Sunday, July 26, 2009

UNSTUCK IN TIME: THE END OF "PRIMEVAL"

Spoilers ahead!

The final episode of 'Primeval' aired in the United States last night, and as I expected, it ended with a cliff-hanger. Team leader Danny Quinn was trapped 3-4 million years ago at Site 333 in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. This is where early hominids were on the rise in evolutionary development. In fact, the episode provided a Toobworld splainin as to why the remains of 13 early hominids were discovered there in 1975. (Scientists believe that they all died at the same time, giving a possible “snapshot” view of how they lived.) As for Connor and Abby, they were trapped in the Jurassic age, literally up a tree to protect them from velociraptors. Meanwhile, back in the "present", Sarah told Captain Becker that she had an idea as to how to get them all back. To me, that's the real cliff-hanger. Otherwise, we're just going to have to assume that Connor and Abby and Danny could be trapped in the distant past until they died. If so, the three of them must have made sure they did nothing to alter the timeline. Danny arrived in the past long before the arrival of the Golgafrinchams from 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy', so he didn't have the opportunity to breed with them or even with the Neanderthals. (And I don't think he'd be THAT desperate to try with the native hominids he did meet!)

As for Connor and Abby, if they could even have made it through the next day, it's doubtful they'd be able to survive long enough to start a family and be Earth Prime-Time's Adam and Eve far sooner than expected. (The real Adam and Eve for the main Toobworld would be Adam Cook and Eve Norda from 'The Twilight Zone' episode "Probe 7 - Over And Out". The Biblical Adam and Eve can be found in the history of Earth Prime-Time's orbital neighbor, Mondas (from 'Doctor Who'). Then again, maybe one of them did alter the timeline for Earth Prime-Time, just as Nick and Helen Cutter did at the end of the first season for 'Primeval'. If so, we can use them as an excuse to correct any future problems caused by other TV shows.

The show's creators didn't have a clue they were about to be cancelled; maybe if they had, we could have been spared the cliff-hanger and some closure could have been provided. As stated in the Guardian's blog, " 'Primeval' looked like [it was] having a real future. The rescue package proposed by Impossible Pictures, which might have seen ITV share production costs with an independent channel like Sci Fi, was clearly deemed a leap of faith too far into the realms of common sense. And ITV now find themselves in the insane position of having just axed a successful show that has
a Hollywood movie in development and a US spin-off as a strong likelihood." If that's true, maybe a US spin-off could provide that closure for the characters of Danny Quinn, Connor Temple, and Abby Maitland......

Anyhoo, I'd like to think that Sarah Page and Captain Becker did find a way to bring them all back to our time. After all, life continues in Toobworld even after cancellation; we just don't get the chance to see what happens.

Oh well. At least we don't have to worry about the future of that bitch Helen Cutter. I wouldn't exactly call her fate a "cliff-hanger". "Cliff-faller", maybe. Who'd-a guessed that one could be thankful to a velociraptor?

BCnU!

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