Primeval: New World -- Ep. 5
So, to anyone I spoiled by accident today on the chat, I apologise, I really thought I wasn't giving anything away that could actually tell anyone any plot points. I will be more careful in future. Je m'excuse, or something like that.
So, we start, for once, without time lapse photography. Instead, it's Frosh Week at what is probably UBC, and the poor blonde girl is participating in the sorts of stupid annual hazing rituals that people claim are bonding experiences, but probably just sort the popular kids from the nerds right from the start in order to maintain high school-based cliques. As she sort-of flees the group, we get our first shot of creature cam. Which is reddish and blurry, because animals . . .
You know what? You've heard that from me before. I shall let you repeat my complaints on the topic to yourselves.
She gets chased by the critter, has the sense to hit two security call points on the way, which would probably hint to security that someone is moving or running away, gets herself somewhere confined and protected and doesn't die, although she gets pretty freaked when the furry thing leaps out at her.
Dude, sensible cannon fodder? What is the world coming to? Evan might even remember to bring a rifle with him the next time he goes spelunking for danger.
Evan and Ange flirt, Ange much more than Evan. Look at that hip cocked posture she's got goin' there. In any event, in an effort to remain topical, they not only have Evan playing with a football right after Grey Cup weekend . . .
Time out. Okay, to anyone who may not know, and with the international audience some of you probably don't, the Grey Cup is Canada's Superbowl. That is, it's our big American/Canadian football final. Except that it has, traditionally, outdone the Stanley Cup, the hockey final, in terms of national outdoor tailgate party. Hockey may be Canada's sport, but the Grey Cup is the biggest sporting event in Canada. They had Justin Bieber singing at the half time show, which is just . . . I don't even know. Who puts Gordon Lightfoot and Bieber in the same show?
Pardon my digression. So, you can see that football is topical. Then they discuss the Chinese buying everything, which has been another big Canadian hoo-ha lately, and I think they're trying to not only be topical, but pander to a Canadian audience. I suppose, having pandered to straight men for a few episodes, they're aiming for their current viewing demographic. Sports fans and people who follow politics. I guess?
Mac is in the shower with his girlfriend, Sam.
Ahem. Perhaps I am not being clear enough. Mac is not wearing any clothes and he is wet and slippery and naked and wet.
And Mac is still naked and wet.
And naked. Did I mention the naked part? There's also a thing about a housekey he's wearing on a chain around his neck, and that he wants to give it to Sam, but she won't take it yet. Still, it's kind of sweet and everything, even with her clear concern about commitment.
Toby, who wishes to have a life outside of sitting on top of the computers in Cross Photonics, maybe even go on a date or do something that doesn't involve watching a computer try to sort anomaly signatures out of every cell phone in the greater Vancouver area, is trying to set up a warning system for their phones. An app, as she calls it.
So, there will be an app for that, too.
The degree to which they need Connor is unbelievable.
When they get an anomaly warning, a half an hour after it opened on the UBC campus (because sorting through every damn cell phone signal in the Vancouver area is a job and a half, even for modern computers), Evan calls up Mac. He is concerned when Mac doesn't answer, which just goes to show the concern he holds for his boyfriend security/gun guy, and also that feelings there are probably reciprocated.
Mac is still naked, wet and naked, and Sam is naked and wet and trying very hard to seduce him, but drops everything when Evan calls. While he's naked.
Pardon me, five fics about Evan and Mac and naked wet phone sex spontaneously were spawned somewhere on the internet.
They all head out to the UBC campus, which is heavily and actively populated in the middle of the night with hyperactive university students doing stupid things because it's Frosh Week, and undergrads can do anything since there are no classes and now's the time to get really drunk and do stupid things.
Kate, who is the girl who didn't die of stupid earlier is not exactly happy that the campus security is trying to convince her she's high on something after nearly dying due to something big and black and furry with fangs and shit. She's really unhappy she's being patronised to by the schmuck in the yellow security jacket.
Dylan and Mac arrive there in time to hear that conversation, while Evan and Toby have been sniping at each other about Toby testing her theories in the field.
Dylan gets her Stephen super-tracker on and tracks the critter to the library, although we see from creature cam that it's actually stalking them, Mac in particular, with its blurry reddened vision. So they all walk straight into the university library in the middle of the night, because some idiot has propped all the doors open, like universities don't have valuable texts and stuff that could be stolen and sold on the black market for lots of money, not to mention computers and all kinds of things to steal and sell.
I see the competence of security on the UBC campus goes far.
Mac and Toby are partnered, I assume that it's because the most physically competent one of them should stick with the least to compensate for her relative lack of capability and experience.
Or we need to give them extra flirting time.
Or Evan and Mac know that they'll just distract each other if they're alone, so they split up.
Whatever.
Dylan and Evan are wandering through the stacks, which are the kind with the moveable shelves that have big spinny handle things to move them around, thus conserving space and allowing more shelving in less room.
Can someone explain how a primitive protomammalian quadripedal predator from the Permian with a relatively close relationship to a gorgonopsid only much smaller, can work the shelves? And why?
Dylan and Evan see it, lose it, and stumble back out of the stacks after it. For some reason, Dylan is letting her bag dangle from an arm in a perfect position for just about anything bitey to grab the bag and yank her off her feet with it. I'm sorry, it distracted me through the whole scene, including the bit where it looked like a giant beaver was running around the library.
Toby and Mac stare around a corner as, by some miracle, a security guard gets out safely. I think they're as incredulous as I was. Where's all the people dying of animals?
So, they catch the thing, then wrap it up in a carpet, lugging it around like they're in a third rate crime drama looking to dispose of a body for the Mafia or something. Man, if they'd been caught there would have been a very long scene about being accused of murder and a bunch of other stuff with the police and so on.
Instead, when Mac sensibly advocates killing the thing before it kills anyone, he's sharply told that they have to send it back to its time, because otherwise history could fall apart. Or rather, let us go to Toby for her sterling explanation.
"Don't you get it? If we kill one stegosaurus and its great-great grand stegosaurus wouldn't be there to eat . . . a bug! That could have eaten a snake that would've eaten a fish, that could have evolved into a mammal, and then, guess what? We're all lizard people."
Dylan is unsure of this logic.
Mac is even less sure of this logic. "Did you just say a bug ate a snake?" he inquires.
"That's what you got from that?" demands Toby in exasperation.
Yes, Toby, that's what any of us got from that. Because the number of things wrong with that explanation is so numerous . . . clearly, English was not your subject in undergrad.
With all the subtlety of Connor Temple hitting on Abby, he tries to get Sam to run the thing over with the security truck. Dylan stops him.
Then Dylan and Sam share a moment, and I pause to throw in gratuitous imaginary femmeslash, just to even things out with the whole Mac/Evan thing, and the electrocuted and drugged critter pees on Mac. Everyone is rather snide about it, and leave Toby to take readings, Mac to guard her and wander around in a t-shirt soaked in prehistoric critter pee. Because that's really subtle.
Also, Toby calls his whole key thing clearly needy, which he counters with an almost Connor-like declaration that it's 'wanty'.
Sam is left to guard the truck with the critter that is locked therein, along with her not-in-the-know fellow security guard. Because I was wrong when I thought Toby was her roommate, she's just another Cross Photonics employee.
Toby and Mac, at Mac's behest, go to see the girl who was attacked, hoping for information. While wandering through the rez, Toby remarks that she misses university, especially the chance to go out with hot jocks. Then she spontaneously melts Mac's brain by informing him that she broke up with the captain of the football team because she and he were sleeping with the same cheerleader. Since they are so close to poor Kate's room, Mac must force images of lesbian cheerleaders out of his head.
I'm not sure it occurred to him that there are male cheerleaders on university cheer squads.
Or maybe it did. Make of that what you will.
Evan and Dylan share a moment while she does research and he sets up a tablet to spy on Sam and her fellow security guard. Someone somewhere is taking a drink because I'm sure something has twigged the inevitable drinking game.
The anomaly reopens and a second lycanops, which is the name of the creature as Dylan discovers, even without Connor's database, comes wandering through. It watches Mac, as we see in the creature cam, having a conversation with Sam.
Then the other guard calls Sam on the walkie-talkie, telling her he thinks someone's trying to steal the 'prototype' in the van. Instead of calling Evan and telling him, and instead of telling the other guard not to approach the van for the love of God, Sam just runs back. So the newly awoken and very pissed off lycanops eats his face off. Sort of literally.
Then Sam arrives, misses three shots with her animal taser, takes off at a run for the elevator (rather than a door she could hide behind and jam closed for safety) and dies horribly.
First, is the lovely shot of its wagging tail as it apparently starts to snarfle her. Then the crane shot of her dead.
Then we know why so many people who would normally be eaten got away. So it would be extra upsetting that Sam died and not them. Because heavens forfend we could have slotted her into the role of SF captain, or at least a second gun, and thanks for killing a strong female character in order to create strained group dynamics.
Dylan is sympathetic, Toby is shocked, and the men cry.
Evan feels terrible because he knows his employees personally, feels guilty and that it's his fault she's dead.
Mac takes off the key and puts it and its chain in her hand where she lies, his silent symbol of devotion. He made it for her, and now she'll never take it.
Then he tells Evan off, storms off on his own to kill the thing in a fire of vengeance, and that's when they find out a second one has come through and that it probably tracked them due to pheremones from the first one's pee. Which is, for the record, still all over Mac. When he's told this, he is grimly satisfied, because it'll bring the critter to him and he'll be able to kill it.
Unlike a snake, which can't smell food three feet in front of it.
Evan and Dylan run off to catch him, leaving Toby alone in a huge room with many entry points from high up, which is exactly where the lycanops likes to attack from.
Maybe it's a reference to earlier in the episode, with all the wet Mac, maybe it's just plot, but Mac decides that (probably) he'll use the clothes as bait, but he's going to not run around smelling like a female lycanops in heat. And pee. So he takes off his shirt and ducks under one of those emergency chemical showers.
Here's Mac from the other side. Also, the male lycanops has caught up to him, as evidenced by him yanking the cord to off, and is snuffling at his clothes.
So, shirtless he faces it, drives it off by hitting it with a fire extinguisher, then grabs the gun and poses with it, aimed after the lycanops.
He is shirtless and wet.
So, that's one better than Stephen, Ryan and Becker, who never shot anything while wet and shirtless, did they?
Toby informs Evan and Dylan that Mac's chasing one of the lycanopses, and they're heading for the lair, which is actually a, ". . . kiln, for the photonics." Which is a sentence that makes no sense, but stopped me dead.
Pardon me, I forgot rule one. Don't bring the science into it.
Also, Evan starts whining about how it's all his fault and Dylan simply has no time for his self-blaming melodramatic bullshit.
So, Toby realises when she looks at security that she's being stalked, calls for help and nearly gets snarfled. Luckily everyone gets to her in time, Dylan shoots the one, and Toby is safe. Then the other one shows up.
Snuffling at his mate, he gently pokes her with his snout, trying to rouse her.
Evan and Dylan both freeze in sympathy, the parallel to Mac is painfully clear.
Mac, shirtless but for a lab coat, is putting up with none of this anthropomorphisation bullshit. He shoots the second one, then makes sure Evan knows how much he sucks for getting Sam killed and stalks off.
Evan sends everyone off to do their jobs, Toby to shut down the plant for the week, Dylan to dispose of the critters in their dead critter freezer and he's off to talk to Ken Leeds about a cover story for the police and to inform the families of the two dead security guards of their loss.
There's the time lapse photography missing from the opening scenes. Evan's clearly done what he needed to to as we see him walk in slow motion down a hall, knock on a door and stand there, inches from tears again. A pop song is playing over it, all about how the singer doesn't know what's going on with her lover and that she'll offer herself as a place for him to hide from the world.
The singer is Miranda Frigon, who plays Angelika, whose apartment Evan's come to. She stares at him and wordlessly lets him cling to her as her voice sings over the scene about taking his pain away. His hiding place as it were.
I will say two things. One, the associated song makes it nearly canon that she's in love with him, and I suspect it will end badly, and two, Connor still cries better.
And we cut away from the final shot of Evan's tearful face staring vacantly over her shoulder.
The pain you feel, I feel it too
Say the words and I will take it away from you.
I will be your hiding place
Somewhere to rest and hide your face
I will be your hiding place
Somewhere you can go
I'll go back to ending with snark next week.
I hope.
Go on to Episode 6
Back to Primeval Archive
So, we start, for once, without time lapse photography. Instead, it's Frosh Week at what is probably UBC, and the poor blonde girl is participating in the sorts of stupid annual hazing rituals that people claim are bonding experiences, but probably just sort the popular kids from the nerds right from the start in order to maintain high school-based cliques. As she sort-of flees the group, we get our first shot of creature cam. Which is reddish and blurry, because animals . . .
You know what? You've heard that from me before. I shall let you repeat my complaints on the topic to yourselves.
She gets chased by the critter, has the sense to hit two security call points on the way, which would probably hint to security that someone is moving or running away, gets herself somewhere confined and protected and doesn't die, although she gets pretty freaked when the furry thing leaps out at her.
Dude, sensible cannon fodder? What is the world coming to? Evan might even remember to bring a rifle with him the next time he goes spelunking for danger.
Evan and Ange flirt, Ange much more than Evan. Look at that hip cocked posture she's got goin' there. In any event, in an effort to remain topical, they not only have Evan playing with a football right after Grey Cup weekend . . .
Time out. Okay, to anyone who may not know, and with the international audience some of you probably don't, the Grey Cup is Canada's Superbowl. That is, it's our big American/Canadian football final. Except that it has, traditionally, outdone the Stanley Cup, the hockey final, in terms of national outdoor tailgate party. Hockey may be Canada's sport, but the Grey Cup is the biggest sporting event in Canada. They had Justin Bieber singing at the half time show, which is just . . . I don't even know. Who puts Gordon Lightfoot and Bieber in the same show?
Pardon my digression. So, you can see that football is topical. Then they discuss the Chinese buying everything, which has been another big Canadian hoo-ha lately, and I think they're trying to not only be topical, but pander to a Canadian audience. I suppose, having pandered to straight men for a few episodes, they're aiming for their current viewing demographic. Sports fans and people who follow politics. I guess?
Mac is in the shower with his girlfriend, Sam.
Ahem. Perhaps I am not being clear enough. Mac is not wearing any clothes and he is wet and slippery and naked and wet.
And Mac is still naked and wet.
And naked. Did I mention the naked part? There's also a thing about a housekey he's wearing on a chain around his neck, and that he wants to give it to Sam, but she won't take it yet. Still, it's kind of sweet and everything, even with her clear concern about commitment.
Toby, who wishes to have a life outside of sitting on top of the computers in Cross Photonics, maybe even go on a date or do something that doesn't involve watching a computer try to sort anomaly signatures out of every cell phone in the greater Vancouver area, is trying to set up a warning system for their phones. An app, as she calls it.
So, there will be an app for that, too.
The degree to which they need Connor is unbelievable.
When they get an anomaly warning, a half an hour after it opened on the UBC campus (because sorting through every damn cell phone signal in the Vancouver area is a job and a half, even for modern computers), Evan calls up Mac. He is concerned when Mac doesn't answer, which just goes to show the concern he holds for his boyfriend security/gun guy, and also that feelings there are probably reciprocated.
Mac is still naked, wet and naked, and Sam is naked and wet and trying very hard to seduce him, but drops everything when Evan calls. While he's naked.
Pardon me, five fics about Evan and Mac and naked wet phone sex spontaneously were spawned somewhere on the internet.
They all head out to the UBC campus, which is heavily and actively populated in the middle of the night with hyperactive university students doing stupid things because it's Frosh Week, and undergrads can do anything since there are no classes and now's the time to get really drunk and do stupid things.
Kate, who is the girl who didn't die of stupid earlier is not exactly happy that the campus security is trying to convince her she's high on something after nearly dying due to something big and black and furry with fangs and shit. She's really unhappy she's being patronised to by the schmuck in the yellow security jacket.
Dylan and Mac arrive there in time to hear that conversation, while Evan and Toby have been sniping at each other about Toby testing her theories in the field.
Dylan gets her Stephen super-tracker on and tracks the critter to the library, although we see from creature cam that it's actually stalking them, Mac in particular, with its blurry reddened vision. So they all walk straight into the university library in the middle of the night, because some idiot has propped all the doors open, like universities don't have valuable texts and stuff that could be stolen and sold on the black market for lots of money, not to mention computers and all kinds of things to steal and sell.
I see the competence of security on the UBC campus goes far.
Mac and Toby are partnered, I assume that it's because the most physically competent one of them should stick with the least to compensate for her relative lack of capability and experience.
Or we need to give them extra flirting time.
Or Evan and Mac know that they'll just distract each other if they're alone, so they split up.
Whatever.
Dylan and Evan are wandering through the stacks, which are the kind with the moveable shelves that have big spinny handle things to move them around, thus conserving space and allowing more shelving in less room.
Can someone explain how a primitive protomammalian quadripedal predator from the Permian with a relatively close relationship to a gorgonopsid only much smaller, can work the shelves? And why?
Dylan and Evan see it, lose it, and stumble back out of the stacks after it. For some reason, Dylan is letting her bag dangle from an arm in a perfect position for just about anything bitey to grab the bag and yank her off her feet with it. I'm sorry, it distracted me through the whole scene, including the bit where it looked like a giant beaver was running around the library.
Toby and Mac stare around a corner as, by some miracle, a security guard gets out safely. I think they're as incredulous as I was. Where's all the people dying of animals?
So, they catch the thing, then wrap it up in a carpet, lugging it around like they're in a third rate crime drama looking to dispose of a body for the Mafia or something. Man, if they'd been caught there would have been a very long scene about being accused of murder and a bunch of other stuff with the police and so on.
Instead, when Mac sensibly advocates killing the thing before it kills anyone, he's sharply told that they have to send it back to its time, because otherwise history could fall apart. Or rather, let us go to Toby for her sterling explanation.
"Don't you get it? If we kill one stegosaurus and its great-great grand stegosaurus wouldn't be there to eat . . . a bug! That could have eaten a snake that would've eaten a fish, that could have evolved into a mammal, and then, guess what? We're all lizard people."
Dylan is unsure of this logic.
Mac is even less sure of this logic. "Did you just say a bug ate a snake?" he inquires.
"That's what you got from that?" demands Toby in exasperation.
Yes, Toby, that's what any of us got from that. Because the number of things wrong with that explanation is so numerous . . . clearly, English was not your subject in undergrad.
With all the subtlety of Connor Temple hitting on Abby, he tries to get Sam to run the thing over with the security truck. Dylan stops him.
Then Dylan and Sam share a moment, and I pause to throw in gratuitous imaginary femmeslash, just to even things out with the whole Mac/Evan thing, and the electrocuted and drugged critter pees on Mac. Everyone is rather snide about it, and leave Toby to take readings, Mac to guard her and wander around in a t-shirt soaked in prehistoric critter pee. Because that's really subtle.
Also, Toby calls his whole key thing clearly needy, which he counters with an almost Connor-like declaration that it's 'wanty'.
Sam is left to guard the truck with the critter that is locked therein, along with her not-in-the-know fellow security guard. Because I was wrong when I thought Toby was her roommate, she's just another Cross Photonics employee.
Toby and Mac, at Mac's behest, go to see the girl who was attacked, hoping for information. While wandering through the rez, Toby remarks that she misses university, especially the chance to go out with hot jocks. Then she spontaneously melts Mac's brain by informing him that she broke up with the captain of the football team because she and he were sleeping with the same cheerleader. Since they are so close to poor Kate's room, Mac must force images of lesbian cheerleaders out of his head.
I'm not sure it occurred to him that there are male cheerleaders on university cheer squads.
Or maybe it did. Make of that what you will.
Evan and Dylan share a moment while she does research and he sets up a tablet to spy on Sam and her fellow security guard. Someone somewhere is taking a drink because I'm sure something has twigged the inevitable drinking game.
The anomaly reopens and a second lycanops, which is the name of the creature as Dylan discovers, even without Connor's database, comes wandering through. It watches Mac, as we see in the creature cam, having a conversation with Sam.
Then the other guard calls Sam on the walkie-talkie, telling her he thinks someone's trying to steal the 'prototype' in the van. Instead of calling Evan and telling him, and instead of telling the other guard not to approach the van for the love of God, Sam just runs back. So the newly awoken and very pissed off lycanops eats his face off. Sort of literally.
Then Sam arrives, misses three shots with her animal taser, takes off at a run for the elevator (rather than a door she could hide behind and jam closed for safety) and dies horribly.
First, is the lovely shot of its wagging tail as it apparently starts to snarfle her. Then the crane shot of her dead.
Then we know why so many people who would normally be eaten got away. So it would be extra upsetting that Sam died and not them. Because heavens forfend we could have slotted her into the role of SF captain, or at least a second gun, and thanks for killing a strong female character in order to create strained group dynamics.
Dylan is sympathetic, Toby is shocked, and the men cry.
Evan feels terrible because he knows his employees personally, feels guilty and that it's his fault she's dead.
Mac takes off the key and puts it and its chain in her hand where she lies, his silent symbol of devotion. He made it for her, and now she'll never take it.
Then he tells Evan off, storms off on his own to kill the thing in a fire of vengeance, and that's when they find out a second one has come through and that it probably tracked them due to pheremones from the first one's pee. Which is, for the record, still all over Mac. When he's told this, he is grimly satisfied, because it'll bring the critter to him and he'll be able to kill it.
Unlike a snake, which can't smell food three feet in front of it.
Evan and Dylan run off to catch him, leaving Toby alone in a huge room with many entry points from high up, which is exactly where the lycanops likes to attack from.
Maybe it's a reference to earlier in the episode, with all the wet Mac, maybe it's just plot, but Mac decides that (probably) he'll use the clothes as bait, but he's going to not run around smelling like a female lycanops in heat. And pee. So he takes off his shirt and ducks under one of those emergency chemical showers.
Here's Mac from the other side. Also, the male lycanops has caught up to him, as evidenced by him yanking the cord to off, and is snuffling at his clothes.
So, shirtless he faces it, drives it off by hitting it with a fire extinguisher, then grabs the gun and poses with it, aimed after the lycanops.
He is shirtless and wet.
So, that's one better than Stephen, Ryan and Becker, who never shot anything while wet and shirtless, did they?
Toby informs Evan and Dylan that Mac's chasing one of the lycanopses, and they're heading for the lair, which is actually a, ". . . kiln, for the photonics." Which is a sentence that makes no sense, but stopped me dead.
Pardon me, I forgot rule one. Don't bring the science into it.
Also, Evan starts whining about how it's all his fault and Dylan simply has no time for his self-blaming melodramatic bullshit.
So, Toby realises when she looks at security that she's being stalked, calls for help and nearly gets snarfled. Luckily everyone gets to her in time, Dylan shoots the one, and Toby is safe. Then the other one shows up.
Snuffling at his mate, he gently pokes her with his snout, trying to rouse her.
Evan and Dylan both freeze in sympathy, the parallel to Mac is painfully clear.
Mac, shirtless but for a lab coat, is putting up with none of this anthropomorphisation bullshit. He shoots the second one, then makes sure Evan knows how much he sucks for getting Sam killed and stalks off.
Evan sends everyone off to do their jobs, Toby to shut down the plant for the week, Dylan to dispose of the critters in their dead critter freezer and he's off to talk to Ken Leeds about a cover story for the police and to inform the families of the two dead security guards of their loss.
There's the time lapse photography missing from the opening scenes. Evan's clearly done what he needed to to as we see him walk in slow motion down a hall, knock on a door and stand there, inches from tears again. A pop song is playing over it, all about how the singer doesn't know what's going on with her lover and that she'll offer herself as a place for him to hide from the world.
The singer is Miranda Frigon, who plays Angelika, whose apartment Evan's come to. She stares at him and wordlessly lets him cling to her as her voice sings over the scene about taking his pain away. His hiding place as it were.
I will say two things. One, the associated song makes it nearly canon that she's in love with him, and I suspect it will end badly, and two, Connor still cries better.
And we cut away from the final shot of Evan's tearful face staring vacantly over her shoulder.
The pain you feel, I feel it too
Say the words and I will take it away from you.
I will be your hiding place
Somewhere to rest and hide your face
I will be your hiding place
Somewhere you can go
I'll go back to ending with snark next week.
I hope.
Go on to Episode 6
Back to Primeval Archive