Primeval: New World -- Ep. 2
So, this will be a more accurate summary, but it will still be me snarking with screencaps. I have more caps this time, since the quality of the recording was better, although it's hardly HD.
Before I start, I need to say this. It bids fair to be one of those episodes that goes down in history as . . . what is the word I'm looking for? Stupid. It's very dramatic, but if a predator was this stupid in reality it would never eat.
So, we start with many scenic shots of the Vancouver area, done with much time lapse photography. Because God knows a fog thick enough to compete with London at its worst is the sort of impression we want to create . . . actually, that makes sense. Let's evoke London, right? Especially the scenic mountains of S4 London. Refers us right back to the original. Then we have two surveyors get attacked and probably eaten out in the scenic BC ocean bays somewhere. Cut to . . .
. . . an intro that bears rather a lot of resemblance to the original Primeval one, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing. Next, to be apropos, there is Geoff Gustafson, aka Lieutenant Ken Leeds (and despite the fact that we are Canadian, and thus use the British pronounciation of 'leftenant', he is known by the American 'lewtenant', because we have allowed Star Trek to corrupt us). Who is waiting for Evan and Ange, in order to tell Evan he wants to help, and alienates Evan by telling him that he sympathises with Evan's lost wife who died via Albertasaur attack.
Here is our friendly Native American guy of unspecified tribe, named Leo, who just saw a sea monster the other day and thinks it's the titular monster, Sisiutl. He shows Dylan some footage on his camera, which, just like all the footage of everything from Bigfoot to Nessie, could be anything. Dylan's convinced, though, and despite the fact that she could lose her job over this, takes him out to go looking. Because that won't convince the people you told about the dinosaurs that you're not crazy or anything. Seriously. She told people there was a utahraptor. Without a shred of evidence to back the claim up. Who does that?
We now get to see Mac trying to get laid. Because I can't imagine anyone being bored enough to do chin lifts on stairs while watching the hot geek object of their affections through the stair treads, just because they're bored. Toby is unimpressed, or so she says. She has been working on their first anomaly detector. It is not, as in the ARC, something to track monster sightings, and it is not, as in the ARC after Cutter found out about the radio signal, designed to track the frequency distortion. Toby has hacked the cell phone network and will track problems with cell phones as her means of finding anomalies.
So, they get umpty-squillion false readings, and throw in an in-joke reference for fans who saw Convergence at the end of S5 that Convergence could happen. But it's just cell phones. They get lucky that the anomaly popped up in the middle of nowhere. I sort of miss Connor's ADD and the massive staging areas and all.
In an attempt to be topical and reference Canadian issues, we have First Nations protestors outside an oil plant. Because this is such a subtle commentary on the tar sands in Alberta and the governmental refusal to accept that, not only do these things destroy the environment and they are waltzing all over the property and land rights of all sorts of people, but they are planning to sell the jobs to Americans and offer up short term contracts to people and low-wage, low skilled jobs that will not help the economy long term, which is the least they could do if they're going to not care about millions of dead animals . . .
Ahem.
So, what we get is the cop showing up, trying to do his job, which is a search for missing persons, and the First Nations guy running the show (Hey! It's that guy from Corner Gas! The cop! Hi!) decides that the police officer who isn't there about their protest at all, but about the possibility two people have been murdered or kidnapped or something, needs to be aggressively run off and treated like he's trying to stop them. In the process, I should add, doing everything he can to make himself a suspect in any future murder cases ("They all look the same to me, I don't care, I hope they're dead.") He then tries one of those power to the people fists in the air, pushing the cop until he's pretty much looking for an excuse to bring this guy in he's so obnoxious. Not helping the cause, here. His nephew is Leo, the guy who wants Dylan to look into his water spirit cryptid critter.
So, the going theory, as Dylan and Leo arrive where he spotted Sisiutl to discover Mac and Evan already there, is that it's a giant prehistoric eel. Also, it would seem that Mac is this show's Stephen Hart. His hair's certainly too mobile to be Becker. He also is a Man with a Gun, that was apparently an arse to get past customs and belonged to his father. Here is Mac, using the gun's scope as a telescope, because no one thought to bring binoculars.
Here is the kayaker of Stupid Plot Point, who is there to make you think he's about to die, when he is there to confuse people. It's a really stupid plot point, for the record. Next is a shot of Leo in the bottom right, hurrying off to tell his uncle the awesome news that there's a sea monster on the coast. Because his uncle will believe him this time when he's made it clear he thinks Leo's a sellout for believing in sea monsters, and for following the laws determined by the First Nations for their own self-governance involving the Band Councils making decisions for the tribe, because that's what they were voted into office to do . . . I don't know.
Evan sends Mac out to buy a boat so he can stand guard over the anomaly in the water, and Mac points out that he can't just drop tens of thousands just to get a boat. Evan gives him all the credit cards he has on him. Then he says he's going to chase after the whatever-it-is. Mac offers him the high-powered hunting rifle and Evan turns it down. Because he is immune to big, sharp teeth or something. Also, Mac notes that he thinks Dylan and Evan have chemistry together, which we knew from the Emergency Missionary Position of last episode, but I think we can keep on slashing them. After all, Evan's now Mac's sugar daddy what with the credit cards, and Mac offered up his dad's gun to Evan. So, money and sentimentality, there's potential, right?
The protesters are setting up drums in what will be an amplification of the plot point of stupid (I'll explain it when we get there, because you need to be smacked in the face with the giant fish of stupid, like in the fish slapping dance, because it's just that stupid). Dylan, meanwhile, finds the chewed up boat one of the surveyors was in, and posits to her police officer friend, who is at least a semi-regular, that it was the Giant Prehistoric Eel of Doom. Without any evidence beyond the chewed up water craft. He is rather sceptical of this, attributing her crazy to grief, and telling her to lie to the people doing the psych evaluation, because she will lose her job otherwise. Dylan is unenthused at lying about the dinosaurs, and he points out that she sounds crazy again.
Evan finds a skeleton, glasses, GPS and walkie-talkie covered in slime and calls Dylan, because he has no idea what could do that. Mac sets up in the boat next to the anomaly, all by himself and with the anomaly causing interference like whoah with his cell phone. Dylan tells Evan that it's vomitus, then explains that apparently only giant snakes will barf up bones and things. Really? Only a snake would do that? Well, okay, I'll let it go.
Although how the hell a snake from tropical climes could possibly handle swimming in the Canadian coastal Paciific in the Canadian autumn weather is utterly beyond me. I mean, as I understand it, by the time of the year we start putting on coats like on this show, normal snakes are burrowing in to hibernate. It's effing cold to be an ectotherm that time of year. Gigantothermy only goes so far, you know.
Evan decides, while on the phone with Dylan, that he's going to follow the snake tracks right into the sewers where no one can track him and with a huge snake somewhere in there. While armed only with a smallish handgun. The snake is stalking him, and we get our first look at it. In the end, Evan is very lucky it's a stupid snake. Or maybe just one with a few physiological malfunctions.
First, it's snake vision! A black and white, slightly distorted view of the world, showing us that snakes can too see things! Which is totally ignored later on because of Plot Point of Stupid. Evan is rescued by being pulled into a side tunnel, because snakes can't tell when you move sideways, just as long as you don't talk loud. Because that tongue is just decorative, the eyes don't work and snakes can't hear human voices if they're really quiet. At least, I would assume that's why Leo's so sanguine about being three feet from a snake that could totally have killed them. If it weren't stupid.
So, they make enough noise to call the snake back and it chases them up a manhole, which is locked down from the outside, so while they wait for it to give up and go away, because it can't quite reach them (in what might be a gross underestimation of a snake's capabilities), Leo decides he has to try getting video of the snake. Because that's what you do when you're in danger. Record something to put on YouTube.
So, on the left we have a state of the art Macintosh computer, because that's what all the cool computer geeks use these days to show their highly complex sewer system schematics. consisting of . . . one, two . . . four connected lines. On the right, we see the computer dating back to the eighties or nineties in the office of not-pronounced-properly Lieutenant Leeds, just before he corrects for the proper plural of vortex, which is not vortexes, after all, but vortices. I will say this. Thank you P:NW for correcting this oft-appearing error, I do appreciate it, even if no one else cares.
Ange, meanwhile, has asked Toby if it's possible to make anomalies disappear, to which Toby replied that it was possible, assuming you had the GDP of Luxembourg and a lot of smart people. So, we all know this plotline is going nowhere good, and we can now begin to fear this woman is another Philip Burton, only meaner and without Helen's influence. All that's left is the confrontation where she says something just short of, "I just wanted you to love me!" In any event, she informs Leeds that she wants the government to take over the anomaly business and take it away from Evan. Which I know isn't Philip Burton-like, but that seems to have been a plan 'b' to keep Evan away from glowy lights.
Evan and Dylan have now broken into the oil plant where the protest is, because the giant snake is apparently attracted to loud machinery noises, and is so deaf from them it can't hear kayakers, because a snake would totally think there's prey in a place too loud to hear people walking. Like, it didn't go for the kayaker because there was no engine on the kayak. I suppose that might make sense if animals in ancient wherever titanaboa is from walk around going, "Brrrrrrrmmmmm" all day long, pretending they're outboard motors. Or have motors instead of tails in the water. I suppose there's a lot we don't know about prehistory.
Meanwhile, the First Nations protesters have formed a drum circle in order to attract the snake, and Mac is zipping around with the engine running in his boat, because that's how you attract predators that are coming up on a massive collection of tasty, edible human animals. You run your outboard motor.
Apparently this snake can't smell, and it doesn't understand, despite eating one, that people are food. Which we are, don't kid yourself. As you can see on the left, it's like a metre and a half away from Dylan, cowering in terror, and on the right, snakevision cam tells us it can totally see her. So instead of eating her, like it ought to, it chases after Evan, who goes running down the hall like a lunatic after mouthing at her to keep quiet. Because this totally makes sense. The snake will totally not eat the prey that's right there, it'll go wasting energy chasing after the running thing. Because, like a t-rex, "It can't see you if you stay still!" Jurassic Park called, and it wants its predatory conceit regarding animal vision back. I think this might become a theme.
There is running and screaming and trying to figure out how to keep the snake from eating people, including Dylan's cop friend, who shoots at the snake without hitting it and also nearly gets eaten before they turn the machinery off. This causes the snake to go rattling up to the protesters, and I do mean rattling, because titanaboa apparently causes earthquakes now. Which is Leo's proof to his uncle that Sisiutl is real. Because not seeing a snake, just feeling the shaking of the earth as it passes is proof that . . . I don't know, okay?
So, Mac is clearly related to Stephen, I guess, because after some running and screaming and tempting a snake with an outboard motor, he dives into the water with the snake to finish up his plan to get it to go back through the anomaly. Because the snake will totally not smell him . . . what am I saying? Clearly this snake has a defective tongue, because I don't think it can smell a damn thing.
We end with a romantic shot of Leo, First Nations something-or-other, standing watch over the bay which is the sometime home to Sisiutl, instead of something really cool, which would be having him take on Sarah's role of noting where animals have come through in recorded history, because he probably knows all the old Haida (or whatever) stories of basilosauruses, and would be an awesome statement for moving Native Americans into the mainstream. But we're not going to do that, are we?
On to Episode 3
Back to Primeval Archive
Before I start, I need to say this. It bids fair to be one of those episodes that goes down in history as . . . what is the word I'm looking for? Stupid. It's very dramatic, but if a predator was this stupid in reality it would never eat.
So, we start with many scenic shots of the Vancouver area, done with much time lapse photography. Because God knows a fog thick enough to compete with London at its worst is the sort of impression we want to create . . . actually, that makes sense. Let's evoke London, right? Especially the scenic mountains of S4 London. Refers us right back to the original. Then we have two surveyors get attacked and probably eaten out in the scenic BC ocean bays somewhere. Cut to . . .
. . . an intro that bears rather a lot of resemblance to the original Primeval one, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing. Next, to be apropos, there is Geoff Gustafson, aka Lieutenant Ken Leeds (and despite the fact that we are Canadian, and thus use the British pronounciation of 'leftenant', he is known by the American 'lewtenant', because we have allowed Star Trek to corrupt us). Who is waiting for Evan and Ange, in order to tell Evan he wants to help, and alienates Evan by telling him that he sympathises with Evan's lost wife who died via Albertasaur attack.
Here is our friendly Native American guy of unspecified tribe, named Leo, who just saw a sea monster the other day and thinks it's the titular monster, Sisiutl. He shows Dylan some footage on his camera, which, just like all the footage of everything from Bigfoot to Nessie, could be anything. Dylan's convinced, though, and despite the fact that she could lose her job over this, takes him out to go looking. Because that won't convince the people you told about the dinosaurs that you're not crazy or anything. Seriously. She told people there was a utahraptor. Without a shred of evidence to back the claim up. Who does that?
We now get to see Mac trying to get laid. Because I can't imagine anyone being bored enough to do chin lifts on stairs while watching the hot geek object of their affections through the stair treads, just because they're bored. Toby is unimpressed, or so she says. She has been working on their first anomaly detector. It is not, as in the ARC, something to track monster sightings, and it is not, as in the ARC after Cutter found out about the radio signal, designed to track the frequency distortion. Toby has hacked the cell phone network and will track problems with cell phones as her means of finding anomalies.
So, they get umpty-squillion false readings, and throw in an in-joke reference for fans who saw Convergence at the end of S5 that Convergence could happen. But it's just cell phones. They get lucky that the anomaly popped up in the middle of nowhere. I sort of miss Connor's ADD and the massive staging areas and all.
In an attempt to be topical and reference Canadian issues, we have First Nations protestors outside an oil plant. Because this is such a subtle commentary on the tar sands in Alberta and the governmental refusal to accept that, not only do these things destroy the environment and they are waltzing all over the property and land rights of all sorts of people, but they are planning to sell the jobs to Americans and offer up short term contracts to people and low-wage, low skilled jobs that will not help the economy long term, which is the least they could do if they're going to not care about millions of dead animals . . .
Ahem.
So, what we get is the cop showing up, trying to do his job, which is a search for missing persons, and the First Nations guy running the show (Hey! It's that guy from Corner Gas! The cop! Hi!) decides that the police officer who isn't there about their protest at all, but about the possibility two people have been murdered or kidnapped or something, needs to be aggressively run off and treated like he's trying to stop them. In the process, I should add, doing everything he can to make himself a suspect in any future murder cases ("They all look the same to me, I don't care, I hope they're dead.") He then tries one of those power to the people fists in the air, pushing the cop until he's pretty much looking for an excuse to bring this guy in he's so obnoxious. Not helping the cause, here. His nephew is Leo, the guy who wants Dylan to look into his water spirit cryptid critter.
So, the going theory, as Dylan and Leo arrive where he spotted Sisiutl to discover Mac and Evan already there, is that it's a giant prehistoric eel. Also, it would seem that Mac is this show's Stephen Hart. His hair's certainly too mobile to be Becker. He also is a Man with a Gun, that was apparently an arse to get past customs and belonged to his father. Here is Mac, using the gun's scope as a telescope, because no one thought to bring binoculars.
Here is the kayaker of Stupid Plot Point, who is there to make you think he's about to die, when he is there to confuse people. It's a really stupid plot point, for the record. Next is a shot of Leo in the bottom right, hurrying off to tell his uncle the awesome news that there's a sea monster on the coast. Because his uncle will believe him this time when he's made it clear he thinks Leo's a sellout for believing in sea monsters, and for following the laws determined by the First Nations for their own self-governance involving the Band Councils making decisions for the tribe, because that's what they were voted into office to do . . . I don't know.
Evan sends Mac out to buy a boat so he can stand guard over the anomaly in the water, and Mac points out that he can't just drop tens of thousands just to get a boat. Evan gives him all the credit cards he has on him. Then he says he's going to chase after the whatever-it-is. Mac offers him the high-powered hunting rifle and Evan turns it down. Because he is immune to big, sharp teeth or something. Also, Mac notes that he thinks Dylan and Evan have chemistry together, which we knew from the Emergency Missionary Position of last episode, but I think we can keep on slashing them. After all, Evan's now Mac's sugar daddy what with the credit cards, and Mac offered up his dad's gun to Evan. So, money and sentimentality, there's potential, right?
The protesters are setting up drums in what will be an amplification of the plot point of stupid (I'll explain it when we get there, because you need to be smacked in the face with the giant fish of stupid, like in the fish slapping dance, because it's just that stupid). Dylan, meanwhile, finds the chewed up boat one of the surveyors was in, and posits to her police officer friend, who is at least a semi-regular, that it was the Giant Prehistoric Eel of Doom. Without any evidence beyond the chewed up water craft. He is rather sceptical of this, attributing her crazy to grief, and telling her to lie to the people doing the psych evaluation, because she will lose her job otherwise. Dylan is unenthused at lying about the dinosaurs, and he points out that she sounds crazy again.
Evan finds a skeleton, glasses, GPS and walkie-talkie covered in slime and calls Dylan, because he has no idea what could do that. Mac sets up in the boat next to the anomaly, all by himself and with the anomaly causing interference like whoah with his cell phone. Dylan tells Evan that it's vomitus, then explains that apparently only giant snakes will barf up bones and things. Really? Only a snake would do that? Well, okay, I'll let it go.
Although how the hell a snake from tropical climes could possibly handle swimming in the Canadian coastal Paciific in the Canadian autumn weather is utterly beyond me. I mean, as I understand it, by the time of the year we start putting on coats like on this show, normal snakes are burrowing in to hibernate. It's effing cold to be an ectotherm that time of year. Gigantothermy only goes so far, you know.
Evan decides, while on the phone with Dylan, that he's going to follow the snake tracks right into the sewers where no one can track him and with a huge snake somewhere in there. While armed only with a smallish handgun. The snake is stalking him, and we get our first look at it. In the end, Evan is very lucky it's a stupid snake. Or maybe just one with a few physiological malfunctions.
First, it's snake vision! A black and white, slightly distorted view of the world, showing us that snakes can too see things! Which is totally ignored later on because of Plot Point of Stupid. Evan is rescued by being pulled into a side tunnel, because snakes can't tell when you move sideways, just as long as you don't talk loud. Because that tongue is just decorative, the eyes don't work and snakes can't hear human voices if they're really quiet. At least, I would assume that's why Leo's so sanguine about being three feet from a snake that could totally have killed them. If it weren't stupid.
So, they make enough noise to call the snake back and it chases them up a manhole, which is locked down from the outside, so while they wait for it to give up and go away, because it can't quite reach them (in what might be a gross underestimation of a snake's capabilities), Leo decides he has to try getting video of the snake. Because that's what you do when you're in danger. Record something to put on YouTube.
So, on the left we have a state of the art Macintosh computer, because that's what all the cool computer geeks use these days to show their highly complex sewer system schematics. consisting of . . . one, two . . . four connected lines. On the right, we see the computer dating back to the eighties or nineties in the office of not-pronounced-properly Lieutenant Leeds, just before he corrects for the proper plural of vortex, which is not vortexes, after all, but vortices. I will say this. Thank you P:NW for correcting this oft-appearing error, I do appreciate it, even if no one else cares.
Ange, meanwhile, has asked Toby if it's possible to make anomalies disappear, to which Toby replied that it was possible, assuming you had the GDP of Luxembourg and a lot of smart people. So, we all know this plotline is going nowhere good, and we can now begin to fear this woman is another Philip Burton, only meaner and without Helen's influence. All that's left is the confrontation where she says something just short of, "I just wanted you to love me!" In any event, she informs Leeds that she wants the government to take over the anomaly business and take it away from Evan. Which I know isn't Philip Burton-like, but that seems to have been a plan 'b' to keep Evan away from glowy lights.
Evan and Dylan have now broken into the oil plant where the protest is, because the giant snake is apparently attracted to loud machinery noises, and is so deaf from them it can't hear kayakers, because a snake would totally think there's prey in a place too loud to hear people walking. Like, it didn't go for the kayaker because there was no engine on the kayak. I suppose that might make sense if animals in ancient wherever titanaboa is from walk around going, "Brrrrrrrmmmmm" all day long, pretending they're outboard motors. Or have motors instead of tails in the water. I suppose there's a lot we don't know about prehistory.
Meanwhile, the First Nations protesters have formed a drum circle in order to attract the snake, and Mac is zipping around with the engine running in his boat, because that's how you attract predators that are coming up on a massive collection of tasty, edible human animals. You run your outboard motor.
Apparently this snake can't smell, and it doesn't understand, despite eating one, that people are food. Which we are, don't kid yourself. As you can see on the left, it's like a metre and a half away from Dylan, cowering in terror, and on the right, snakevision cam tells us it can totally see her. So instead of eating her, like it ought to, it chases after Evan, who goes running down the hall like a lunatic after mouthing at her to keep quiet. Because this totally makes sense. The snake will totally not eat the prey that's right there, it'll go wasting energy chasing after the running thing. Because, like a t-rex, "It can't see you if you stay still!" Jurassic Park called, and it wants its predatory conceit regarding animal vision back. I think this might become a theme.
There is running and screaming and trying to figure out how to keep the snake from eating people, including Dylan's cop friend, who shoots at the snake without hitting it and also nearly gets eaten before they turn the machinery off. This causes the snake to go rattling up to the protesters, and I do mean rattling, because titanaboa apparently causes earthquakes now. Which is Leo's proof to his uncle that Sisiutl is real. Because not seeing a snake, just feeling the shaking of the earth as it passes is proof that . . . I don't know, okay?
So, Mac is clearly related to Stephen, I guess, because after some running and screaming and tempting a snake with an outboard motor, he dives into the water with the snake to finish up his plan to get it to go back through the anomaly. Because the snake will totally not smell him . . . what am I saying? Clearly this snake has a defective tongue, because I don't think it can smell a damn thing.
We end with a romantic shot of Leo, First Nations something-or-other, standing watch over the bay which is the sometime home to Sisiutl, instead of something really cool, which would be having him take on Sarah's role of noting where animals have come through in recorded history, because he probably knows all the old Haida (or whatever) stories of basilosauruses, and would be an awesome statement for moving Native Americans into the mainstream. But we're not going to do that, are we?
On to Episode 3
Back to Primeval Archive