Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: Same as last week
Anomalies: 1 (Unseen)
Species of Beasties We’ve Seen Before: Same as last week
Big breasts Beastie: Helen
Little man Beastie: Leek

Before the credits we get a recap of last week in 1 minute.  It includes: a mammoth, Bob, a punch, a kidnapping a little man with big aspirations and a scorching hot man so gullible you can tell him anything and he’ll believe you.  (Fangirls line up everywhere to say “You want to sleep with me.”) Last week, I brought it to you in 2.7MB (yes, I checked).

It also features the most painful case of obvious Retcon, ever, unless you count the whole Not!Claudia thing.  At least over in Torchwood, the Retcon comes in a nice pill form and often is given to you by a sexy Welshman.  Although, I should avoid talking about the Whoniverse because 1) Primeval is on a different network a 2) the Whoniverse is depressing me at the moment, so this show had better cheer me up!

This Retcon features a rewritten line about Connor installing a virus that Leek will not catch until “it turns around and bites him.”  Replace “Leek” with “no one” and remove the whole virus part with something about “both parts” and we’ve got what we watched last week. 

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 5+ (*hides under the table*)
Anomalies: 1
Episodes of Doctor Who Written By Paul Cornell: 3 ("Father’s Day,” "Human Nature,” "Family of Blood” )
Species of Big Beasties We’ve Seen Before: 8
Big Beastie: Mammoth on the Motorway! (AKA: Snuffleupagus)  

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 0 (It’s almost like they’ve given up on dinos completely!)
Anomalies: 2
Soldiers Lost: 3
Number of Times a Kid Knows Best: 3
Big Beastie: Sarlacc

In what has to be the ugliest apartment block I’ve ever seen, a young girl, Taylor, looks to be doing all the chores around the flat, while her stepfather, Steve (I’m assuming stepfather, as the photo shows only Taylor and her mother), sits with his ass in his easy chair.  The chore she has to do next is taking her dog, Sprat, out to piss on the car.  Careful, kid, Steve’ll probably make you clean that up too.

Sprat takes off, probably looking for a bit of grass to pee on, since I haven’t seen anything other than a couple of sickly trees.  Eventually, Sprat winds up in an alleyway, and running straight through an anomaly.  Taylor follows Sprat through, and although I would usually yell at the kid for wandering into things she has no idea about, it is for her dog.  I would follow mine through an anomaly, considering I know what the rescue crew looks like.  I save my dog and have Stephen come looking for me.  It’s a win/win!

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 0 (Yay!)  
Anomalies: 1
Future Predators Not Named Bob : 9 (at least)
Messages To Connor From the Universe: 2
Big Beastie: Mer (Murcus)

We open at a basketball game on the Isle of Dogs.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the only thing I know about the Isle of Dogs is that Canary Wharf is there, which has a history for being a bad place in British Sci-fi.

This time, the sewers are overflowing.  Ew.  When the ball is knocked off the court, a kid named Lucien is sent to get it.  Of course, the ball landed in the grossest place possible: in an uncovered manhole.  Only a teenage boy would think it’s okay to go and pick it up without promptly needing to be disinfected.  The water bubbles up and something pulls Lucien into the manhole, without any of his friends noticing what’s going on.  They just think he’s goofing around.  Soon, all that’s left of Lucien is one white trainer.  

Credits.

ARC:  Connor’s ADD is alerting.

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 0 (Yay!)  
Anomalies: 0 (Sorry, no sparkly lights this week.)
Bad Ideas For A House Pet: 1
Appropriately Named Technology: 1
Big Beastie: Smilodon / Sabretooth (AKA Victor)

Recapper’s Note: I admit, I was all ready to make a bunch of Tony the Tiger cracks with this week’s episode, but then I realized I could call him Sabretooth instead.  Anything that allows me to reference/ think about Hugh Jackman (Sabretooth being Wolverine’s arch enemy) and revel in a level of extra-geeky will always win out over any puns involving the words “They’re great!”

We’re at Blue Sky Park, which makes me wonder if we’re in Britain at all.  When I lived there blue sky was practically news-worthy.  My next-door neighbour in Glasgow told me that “a dry day is where it only rains once.”  She wasn’t lying.  

With all the hand-held cameras and rhythmic drums, we’re supposed to be frightened, but I’m not fooled for a minute.  It’s a paintball match.  Two pretty, and moronic, girls are spooked by what is clearly a couple of guys doing wolf calls.  Come on, ladies, like you haven’t heard that before.  They’ve even managed to get themselves lost on the course.  They’re scared by another player who fires more than a dozen shots at them, while all they do is stand there and scream.   Geez, these two women are too stupid to live.  Because of this, I’m totally pissed off when the other player promptly gets attacked.  Evolution really has run amok because of the anomalies.  If Darwinism really did work, Victor would’ve gone for the two morons who are probably just standing there, listening to the man scream.

Credits.

Connor is still ignoring that fate is clearly telling to stay away from Caroline.  Last week, he washed off her number.   This week, he has to skip a coffee date with her to go save the world from Victor.  In case fate couldn’t be any clearer, Abby is waiting impatiently for him.

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 0 (Yay!)  
Anomalies: 1
Dinosaurs With The Right Idea: 1 (Myfanwy 2)
Deplorable Scenes That Could’ve Been Saved By A Half-Naked Stephen : 1
Big Beastie: Giant Worms (Slimey – they’re all called Slimey)

As if the trauma of two weeks ago wasn’t enough, we begin this episode with Helen.  Boo.  Some time in the past Helen’s been able to find not only a great lingerie store, but also a hairdresser, because she’s wandering around some prehistoric era with a new ‘do and the best supported boobs in history.

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 3  
Anomalies: 1
Great Guy Moments: 1 montage
Evil Step-parents: 1
Big Beastie: Deinonychus (AKA: Larry, Curly and Moe)

So, let’s not talk about what happened last week, shall we?   Claudia’s just off on a much needed break after a series of terrible days at work and Captain Ryan’s lying in the sand somewhere sunny, right?  Right?

Okay, so now I’ll focus on the present, where an anomaly has opened in a bowling alley.  I’ve seen cheesy bowling alleys with dinosaur themes before, but this is going way too far on the scale of realism, when one bowler’s ball finds itself in the land before time (as in a long, long time ago, not the movie).

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 1
Anomalies: 2 (But one’s unseen)
Plot Advancements To Be Repressed: 3
Big Beastie: Fluffy
Bigger Beasties: Future Predators (AKA: Bob)

This is technically the end of the first series and the opening recap is far more balanced than the ones from the past couple of weeks.  While Helen and the question I asked at the end of the first episode is featured, so are  young Captain Jack , Fluffy, Myfanwy, and The Birds.   Heck, there’s even some kissing featured between Nick Cutter and Claudia Brown.  That’s Primeval for you: terrifying dinosaurs, the biggest bitch of all time and angst rolled up into one show.  All we’re missing is a good shot of a half-naked Stephen.  I freaking love this show.  

We’re back at Central Metropolitan University and can I say epic fail on the variety of shots we have for the place.  Seriously, we know location shoots are expensive but we see the same two couples every time, in the same outfits.  I once had to do extra work and trust me we did change clothes to make it look like different days.  It doesn’t cost anyone a cent to ask extras to bring a change of clothes.

Important Stats:
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 100 (I think that’s the actual number)
Anomalies: 1
Women’s worst nightmare: 1
Big Beastie: Pterodactyl (AKA: Myfanwy .) 
Little Beasties: Primeval Piranhas (AKA: The Birds ). 

From the opening recap, I realize what this show is really about.  From the disproportionate amount of time spent on the Helen Cutter mystery and whether or not she’s responsible for the parasitic dodos, or the anomalies in general, or was on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, she is far more important than Fluffy, Skip or Snappy.

We begin with a couple of bad golfers.  It’s a veritable montage of how not to play golf.  One misses the ball, only to then shoot it into the water and the other is stuck in a sand trap.  While they may be incompetent golfers, I hope there’s no money bet on the game because the guy who just shot it into the water lies to his friend stuck in the sand trap that he’s on the green.

Fishing his ball out of the water, lying golfer just misses a very important discovery.

Important Stats:  
Terrifying Dinosaur Count: 0 (Phew, maybe we’re done with them for a long, long time)
Anomalies: 7 (But I may have missed a couple)
Number of Big Damn Heroes: 2
Times Stephen uses convenient props to trap things: 2
Big Beastie: Parasitic Dodos (AKA: Donald, Daisy, Huey, Louie, Dewey and Tom.)  

After the recaps of the anomalies, the big beasties, and the bitch , we hop right into the credits.  You know, with the way this show is racking up mythology – the anomaly arc, the Helen arc, the security arc, the Connor fitting in arc, never mind all the ‘ships floating around the fandom, they’re going to need a longer intro recap.  Of course, a longer intro recap would eat into the show which would be the biggest travesty of all because then how would they find time to provide me with more images of half-naked Stephen?

We begin with an average day in the neighbourhood.  A mother is yelling at some children not to make so much noise, while her son is inside, taking a bath.  Suddenly, a slithery creature which is either a beast from the past, an urban legend, or Voledmort’s Nagini peeks out of the toilet.