Primeval: Catch Up Post
Only just started watching Primeval? Well this should get you up to speed. It is direct response to Gerard's reply to this post and if you have any more questions feel free to ask away.
Well, in S01 there was no ARC and Nick Cutter was a Professor of Paeleontology at Central Metropolitan Museum. Stephen Hart (that's oh-so-pretty-but-oh-so-stupid Stephen to you and me) was his lab technician/research assistant bloke who has experience with wildlife conservation, tracking, etc. Helen left Nick Cutter eight years previously never to be seen again and he's still trying to get over this (with Stephen *shut up slashbrain*).NB: We saw Helen being pursued by a dino in the pre-credit sequence of S01E01.
Connor is a student of Nick Cutter's but he's never really attended any lectures or tutorials. He's your basic loveable nerd with an interest in dinosaurs and history of unrequited crushes. He loves his conspiracy theories and comes to Nick Cutter with an article about a creature sighting, which Nick Cutter initially dismisses but then pursues along with Stephen after Connor makes a comment about how his wife wouldn't have ignored it thus suggesting Helen had some sort of interest in these things. Connor ends up as a tag along and basically they can't really get rid of him but he proves useful because from an intellectual standpoint because he has an interest in dinosaurs and other extinct creatures and has built a database of information on them. He has harboured a crush on Abby since he met her and moved in with her after he got kicked out of his own flat. In S02E01 he got a girlfriend called Caroline Steel and it is obvious that Abby doesn’t like her and that her feelings towards Connor, who she initially rejected as she fancied oh-so-pretty-but-oh-so-stupid Stephen, have grown. In S02E04 Connor admitted to Abby that he loved her when justifying why he wouldn’t let go when she was hanging off a cliff and some future creatures are trying to eat her (Abby, om nom nom) – this moment was another high point of the show- so tense and emotive – anyway since then therehave only been hints at then getting together. Caroline left at the end of S02.
Right, onto Abby. Abby was a zookeeper in the reptile house at this point and had no ties with the other characters. She offers to take care of a letter from a boy who has found a lizard and, thinking it may be a new species she asks the boy to take her to the Forest of Dean, where he found it. Here she runs into Nick Cutter who sort of explains it to her and they find the anomaly which leads to the Permian era and try to set the lizard free. The lizard comes back and Abby keeps him (secretly for a while) – this is Rex and he is a coelurosauravus.
Also at the Forest of Dean, or a nearby hotel, Nick Cutter meets Claudia Brown (played by Lucy Brown), a junior at the Home Office who is trying to get the creature sighting debunked. Obviously she can’t and they all end up going to the Home Office to sign the Official Secrets Act and meet Lester who has a much higher up role. Throughout the series Claudia Brown and Nick Cutter get closer, much to Helen’s dissatisfaction – she asks him not to go through an anomaly in the final episode of S01 saying she had a bad feeling about it (much like S03E03 with Jenny) and he kisses her saying he will come back which he does however something changes the course of human evolution (we presume it is Helen but don’t actually know) and Claudia Brown no longer exists.
At the start of S02 we find out that the team are now set up in the ARC. Lester is looking for a someone to handle the press surrounding the creature escapes cue Jenny Lewis, someone who looks exactly like Claudia Brown. Jenny’s character is/was much different to Claudia Brown’s – she is stern, bitchy and tough throughout the series she softens and her and Cutter begin to get along. In S03 however it seems she’s just turned back into Claudia Brown character-wise :(
