Primeval New World is “Undone” as Mike Rohl Directs Vancouver Dino’s Lurking in the Shower Room!

Welcome to our dedicated site to Primeval New World!

We love Primeval New World here at WHR, so let us begin with a fun video from the series producers about “How To Fight a Creature”.

Featuring Danny Rahim, the video illustrates a behind the scenes (BTS) look at the filming of a sequence from the fifth episode (written by Sarah Dodd.

Directed by Mike Rohl (pictured left), the fun BTS describes how it is all accomplished to bring the series dinosaurs to life before our very eyes!

Enjoy!

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR NON CANADIANS:

The episode begins with a bunch of university students during Frosh week, playing some version of, “capture the flag”. A young woman, who, apparently, seems very out of place, is playing the game as well, but ends up wandering along a darkened path away from the activities. She begins reacting fearfully, as she becomes aware that she is in danger.

Instead of heading back to the crowds, she runs further away into the darkened areas of the campus, setting off security alarms as she runs. She has keys to a locker facility, gets inside, as the tension builds. She is safe. She steps up to the metal fencing  to see if she has lost the creature, only to have it jump up at her and give her a good scare. This first part of the episode is full of horror film cliches, beginning with the campus full of students, the naive blonde newbie as the first victim, the jocks jumping out of bushes to torment her, and so on.

While Evan Cross (Niall Matter) and Ms. Finch (Miranda Frigon)discuss a possible new contract that will ensure, as Evan says, their lack of financial dependence on Ken Leeds’ government funding, Mac (Danny Rahim)is finishing up his bedroom games by showering with his new girlfriend, Samantha Sedaris (Jody Balfour). Samantha, incidentally, is putting pressure on Mac to be more involved with Evan’s group.

We find ourselves next in Toby’s (Crystal Lowe) lab, where Evan is playing with a football. It must be nice to be the boss. We discover that Toby is designing an app. That will let her know every time they get notified of an anomaly.  So, we know that the next logical step in this plot is that they will get an anomaly. It is the one on the university campus with a 34 minute delay. Evan is not happy about the delay, of course. We do find out that the anomaly has closed, and the delay gives the team time to arrive on campus while the security is there questioning the first victim, thereby providing all the information necessary for them to begin looking for whatever came through.

The team tracks the creature into the library, which oddly, is not locked. It is interesting that the bikes are locked up, but not all the books in the library. Anyway, we spend several minutes watching Evan and Dylan (Sara Canning) and Mac and Toby, exploring various areas of the library with flashlights, looking for the creature. My next thought is, does no one know how to find and click a light switch? But then, that would take away from the spookiness of the story.

Eventually, after several glimpses of the animal eluding the team, they meet up in a stairway, only to discover that the canine ancestor creature has come up behind Evan and Dylan. Mac to the rescue. He uses a taser to render the animal unconscious so they can remove it without anyone knowing it was ever at the university.

The next problem for Evan and his team is to find a way to put the creature back where it came from. The anomaly has closed, so they discuss how they will get the animal back to its proper time and place. Naturally, Mac’s reaction is just to kill the creature; problem solved. Toby then explains how, “one snowball could turn into an avalanche. Don’t you get it? If we kill one stegosaurus and its great grand stegosaurus would not be there to eat a bug that could have eaten a snake, that could have eaten a fish, and then, guess what, we are all lizard people.” Mac gives Toby a good look, then asks, “Did you just say a bug ate a snake?” Toby responds, somewhat miffed, “Really, that’s what you got from that?”

They need the armored cargo van to store the creature until they can get it back to its own time. The logical thing to do, to save time, is to ask Samantha, Mac’s girlfriend to bring the vehicle. “She wants to be part of the team, right”, Evan asks.  Mac is not that happy with the idea. When she arrives, and backs up the vehicle toward the creature, now wrapped up in a rug, to hide it, Mac directs the truck as it backs up. He seems to be permitting it to back up awfully fast toward the prone creature. If Sam ran over the creature, it would definitely work in Mac’s favour. They would no longer have to figure out how to get it back to its own time and Evan might then decide that Sam would not be a good team member. So, why does Mac not want Sam to be a member of the team?

Dylan gives Mac a dirty look. Mac’s return look indicates that he knows he is busted, but does not much care. Sam gets chastised by Evan for driving a bit too fast. She first calls him Mr. Cross, then sir. Both times, he reminds her to call him Evan. Sam is so pleased to be there it looks like nothing could dampen her mood.

Too bad we cannot say that for Mac. As he helps to lift the creature into the van, he gets soaked with a liquid that pours out of the carpet and onto him. Turns out it is a side effect of a sedative given to it by Dylan. Looks like Mac got peed on.

Once they have the creature safely loaded in the truck, Evan decides to take it back to his company. There is only one security officer, Bill, on watch, so it should not be a problem. Stargate Atlantis fans may recognize the security officer as Kanaan (Patrick Sabongui), who played Teyla Emmagan’s (Rachel Luttrell) husband.

Back at the university, Mac and Toby track down the first victim of the creature as they attempt to determine the previous location of the anomaly. They find her, using the cover that they are from the zoo and a couple of frat boys stole a cheetah as a prank. Mac asks her if she saw a light that looked like a disco ball. All she seems to be aware of is that Mac smells bad. They excuse themselves and continue the search. Fortunately, the anomaly conveniently opens moments later. Unfortunately, another creature appears.

Mac and Toby have run all the way from the university dorm to the location of the anomaly, only to miss it as it closes again. They are both frustrated, and neither realize that they are being watched. Mac answers his cell phone. It is Sam, calling. She thanks him for going out on a limb to get her involved in his career. The phone calls gets cut short when she gets a message from the security officer. Something is wrong. Mac immediately calls Evan and everyone races to the scene.

Security officer Bill has become the first casualty. Sam comes upon the scene, but keeps her head and fires the taser at the creature as it attempts to escape. She misses. As she goes looking for the creature, she rearms the taser. It is on top of the van. She shoots again, and misses again. Now, with no weapon except a night stick, she runs along the corridor to a dead end.

Evan and Dylan come across Samantha’s body. She is the second casualty. This was a surprise. The set up earlier in the episode gave the indication that Sam would have a longer story arc and a relationship with Mac that would last a while. Sam’s death leads to a guilt filled monologue from Evan who realizes that his actions resulted in the deaths of two colleagues.

Mac arrives on the scene with Toby. He says goodbye to Sam by placing his key into her palm. Then he goes on a revenge hunt to kill the creature. Should it now be pointed out that had he been permitted to kill it earlier on, Sam and Bill would not now be dead?

As Mac heads off with weapon in hand, Toby is alerted to the incursion of another creature. It is bigger and obviously a male. It must have come through the other anomaly and arrived at Evan’s company as a result of the animal following the odor on Mac’s shirt. Dylan calls him to warn him to take a shower, but Mac is not listening. He hangs up and continues to hunt.

As Evan, Dylan and Toby suit up with weapons to catch up with Mac, Evan takes a dart rifle. This surprises Dylan. Her understanding is that once an animal kills, it must be destroyed. However, Evan is still insisting that the creatures need to be returned safely to their own environment. Dylan is somewhat surprised at Evan’s reaction; the snowball effect that Toby argued so well earlier is just a theory, unless Evan is not telling them everything. Instead of answering, he tells Toby to keep scanning for Mac. He wants to find his colleague first, “I’m not finding another body”, he tells Toby and Dylan.

Mac locates a shower as he continues to hunt. He removes his smelly shirt and tosses it over a piece of pipe. We know that this is going to be the perfect opportunity for him to encounter one or both of the creatures. And this is exactly what happens. One of them sniffs at his shirt, then turns on him. Mac responds, “you just try me”, grabs a fire extinguisher and bashes the creature in the face with it, then tosses it at the creature. The animal runs off. Mac grabs a clean lab coat and chases after it.

Meanwhile, Toby searches the video camera feed for Mac. She finds him heading along a corridor, then she phones Evan to let him know. That is when we discover that Toby is being stalked by one of the creatures. She realizes that she is being stalked when she accidentally comes across the feed of one of the video cameras; the one in her lab, that shows an image of one of the creatures watching her from above.

Toby runs. The creature chases. She attempts to hide, and phone Evan to tell him the creature is in the lab. The rest of the team rushes to her aid. Dylan shoots the creature. As it falls to the ground, the bigger one shows up. They watch, transfixed as the male nudges the dead female. Suddenly, Mac shoots his weapon and kills the other one.  As Evan approaches him, he demands, “What are you going to say to make it better?” Evan has no answer.

While the episode began rather poorly with a monster of the week plot, it did build nicely to a more interesting story arc. A few questions are raised, such as what was the key for that Mac gave Sam, and when Dylan questions whether Evan knows more about the impact of killing creatures rather than returning them to their habitat. This suggests there may be more to the frozen ARC member than we think. Hopefully, these are clues to a bigger story line and not red-herrings.

The death of Sam in the episode certainly comes as a shock. It curtails the plot arc of a character that only appeared twice and it shows that no one is safe, except, perhaps Evan Cross. We did have enough of a connection with her for this to make an impact. Now that the two creatures are dead, and no one has turned into a lizard, will Mac remain angry at Evan? Will his anger affect their relationship? So far, the episodes are pretty much stand-alone. It should be interesting to see if this continues or if a plot arc develops.

Of special note, Miranda Frigon is the singer of the song, “Hiding Place” at the end of @PrimevalNewWrld Episode 5. Miranda says that it will be available for download on itunes by the middle of December.

Thanks to Kenn for final staging of the audio video embeds and images in this news article and thanks to you for stopping by WormholeRiders News Agency!!

We look forward to seeing more of you here at our review site dedicated to our wonderful science fiction series Primeval New World!

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Regards,

Thank you.

ArcticGoddess1 (Patricia)