The fifth and final series of the British science fiction programme Primeval began on 24 May 2011 and concluded on 28 June 2011 after airing six episodes. Primeval follows a team of scientists tasked with investigating the appearance of temporal anomalies across the United Kingdom through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present. The fifth series kept most of the cast intact from the fourth series, the two series having been produced and filmed back-to-back in 2010. Given that Primeval had been unexpectedly cancelled by ITV in 2009 following the broadcast of its successful third series, the producers did not wish the fifth series to end on a cliffhanger in case the same happened again and as such wrote it to have a "very satisfying conclusion" in case Primeval was not renewed. The fifth series was written to be darker than the fourth and to explore the motives of main characters Philip Burton (Alexander Siddig) and Matt Anderson (Ciarán McMenamin) as well as answer key questions set up in preceding series. The fifth series also sought to stay more focused and to develop the key main characters, now a more unified team, further. As part of the co-production deal that ensured the fourth and fifth series would be made, the fifth series aired first on the digi...
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Matt's secret mission to find the ARC member that will destroy the future continues, as does Philip's New Dawn project for the Anomalies. After Abby learns of Matt's mission, the latter recruits her into it, while Connor instead joins Philip in the New Dawn project. Connor and Abby's opposing allegiances in turn strains their relationship more and more.
Matt and Abby's fears that New Dawn is what will destroy the future are soon confirmed, and after Connor realises his error, he and the rest of the ARC team join Matt and Abby against Philip as the latter activates New Dawn. Although Philip successfully activates New Dawn, the team manage to stop New Dawn and save the future. However, Matt then sees a double of him at the ARC which gives him a warning.
#1 | 02/10/2011Matt's Secret4.4/5 (with 3 votes)
The team attempt to track a giant, underground insectoid predator from the future, and there is something about the creature that Matt isn't telling the team. Meanwhile, Philip shows Connor the true purpose behind New Dawn, and Abby becomes more suspicious of Matt and grows closer to discovering his secret, while Lester struggles at the ARC to make a good impression to Ms. Reece of the Cabinet Office for a knighthood.
#2 | 05/30/2011The Submarine4.4/5 (with 3 votes)
When a Navy submarine in the North Sea discovers a giant underwater Anomaly, Matt, Connor and Abby join the Navy crew aboard, but things go awry when the submarine is pulled through the Anomaly into a prehistoric sea inhabited by giant pliosaurs. The team subsequently attempt to get the submarine back through the Anomaly to their time, while Lester struggles to stop an Admiral from nuking the Anomaly and potentially altering history.
#3 | 06/05/2011In the Good Old Days4.4/5 (with 3 votes)
When the team send a Raptor at an art museum back through the wrong Anomaly, Matt goes through into Victorian London in pursuit of the Raptor, and there he reunites with Emily and attempts to help her escape her grim fate of incarceration at Bedlam Asylum by her shallow husband. Meanwhile, Abby infiltrates Connor's lab to capture Connor's files on New Dawn for Matt.
#4 | 06/12/2011The Prototype4.0/5 (with 4 votes)
The team learn the truth about New Dawn when Connor creates an artificial Anomaly in the ARC, and trouble soon erupts when the Anomaly unleashes swarming, carnivorous beetles from the future into the ARC, which trigger the lockdown but threaten to burrow out and swarm onto the modern world. The situation is only exacerbated when the beetles trigger Jess' deadly allergy to insect bites, and when Philip threatens to incinerate the entire ARC to stop the beetles.
#5 | 06/19/2011The End of the Future (1)4.1/5 (with 4 votes)
With Convergence having finally arrived, while Becker and the entire ARC struggle to contain an increasing outbreak of numerous Anomalies and creatures, New Dawn begins to power up for its final phase, as the team struggle to stop Philip from activating New Dawn before it's too late.
#6 | 06/26/2011The End of the Future (2)4.7/5 (with 3 votes)
Matt and Abby go through New Dawn's Anomaly on a rescue mission for Connor into the barren, Predator-ruled wastelands of the future, while back in the present, the future apocalypse looms closer as New Dawn spirals out of control. Meanwhile, Jess and Lester face problems of their own when the ARC is invaded by Mutated Future Predators.
The fourth series of the British science fiction programme Primeval began on 1 January 2011 and concluded on 5 February 2011 after airing seven episodes. Primeval follows a team of scientists tasked with investigating the appearance of temporal anomalies across the United Kingdom through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present. Following the departures of key actors in the third series and the inability of some of the actors to return for the fourth series, several new main cast members were introduced, including Ciarán McMenamin, Ruth Kearney, Alexander Siddig and Ruth Bradley. After the broadcast of its third series, Primeval was cancelled by ITV in June 2009 due to financial issues but it was renewed for two more series after ITV and the production company Impossible Pictures worked out a deal for co-funding with UKTV. The fourth and fifth series were produced concurrently in 2010. The writing of the fourth series was focused mainly on resolving lingering plotlines, introducing the new characters, setting up plot elements in preparation for the fifth series, and developing the remaining characters from previous series further. The fourth series marked the first time Primeval was filmed in HD and also the first time the visual effects of the series were...
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After a year marooned in the Cretaceous, Connor and Abby finally return to the present to find that the ARC has greatly changed in their absence, and is now funded by entrepreneur Philip Burton and led by the quiet and mysterious Matt Anderson. Connor and Abby are initially not allowed back on the main team due to a new military code, but soon manage to get back on, though they still have to try and earn their old positions on the team back.
When two Anomaly travellers (the Victorian lady Emily Merchant and the murderous Ethan Dobrowski) come to the present, Matt takes Emily in, and begins to open up to her on his past and who he really is, while hunting Ethan and trying to protect Emily from him. Meanwhile, Connor becomes more and more allied with Philip and the latter's mysterious New Dawn project for the Anomalies, and Connor and Abby's relationship begins to become strained because of this.
Eventually, Danny Quinn returns from the past as well, and Ethan is revealed to be Danny's long-lost brother Patrick. Both Danny and Ethan/Patrick return to the past, and Emily returns to her time as well; but not before Matt reveals to her that he is from the future and has been sent back to stop an apocalyptic disaster with the Anomalies in the present from destroying the planet. Meanwhile, Connor learns of a catastrophic upcoming event with the Anomalies, and ultimately allies with Philip and New Dawn against it.
The third series of the British science fiction programme Primeval began on 28 March 2009 and concluded on 6 June 2009 after airing ten episodes. Primeval follows a team of scientists tasked with investigating the appearance of temporal anomalies across the United Kingdom through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present. The third series featured dramatic changes to the main cast, seeing the departure of lead actors Douglas Henshall, Lucy Brown and Juliet Aubrey and the introduction of several new lead characters, played by Jason Flemyng, Laila Rouass and Ben Mansfield. During the production of the third series, the production team saw it as the most ambitious series of Primeval yet, owing to its greater length (the first and second series being six and seven episodes, respectively), its changes and surprises, and its more concentrated effort to have the featured creatures to be unique from what had been shown before and to serve story functions. The departure of Douglas Henshall, who played the main character Nick Cutter, forced extensive revisions to the intended storyline which left several plot threads ultimately unresolved. The visual effects of the third series were improved over the two preceding series owing to new techniques and technologies, as we...
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As the ARC team still reel from Stephen's death, they are joined by several new team members, including new security leader Captain Hilary Becker, and sparky egyptologist Sarah Page. Meanwhile, after discovering a future world where the Earth is overrun with Future Predators, Helen Cutter sets out on a mission in the present against the ARC, whom she blames for the future catastrophe, and launches an attack on the ARC in which Nick Cutter is killed by Helen.
The ARC subsequently manage to obtain a mysterious artifact from the future from Helen, which in turn causes military liaison Christine Johnson to target the ARC and attempt to take control of it and get the Artifact for her own purposes. Following Cutter's death, the ARC team are ultimately joined by ex-cop and new team leader Danny Quinn, and Jenny Lewis learns of her alternate life as Claudia Brown and ultimately leaves the ARC. Meanwhile, Connor himself is forced to move out of Abby's flat and into Lester's (to the latter's chagrin and misery) when the troublesome Jack Maitland moves in with Abby.
As Johnson's mission to get the Artifact from the ARC continues, Helen returns and kills Johnson. When the ARC team learn that Helen intends to wipe out humanity's ancestors to stop them evolving to cause the future disaster, Danny, Connor and Abby are sent on a race after her through the Anomalies. Helen is killed before she can kill off enough of humanity's ancestors to have a temporal impact, but Abby, Connor and Danny are themselves left marooned in the past.
The second series of the British science fiction programme Primeval began on 12 January 2008 and concluded on 23 February 2008 after airing seven episodes. Primeval follows a team of scientists tasked with investigating the appearance of temporal anomalies across the United Kingdom through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present. Most of the main cast from the first series returned for the second; the cast was also expanded with the additions of characters played by Karl Theobald and Naomi Bentley. Following the success of the first series, the second series of Primeval was commissioned in March 2007, with storylines and scripts being worked on for three months before shooting began in June. The second series was envisioned as more ambitious than the first, with more creatures and more action sequences, and was also written to be rougher, with more people being killed by the various creatures. The second series also introduced the Anomaly Research Centre (ARC), created using a massive set in a building formerly for military use at Longcross Film Studios in Chertsey. The second series replicated the success of the first in terms of ratings, being seen by over six million viewers in the United Kingdom. Reception was overall positive; critics enjoyed that it ...
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After returning from the past to find that Claudia Brown has been erased from time, Nick Cutter is forced to cope with other changes, including that the team are now their own Anomaly-combatting organisation called the Anomaly Research Centre. Just when Cutter finally begins to come to terms with losing Claudia, a new PR guru joins the ARC; Jenny Lewis, who is physically identical to Claudia Brown but temperamentally is a completely different person.
Meanwhile, though Cutter believes that Stephen has gotten over Helen's betrayal, Stephen has in fact begun seeing Helen again and is becoming torn between her and Cutter; while Connor begins dating the mysterious Caroline Steel. Abby doesn't trust Caroline, and her and Connor's opposing opinions on her begin to drive a wedge between them. Unbeknownst to anyone, Caroline is secretly spying on Connor for the mysterious Oliver Leek, who has a secret agenda of his own for the Anomalies alongside Helen.
After the ARC team learn of Leek's and Helen's secret plans to use a creature army that they have captured to create chaos in the present, they are forced to try and stop the creatures from escaping onto the modern world. Helen, Nick and Stephen manage to trap and kill the creatures, but Stephen loses his life in the process. In the aftermath, Cutter finally accepts that Claudia Brown is gone forever and moves on with Jenny, while Helen promises that things will change with her clone army.
The first series of the British science fiction programme Primeval began on 10 February 2007 and concluded on 17 March 2007 after airing six episodes. Primeval follows a team of scientists tasked with investigating the appearance of temporal anomalies across the United Kingdom through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present. The first series stars Douglas Henshall, James Murray, Andrew-Lee Potts, Lucy Brown, Hannah Spearritt, Juliet Aubrey, Ben Miller and Mark Wakeling. Originally conceived by Tim Haines in the aftermath of the production of Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), Primeval was worked on as a concept by both Haines and Adrian Hodges for a lengthy period of time, intended as a BBC production. The BBC ultimately turned down the project after the revival of Doctor Who in 2005 due to deeming Primeval to be too similar, whereafter ITV was approached. ITV enthusiastically commissioned the series, which received a £6 million budget. Haines and Hodges thereafter approached directors Cilla Ware and Jamie Payne, each of whom directed three episodes each. Every episode of the first series of Primeval were intended to be unique in both the creatures featured and the atmosphere of the episode. Though commissioned as a contender for Doctor Who by ITV and dismiss...
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Eight years after his wife Helen disappeared, evolutionary zoologist Professor Nick Cutter - along with his friend Stephen Hart, his geeky student Connor Temple, zookeeper Abby Maitland, Special Forces leader Captain Tom Ryan, and government officials James Lester and Claudia Brown - discovers that mysterious rifts in time and space called Anomalies are allowing creature from across Earth's history to run rampant in the present; and the group subsequently become a Home Office research team tasked with predicting the Anomalies and containing the ceatures which come through them, and learning more about the Anomalies and why they are happening.
However, Cutter secretly has an agenda of his own about the Anomaly operation: as the team investigate the Anomalies, Cutter begins to find more clues that imply his long-missing wife Helen is alive and living in the past on the other sides of the Anomalies. The rest of the team eventually learn of this, and that Helen is indeed alive and in the past, but she has been greatly changed by her time there and her study into the Anomalies, and the team are uncertain which side she is on. Eventually, Helen seemingly allies with the team to find and contain an Anomaly in the past to the future and to combat a deadly predator from the future which is on a killing spree in the present; but while Nick and Helen are searching in the past for the future Anomaly, Nick discovers that Helen only wanted to find the Anomaly and see the future, and after Captain Ryan is killed, Nick returns to the present. However, there, Cutter finds that Claudia Brown has been erased from the timeline while he and Helen were in the past.