word 'legend' triggers a realisation for Nick as he figures out that many manifestations in history could be the results of Anomalies depositing Creatures in strange time periods. He immediately shanghais Sarah into starting research, hoping they can start to chart past Anomalies and maybe get a handle on where they're going to open next.
"OK...I'm on."
"Great news. I feel safer already."
Nick wants the Sun Cage pulled from public display, but it's already on its way to a new display in Pyongyang.
Cleaner Clones march into a building, setting up shop in a disused room. Helen follows them. Casually, she passes the Artefact off to a Clone for safe keeping.
"Put that somewhere safe until I work out what it is."
Helen was in the post-apocalyptic city and saw the soldiers being killed. Once the area was clear she retrieved the Artefact. Won't Christine be unhappy.