Episode 2 Reviews

[Admin - Jon]

Please post any reviews for episode 2 here.

Source: geekhardshow.com/2012/11/review-primeval-new-world-ep-1x02/

Evan and Mac investigate a prehistoric sea serpent terrorizing the waters near disputed First-Nations territory. Dylan faces a crossroads when Evan recruits her to join his team. Yeah, that’s right. Native American sea serpent going to kill your ass. Well, it’s really prehistoric, but you get the picture.

After last weeks episode was a bit of disappointment for me when compared to UK Primeval, this week does see some improvement overall in the acting and directing departments. I might have been right about the episode one anomaly (oh, I couldn’t resist). Overall, I felt like that everyone involved is starting to better understand what makes this show tick. Niall, as the shows lead, is fully on board with what he needs to do with his character but this week Danny Rahim (Mac) finally starts to show why is on the team and it’s not for doing bike tricks in the parking lot with his boss. This is crucial to the show’s success because it was doomed otherwise. What I can see here is that the relationships are starting to be more defined in their early stages as each shows what they can do both as characters but also as actors as well. I thought the acting overall in last week’s pilot was well done. It was the writing that let them down. Sara Canning also is proof of that this week. She is given some material to work with that helps define who she is better than in the first episode. Even better, the direction felt more inline with what we should expect with Primeval. There was a greater sense of tightening of pacing this week, which allowed for more natural tension and drama throughout.

The UK version always had a better understanding of the “confined spaces” approach to low end TV budgets. Plus, this was help by a London background that in itself is pretty confining. The obvious difference with the move to Vancouver is the sheer size of the Canadian West Coast. There is a lack of physical confinement and claustrophobia that I always liked about the show. Hopefully like this week, they can figure out some creative ways to incorporate these new challenges into the series. How do you make the wide open spaces of locations feel scary or tense? These are questions that the producers will have to answer soon. They got lucky with this story and how they got to stay on land and still make it interesting.

I’m now two episodes in on this series and while it’s not anything to write home to Mom about yet, there is hope. The improvements to the overall feel of the show in this episode were very encouraging to see. But I will continue to stress that it better continue or this guy will drop drop you like a tranked dino. I like all those involved but that won’t be enough to keep me around if they don’t continue building on the improvements they have already made.

Source: scifibulletin.com/primeval/reviews/review-primeval-new-world-series-1-ep-2-sisiutl-spoiler-free/

Don’t go in the water, as an anomaly opens near the coastline…

Land and air creatures have come through in British Columbia, so it’s time to see what damage an aquatic one can do. This second episode continues to lay the groundwork for the series, as Dylan Weir is brought to a second anomaly site, only to run into Evan and Mac, who have reached it thanks to their prototype anomaly detector.

Part of the fun of this for long-term Primeval fans is watching how the new team (both on and off screen) deal with the same problems that their British counterparts faced, particularly as the New World team are being scrupulous (so far) about following the rules established in the earlier show. How do you cope with ordinary people finding out? How do you track the anomalies? Can they be closed? With connection to one of these, we see an unlikely alliance start to be formed in this episode, which has the potential to be explosive in all sorts of ways!

The effects work continues to be good: the interaction of the humans and the creatures sells the latter, and we’re getting a lot of close-ups of the textures. The only aspect I’m not sold on so far is the theme music, which seems a little gentle for the nature of the show – but that really is a minor detail in a great continuation.

Verdict: The Jaws references are present but not overwhelming in a solid episode. 7/10

[Admin - Jon]

www.impactonline.co/reviews/1022-primeval-episode-two-reviewrld

When two oil-company scientists disappear from their boats off the Vancouver/First Nations' coastline, the police suspect possible foul play or another animal attack, but local Leo John (William Belleau) thinks it could be linked to one of the legendary spirit animals of his people's mythology. He's a modern young-man, aware of how extreme those claims sound, but seeks out preadtor-expert Dylan Weir (Sara Canning) in an effort to find the truth.

Simultaneously, Evan (Niall Matter) and his team are trying out new tech to track anomalies and end up in the same bay area.

It soon becomes clear that the mix of science and mythology could both be true and that an unstable anomaly may be letting the creature through on a regular basis. The creature is a massive snake-like monster, at home in both the sea and on land... and with a noisy protest at the coast's oil plant, the chances for casualties are high. Once again, a pooling of the individual resources may be the only way out... that's if Evan's reckless nature doesn't get in the way...

Primeval New World's second episode, entitled 'Sisiutl' continues to be an engaging new thread in the Primeval tapestry and if it doesn't expand out much further than the pilot's set-up or dangle as many mytseries as we saw there, it does continue to edge the characters together and establish a growing connection between the team members that will allow them to work better as a team.

A seasoned viewer might sigh slightly at Evan's conveniently stupid decision to plough headlong into the Vancouver coastal sewers in pursuit of a snake that is big enough to eat him up, spit him out and leave his carcass on the shoreline (something we see earlier in the episode - and giving 'Bones' a run for its money in the ewwwwwww department). One might even think the character has something of a survivor's guilt/death wish - maybe something we'll explore later?

The FX of a show like Primeval: New World are an integral part of its success and here they continue to impress and - apart from the occasional iffy eye-line - the blending of CGI and actors is as good and convincing as it was in the original show. The trick is to make the monster-of-the-week and the human interplay equally interesting and that continues to work well.

That being said, there's one criticism - the first sounding of the show's official theme music proves to be unbelievably bland, shuffling melodically along like a small, tired herbivore rather than the dynamic, charging T-Rex of a score that's needed. People remember the soundtracks of other Canadian shows such as Stargate and Smallville and can probably whistle the tunes on demand, but here it would be a challenge to recall a single chord before the titles are done. It's the one, surprising mis-step so far, but one that really needs to be addressed before any second season.

However fans won over by the pilot should be happy with what they see here and UK fans can look forward to seeing the episode in January.

[Admin - Jon]

www.denofgeek.com/tv/primeval/23378/primeval-new-world-episode-2-review-sisiutl

After last week’s introductory episode to the Canadian spin off to Primeval, a show focussing on anomalies opening up and spewing out creatures long extinct, the sister Canadian show hits its stride more in its second story.

With its title taken from the name of a mythical Native American creature, Sisiutl sees Evan Cross and his team come together to stop a large sea serpent from killing any more people.

Just as in the first episode, the opening scenes set up the story and once more feel a little like a sci-fi version of Casualty, where you can see the setup happening – oh, two people in boats, the silhouette of something large approaching, he disappears, she gets dragged into the water – knowing it will lead to the crux of the episode. That said, the opening is filled with suspense and sparing with the creature shots, making use of its props and the actors to fill in the gaps.

After this, we actually get a full credit sequence. It’s a little more complex than the UK version but keeps the shard motif and features clips from the first episode amongst the shards; I can only assume these images will change from episode to episode as the series continues? Graphically the opening credits are great but the musical theme is not a patch on the powerful, cinematic UK score – an issue I have throughout the show – and it’s a shame that the traditional theme was not re-employed here.

The second episode then hits its stride proper and feels more like it's nodding back to the original series. Here we get a reference to ‘convergence’ and an example shown of it, suggesting that the events of UK series five haven’t passed the team by, but surely they would know more about it from the media coverage with creatures spotted all over? Either that or the marks are false positives, as mentioned, and that’s just a nod for the fans.

The one thing that does surprise me about the series is how fast they’re progressing with their technology. It took the UK ARC team until series two to discover how to track anomalies. Here Toby Nance, played by Crystal Lowe, morphs into a weird cross between Connor and Jess, building the ARC detector and then operating it. I can see why they’ve done it, so fans aren’t seeing the same progression all over again and it speeds up the action, allowing them to find anomalies and creatures easier, but it seems rather rushed. Then again, Nick Cutter and his team didn’t seemingly have the budget that Cross’ company has. From the dialogue it also seems that the anomaly locking mechanisms may not be far behind.

Another neat connection is to series three where the idea of anomalies being behind legends was first mooted and shown by a dragon and Egyptian God coming back. Here we have Ogopogo, or the titular Sisiutl, as the giant sea serpent from mythology and old copies of Fortean Times.

The plot of the second episode moves along at a nice pace. We get a subplot about the Native American residents of the town protesting against the expansion of an oil refinery which adds a little bit of depth to the piece and also ties neatly into the plot at the end, but it’s the character development that really shines in this episode. Lt. Ken Leeds lights up the screen whenever he’s on and there’s a developing situation with Angelika Finch who seems to be moving away from being this series’ Lester character to more like Oliver Leek, wanting to get Evan off the case and taking over. We also have some interesting grounding in Dylan Weir being sent for psychometric testing after confessing to seeing dinosaurs and her subsequent decision to join the team. The group also comes together more by the end, hopefully rounding the ‘let’s get the band together’ aspect of the show. The characters certainly seemed to be more fleshed out here, away from the stock stereotypes that you could argue existed in the UK series.

Though the script has some great one-liners and sassy dialogue, there is a strange feeling of déjà vu and coincidence. Evan’s back story of his wife being killed by a dinosaur is very Nick Cutter; there appears to be just one police officer in the area who investigates crimes, and the plot just happens to pull Evan and Mac together with Dylan and her former pupil Leo, who just happens to be the nephew of the Native American protestors. I’m all for the need to pull things together but it does smack of one too many coincidences.

Graphically, the episode is not as strong as the first, with the use of bullet time in one scene and more character-following cuts (though they are less intrusive here). Once more, considering the suggestions that the budget is larger, the creature of the week is very much implied for much of the episode and though the shots are undoubtedly well done as the Titanboa attacks Ethan and Leo in the storm drain, they are no more impressive than we saw in the UK original and, if you take the nearest sister episode from Primeval being series one episode three with the giant Cretaceous Mosasaur which interacts a lot with Connor, the set-pieces seem less adventurous. Though the UK Primeval is not innocent of it, they also seem fond of the anomalies closing straight after the creature has passed through.

The more adult nature of the show does, however, show its face in this episode with a decapitated head covered in goo discovered by Evan, though I wouldn’t say the prop was particularly convincing or disturbing for kids. There are certainly a few moments you wouldn’t have seen in the British Primeval, though the deaths remain off screen and, aside from one call of ‘Jesus’, the language is kept pretty family-friendly.

The show is certainly growing on me. There are enough developments in the episode of the overall arc to keep me interested with Angelika Finch’s motivations coming under question and Evan and Dylan’s blossoming relationship and the script is filling up with witty lines and some interesting dialogue. The CGI is great if not spectacular, and if you ignore the plot-by-numbers, lack of any truly massive set-pieces, and quite a bland creature of the week it’s an enjoyable episode that neatly establishes the set-up and advances what we know about the characters.