| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/3142a218_1e1c_44f2_be1a_64841d4c8026.jpeg]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | ->'''Lester:''' You're aware of the work we do here?\ |
| 4 | '''Becker:''' You detect anomalies and fight dinosaurs, when necessary. |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ''Primeval'' (2007-2011) is Creator/{{ITV}}'s [[DuelingWorks answer]] to the revived ''Series/DoctorWho'',[[note]]''Series/TheTomorrowPeople1973'' being their weapon against the classic ''Doctor Who'' series.[[/note]] with less traveling through the cosmos, but more death (of recurring characters, anyway) and more underwear. Or, more accurately, ITV's answer to the ''Series/DoctorWho'' spin-off ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ''[[http://www.itv.com/primeval/ Primeval]]'' involves a group of crack scientists and experts [[note]]Well... depending on your series, a paleontology professor, his TA, one of his students, an ex-zookeeper, an SAS guy, and a couple of Home Office boffins; or [[spoiler:an ex-copper]], an archaeologist, a PR lady, the student and the zookeeper, the Home Office guy and an Army guy; or a time-traveling ex-army guy, the student, the zookeeper, the army guy, now ex-army and with a shiny new guilt complex, a computer whiz and the Home Office guy, and occasionally a time-traveling Victorian Lady.[[/note]] protecting modern Britain from [[TimeTravel trans-temporal]] threats. These mostly consist of extinct, usually prehistoric, beasties trolling around the South of England after coming through magnetic time portals known as "anomalies". |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Actual dinosaurs other than birds didn't appear until the second season (despite the show being often initially billed as ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' [[JustForFun/XMeetsY with dinosaurs]]); Season One focuses primarily on the more ancient time periods, with some dodos, a pterosaur, a sea reptile, and a predatory creature from the future thrown in for flavor. In the later seasons, some completely fictional prehistoric species (justified, since only a small fraction of species have been discovered) and more future creatures appear along with the dinosaurs. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | The series launched in 2007 and ran for three seasons until its cancellation in 2009 due to budget problems. Two years later, it was revived and ran for two more seasons, the last of which ended in late 2011. Adrian Hodges, Primeval's co-creator, claims that a sixth series will someday be made, but that they must wait for commitment from a major network. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | A DarkerAndEdgier Canadian spinoff, ''Series/PrimevalNewWorld'', started broadcasting on Creator/SpaceChannel on October 29th and aired on Creator/{{Syfy}} (and was added to Hulu) in early 2013. An American BigDamnMovie (currently in DevelopmentHell) was also announced. Unfortunately, New World was {{cancelled}} in February 2013. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | [[{{Recap}} Episode Guide]] pages for both [[Recap/{{Primeval}} the main show]] and [[Recap/PrimevalNewWorld New World]] have started. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 19 | |
| 20 | ---- |
| 21 | '''Delicious unmarked spoilers below!''' |
| 22 | !!''Primeval'' provides examples of the following tropes: |
| 23 | %% NOTE: Remember edit tip 2! "Use spoiler tags when you really need them, but it would be even better if you could manage to write your example without bringing up the sensitive information." |
| 24 | %% NOTE 2: Zero Context Example entries are NOT allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. |
| 25 | %% NOTE 3: Please add context to the entries before uncommenting them. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | [[folder:A-M]] |
| 28 | * AbortedArc: |
| 29 | ** After Cutter returns from the anomaly in the Season 1 finale, Claudia Brown somehow never existed and grew up as Jenny Lewis instead. The show looked like it was exploring the conflict of a romance between them - where Cutter loves Claudia and not Jenny - but [[spoiler: Cutter dies and Jenny leaves the team, later showing back up to get married to someone else]]. |
| 30 | ** Season 2 ended with Helen vowing things could change over Stephen's grave, with an army of clone/alternate Cleaner mercenaries giving the impression she could somehow bring him back. The next season dropped Helen's obsession with Stephen entirely, and [[https://primeval.fandom.com/wiki/Anomaly_Research_Centre:Exclusives/James_Murray_Interview James Murray revealed]] he'd never been contacted about a return. |
| 31 | ** Sarah ends the Season 3 finale saying "I've got an idea." But when production moved from the UK to Ireland, actress Laila Rouass opted to stay to care for her young daughter. And so Sarah [[ActorLeavesCharacterDies was abruptly killed off]] - with the only clue being a brief flashback to her screaming "Becker!" as a creature attacks her car. |
| 32 | ** Jess moving in with Connor and Abby looked like the set-up for a comedy arc, then... nothing. |
| 33 | ** Danny Quinn chasing Patrick Quinn through the anomaly. Neither returned in Season 5 so they either both died or are still running around searching for each other. |
| 34 | * ActionDressRip: Abby and Sarah in episode 6 of S3. "Great for dancing, not so much for cross-country." |
| 35 | * ActionGirl: |
| 36 | ** Abby becomes one early in the series. |
| 37 | ** Emily can be considered one as well. This is demonstrated when she briefly returns to the Victorian era - she assumes the identity of a murderer and subsequently hunts down the real one (a raptor). |
| 38 | * ActorAllusion: |
| 39 | ** Abby is played by Creator/HannahSpearritt, who before this was best known for being a member of Music/SClub7. In the Season 4 premier, when she turns on music in an arena to distract a dinosaur, what plays? "Don't Stop Moving" by S Club 7. |
| 40 | ** At several points in Series 5, Lester hints that he has a less than peachy relationship with his wife. Christine Johnson, who could be described as Lester's EvilCounterpart in Series 3, is played by Belinda Stewart-Wilson, Ben Miller's real-life wife at the time. |
| 41 | ** In the season 3 finale Connor gets injured when he's not ready for a grenade's explosion. The same thing happened to Andrew Lee Potts in ''Series/BandOfBrothers'' [[spoiler: though at least he lived this time around]]. |
| 42 | * AdultsAreUseless: One very specific example in the very first episode: after the Gorgonopsid attacks Ben's house, very clearly smashing in the window from the outside, Ben's mother proceeds to blame him for the (wrecked) state of his room after he scares it off. She doesn't even come to check on her son despite the loud roars of the creature. |
| 43 | * AffirmativeActionGirl |
| 44 | ** Sarah in season 3. |
| 45 | ** Jess and Emily in season 4. |
| 46 | * AlasPoorVillain: Philip. Unlike Helen, [[GoMadFromTheRevelation who went crazy]] and tried to kill humanity, Philip [[WellIntentionedExtremist really believed he was saving the future and only wanted to do good]]. After [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone he realizes the mistake he made]], he goes through a VillainousBSOD just moments before [[RedemptionEqualsDeath he sacrifices his life in an attempt to undo all the wrong he's caused]]. |
| 47 | * AllAnimalsAreDogs: [[TeamPet Rex]] often exhibits some very doglike behaviour despite being a prehistoric Coelurosauravus lizard. He is extremely playful and curious, begs for attention, crouches low to the ground and quivers when scared, and frequently wags his tail and cocks his head in a doglike manner. Subverted, however, in that he displays just as many typically reptilian behaviours. |
| 48 | * AllForNothing: [[spoiler: Helen's]] manipulations of [[spoiler: Philip]] was to prevent an apocalyptic future where mankind was wiped out by the Future Predators... only to result in an even worse future where the Predators ''still'' evolved and are even more dangerous than their previous counterparts. |
| 49 | * AllLoveIsUnrequited: Connor --> Abby --> Stephen --> Helen --> Nick --> Claudia. At first, anyway. |
| 50 | * AllMythsAreTrue: Or at least some of them. The animals that travel through the anomalies explain gaps in the fossil record, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_taxon Lazarus taxa]], the Loch Ness monster, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRTs8q7GlHc mermaids]], chupacabra, [[DinosaursAreDragons dragons]], sea serpents and other monsters, thunder birds, [[AncientEgypt Egyptian]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhr3Grl_wC0&feature=related mythical beasts]] and even [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvG9mtZKtaQ gremlins and haunted houses]]. |
| 51 | * AllThereInTheManual: Miscellaneous character trivia. Some of it (like Helen's maiden name and Claudia being a LethalChef) never showed up in the series proper, some (like Lester having kids) showed up in very minor ways, and some (like Stephen being in a relationship that ended badly: with Helen: prior to the series proper) played a role. |
| 52 | * AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: |
| 53 | ** Helen stages such a takeover of the ARC in Season 3. |
| 54 | ** Christine Johnson takes over the ARC from Lester three episodes later and forces TheTeam to go on the run, although everything is back to normal three episodes later. |
| 55 | ** The Future Predators have done this to the ARC ''twice''. |
| 56 | * AlwaysABiggerFish: Cutter's saved in the nick of time from the incredibly quick and vicious Future Predator by the even bigger and meaner Gorgonopsid at the end of season 1. |
| 57 | * [[AlwaysSaveTheGirl Always Save Rex]]: Abby repeatedly goes back into danger to save Rex. |
| 58 | * AmbitionIsEvil: Several of the human antagonists have a case of this. |
| 59 | ** Oliver Leek apparently believes that the Anomaly crisis is going to force the world as humanity knows it to change drastically in the near-future, and when that time comes, he wants to be one of the big dogs standing on top. To that end, he's willing to betray the ARC, murder every and any of the heroes whom even ''try'' to get in his way, and he's collected dozens of creatures from the Anomalies with the plans to use them as ''weapons of terror'' against the public. It's also made clear that a big part of Leek's motivations is a lifelong inferiority complex which has driven him to crave respect, fear and reverence from others. |
| 60 | --->"''The Anomalies are unstoppable now, and in the future, money will not mean very much. But knowledge and power will, and I intend to be very, ''very'' powerful!''" |
| 61 | ** Early in Season 3, antagonistic IntrepidReporter Mick Harper is driven by greed and a hunger for career advancement to get in the [=ARC's=] way and to try and get proof of the creatures' existence. |
| 62 | ** It's unclear in the end with Season 3's scatter-brained and hobbled-together overarching storylines precisely ''what'' Christine Johnson wants, but it's clear that she's a civil servant motivated by ambition and a hunger for power where the Anomalies are concerned, and she's willing to [[NatureIsNotAToy toy with Future Predators]] to that end (ironically, the latter leads Helen to believe for a time that ''Johnson'' is responsible for the BadFuture where the Predators have apparently wiped out humanity). |
| 63 | ** Philip Burton in the last two seasons is a radical scientific businessman who [[WellIntentionedExtremist wants to manipulate the Anomalies in order to create a new green fuel source for the world]]. Although Philip apparently has no interest in making any material profits for himself off of selling this green product, it's implied that he's very eager to make a huge name for himself via the intellectual, philanthropic and scientific victories that his plan will entail. Notably, Philip's obsession with realizing his ambitions on his own terms causes his sense of morality to take a backseat multiple times, and it makes him extremely manipulative and distrustful of others sans the ''one'' person whom he should have known far better than to trust ([[spoiler:Helen]]). When Philip realizes how badly he's screwed up, he admits that it was his ego above all else that led him down this path. |
| 64 | * AnimalsLackAttributes: Mostly played straight, but averted with the Mer; the alpha has noticeable small breasts. |
| 65 | * AnimalsNotToScale: Many of the prehistoric creatures are larger than their real-life counterparts for RuleOfCool, though the series did get better at portraying the creatures' size a bit more accurately as time went on. |
| 66 | * AntAssault: The Megopterans are mutant future ants the size of cars that are apparently responsible for the extinction of humanity. Even the Future Predators, the deadliest creatures in the series, [[TheDreaded are afraid of them]]. |
| 67 | * AnyoneCanDie: |
| 68 | ** At least six major characters (depending how you class Claudia's alteration into Jenny and Captain Ryan's status as a major character) and many minor characters died. Taken to the furthest extreme with the death of the ''main character'' in Series 3. |
| 69 | ** By Series 4, only three of the characters remained, with the rest having died. Of the characters introduced later on, Sarah is heavily implied to have died in between Series 3 and 4, Jenny left and Danny got stuck in the past, then ended up wandering through time via anomalies, before also putting in a brief reappearance, have been PutOnABus, probably permanently. Becker survived. |
| 70 | * ApocalypseHow: In the [[BadFuture future]] a couple times. |
| 71 | ** Season 3 features a BadFuture where a ApocalypseHow/Class3A, or possibly a ApocalypseHow/Class2 has occurred seemingly not long after the present. There are no more humans around, and all that remains of our existence are decaying, modern-looking ruins infested by Future Predators and Megopterans, surrounded by forestry. Helen Cutter heavily implies that the apocalypse's fallout actually reaches ApocalypseHow/Class4. The season never bothers to properly wrap this StoryArc up and explain what happened, but Helen claims that humans created the Predators as {{bioweapon beast}}s, and she and other characters separately conclude that if [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters the Predators got loose]], then "humanity never stood a chance." Word of God [[https://primeval.fandom.com/wiki/Anomaly_Research_Centre:Exclusives/Tim_Haines_Questions_about_Primeval here]] somewhat supports this. |
| 72 | ** The last two seasons feature an alternate Bad Future where the Earth is headed towards a ApocalypseHow/Class6 ('''Total''' Extinction), and in the meantime, the only things left alive are [[ApocalypseHow/Class4 some struggling human survivors and a handful of likewise-struggling future creature species]], after a cataclysm that's set to occur in the present ([[spoiler:New Dawn forcibly creating an oversized man-made Anomaly]]) turned the Earth's entire surface into a barren, "sterile" desolation wracked by poisonous wind storms. |
| 73 | %%* ApocalypticLog: In 3x06. |
| 74 | * AppealToInherentNature: An orphaned sabretooth tiger upholds its natural instincts when it comes to the woman who raised it. At least for a while. |
| 75 | * ArcWords: "Who are you people?", often said by innocent bystanders in series 2. |
| 76 | * ArtisticLicenseBiology: The animals depicted in the series usually diverge from their real-life equivalents to varying degrees and for a number of reasons, ranging from simple artistic convenience to making them more dramatic to suit an episode's storyline. |
| 77 | ** Most notably, the ''Dracorex'' looks less like an ornithischian dinosaur and more like a [[DinosaursAreDragons dragon]], with wing-like dorsal crests, exaggerated horns, and no cheeks. |
| 78 | ** While the time for tranquilizer darts to take effect varies, it's usually more than ten minutes, as opposed to less than five seconds. |
| 79 | ** In the first episode, Cutter comes across a human skeleton. He is initially worried that it may be [[ChekhovMIA his missing wife]], but he soon realizes that it's a male skeleton and thus can't be her. Fair enough, but ''the way he checks'' is by ''[[LamarckWasRight counting the number of ribs]]''. Never mind that this is based solely on the [[Literature/TheBible Biblical account]], which even then only affected one individual from who knows how long ago (it was never said to be a ''hereditary'' trait). Checking the shape of the hipbones would be easier. |
| 80 | ** An especially jarring example would be the ''Hesperornis''. It is depicted as featherless, despite the fact that it is a ''bird''. |
| 81 | ** The pterosaurs are all bipedal and lack pycnofibres (although the anurognathids are at least quadrupedal enough to duck under a door in episode 5.5 of the original series, and the ''Pteranodon'' from the spinoff does have a few pycnofibres if you look closely). |
| 82 | * AssholeVictim: The person who dies at the beginning of most of the episodes is usually exaggeratedly unpleasant for the sake of [[BlackComedy comedic effect]]. |
| 83 | %%** The journalists from series 3. |
| 84 | ** Also, Christine Johnson, who was killed by a Future Predator after she was pushed into an anomaly leading into the future, by Helen Cutter. She had orchestrated a military takeover of the ARC, and was previously described by Lester as "like a Velociraptor, only better-dressed". |
| 85 | ** The guy on the beach in the penultimate episode of season 2, who refuses to turn down his loud music when asked, in fact turns it ''up'', and draws a Silurian scorpion right to him. |
| 86 | ** the AlphaBitch who gets eaten by a ''Therocephalian'', though she's something of a zig-zagged example, since the team are quite clearly pissed that a child's been hurt |
| 87 | ** Henry Merchant definitely counts. |
| 88 | ** So does April. |
| 89 | * ATeamFiring: Lester tries to kill a Future Predator with an [=L110A1=] Light Machine Gun. Despite firing an entire belt of ammunition, he only manages to hit it twice. Lester was a Home Office bureaucrat and therefore probably a NonActionGuy.[[note]]Considering the job he was doing though, he might have had light firearms training. However, light firearms don't have the stopping power to take down a Future Predator and Lester's actual combat experience is next to non-existent.[[/note]] The fact that the lights are flickering, he's injured and panicking probably didn't help matters. Also, the Predator is [[SuperSpeed so fast]] that it would be hard to hit it even with that many bullets. |
| 90 | * AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: Lester has done this at least once with ''every single other protagonist''. For one of the best instances of this, take a look at how many times he asks about Abby and Connor in 4x01. |
| 91 | * BadassBookworm: Conner, after he gets [[TookALevelInBadass a few levels of badass]] under his belt. |
| 92 | * BadFuture: |
| 93 | ** In the third season, [[BigBad Helen Cutter]] and later TheTeam discover a future world where humanity is apparently extinct, leaving behind decaying city ruins which are crawling with Future Predators and Megopterans. As the team themselves observe, the architecture and technology in the city indicates the future disaster which wiped out humanity isn't far away from the cast's present at all. Worse, it's implied that [[spoiler:the Anomaly Research Centre themselves might've been the ones responsible for humanity's destruction in this future]]. It's actually not the heroes but [[WellIntentionedExtremist the Big Bad herself]] who tries to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong during this season (but she ultimately resorts to trying to [[spoiler:stop humanity from ever evolving altogether to that end]]). Ultimately, this storyline is dropped and nothing done with it at the end of Season 3 due to the season's frankly messy StoryArc writing. |
| 94 | ** Seasons 4 and 5 feature a very different Bad Future, although the Team don't actually physically visit it until during the SeriesFinale. In the future, human survivors still (barely) exist for the time being, but the future Earth is a completely inhospitable wasteland on the surface where [[ApocalypseHow/Class4 only a handful of humans and future creature species (which mostly live primarily underground now) still exist]], and even ''they'' are still headed towards [[ApocalypseHow/Class6 total biosphere extinction]]. [[spoiler:These two seasons' new team leader Matt Anderson]] is revealed to have been sent to the present from this world to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, having discovered that the extinction event which permanently poisoned the Earth occurred due to something humanity did with the Anomalies in the present [[spoiler:(he eventually discovers that the New Dawn project caused the cataclysm when it created an oversized man-made Anomaly with an infinite lifespan and lost control of it). At the end of the series, Matt succeeds in derailing this future from ever happening]]. |
| 95 | *** Even more worrying, it's implied that this future was caused by Helen in her attempts to prevent the earlier Bad Future. |
| 96 | * BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: |
| 97 | ** While spying on Connor and Abby for Leek, Caroline is downright ''vicious'' to Rex: she responds to him knocking over her plate of salad by sealing the little lizard in the freezer box while Connor and Abby are out, which almost kills him; and she takes a horrid little bit more pleasure in trying to knock him out with a tennis racket than she needs to when she tries to catch and kidnap him for Leek. [[TookALevelInKindness Though Caroline does make a good effort to atone for this after she changes sides]]. |
| 98 | ** In Season 3, Christine Johnson is experimenting on Future Predators taken from an Anomaly with the intent to make {{bioweapon beast}}s out of them, much like what Oliver Leek ''succeeded'' in doing in the previous season. However, what's really presented by the show as this trope is the method that Johnson and Captain Wilder use to execute a Predator that wakes up mid-experimentation: they electrify the room, and the Predator is ''screaming long and hard in agony'' as it dies. Necessary precaution or no, Johnson doesn't even bat an eye while watching the creature die. |
| 99 | ** Somewhat {{downplayed}} with Abby's brother Jack: he doesn't think twice before betting his sister's beloved exotic TeamPet in poker with his friends, and after he loses Rex in the game, he doesn't even bother to tell Abby until the latter realizes on her own that Rex is gone. It's made clear that no-one ever seriously taught Jack that animals have feelings and aren't just objects, as he tries to defend himself by saying "he's only a lizard" before Abby snaps at him. |
| 100 | *** The guy Jack lost Rex to however is more deliberately worse than Jack: whereas Jack only did what he did because he's ''that'' thoughtless and insensitive, his friend apparently lied to Jack that he was temporarily borrowing Rex, before he greedily put Rex up for auction on the internet as an exotic lizard. |
| 101 | ** Season 4, Episode 2 features a woman who, upon finding a strange reptilian-looking animal in her house at night (a baby Kaprosuchus) responds to it snapping its jaws at her by... Getting it under a box? Calling animal control? No -- she responds by ''grabbing the little creature by its tail and flushing it down the toilet, '''alive'''.'' '''''Bitch.''''' This woman has the distinction of possible being a rare case of a one-scene character achieving Scrappy status among the show's fandom. |
| 102 | ** Philip Burton shows signs of this, after Rex's antics almost got Philip killed by his own invention in the previous episode. He uses the incident with the technology as an excuse to have all the [=ARC's=] captive creatures, Rex included, put down, and though he makes it sound like a safety precaution and euthanasia for these lost wild animals which are so far from their homes, it's implied that he's actually doing all this out of internalized spite towards Rex. |
| 103 | * BaldOfEvil: Captain Ross (one of Christine's soldiers) sports one. |
| 104 | * BallsOfSteel: Used in Series 3, Episode 7, where Danny tricks a knight with the old [[LookBehindYou Look Up]] routine, only to discover out his groin is armour-protected. |
| 105 | * BeastInTheBuilding: Happens quite a bit, given that anomalies can open just about anywhere. Examples are a gorgonopsid in a school, raptors in a shopping mall, a ''Giganotosaurus'' in an airport, and a ''Pristichampsus'' in a museum, among many others. |
| 106 | * BeenThereShapedHistory: One plotline in series 3 suggests that creatures coming through anomalies into other times can be the answer to many of the myths and legends of our time - from Prisochampus being mistaken for the Egyptian god Ammut to modern day cryptid sightings like the Yeti and Loch Ness Monster. Pops up again in season 5 when a raptor turns out to be the inspiration for Spring-Heeled Jack. |
| 107 | * BenevolentBoss: Lester, albeit acting like a jerk, but that is just an act. And if you think that the [=ARC=] employees don't know this, take a look at the round of applause he gets after his (forced) TenMinuteRetirement. |
| 108 | * BerserkButton: |
| 109 | ** Lester is normally a very composed guy, who will nevertheless use every means at his disposal to take you down if you either a) usurp his authority or b) threaten his Jag. The former involves political connections and clever subordinates. The latter involves an EMD. An understated bonus point: don't try to usurp his authority while simultaneously implying that the [[TeenGenius genius]] he's a bit of a TeamDad towards should fetch you coffee. |
| 110 | ** Even TeamPet Rex seems to have one of these. Call him "that thing" and he will bite your finger off, as Caroline learned the hard way. |
| 111 | ** Jenny, crash her wedding, and you ''WILL'' pay, as the Hyaenodon found out. |
| 112 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: While she never exactly gets ''serious'', it's probably not a good idea to underestimate [[MissionControl Jess]]. She is able to keep relatively composed while being instructed to dismantle a bomb, she was able to shoot a two-inch beetle from about ten feet away while hallucinating and half-unconscious, and she even managed to, [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome somehow]], go from one side of the [=ARC=] to the other, while running into about four Future Predators, and with an injured Lester, and do all of this without getting so much as a scratch. And she also had to have ''switched guns'' between Point A and Point B, which is important to note because when the whole incident started, ''only one gun in the entire building was loaded''. |
| 113 | * BewareTheSillyOnes Connor is a total GeniusDitz who likes Scooby Doo and video games. He's almost never serious and is repeatedly ridiculed for being a complete idiot, plus guilty of several counts holding the IdiotBall for the episode, but do NOT make him angry. Sometimes when a team member is seriously hurt or thought to be dead, a darker side comes out and he will stop at nothing to either rescue them or get revenge. After he TookALevelInBadass, anyway. |
| 114 | * BigCreepyCrawlies: Many of them, both from the past and the future. There are giant camel spiders and centipedes from the Carboniferous, vicious Silurian whip-scorpions, mutant ants from the future called Megopterans that have wiped out humanity, and burrowing beetles the size of cars. |
| 115 | * Bridal Carry: Becker carries Jess in this manner when she's bitten by the future beetles in 5x3 |
| 116 | * BigBad: |
| 117 | ** Season 1 is the only one that doesn't have a main villain. Season 2 has Oliver Leek, Season 3 has Helen Cutter, Season 4 has Ethan Dobrowski/Patrick Quinn, and Season 5 has Philip Burton. |
| 118 | ** The novel ''Primeval: Fire and Water'' has Tom Samuels. |
| 119 | * BigDamnHeroes: Stephen is pretty much a ''walking'' Big Damn Heroes moment. Even comic relief Connor gets one of these moments in Season 2, episode 4. |
| 120 | ** Connor gets another in Season 3 [[spoiler:when he saves Abby from a Raptor]] |
| 121 | *** Matt and Becker get several of these in Series 3 (Becker) and Series 4 and 5 (Becker and Matt). |
| 122 | * BigDamnKiss:n Season 1 between [[spoiler:Cutter and Claudia]] and in Season 3 between [[spoiler: Connor and Abby.]] |
| 123 | * BigDamnMovie: In an interview on [[Creator/TheBBC Radio 2]] the cast revealed a BigDamnMovie is [[DevelopmentHell in the planning stages]]. |
| 124 | * BigNo: Abby does this in S2, episode 4. Impressively enough, Hannah Spearritt ''actually makes it work.'' |
| 125 | * BirthDeathJuxtaposition: The episode where [[spoiler:Cutter dies]]. |
| 126 | * BitchInSheepsClothing: April |
| 127 | * BizarreAlienSenses: The "future predators" use echolocation, represented on-screen with distorted false-color imagery and concentric, pulsing rings of sonic energy. This is probably due to their bat ancestry. |
| 128 | * BlackComedy: The death that takes place at the beginning of most episodes to introduce the creature is often PlayedForLaughs, often showing the victim screaming exaggeratedly and making them an AssholeVictim. |
| 129 | * BodyHorror |
| 130 | ** The fungus monster. "[[DeadpanSnarker I'll never look at athlete's foot the same way again.]]" |
| 131 | ** The parasite from 1.4, which literally destroys its host from the inside. It's even seen ''crawling under the skin''. |
| 132 | * BondOneLiner: [[AlwaysABiggerFish "Good boy."]] |
| 133 | * BoomHeadshot: The first [[spoiler:Future Predator]] is killed in this way. |
| 134 | * BriefAccentImitation: Well, Jenny ''did'' ask for Cutter's ''exact'' words... |
| 135 | * BringItBackAlive: What they do with animals they can't send back through their anomaly or are forced to kill. |
| 136 | * BritishBrevity: Every series is six or seven episodes long, except series three which went for ten. |
| 137 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: The whole ARC crew according to Lester (and probably Lester too, given his relations with UsefulNotes/{{Whitehall}}). |
| 138 | -->'''Lester:''' You will be dealing with a highly strung and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do. |
| 139 | * TheBusCameBack: |
| 140 | ** Jenny reappears when the team detects an anomaly at her wedding. She is really not happy about that... the Anomaly, I mean, not the team; she doesn't mind seeing them, invites them to the wedding and beats a Hyaenodon with a candlebra. |
| 141 | ** Danny reappears at the end of season 4. |
| 142 | ** Emily reappears to stay in Season 5, Episode 3, after returning to her time period in the Season 4 finale. |
| 143 | * ButtMonkey: |
| 144 | ** Connor... sort of. |
| 145 | ** Jack Maitland |
| 146 | * CainAndAbel: [[spoiler:Danny and Ethan. Because Ethan is Patrick, Danny's long lost brother.]] |
| 147 | * TheCameo: Nigel Marven, star of ''Series/ChasedByDinosaurs'' and ''Series/PrehistoricPark'' has a nice cameo... [[DeathByCameo in which he's eaten by a dino]]. |
| 148 | * CannotSpitItOut: Helen seems to be trying to prevent the end of the world, but instead of explaining that to the ARC team she prefers to drop cryptic hints that serve only to antagonize them and hurt her cause. Probably because [[spoiler:her idea of saving the world involves eradicating humanity.]] |
| 149 | * CarFu: |
| 150 | ** Used by Stephen in the first episode against the Gorgonopsid. It saves Nick and Claudia from becoming monster food, but doesn't actually kill the creature. [[MoreDakka Liberal application of dakka]] is what kills it. |
| 151 | ** Used by Matt in Season 5 against a ''T. rex''. |
| 152 | * CastingGag: Christine Johnson, Lester's bitter arch-rival, was played by (at the time) Ben Miller's real-life wife. |
| 153 | * CatFight: Abby vs. Caroline toward the end of Season 2 |
| 154 | ** Averted slightly in that they are both well trained martial artists and it's a genuinely dangerous fight. |
| 155 | * CelebrityParadox: The S Club 7 song "Don't Stop Movin" is heard in the first episode of Series 4, thus creating the possibility that Creator/HannahSpearitt exists in this universe. |
| 156 | * CharacterDevelopment: |
| 157 | ** Most notably Lester who goes from SmugSnake to BenevolentBoss and walking Crowning Moment of Sarcasm as the series progresses. |
| 158 | ** Also Abby has undergone a transformation into an ActionGirl, and Connor is [[TookALevelInBadass Taking a Level in Badass]], on an installment plan. |
| 159 | * TheCharmer: Danny attempts to be this to Jenny. Unfortunately for him it doesn't work. |
| 160 | * ChekhovsGun: The [[spoiler:numbers on the artifact]]. |
| 161 | * ChekhovMIA |
| 162 | ** Helen Cutter at first. |
| 163 | ** In season 4 [[spoiler:Danny's long lost brother returns (as does Danny himself)]] |
| 164 | * CliffHanger |
| 165 | ** Season 1 ends with the disappearance of Claudia. |
| 166 | ** Season 2 ends with Helen creating an army of clones. |
| 167 | ** Season 3 ends with [[spoiler:Connor and Abby stuck up a tree in the Cretaceous, Danny in the Rift Valley at the Dawn of Humanity, and Sarah [[UnspokenPlanGuarantee having a plan]] to save them]]. |
| 168 | ** Season 4 ends with Matt leaving [[spoiler:the anomaly to Victorian London (to which he had sent Emily back through)]] to plan his next move to save the future while Philip takes Connor into his automobile to discuss Connor's theory of convergence. |
| 169 | ** Season 5 ends with [[spoiler:Matt being warned by a battered future version of himself that he has to "go back".]] [[LeftHanging A very bad place to leave it.]] |
| 170 | * CombatPragmatist: Danny. However HeyYouHaymaker / GroinAttack fails against knight in plate armor. |
| 171 | * ConspiracyTheorist: Connor's friends Tom and Duncan, who believe the stuff about the Freemasons, CIA and Illuminati. Ironically, they discover their friend Connor is indeed part of a GovernmentConspiracy, but they (Tom in particular when suffering aggression-inducing ParasiticHorror) don't believe it's a BenevolentConspiracy and think it involves bio-weapon parasites that make people {{Brainwashed}}. They actually think they can [[ToUnmasqueTheWorld expose it]] (they don't have much of a hope). |
| 172 | * ContainerMaze: In episode 4.2, featuring an extended face-off against a Kaprosuchus. |
| 173 | * ContinuityNod: In 5x05, after dealing with a ''T. rex'', Becker makes a comment about the [=EMDs=] actually being able to take one down. In the first episode of season four, while arguing with Matt over the effectiveness of [=EMDs=], Matt said that they could take down a fully-grown tyrannosaur. |
| 174 | * [[CoolGate Cool Anomaly]]: It looks like shattered glass and is very bad luck. |
| 175 | * CoolCar: In Season 3, the anomaly appeared at Racetrack full of [[http://men.style.com/theupgrader/gear/sport-coupes/Lotus-Exige-S Lotus Exige]]s. |
| 176 | * CoolVsAwesome: The ''spectacular'' battle between the Gorgonopsid and Future Predator, top killers of two very different eras, at the end of season 1. |
| 177 | * CowardlyLion: Connor, before beginning his installment course in badass. |
| 178 | * DaChief: Lester slips into it every so often. |
| 179 | * DeadpanSnarker |
| 180 | ** Lester gets the all best lines in the show. |
| 181 | ** Cutter and Becker have had their moments as well, but Lester is still the king of this trope. |
| 182 | ** Connor develops a tendency to do this under stress. |
| 183 | --->'''Connor:''' That's funny Matt, I thought we could all just stick our hands out the portholes and paddle back to the 21st century. |
| 184 | * ADeathInTheLimelight: Poor Tom... |
| 185 | * DeathOfAChild: A season 4 episode has a pack of prehistoric creatures loose in a school during Saturday detention. A parent who sent their child off to do detention in an empty school and find out that there is some kind of wild animal or dangerous person on the loose. To make matters worse, the teacher is the first to die leaving the students alone. To make matters even worse [[spoiler: one of the children wanders off and gets eaten before the team can save her]]. |
| 186 | * DeathWorld: Pretty much every Anomaly is almost guaranteed to spit out something large and dangerous, whether it's a meat-eating predator, a deadly contagion, or a frightened giant herbivore. Several of the Anomalies that the team have gone through have indeed had landscapes that seem almost ''determined'' to be hostile to humans: the Cretaceous inlet in Season 1 is home to gigantic mosasaurs and to rooks of ''Hesperornis'' that'll kill a man if he gets too close, the Silurian's lower oxygen content and desertified landscape will surely weaken and eventually kill you if the gigantic scorpions or the lack of inland water sources don't, and animals in the future from bats to marine primates to ''mold'' have evolved into ferocious people-killers. |
| 187 | * DemotedToDragon: Defied by Helen Cutter in Season Two. She serves Oliver Leek as part of a deal, but her psychotic disposition makes pretty clear she wears the pants regardless. When he finally makes his power play and [[TheDogBitesBack puts Helen in her place]], she near immediately [[EnemyMine switches sides]] to avoid playing the trope straight. |
| 188 | * DiggingHerselfDeeper: Jess discussing Becker's relationship status in episode 4x02. |
| 189 | * DinosaursAreDragons: The Dracorex was understandably mistaken for a dragon when it wandered through medieval England. |
| 190 | * DiscoveringYourOwnDeadBody: Series 1 has an especially grim example. [[spoiler:During a trip to the Permian era in the first episode, Nick and Captain Ryan discover a decomposed human skeleton among the remains of a destroyed human camp, but are unable to identify it before they have to return to their own time. In the Series 1 finale, they unknowingly travel a few years further back in time and begin to realize they're part of a StableTimeLoop, before their camp is attacked by a future predator and Captain Ryan is killed. During his final moments, the captain realizes that the body they found on their first adventure was his own future corpse, and his fate has already been sealed the entire time since then.]] |
| 191 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: A parasite that causes its host to become [[Film/TwentyEightDaysLater very aggressive, spreads itself through bites and alters the colour of their eyes?]] Add on the photosensitive factor, and there's [[OurVampiresAreDifferent another thing it (or rather, its host) resembles...]] |
| 192 | * DragonsVersusKnights: Subverted in Episode 3.7, A dinosaur that resembles a dragon (which was later nicknamed ''Princess'') ends up in medieval England before being attacked and pursued through another anomaly into the 21st century by a knight. |
| 193 | * DroppedABridgeOnHim: As befits an AnyoneCanDie show, ''Primeval'' likes dropping bridges. |
| 194 | ** The most egregious example so far is probably Sarah, who was last seen saying she had "a plan" to get Connor and Abby back from the past. A year later, they get back on their own, to discover she died offscreen at some point, apparently in some undescribed attempt to save them. [[AntiClimax Yeah.]] As it turns out, her plan was to go to the future and find Abby, Connor and Danny... great idea! You die. In a car. Mauled by a predator, while crying out for Becker... |
| 195 | * TheDulcineaEffect: Emily has one on Matt. |
| 196 | * DyingToBeReplaced: [[spoiler:Nick Cutter]] bites it to make way for [[spoiler:Danny Quinn]] early in Season 3. |
| 197 | * DyingDeclarationOfLove |
| 198 | ** Matt and Emily, crosses "Now or Never Kiss". |
| 199 | ** Claudia and Nick in series 1. |
| 200 | * DyingRace: Humanity in Matt's BadFuture -- along with all the future creatures and pretty much all life that hasn't already gone extinct. Matt and several other humans were sent back in time to try and SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong in a last-ditch effort to save the Earth. |
| 201 | * EatenAlive: Naturally a very common fate in a series featuring hostile creatures from across Earth's history. Vartiations include DevouredByTheHorde, being swallowed in one or two chomps, and old-fashioned being ripped to shreds (with a GoryDiscretionShot). |
| 202 | * EmbarrassingFirstName: When asked by a fan, [[WordOfGod ITV revealed that]] Captain Becker's first name is [[spoiler:Hilary]]. |
| 203 | * EmbarrassingMiddleName: {{Word of God}} is that Lester's middle name is Peregrine. |
| 204 | * EndangeredSpecies: Until-recently-extinct species. Also, the dodo birds were endangered in the time they came from. |
| 205 | * EngineeredPublicConfession: [[spoiler:Lester and Becker end Christine Johnson's takeover of the ARC by recording her less-than-complimentary comments about the Minister of Defence.]] |
| 206 | * EurekaMoment: Sarah talking Egyptology lets Cutter figure how to plot anomalies appearances, or at least begin to. |
| 207 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: "All right, Leek. [[YourLittleDismissiveDiminutive You've had your nasty little joke]]." This comes from Helen Cutter, of all people. |
| 208 | ** One of the mercenaries in Series 2 Episode 5 is horrified at The Cleaner refusing to help a girl who's lost in the Silurian desert. |
| 209 | * EvilChancellor: In many ways, this is Leek's role in Season 2. |
| 210 | * EvilGloating |
| 211 | ** Done by Leek to Lester in Season 2 with a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. Of course, Lester takes out Leek's Future Predator assassin with a mammoth, so that kinda backfired. |
| 212 | ** In in the SeasonFinale of Season 3 [[spoiler:Helen gives Danny a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech and MotiveRant that is cut short by a Velociraptor just as she reaches the gloating stage]]. |
| 213 | * EvilutionaryBiologist: [[spoiler:Helen]] |
| 214 | * ExactEavesDropping: Done enough times it is practically the preferred way of getting information. |
| 215 | * ExpandedUniverse: There are four ''Primeval'' novels based on the TV series. The novels are canon, and each one is set between two episodes of the TV series. |
| 216 | * ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Helen between Seasons 1 and 2, Nick between 2 and 3, and Abby between 3 and 4. |
| 217 | * ExtraStrengthMasquerade: The series veered into this pretty soon with either the mammoth on the (crowded) motorway, the Egyptian prehistoric crocodile on the rampage in central London, or at the very latest the prehistoric rhino stampede over a camp ground. |
| 218 | * ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation: The anomaly detector in the ARC. |
| 219 | * FaceHeelTurn: During Christine's takeover of the ARC, Becker switches sides and becomes her loyal soldier. [[spoiler:Or at least she thinks he does, in reality he is TheMole for Lester]]. |
| 220 | * FacePalm: Abby does this right after Connor throws dirt in the eyes of a raptor in the last episode of series three. "That was a stupid idea; I've just aggravated him!" |
| 221 | * FacingTheBulletsOneLiner |
| 222 | ** "Oh, and one last thing? You really are a tiresome little man." Of course, Lester doesn't actually die, but still. |
| 223 | ** [[spoiler:Cutter]]'s death. "You know what, Helen? You're not as smart as I thought you were..." (Beat, then Helen pulls the trigger; even ''SHE'' is crying.) Note, these aren't actually his last lines, (which were, "Tell Claudia Brown ... oh, never mind ..."), as he had a conversation with Connor, but his last lines before being shot. |
| 224 | * {{Fanservice}} |
| 225 | ** Abby wanders around her apartment in her underwear because she needs to keep the temperature on high for her pet prehistoric lizard. Riiiiight. We stopped seeing this in Season 2 (after the actress found out what a big deal was made over what she thought would be just a short scene). |
| 226 | ** Then Helen took over that role. [[spoiler:Sans any underwear at all]]. |
| 227 | ** Most of Abby's regular outfits qualify though, and her kickboxing practice affords many more opportunities. |
| 228 | ** Jenny's outfits in series 2 and 3 as well as her very short dress in series 4. |
| 229 | ** For the ladies, Becker taking his shirt off towards the end of 4.04. |
| 230 | ** Same goes for Connor, three episodes earlier. |
| 231 | ** Actually 4.04 featured BOTH Matt AND Becker shirtless. (And the extent of Matt's state of undress is left to the audience to ponder.) |
| 232 | * FantasticRomance |
| 233 | ** For a show making use of TimeTravel and with a few {{Official Couple}}s§, it's kinda strange that Matt and Emily in S4/5 is the first example. He's from the [[BadFuture far future]], she's from Victorian London, and they meet in the 21st century. It's all a bit "Time Traveller's Wife" isn't it? |
| 234 | ** One could argue the UST between Cutter and Jenny in Series 2 was a FantasticRomance. It's certainly not ''normal'' for the main source of angst in a relationship to be that one party can't tell whether the other party looks lovingly at her because he actually loves her or whether it's just because she reminds him of the girl he loved in a timeline that he accidentally destroyed by changing the past. |
| 235 | * FeatheredFiend: The phorusrachids, and to a lesser extent, the raptors, which did have some light feathers, which you will notice, if you look closely enough. ''Hesperornis'' also counts, if it weren't for the fact it is depicted as featherless. Also, the dodo bird (albeit only [[spoiler:when infected with a fast-acting and deadly parasite]]). |
| 236 | * FesteringFungus: The Future Fungus in Series 3 grows on ''people'' if they inhale its spores or even so much as touch it. It basically eats the infected, then turns the mold-eaten husk into a primal MushroomMan who spreads the fungus further. |
| 237 | * FishOutOfTemporalWater |
| 238 | ** Sir William in S3, mistaking modern London for Hell. Easy mistake to make, though. Not that it breaks his spirit much as he promptly shows a few minutes later as he scares the shit out of some allegedly badass bikers in a bar, forcing them to cower under the table. |
| 239 | ** Emily, a lady from the Victorian era, in modern London in S4. Her and Ethan also reference groups of time-displaced humans who wander through anomalies and manage to be every variant of FishOutOfTemporalWater at once. However, Emily, since she was from a time closer to our own, and a time that wasn't as superstitious as the Middle Ages, became accustomed to life in the 21st century more easily than De Mornay did. |
| 240 | ** [[spoiler:Subverted with Ethan. He's thought to be from the past like Emily, and even she thinks he's from an era without technology - then he turns out to be able to work a car perfectly when he returns to the present, cluing her in he's from modern times]]. |
| 241 | * {{Flanderization}} |
| 242 | ** James Lester originally was more serious while making a few sarcastic comments in Series 1. In Series 2 and 3, his sarcasm and comedy was a bit more obvious, but in Series 4 and 5, he is a complete goof. |
| 243 | ** In Series 5, Abby's tendancy to keep cool in tough situations disappears. |
| 244 | ** Connor was [[TheSmartGuy always very intelligent]], though his intelligence was exaggerated in the fourth and fifth series, to the point where he can even [[spoiler:create machines that can ''open anomalies''.]] |
| 245 | ** Helen has also grown more psychotic as the series progresses. |
| 246 | ** It could be argued that her psyche is simply degrading, though, and she just does keep getting crazier. |
| 247 | * {{Flynning}}: Danny and a couple of iron bars + Knight with broadsword = {{Flynning}} in large quantities. |
| 248 | * FriendsRentControl: Matt's father Gideon is a refugee from a dystopian future who doesn't seem to have a job in the 21st century, yet is somehow able to afford a mansion and servants. |
| 249 | ** From the uniform of the person working there, it could be that he was put in a senior centre or hospice as the uniform seems to be healthcare oriented |
| 250 | * FullBodyDisguise: A hologram that obscures the face with a totally different one, as used by Eve/Helen. |
| 251 | * FunWithAcronyms: |
| 252 | -->'''Jenny:''' I have to get back to the ARC.\ |
| 253 | '''Sarah:''' The Ark?\ |
| 254 | '''Connor:''' Not [[Literature/TheBible that one.]] |
| 255 | * GallowsHumor: |
| 256 | -->'''Jenny:''' There was an eyewitness: a young woman in the museum.\ |
| 257 | '''Lester:''' Well, you know, have her shot and dispose of her body discreetly. ''[as he's leaving]'' [[RefugeInAudacity Just kidding.]] |
| 258 | * GeniusBruiser: Nick Cutter |
| 259 | * GenreBlindness: |
| 260 | -->'''Lester:''' This isn't over, Christine.\ |
| 261 | '''Christine:''' When people say that James, it usually is. |
| 262 | * GenreSavvy: |
| 263 | -->'''Danny:''' We should split up.\ |
| 264 | '''Connor:''' ''Split up?'' I'm not splitting up! Have you not seen the horror movies? |
| 265 | * GettingHotInHere: Abby keeps her flat at high temperatures during Season 1 for Rex's comfort, so she goes around in her underwear (even when she has company...). This is also Helen's excuse for frequently stripping--she travels in time periods with higher temperatures than the present day. |
| 266 | * GiantFlyer: Giant Flying Praying Mantis' from the future in Season 3 and the Pteranodon in Season 1. Also subverted the predatory subtrope by not having the big ''Pteranodon'' as the human killer, [[spoiler:but small, probably-insectivorous ''Anurognathus'']]. In the Canadian series, the species of ''Pteranodon'' featured was deadly during its mating season. |
| 267 | * GoneHorriblyRight: Phillip's Security Lockdown program. It locks down very well... UN-locking, however... |
| 268 | * GoodAnimalsEvilAnimals: Animals from the past vary from [[NonMaliciousMonster Non-Malicious Monsters]] who merely strike out in panic at their new environment to ruthless carnivores, whereas creatures from the future appear to be universally dangerous towards humans. [[note]]This is partly that they can't kill creatures from the past without [[ButterflyOfDoom risking the present]] but creatures from the future are "downstream" and thus fair game[[/note]]. |
| 269 | * GovernmentConspiracy: Tossed around a few times. |
| 270 | ** Subverted in Season 2. [[spoiler:Leek wasn't stockpiling creatures on behalf of the British government, he was just creating a small conspiracy ring ''within'' the ARC and the government]]. |
| 271 | ** Done a little more deliberately in Season 3 with [[spoiler:Christine Johnson's plan to take over the ARC and gain power]]. |
| 272 | ** Finally played straight in a spin-off book of all things. ''Primeval: Fire and Water'' has [[spoiler:a conspiracy within the government to use anomalies to go back in time and get oil from the past, using an oil refinery in South Africa as a front]]. |
| 273 | * GuardingThePortal: The team tries to guard the anomalies to prevent pre-historic creatures from passing through, or contain them if they do. The problem is that the anomalies tend to form in random places and may be there for some time before anybody notices. |
| 274 | * HandBehindHead: Connor and, lately, Abby seem quite fond of this. |
| 275 | * HappyEndingOverride: Lester fought against Christine's plans in Series 3 to insist that the ARC team be replaced with military-trained soldiers. In Series 4, we learn that he put the same rule in place himself after Connor, Abby and Danny got stuck in the past. Needless to say, Connor and Abby were not pleased when they got back. |
| 276 | * HappyPlace: Abby encourages Connor to find his [[spoiler:when they're both stuck in a Cretaceous tree.]] She suggests a beach and Connor runs with the idea: He starts with the beach, adds Abby to the HappyPlace, makes the water warm, and then puts Abby in a bikini. She's mildly amused, while we get pissed cause we know we're never going to see it. |
| 277 | * HeadphonesEqualIsolation: In the pilot and 3x01. |
| 278 | * HeelFaceTurn |
| 279 | ** Helen flirts with this trope throughout Season 3 and [[spoiler:even briefly plays it straight to save some campers from stampeding prehistoric rhinos]], but in the end [[spoiler:it's all a fake as virtually all the other spoiler tags on this page confirm]]. |
| 280 | ** Played straight with [[spoiler:Caroline]]. |
| 281 | * HerbivoresAreFriendly: For the most part. They're just as prone to panicking as any animals, though, which can cause them to become violent at times. The ''Dracorex'' and ''Pachycephalosaurus'' are prime examples. |
| 282 | * TheHeroDies: [[spoiler: Cutter, the main protagonist of the first two seasons, is killed off early in Season 3.]] |
| 283 | * HeroicBSOD: The time-displaced Sir William has one during the episode with the Dracorex during which he briefly becomes a DeathSeeker. [[spoiler:He is redeemed by ThePowerOfLove though (and a StableTimeLoop)]]. |
| 284 | * HeroicSacrifice: |
| 285 | ** [[spoiler:Stephen]] in the finale of Season 2. |
| 286 | ** Season 3 finale: [[spoiler:Connor is prepared to pull one of these to save Abby, but {{Indy Ploy}}s his way out of it]]. |
| 287 | ** Becker a couple of episodes earlier, but he's NotQuiteDead. |
| 288 | ** [[spoiler:Phillip]] tries to perform one at the end of Series 5, but it isn't enough. |
| 289 | ** [[spoiler:Matt riding off into an apocalyptic anomaly]]. Fortunately for him, it wasn't actually lethal. |
| 290 | * HeroStoleMyBike: In the first episode of Season 2. |
| 291 | * HighHeelFaceTurn: A particularly jarring example in Caroline who was clearly depicted as amoral and even outright sadistic (including stuffing Rex into a fridge) but then suddenly developed sympathetic qualities. |
| 292 | * HijackedByGanon: Invoked by Carter in season 2 when a "Cleaner" mook is killed while infiltrating the ARC. He states that it has to be Helen, and that it's always Helen. And Carter's got a point: a lot of the time, troubles can be traced back to Helen one way or another. |
| 293 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:Oliver Leek,]] the villain of series 2, is [[spoiler:killed by his own army of mind-controlled Future Predators after the mind-control device is broken]]. |
| 294 | * HolyBacklight: When Emily goes back through the anomaly in series four. |
| 295 | * HoneyTrap: Caroline for Connor in season two. (She's working for Leek.) |
| 296 | * HonorableElephant: A Columbian mammoth once saves James Lester's life. |
| 297 | * HonorBeforeReason: Nick Cutter |
| 298 | * HopeSpot: Brutally exploited in the episode with the mammoth. A woman is in her wrecked car with her terrified young child, and her feet are trapped under the dashboard. A young man appears, tells her he has a crowbar in his vehicle, and promises to come right back with it and help her get free... oops, he just got gored to death right in front of her. |
| 299 | * HorribleJudgeOfCharacter |
| 300 | ** Stephen. What else can you say about a man who trusts Helen Cutter? |
| 301 | ** Nick is a minor example of this, at first. He pretty quickly stops trusting her. |
| 302 | ** [[spoiler:Connor in Series 4-5. Stops trusting him [Philip] in episode 4 of series 5.]] |
| 303 | ** [[spoiler:And Philip himself is yet another guy who trusted Helen.]] |
| 304 | * HospitalHottie: Abby is a qualified vet. |
| 305 | * HumansAreTheRealMonsters: [[spoiler:Which is why Helen wants to kill us all.]] |
| 306 | ** This is played with in Season 3 episode 7, when a Dracorex that has ended up in medieval England ends up in the present with the team having to protect the wounded dinosaur from the superstitious knight that had pursued it through the anomaly. However, he is ultimately a good, if guilt-ridden and misguided man and parts with the team on friendly terms, thanking them for giving him peace. |
| 307 | * ICallItVera: [[spoiler:Danny's stick is called "Molly"]]. Not sure if he's still sane; he's been gone almost two years... |
| 308 | * IdenticalStranger: Jenny Lewis and Claudia Brown. Justified by InSpiteOfANail. |
| 309 | * IdiotBall: The defining plot point for almost any given episode. |
| 310 | ** Stephen is saddled with a particularly JustForFun/{{egregious}} one in Season 2. (See HorribleJudgeOfCharacter.) |
| 311 | ** Connor in Series 5. [[spoiler:He's working on ''creating'' Anomalies... despite knowing that they are in some way tied to both the Artifact and Future Arc he himself witnessed in Series 3. Well done Connor, you probably just took everyone one step further to whatever accident caused them to appear through history ''in the first place!'']] |
| 312 | ** Special mention should go to the idiot in the fungus infection episode who, stumbling back through an anomaly after being infected, choking and unable to speak, [[GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity calls his boss]] instead of the local emergency number. |
| 313 | * ImDyingPleaseTakeMyMacGuffin: Passed over from [[spoiler:Nick to Connor]]. |
| 314 | * ImprobableAge: Jess is just 19 and holds an vital post in the super secret ARC. It's said that she's a superb team co-ordinator but while she certainly seems capable enough she hasn't displayed the sort of [[TeenGenius brillance]] that would justify someone so young holding a position like hers. In fairness she does seem excellent at keeping an eye on the ARC operatives and making important connections. 5x05 shows us that she's [[spoiler:really, ''really'' good at what she does. She sets up multiple tactical teams in minutes and coordinates all of them, only losing her cool briefly. She's quickly talked out of her panic by James "AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther" Lester, and goes right back to work.]] |
| 315 | * ImprovisedWeapon |
| 316 | ** Connor does this a lot. |
| 317 | ** He's not the only one. Golf club, anyone? |
| 318 | --->'''Claudia:''' [[BondOneLiner Hole in one!]] |
| 319 | ** Once again, Lester and the mammoth count. Sort of. |
| 320 | ** I think a 15-ton charging mammoth with 10-foot tusks is just as, if not more, an effective weapon than any firearm, especially considering that Future Predators seem fast enough to dodge bullets. |
| 321 | * IndyHatRoll: Connor does one (sans going back for anything) in S2, episode 1. |
| 322 | * IndyPloy: Several, but Danny Quinn [[spoiler:hijacking a helicopter to lead the Giganotosaurus back into the anomaly]] is the most well-known example. Hell, virtually any and all episodes with Danny Quinn in them. He carries this trope in his pocket. |
| 323 | * ImprobableInfantSurvival: Children and cute animals don't die. Even if they wander into the Silurian or are directly in the path of a Columbian mammoth. [[spoiler:Subverted in Season 4. Therocephalians are loose in a school, and one of them kills a teen before Matt and Becker can save her.]] |
| 324 | * InnocuouslyImportantEpisode |
| 325 | ** Season 3 episode 7 re-introduces the concept of a [[spoiler:StableTimeLoop with Sir William's grave, and the finale takes it to its logical conclusion with the fossil records in the rift valley]]. |
| 326 | ** Episode 2 of series 5 directly references what happened to Emily when she returned to the 1860s, but also indirectly references the murder spree of "Spring Heel Jack" at the same time. Both these things are hugely important in episode 3. |
| 327 | * InspectorJavert: Danny is introduced as one of these. He gets better. |
| 328 | * InSpiteOfANail: Leaving baby Future Predators in the past specifically switches Claudia Brown with Jenny Lewis, introduces Oliver, and gives the team a new home base? Okay. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] repeatedly. Early on, Stephen points out how odd it is that so little changed, as do several other characters (including Cutter) later on. Toward the end of Season 2, it's suggested that the sheer implausibility of it all is significant to the understanding of the Anomalies. |
| 329 | ** There were also other things that changed, or may have, that were never mentioned. Abby has a different apartment, no longer walks around in her underwear, and seemed to have no romantic feelings for Stephen. Connor seems a bit more shy: compared to him asking Abby for a kiss is Series 1: and his friends are never mentioned, which could imply he never had them [[spoiler:One of them (ie, the surviving one) pops up in 4.2]]. His taste in clothing also changes as instead of button downs and sweaters/sweater vests, he wears mostly tee shirts, hoodies, and button vests. Also, instead of being a dinosaur expert, he instead becomes a computer genius. Lester's suits are a lot less tacky, and he's no longer a knight (check the credits) or an asshole. There are other things as well (the gorgonopsid never died, the scutosarus never returned to its time, etc.). |
| 330 | * IntrepidReporter: Mick Harper is an antagonist example who wants ToUnmasqueTheWorld during his short tenure on the show. |
| 331 | * IrrelevantSideQuest: In the Season 3 finale, [[spoiler:the second anomaly at Christine's former HQ is a RedHerring to justify the team splitting up and Becker and Sarah staying behind.]] |
| 332 | * ItsAllMyFault: |
| 333 | ** Cutter tends towards this. It's implied he feels this way about Claudia Brown ending up RetGone, and he tells Connor the latter's right to blame him when they believe Abby has been killed by a creature in Episode 10. After [[spoiler:Stephen]]'s death, Cutter admits in the Season 3 premiere when told "It's not your fault" that he knows Helen is to blame but still can't help feeling somewhat responsible. |
| 334 | ** Connor also does this sometimes. In Episode 4, he briefly declares Tom's death happened because he was involved with TheTeam. He feels this way about the horrific BadFuture in Season 5 after he [[spoiler:aided Philip's New Dawn project]]. Compounding his guilt is that he should've known better than to put Philip's hubris on a pedestal, but instead he ended up betraying everything that Cutter ever believed in without realizing it. |
| 335 | ** Becker feels responsible for TheTeam (which is his job, but it also goes a bit deeper than that), and after [[spoiler:Sarah's death and the disappearances of most of the team]], it's implied he's still carrying around guilt for feeling he was unable to do that job. |
| 336 | * ItsQuietTooQuiet |
| 337 | ** In episode 1.5, Abby notes that they can't hear any birdsong... out in the country... on a clear day. |
| 338 | ** "Where are all the predators?" in Season 3. |
| 339 | * IveNeverSeenAnythingLikeThisBefore: |
| 340 | ** In Episode 6, Connor says the Home Office's science lab said this when they identified a blood sample from the MonsterOfTheWeek as possessing extremely-scrambled bat-like DNA. |
| 341 | ** Connor says as much in Series 2, Episode 6 regarding the neural clamps used on the Future Predators. |
| 342 | * {{Jerkass}}: Leek, Christine, and Helen. Jack Maitland, a little, albietly unintentionally in 3.8 as he's not sad about Becker's apparent Death. |
| 343 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Both Cutter and Lester are examples of this trope. They aren't expressly unlikable people, just a bit acerbic. Cutter seems a mild example of a JerkassWoobie later on in the series. |
| 344 | * JumpedAtTheCall: Connor did this in Season 1. After learning about the existence of the anomalies, Danny went out of his way to pester the ARC crew until they let him join. |
| 345 | * KarmicDeath: Several. |
| 346 | ** Oliver Leek is torn apart by [[spoiler:the same Future Predator he had fitted with neural clamps when they're freed from his control, in an instance of TheDogBitesBack]]. Adding to this trope, he's killed in the same "dinner theatre" room where earlier, he attempted to have TheTeam and Caroline fed to a Smilodon ForTheEvulz. |
| 347 | ** Mick Harper and his boss Katherine Kavanagh wanted ToUnmasqueTheWorld for news profit, and they end up getting killed by one of the creatures they attempt to expose to the world. In Kavanagh's case, her death occurs precisely because she (apparently in the midst of a VillainousBreakdown) cared more about filming the Giganotosaurus that's rampaging ''towards her'' than about saving her own life. |
| 348 | ** Similarly to Leek, Christine is killed by [[spoiler:a Future Predator, a species which she also attempted to control for selfish purposes]]. |
| 349 | ** [[spoiler:Ray Lennon]] in Episode 4.5 set the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Labyrinthodont]] loose on more than one person when they got close to discovering the family's smuggling operation, and in the end he and his mother get EatenAlive by the same creature. Adding to this, the duo's dumping of fuel was severely injuring the offspring of the Labyrinthodont that killed them. |
| 350 | ** [[spoiler:Henry Merchant]] scorns Emily's stories and "unwomanly" behavior and outright dismisses the idea that SpringHeeledJack is anything other than a mortal man, and the same creature ultimately kills him. Furthermore, he could have avoided his death if he'd let Emily flee (since she no longer wnated to be with him) instead of pursuing her. |
| 351 | ** PlayedWith by Philip Burton, who [[spoiler:has a HeelRealization and makes a SenselessSacrifice]], being killed by the same artificial Anomaly that he created. |
| 352 | * KickTheDog: |
| 353 | ** Leek attempting to feed most of TheTeam and Caroline to a Smilodon as "dinner theatre" while Cutter helplessly has to watch. |
| 354 | ** Caroline's treatment of [[spoiler:Rex]]. She somewhat redeems herself of this in the SeasonFinale when they interact following Caroline's HeelRealization. |
| 355 | ** A presumably unintentional one, but in Episode 2 of Season 4, a woman finds a small reptile-like creature in her house at night. Being TooDumbToLive, she tries to pick up the wild animal with visibly sharp teeth, and it bites at her. She responds to this how? Trap it under a box? Call the RSPCA? Of course not. She grabs the little thing and flushes it down the toilet. ''Bitch.'' Hasn't she ever heard those SewerGator legends? |
| 356 | * KillAllHumans: [[spoiler:What Helen is really up to.]] [[CharacterizationMarchesOn In Season 3,at least]]. |
| 357 | * KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:So far, Cutter, Stephen, Helen, Ryan, Sarah, and a whole host of minor characters.]] |
| 358 | * KillerBunny |
| 359 | ** In a way, the hyaenodon pups. They are absolutely adorable, but wherever they are, their ferocious parents can't be far behind. However, the worst the pups themselves do is playfully tug at Connor's ankles. |
| 360 | ** Also, the juvenile raptors from the final episode of season 3. In the words of Danny Quinn: "They don't look too bad". Really, Danny? Really? In case you didn't notice, they were eating one of their own pack mates! |
| 361 | * KillItWithFire: Subverted, as the fungus monster [[FeedItWithFire reproduces faster when exposed to high temperatures.]] "DO NOT USE THE FLAMETHROWERS!" |
| 362 | * KillItWithIce: Works on the fungus monster. ''[[HoistByHisOwnPetard Almost]]'' [[HoistByHisOwnPetard works on Connor]]. [[OnlyMostlyDead Sorta works on Jenny]]. Oddly no-one thought of fungicides or even bleach. |
| 363 | * KnightTemplar: A literal one in Sir William's case. A straighter example of this trope in the case of [[spoiler:Helen Cutter]], who eventually ends up as a NietzscheWannabe. |
| 364 | * LampreyMouth: The giant pre-Cambrian worms. |
| 365 | * TheLancer: Stephen. Abby occasionally slips into this trope, too. Danny also until he's put in charge. |
| 366 | * LandMineGoesClick: Used to blow up a [[FeatheredFiend phorusrachid]], as well as [[spoiler:Captain Ross]]. |
| 367 | * LastNameBasis: Nick Cutter, James Lester, Oliver Leek, and both Captains. Each of these have exceptions. Understandable in the case of Becker, given that [[spoiler:his first name is Hilary]]. |
| 368 | * LastSecondWordSwap: "Smells like... something rotten." |
| 369 | * LingerieScene: |
| 370 | ** In the first series, Abby has to keep her flat very warm for the prehistoric lizard she is keeping as a pet, so at home she usually wears just her camisole and knickers. |
| 371 | ** When staying at Abby's flat, Connor also tried stripping down to his undershirt and boxers. This was played more for comedy than for FanService. |
| 372 | * LizardFolk: Episode 4.3 features Treecreepers, apelike theropod dinosaurs. They are implied to be at least semi-sentient, as they travel in family groups and communicate in primate-like hooting and chittering. |
| 373 | * LoopholeAbuse: How Lester keeps Connor and Abby in ARC employment after they return in season 4. [[GrandfatherClause Since they were employed before the military background rule was implemented]], and technically never quit, it doesn't affect them. |
| 374 | * LostHimInACardGame: Not a person, but TeamPet Rex, lost by Abby's brother in a poker game. |
| 375 | * LoveableRogue: Danny Quinn |
| 376 | * LoveInterest: Claudia to Cutter, then Jenny to Cutter; Abby to Connor; Emily to Matt; Becker to Jess. |
| 377 | * MacGuffin: The Artifact. |
| 378 | * MacGyvering: [[spoiler:Fixing Helen's OmniscientDatabase with torch batteries, amongst other things.]] |
| 379 | * MamaBear |
| 380 | ** Mama Embolotherium in this case. |
| 381 | ** Abby's relationship with Rex sorta counts, too. |
| 382 | * ManipulativeBastard: Oliver Leek |
| 383 | * {{Masquerade}}: The team uphold it the best they can, but you can't help but wonder when it's going to come apart at the seams. Mammoth -- hu, escaped large circus elephant on the M25, anyone? |
| 384 | * MeanwhileInTheFuture: Mostly averted. |
| 385 | ** A notable exception is in season 4 episode 3, where a creature is shown stalking Matt in the Cretaceous after he goes into an anomaly, while repeatedly cutting to the present where it shows Connor and Abby arguing with Becker over whether they should open it to let him out. |
| 386 | * MegaNeko: The Smilodon. |
| 387 | ** More an example of PantheraAwesome, since Smilodon is of the standard big cat variety. |
| 388 | * MenAreTheExpendableGender: An JustForFun/{{egregious}} user of this trope, especially early on. All deaths in the first series (whether special forces or civilian bystanders) are male and it takes until the third episode of the second series for a female one-shot character to die. [[spoiler:And even though she's a ''[[WellIntentionedExtremist villain]]'' responsible for several deaths, her own death is apparently so much more tragic than the two men that die in the same episode that Cutter goes into HeroicBSOD.]] A few episodes later, a giant scorpion attacks a beach. Despite the ''dozens'' of women around, the only visible victims it eats are men. The show's been getting better about this: one episode of series 4 has the heroes fail to save a girl while managing to save two boys, although the heroes are upset about their failure, they don't dwell on it ''too'' much. |
| 389 | * MetamorphosisMonster: In season 3, the team encounters a nastily infectious fungus that converts its hosts into hideous mutants which of course are infectious as well. |
| 390 | * MidSeasonTwist: The seventh episode of series 4 (which like ''Series/DoctorWho'' is the finale thanks to BritishBrevity -- 4 and 5 are treated like one large series) reveals that Matt Anderson is [[spoiler:from a future Earth that is a sterile wasteland (except for a few lifeforms)]], and that he and his father came to the present to [[spoiler:prevent the disaster that destroyed the Earth.]] Connor also finds out that the anomalies are [[spoiler:growing more frequent]]. |
| 391 | * MisplacedWildlife: The show has a convenient HandWave for this. Since anomalies pop up everywhere, any creatures in the wrong time could have wandered through one. More than a couple of episodes have dealt with a plot like this. |
| 392 | * MissingChild: A season 2 episode has a little girl and her dog disappearing through an anomaly. The girl in question had lost both her parents and was being taken care of by her neglectful stepfather. And she was outside and found the anomaly because he was lazy and made her take the dog out. |
| 393 | * MissionControl: In the revival the ARC employs Jess as the VoiceWithAnInternetConnection variety. |
| 394 | * MrFanservice: ''Becker.'' Stephen and Connor normally get this treatment too. |
| 395 | * TheMole: Connor's girlfriend in Season 2. |
| 396 | * MonochromeCasting - Until Sarah, and then again [[DroppedABridgeOnHim after her]]. This was Creator/RussellTDavies' single criticism of the series, who otherwise called it excellent. |
| 397 | * MonsterDelay: A lot of creatures. The Gorgonopsid, Anurognathus, the Future Predator in its debut, the Raptors, the Precambrian worms, the Silurian scorpions, the Labyrinthodont, the Hyaenodon, and the giant burrowing insects from the future. |
| 398 | * MonsterOfTheWeek: Just what will come through the [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Anomaly]] this week? Gorgonopsid? Mammoth? Velociraptor? Future predator? KnightInShiningArmor? The show also has a StoryArc that ran parallel, with the heroes battling human villains while still handling the Monsters Of The Week, who filed both sides under "dinner". |
| 399 | * MoodWhiplash: |
| 400 | ** Episode 1.4 contains this: the tension is broken when the dodos come through. [[spoiler:Then Tom gets infected, and the show goes darker than it's ever gone before when he dies.]] |
| 401 | ** Episode 3.3: the first half of the episode is very light-hearted with non-violent cute creatures running around a hospital whilst Cutter and Abby successfully help a woman give birth. The mood changes when they return to the arc to find that Helen has taken it over. [[spoiler: Helen then proceeds to blows the arc up and kill Cutter.]] |
| 402 | * MoralityPet: Jess acts like this for No-Nonsense Becker, as notable in the episode he's almost crying when she nearly dies from her allergy to bug bites. |
| 403 | * MoreExpendableThanYou: The reason behind Stephen's HeroicSacrifice. |
| 404 | * MorePredatorsThanPrey: ZigZagged. When the prehistoric and futuristic landscapes on the other sides of the Anomalies are seen in full, sometimes this trope is in effect, sometimes it isn't. |
| 405 | ** {{Averted}} with the Permian landscape on the other side of the first Anomaly. There's an entire herd of herbivorous ''Scutosaurus'' mulling around (plus multiple small, leaf-eating ''Coelurosauravus'' flying about), and there's only one or two predatory Gorgonopsids. Assuming that the Gorgonopsid/s chiefly prey on the ''Scutosaurus'' and can make the odd snack out of the ''Coelurosauravus'', this is a decent predator-prey balance. |
| 406 | ** The Silurian Scorpions' desert home seems like a case of this. There are only two lifeforms in this desert[[note]]Somewhat TruthInTelevision, as the Silurian was a time when land-based organisms were still mostly shore-based, and the desert appears to be inland[[/note]]: the scorpions (predators) and smaller giant millipedes (implied to be the scorpions' prey). We only ever see ''one'' swarm of millipedes in the desert the entire time that the cast are there, but the sand-dwelling scorpions are never far away during the cast's trek across the desert, and at one point it looks like there's close to a dozen of there under the sand in one area. |
| 407 | ** The Cretaceous pine forest which Connor and Abby are marooned in for a year seems to be almost-''exclusively'' populated by predators. Apart from fish in the forest's waterfall which Connor fishes for his and Abby's diet, the forest's only other inhabitants are numerous Raptors (which are shown to cannibalize each-other to boot), a grown ''Spinosaurus'', and a herd of giant theropods glimpsed in the distance. |
| 408 | * MurderIsTheBestSolution: Becker is a strong advocate of this approach. |
| 409 | * MushroomMan: The FesteringFungus in Season 3 turns its human victims into these: the head bares a vague resemblance to an oyster mushroom, there's a pair of large eyes (which look nothing like human eyes) and a sort of mouth, and a bipedal walking and running gait. Oh, and they're completely feral. |
| 410 | * MustMakeAmends: [[spoiler:Connor]] does this in episode 5 of series 5, though he shows the intention a little before hand. |
| 411 | -->'''Connor:''' I helped build this. I need to make it right. |
| 412 | * MyCarHatesMe: Jenny tries to start up her car. There is a Giganotosaurus trying to eat her. Predictably, the car fails to start. |
| 413 | * MyFavoriteShirt: Connor, Danny and Abby lose Becker's favourite gun. |
| 414 | * MyFutureSelfAndMe: [[spoiler:Matt]] is warned to [[spoiler:"go back"]] by what is apparently a battered future version of himself at the end of Season 5. |
| 415 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:Phillip when he realises Matt's predictions were right and his anomaly is going to destroy the world.]] |
| 416 | [[/folder]] |
| 417 | |
| 418 | [[folder:N-W]] |
| 419 | * NatureIsNotAToy: It's revealed in the show's final season that Philip Burton's plan with New Dawn is to use the Anomalies as a source of endless green energy for the world, [[spoiler:by forcibly creating a giant man-made Anomaly in the midst of the Earth's upcoming [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal geomagnetic reversal]] (potentially disrupting the process in and of itself)]]. Not only is Philip destined to lose control of the Anomaly, but the disaster has created a BadFuture which makes the Future Predator-overrun other Bad Future from Season 3 ''look like a healing Eden where HopeSpringsEternal'' by comparison. |
| 420 | * NatureIsNotNice: Pretty much everything from the past or the future wants to kill humans. Carnivores will attack human life without hesitation regardless of their native time period, ''mould'' in the future can turn humans into zombie-like husks, dodos carry contagious and vicious parasites, and even large herbivores which mean no real harm to humans will panic and go on a rampage in the unfamiliar modern environment. |
| 421 | * NeverSayGoodbye: Between [[spoiler:Danny and Sarah when they split up to tackle two separate anomalies]]. |
| 422 | * NeverSmileAtACrocodile: The show features a Pristichampsus in episode 3.1, and later includes a Kaprosuchus in episode 4.2. Both are large, prehistoric terrestrial crocs. If you thought crocs were bad in the water, just wait till you have to deal with them on land. |
| 423 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero |
| 424 | ** In [[Recap/PrimevalS3E8 Season 3 Episode 8]], Becker guns down a Future Predator about to attack Abby and Connor...and makes enough noise to alert every other creature in the vicinity. |
| 425 | -->'''Abby''': You've just alerted every predator around for miles! |
| 426 | -->'''Becker''': Well I didn't have much choice, did I, ''[[YouCalledMeXItMustBeSerious Abigail]]''?! |
| 427 | ** In a minor one in the above episode, Sarah ends up locking the Anomaly while the team desperately need an escape route after a juvenile Megopteran surprises her. |
| 428 | ** In the [[Recap/PrimevalS3E9 next episode]], Danny allowing [[spoiler:Helen Cutter in her guise as]] Eve access to the ARC. She even lampshades it. |
| 429 | -->'''Eve''': ''[while holding Christine Johnson at gunpoint]'' Thanks for bringing me here, Danny, I dunno what I'd do without you! |
| 430 | ** In Season 5 Episode 3, the team sends a Raptor back through the same Anomaly it emerged from, and only afterwards discover that the Anomaly doesn't lead to the Raptor's home time but to Victorian London. Matt has to go in after it. |
| 431 | ** Connor throughout season 4 and up to the second half of Season 5, by helping Philip and emulating his ideals, ended up helping Philip [[spoiler:create a machine that almost caused the end of all life on Earth in the future]]. |
| 432 | * NightSwimEqualsDeath: A couple is swimming in a public pool at night, when a [[SeaMonster mosasaur]] joins them... |
| 433 | * NoPeripheralVision |
| 434 | ** Seriously. It's like Predators have the ability to turn off their target's peripherals or something. Amusingly Lampshaded by Helen, who states that the Predator has "an almost ''supernatural'' ability to stalk its prey." |
| 435 | ** A human version pops up late in series 5: [[spoiler:a {{Mook}} manages to catch Matt completely off-guard by ''running straight at him from the side.'' Emily's attacker grabs her from behind, saving her from being a victim of this trope.]] |
| 436 | * NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: A few minor characters in seasons 4 and 5 don't bother attempting accents and we have a strange situation in one episode where a son has an English accent but his mother is Irish. Could be justified for episodes in the city since Britain does have a lot of Irish immigrants. |
| 437 | * NotSoAbandonedBuilding: Most prominently in Season 3, with the vacant house taken pretty much straight out of Series/AmericanHorrorStory. It is, of course, inhabited by a creature, that may or may not have gone mad during its long stay in our time period. |
| 438 | * NotSoDifferentRemark: Connor says he's taking risks because he's like Cutter, who wanted to change the future. |
| 439 | -->'''Abby:''' No he didn't. He really didn't, Connor. That was what ''Helen wanted''. |
| 440 | * NotUsingTheZWord: Future Predators could totally be called Chupacabras. The dodo worms? "Mongolian" death worms. |
| 441 | * NowOrNeverKiss: Between [[spoiler:Matt and Emily]] in series 5, right before [[spoiler:Matt runs off to drive an anomaly into another one in order to blow them up.]] |
| 442 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: Leek puts on a convincing show of incompetence during his employ at the ARC which disguises his [[BitchInSheepsClothing true intentions]]. |
| 443 | * ObliviousJanitorCut: In the pilot. |
| 444 | * OddCouple: Implied, when Connor briefly moves in with Lester. We don't get to see much of the shenanigans, but we see plenty of exasperated Lester, which is just as good. |
| 445 | * OhCrap: The expression on [[spoiler:Helen]]'s face just before [[spoiler:her KarmicDeath by Raptor]]. Beautiful, just beautiful. |
| 446 | * OminousLatinChanting: The music (name unknown) that accompanies the Alpha Mer-creature. |
| 447 | * OneSteveLimit: Averted. Season 1 has two characters named Tom. They both die. |
| 448 | * OneWordTitle: The word connects to ancient things, and the show is about things from the past time travelling to the present. |
| 449 | * OnlySaneEmployee: Becker is flat-out told that this will be his job description by Lester. This is fair description of Lester's role, too. |
| 450 | * OurClonesAreDifferent: The third season reveals Helen Cutter's army of Cleaner duplicates are clones made from the original Cleaner's DNA using advanced technology which she discovered in the future. [[spoiler:Helen also clones Nick after obtaining swabs of his DNA, with the clone being fully-formed and -functional just days after Helen took the samples]]. The clones are conditioned and mostly operate like machines, pre-programmed to recognize and obey verbal commands from their creator (to the point where even an obvious looped audio recording of their creator's voice can fool them while their real creator is physically and visually in their presence and trying to countermand the recording), although the clones have just enough innate humanity in them that one clone instinctively hesitates to commit suicide when ordered, and the [[spoiler:Cutter]] clone voluntarily gives his genetic source time to save himself before carrying out a suicide-bombing order after said source had attempted to talk the clone into rebelling against his creator and staying alive. |
| 451 | * OurDemonsAreDifferent: The "Camouflage Beast" of Season 3 is an intelligent primate-like creature with highly advanced camouflage that lets it all but disappear at will. They also speak in [[BlackSpeech creepy whispering noises]]. They are implied to be the basis for legends of ghosts, spirits, poltergeists and demons. |
| 452 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: The ''Dracorex'' in Season 3 is a kind of [[DinosaursAreDragons dinosaur]] that gave inspiration to the actual dragons of medieval myth after they made a habit of traveling to the Middle Ages through an anomaly. |
| 453 | * OurMermaidsAreDifferent: The "Mer" creatures are seal-like marine apes. Cutter jokingly suggests that they may have evolved from humans. |
| 454 | * OutrunTheFireball: Helen, after she blows up the hotel in Episode 5. Nick does something similar in Season 3. |
| 455 | * PacManFever: Averted. Connor plays ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' on the Xbox 360 at one point with actual gameplay and sound effects. |
| 456 | * PalatePropping: Connor attempts propping the Mosasaur's jaws with an oar in an early episode. |
| 457 | * {{Paparazzi}} |
| 458 | ** Journalist Mick Harper in Series 3. [[spoiler:Fortunately, he only bothers the team for a few episodes, before he and his boss suffer a KarmicDeath while GoingForTheBigScoop.]] |
| 459 | ** The masquerade finally is bust right open in season 5 episode 5, when [[spoiler:a ''T. rex'' attacks London city centre]]. |
| 460 | * PapaWolf |
| 461 | ** Subverted with the raptor in the Season 2 premiere: It eats the baby raptor after the little critter gets used as bait to try and draw it out. |
| 462 | ** Played straight with the Future Predators. |
| 463 | * ParasiticHorror: In one episode a flock of dodos manages to escape into a building in the present day. The dodos themselves are about as dangerous as you might expect, but they bring with them a highly infectious worm-like parasitoid that can also transfer to humans. |
| 464 | * PermaStubble: Cutter |
| 465 | * PhlebotinumRebel: Valerie mistakenly thinks the Smilodon is this. |
| 466 | * PietaPlagiarism: [[spoiler:Connor, when Nick Cutter dies.]] |
| 467 | * ThePlan: Most characters are pretty good at this. |
| 468 | * PlausibleDeniability: Jenny Lewis' job is to maintain this for Lester. Which she does mainly through BlatantLies. People seem to buy it, though. Possibly because the reporters that didn't ended up getting eaten by a Giganotosaurus. |
| 469 | * PluckyComicRelief: Connor Temple initially provides some comic relief with his nerdiness and CowardlyLion behavior, but as the show becomes more serious, so does he. |
| 470 | * PluckyGirl: Taylor in 2x05. |
| 471 | * PoorCommunicationKills: A number of civilian deaths could've been averted if the ARC team was honest with them about what's happening. This ends up driving a rift between Stephen and Cutter in Series 2. To name a couple examples, |
| 472 | ** Tom, after getting infected by a prehistoric parasite, asks Abby what's going on. All Abby does is stand there in silence, occasionally giving Tom vague answers and dodging his questions, making him even more suspicious and agitated than he already was. |
| 473 | ** [[spoiler:Valerie]] was convinced that the Smilodon was the product of a genetic experiment, and that the ARC team were sent to kill it. Cutter doesn't tell the truth about where the cat came from, which starts a chain of events that ends in [[spoiler:Valerie getting mauled by the Smilodon.]] |
| 474 | * PortalCut: Happened once, to a dinosaur. |
| 475 | * PortalToThePast: Time on either side of an anomaly is synced until the anomaly evaporates (when you are dealing with multiple interlinked anomaly trips [[TimeyWimeyBall try not to think about it]]). |
| 476 | * PostKissCatatonia: [[spoiler:Connor in Season 3, episode 8 after Abby kisses him. Finally.]] |
| 477 | * PraetorianGuard: In the Season 2 finale, Oliver Leek refers to the small army of Future Predators he's gathered as his "very own Praetorian Guard". Of course, as soon as they're free of his control, they promptly eat him. |
| 478 | * PrecisionFStrike: "You know what I'd forgotten, Helen? Sometimes you can be a real bitch." Not exactly the grade of swear that's often used, but the profanity in this series generally doesn't rise above "Damn it!", so it probably qualifies. |
| 479 | * PrehistoricMonster: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]. While most of the creatures have some dangerous aspect to them, they tend to be presented more as lost and frightened animals than as rampaging monsters. An exception can possibly be made for some of the large predators, but even they are not quite portrayed in a villainous manner. |
| 480 | * PutOnABus: |
| 481 | ** Jenny puts herself on one, Connor's two geeky friends are either PutOnABus or [[DroppedABridgeOnHim have a bridge full of prehistoric parasites dropped on them]]. Either way, they are gone. [[spoiler:Until the second episode of the 4th season which features Duncan...as a homeless wreck tracking creature sightings. Yay?]] |
| 482 | ** Lester gets put here after the Season 3 finale. |
| 483 | * RagnarokProofing: The apocalyptic city ruins in the future in Season 3, which appear to be in relatively good condition all things considered, suggesting the future time period is no more than a few centuries after the ApocalypseHow. Even [[spoiler:the future [=ARC's=] technology is still in working order, and the indoor paint hasn't peeled off.]] |
| 484 | * RagtagBunchOfMisfits: As Lester says, the team are a group of "rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do", with Becker as the OnlySaneEmployee. |
| 485 | * RaptorAttack: Season 2 has the first one; a few minor examples occur in other seasons. The raptors are never named on-screen, but are variously called ''Velociraptor'', ''Dromaeosaurus'', and ''Deinonychus''. Seasons 4 and 5 feature a [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology featherless monkey-like tree-climbing "raptor" with a stick-thin tail still capable of lifting a human off the ground and lynching them effortlessly.]] In the Canadian spin-off, the raptors are confirmed to be ''Utahraptor'' and are marginally more accurate than the original ones. |
| 486 | * RealIsBrown: Most of the creatures that appear are drab shades of black, gray, and sometimes brown or green. Even the ones that aren’t one of these have a very dull shade of color. The BadFuture shown also has a mainly brown color pallet. |
| 487 | * RealLifeWritesThePlot: Laila Rouass was reluctant to relocate to Ireland to film Season 4 when the show was picked back up again, and Creator/JasonFlemyng was busy with other commitments in America. As a result [[spoiler: Sarah is killed off in between seasons and Danny only comes BackForTheFinale]]. |
| 488 | * RecurringCharacter: Helen Cutter, the series' human BigBad who has a VillainousLegacy over the last two seasons; the Cleaner in Season 2 who clued the team in [[spoiler:about TheMole]] (to be fair, he appeared in every episode of the season until he was killed off two seasons before the finale), Abby's brother Jack in Season 3 who causes a few problems for her and Connor and a direct impact on [[spoiler:them becoming a couple]], Matt's LoveInterest Emily who's [[TheBusCameBack temporarily]] PutOnABus, Ethan Dobrowski ([[spoiler:a.k.a. Patrick Quinn]]) who's introduced after the first two episodes of the fourth season, and Connor's friend Tom in the first season. |
| 489 | * RedemptionEqualsDeath |
| 490 | ** [[spoiler:Stephen]] at the end of Season 2. |
| 491 | ** [[spoiler:Philip]] as well at the end of Season 5, though, unlike [[spoiler:Stephen]]'s, his was all in vain. |
| 492 | * {{RedShirt}}: The ARC goes through a few of these. |
| 493 | * RedshirtArmy: Christine's security forces |
| 494 | %%* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: The crocodilians and carnivorous dinosaurs fit this trope nicely. |
| 495 | * ReReleaseSoundtrack: "All Sparks" by Editors used during the closing credits for the TV broadcast of Series One, which was replaced with the series original opening theme for the DVD release. Series Two just used the main theme for the closing credits from the get-go. |
| 496 | * RetGone: Claudia's fate and [[spoiler:Helen's plan for humanity]]. |
| 497 | * ReTool: At the end of Season 1 the creators took the opportunity to [[RetGone tweak the casting]] slightly, give the team a wider scope, and gift them with a new base. More slight tweakage occurs in Season 3 where they quietly drop the Claudia/Jenny arc in the wake of [[spoiler:Cutter]]'s death. |
| 498 | * {{Revenge}}: Danny's brother was killed by a gremlin. Danny kills the gremlin. [[spoiler:Except Danny's brother wasn't killed...]] |
| 499 | * ReversePolarity: How Connor's device works to freeze the anomalies. |
| 500 | * RidiculouslyCuteCritter |
| 501 | ** The Diictodon. They're basically the [[Series/DoctorWho Adipose]] of Primeval. |
| 502 | ** Rex, too. |
| 503 | * RippleEffectProofMemory: Cutter recalling Claudia. |
| 504 | * RoadsideWave: Done to [[ButtMonkey Connor]] in Season 2, courtesy of a roller coaster. |
| 505 | * RoomFullOfCrazy: In episode 4x02, Connor's friend Duncan has been keeping track of creature sightings on a Wall of Crazy in his flat. |
| 506 | * RuinsOfTheModernAge: PlayedStraight in the BadFuture in Series 3, where the only known trace of humanity besides the creatures they created is decaying city ruins standing amid clifftops surrounded by wilderness. |
| 507 | * RuleOfCool: While the show's website (at least the older version of it) and interviews makes it clear that the filmmakers do their homework, they occasionally enlarge the creatures for dramatic purposes (''Pristichampsus'', for instance, was about ten feet long in real life, but the creators acknowledge that they enlarged it for the show). They had raptors chasing characters who were riding motorbikes through a mall. RuleOfCool indeed. |
| 508 | * SacrificialLamb |
| 509 | ** Tom Ryan was originally supposed to die at the end of the first episode, in a classic example of this trope. However, the creators liked the actor's job so much that they kept him around until the SeasonFinale. Douglas Henshall (who plays Cutter) says that he was pushing for the character to be [[TheyKilledKenny killed in every single episode, and then back again with no explanation]]. |
| 510 | ** If anything, Connor's friend Tom (yes, they coincidentally have the same name) is one, especially since the last episode he was in was spent around the team trying to save him, but ultimately failing. |
| 511 | * SeeTheWhitesOfTheirEyes: "Don't fire 'till you see the whites of his teeth." |
| 512 | * SelectiveMagnetism: The Anomalies tendency to emit magnetic fields as and when the plot requires it. |
| 513 | * SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: |
| 514 | ** Season 3 features a case where it's Helen who's motivated by this as a WellIntentionedExtremist after she visits a BadFuture. However, she doesn't really seem to know exactly what caused the disaster in said Bad Future or she just madly changes her mind about it in her SanitySlippage, wavering between blaming the ARC and blaming Christine Johnson. Ironically, it's implied that Helen's efforts are responsible for creating an ''even worse'' Bad Future. |
| 515 | ** It's revealed that [[spoiler:Matt and his father Gideon]] came from the Bad Future to find out who and what caused the future apocalypse that has ravaged the Earth in their time, and prevent it from ever happening. |
| 516 | * ShellShockedVeteran: Season 2 Cutter has definite elements of this. Comes of being the only one with RippleEffectProofMemory. It's fully there in season 3, after [[spoiler:Stephen's death]]. |
| 517 | * ShoutOut |
| 518 | ** In Series 1 Episode 5, Connor is seen playing VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion |
| 519 | ** The future predators are quite similar to the nightstalker of ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'', which are also blind, flightless futuristic bats. Incidentally, the author of the book, Creator/DougalDixon, was pretty much of an influence on speculative creature concepts (as Creator/PeterJackson can tell), so it's likely that the authors of ''Primeval'' got the idea from the book. |
| 520 | ** The Anomaly Research Center (ARC) is shaped like a large [[TheArk ship.]] |
| 521 | ** Episode 5.6, James Lester gets a call from the Minister, who reports that a train left from King's Cross Station and disappeared into thin air. |
| 522 | --->'''Lester:''' Sorry, does that sound [[Literature/HarryPotter familiar]] to anyone...? |
| 523 | * ShutUpHannibal: From the episode 3 of season 1: |
| 524 | -->'''Helen:''' I offer you the Key to Time. ''The Key to Time, Nick.'' And you turn your back on it. Call yourself a scientist!\ |
| 525 | '''Cutter:''' I call myself a human being. |
| 526 | * ShutUpKiss |
| 527 | ** [[spoiler:Connor and Abby]] leading to the aforementiond PostKissCatatonia in a textbook perfect example of these tropes. |
| 528 | ** 5.06 gives us one involving the "finger to the lips" gesture between [[spoiler:Matt and Emily]]. It crosses a bit with [[spoiler:NowOrNeverKiss]]. |
| 529 | * SinisterSubway: Season 1, Episode 2. It was full of big bugs. |
| 530 | * SkywardScream: Lester waits until he's in his office before letting out one, when he realises that the person the government want to give a Knighthood to is ''Philip Burton'' and not himself. |
| 531 | * SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: In spite of the AnyoneCanDie status, high KarmicDeath count and [[DroppedABridgeOnHim Bridge Dropping]], ''Primeval'' manages to stay pretty well on the Idealistic side of the scale. |
| 532 | * SmugSnake: Leek. He would be a MagnificentBastard if he didn't sneer quite so much. We're almost sorry when he meets his death at [[spoiler:[[HoistByHisOwnPetard the teeth of his own predators]]]]. |
| 533 | %%* SomebodySetUpUsTheBomb |
| 534 | * SpidersAreScary: Especially when they're a meter across and falling on you. |
| 535 | * SpotlightStealingSquad: Connor and Abby. Their relationship is the only subplot with no direct relation to dinosaurs or anomalies that lasts more than a couple of episodes. By Season Four, they're arguably the main characters, even if they're not in charge yet. The first two episodes of Season Four are largely devoted to [[spoiler:their return from the Cretaceous and reintegration with the new team]]. |
| 536 | * SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic: The Anomaly Detection Device alerts the team whenever a new Anomaly is detected opening, but in the series' penultimate episode, its onscreen global map indicates to the team when [[spoiler:one new Anomaly in Britain becomes dozens of simultaneous Anomalies all around the world]]. |
| 537 | * SpringHeeledJack: Whilst the boogieman doesn't appear in the show, he is referenced in an episode where the team has to track down a wild raptor that's loose and has been killing several people in Victorian London, with the natives mistaking it for Spring-Heeled Jack. Matt and Emily are also framed for the murders by the people. They eventually manage to return to the present and send the raptor back to its own time. |
| 538 | * StableTimeLoop: |
| 539 | ** The campsite seen in the first episode [[spoiler:was left there by the cast in the first season finale. The camera taken by Nick was later used in the finale to take the exact pictures that were downloaded from it in Episode 1.1, then left there alongside Tom Ryan's skeleton for Nick to find.]] |
| 540 | ** Sir William knows to go back and marry Elizabeth because the writing on his own grave tells him to. |
| 541 | ** And also because of Helen, [[spoiler:the totality of human history.]] |
| 542 | * StandardPostApocalypticSetting: In Season 3, Earth in the BadFuture -- which has a sepia-like visual effect distinguishing it from other time periods -- is littered with modern-looking ruins, infested with Megopterans and Future Predators (implied to have been genetically engineered by humanity), and there's no trace of any humans remaining. Even Helen Cutter, a woman who places about as much value on individual human beings as you would on an ant, is horrified by the disaster that humanity apparently create. |
| 543 | * TheStarscream: In Season 2, Helen spends her time playing the Starscream to Leek. |
| 544 | * StealthInsult: Subverted, as Claudia spots it. |
| 545 | -->'''Helen:''' You know, I can see why Nick likes you... you're his type, Claudia. Strong, independent, reasonably intelligent...\ |
| 546 | '''Claudia:''' Shall we stick to the point? |
| 547 | %%* StockNessMonster |
| 548 | %%** The Mosasaur. |
| 549 | %%** Liopleurodon appears in one of the novels and in episode 5.2. |
| 550 | * StockScream: Used liberally. Every episode of the first two seasons has a "Wilhelm". |
| 551 | %%* TheStoic |
| 552 | %%** Cutter after Season 2. |
| 553 | %%** [[spoiler:His clone is an even bigger one]]. |
| 554 | * StringTheory: In Season 3, Nick creates the Matrix, a three-dimensional map that attempts to chart the anomalies across time and space. Later, [[spoiler:the team discovers an artifact from the future, referred to, in fact, as the Artefact, which, among other functions, projects a holographic map of all the anomalies encountered by the future ARC.]] |
| 555 | * StrippedToTheBone: Implied with the ''[[TheSwarm Anurognathus]]'', but there's a GoryDiscretionShot, so it might not ''quite'' be all the way to the bone. Likewise implied with the Jurassic beetles, future beetles, and ''Daemonosaurus''. |
| 556 | * SummonBiggerFish: How does Lester take out a Future Predator? Summon Columbian Mammoth! Also used when Cutter and Stephen escape a Silurian scorpion by using their vibrations to bring in a ''much'' bigger one. |
| 557 | * SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Despite ''Primeval'' being an AnyoneCanDie this is pretty much averted with the exception of Becker replacing Tom Ryan (this could be a JustifiedTrope as the role is (para)military minder so you wouldn't expect much variation). |
| 558 | * SuspiciouslyStealthyPredator: It sometimes gets hard to believe that displaced creatures aren't showing up on youtube or the evening news every day. |
| 559 | * SwallowedWhole: The Mosasaur's first victim in Episode 3 is EatenAlive in this manner, and it's {{lampshaded}} by the characters. It later vomits up a gruesome bolus composed of what remains the Mosasaur couldn't digest. |
| 560 | * TheSwarm: Season 1 features the ''Anurognathus'': a flock of carnivorous pterosaurs each no bigger than a large bat, which swarm like piranha when they smell blood, and can kill a grown man in minutes. The Future Beetles in Season 5 are just as ferocious and then some -- they may be no bigger than mice, but they can eat a grown man alive ''down to the bone'', their bite force is powerful enough to burrow through reinforced concrete in minutes, and they literally come ''pouring'' out of an Anomaly in the thousands. |
| 561 | %%* TeamPet: Rex |
| 562 | * TeenGenius: Jess is just 19 but is the head ARC team coordinator. |
| 563 | %% * TelevisionGeography |
| 564 | %% Just giving a name is not enough context so TemporaryBlindness is a ZCE |
| 565 | %% * TemporaryBlindness: Claudia |
| 566 | * TemptingFate: |
| 567 | ** Done repeatedly, although the stand out moment is [[spoiler:Becker hoping that getting to Christine's anomaly is as easy as getting in the unguarded gate. It isn't.]] |
| 568 | ** Poor Connor seems the victim of this more often than anyone else. The monsters seem to wait on cue for him to say something reassuring. Even more spectacularly in episode 4.1, where he cheerfully assures Matt that he can easily close the anomaly (with Abby even saying he's done it loads of times before). Needless tos ay, he's wrong, and the team's stuck with a Spinosaurus rampaging through London as a result. |
| 569 | --->'''Connor:''' I think we're all right. ''[giant worm swallows his head]'' |
| 570 | * TenMinuteRetirement: Lester is forced into one of these during Season 3. |
| 571 | * TerrorDactyl: |
| 572 | ** The little ''[[ZergRush Anuragnathus]]'' are portrayed as essentially flying piranhas that will strip humans to the bone in a matter of seconds. |
| 573 | ** In the Canadian spinoff, an aggressive species of ''Pteranodon'' appears, although [[spoiler:it's only killing humans to collect things to decorate its nest with]]. |
| 574 | * TerseTalker: [[spoiler:The clone of Cutter,]] most likely due to Helen only bothering to teach him the bare minimum to communicate. |
| 575 | %%* ThoseTwoGuys: Geeky Tom and Duncan. |
| 576 | * TimeTravelersDinosaur: The time portals transport what ever goes through them to [[TimeTravel another time]]. Therefore most episodes involve some sort of prehistoric animal traveling through time, typically to modern day. |
| 577 | * TimeyWimeyBall: Ran into this early on with the Jenny/Claudia thing, but this got lost in the AbortedArc, so presently the show is remarkably consistent in its portrayal of TimeTravel. YouAlreadyChangedThePast, it's just the characters aren't quite aware of this yet. When time travel is explained by such lines as "The creatures are proof that the past exists as a fourth dimension..." you know that nobody knows what's going on. |
| 578 | * TooDumbToLive: Any and all deaths at the beginning of the episode to introduce the MonsterOfTheWeek. These are intentionally moronic to make it [[BlackComedy funny]]. |
| 579 | ** The best one? The business agent from 3.5 ''entering the anomaly'' and, instead of hurrying back into the present, ''putting his face directly over the fungus''. |
| 580 | ** The guy in the same episode who got the fungus virus. After he sneaks into the ARC's lab and finds the fungus growing inside a sealed container, he sticks his hand inside and touches it. [[IdiotBall Because he clearly couldn't just find a pair of gloves lying around.]] |
| 581 | ** The [[AssholeVictim reporters]] from season 3 insisted on filming the Giganotosaurs that was trying to eat them, standing directly in its path and practically begging for it to eat them. Predictably, it does. |
| 582 | ** [[spoiler:Valerie]], although she wasn't exactly in a good frame of mind. |
| 583 | ** The real estate agent from 3x02. Connor and Abby find him hiding in a bathroom screaming and tell him to be quiet so he won't alert the gremlin in the house. After he nods and shuts up, what does he do? Run down the stairs screaming like a moron. The gremlin quickly pounces on him and claws at his back. |
| 584 | ** The fat guy at the barbecue in 5x01. If you see a gigantic insect coming out of the ground and slowly moving towards you, get off your ass and run away. ''[[GenreBlindness Do not offer it your half-eaten hot dog]]''. |
| 585 | ** The girl running from [[spoiler:the ''T. rex'']] in series 5 [[spoiler:''should'' count, since she basically makes all of the wrong decisions when it comes to surviving, but Matt manages to save her.]] |
| 586 | ** One of the most hilarious examples occurs in series 5 episode 4. An ARC employee flings a beetle back through Connor's New Dawn prototype which it emerged from. Almost immediately, thousands more start literally pouring from the anomaly. What do you think the guy does? He frickin' ''stands there and watches'' as they move toward him in the millions. He does panic once they start to crawl on him and eat him alive, but anyone in real life who wasn't commiting suicide would have reacted sooner! |
| 587 | * TookALevelInKindness: |
| 588 | ** For most of Season 2, Caroline is [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals horribly cruel]] to Rex when Connor and Abby aren't around and when she wants something to do with him, stuffing him in a freezer box for knocking over a salad she made (which almost kills him), and taking a little bit more satisfaction than she needs to in brutally knocking him out to be brought to Leek. She's also at first completely unapologetic to Abby when the latter confronts her. This changes over time, particularly as it really sinks in with Caroline who she's been working with and what she's gotten herself into. She sincerely apologizes to Connor and Abby for what she did, and more than that she goes out of her way to help Rex when he's injured, specifically to atone for what she did to him. |
| 589 | ** At first, James Lester seems to care little if anything for the team's members themselves if his reaction to Abby being believed dead in Season 2 is any indication, and he's ruthless enough to (reluctantly but unflinchingly) agree with Cutter about sacrificing the latter to stop Leek in the Season 2 finale. As the show's five seasons go on, not only does Lester's opinion of the team increase, but he gets subtly but noticeably mellower and a lot more genuinely concerned about their welfare, not that he'll ever admit to it. |
| 590 | * TrappedInContainment: Season 3, episode 5. With TheVirus. |
| 591 | * TRexpy: For the majority of the show's run, it forewent featuring the UsefulNotes/TyrannosaurusRex in favor of giving similar, more obscure giant predators from prehistory a chance to shine in the spotlight. |
| 592 | ** The Gorgonopsid in Season 1 was clearly meant to be this trope for the show at its beginning. It primarily resembles the gorgonopsid species ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inostrancevia Inostrancevia]]'' but is far larger than that specimen, and despite galloping on four equally-large legs, the Gorgonopsid's head shape and its dinosaur-like tail end up making it superficially look a lot like a saber-toothed ''T. rex''. It's also a territorial hunter that won't hesitate to go for long pig to match, and even the Gorgonopsid's vicious duel with the smaller, more agile and more intelligent Future Predator seems like an expy for [[Film/JurassicPark Rexy]]'s fight against the ''Velociraptors''. |
| 593 | ** Season 3 features an even more ''T. rex''-like creature when the ''T. rex''[='s=] larger-sized and more agile cousin ''Giganotosaurus'' serves as the MonsterOfTheWeek. The creature is even mistaken for a ''T. rex'' by Jenny, before Connor corrects her and he unofficially dubs it a "[[LampshadeHanging G-Rex]]" for simplicity. |
| 594 | * {{Tsundere}}: Jenny Lewis (Type B) is clearly cut from this mould (making her relationship with [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Cutter]] the ever-popular duo with BelligerentSexualTension, albeit cut short by the events in season 3). Abby occasionally acts like this towards Connor. |
| 595 | * UncannyValley: Several creatures are meant to invoke this. |
| 596 | ** The [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent Mer]] creatures aren't too bad...until you hear them singing and wailing in this dreamy, angelic melody, identical to what you'd hear in a church. |
| 597 | ** The Treecreepers, carnivorous dinosaurs with a humanoid muscle structure that communicate with a high-pitched chatter similar to language. |
| 598 | * UngratefulBastard: Abby's brother Jack when he gets [[spoiler:marooned in the future]]. Despite the dangers of Megopterans and Future Predators, the team risk it all to save him - and he promptly blames his sister for not telling him what her job was, [[NeverMyFault despite his stealing her anomaly detector and going off to look at an anomaly]]. His reaction to Becker's [[spoiler:seeming]] HeroicSacrifice for him is "so"? Really, it's a miracle Danny didn't just leave him to be eaten. |
| 599 | * TheUnmasquedWorld: Lester believes this will happen at the end of the series when Convergence leads to widespread creature sightings and news reports around the world. Implied to be {{subverted}} in the [[Series/PrimevalNewWorld sequel series]] where the {{Masquerade}} is still in place in Canada, and Word of God [[https://primeval.fandom.com/wiki/Anomaly_Research_Centre:Exclusives/Tim_Haines_Questions_about_Primeval here]] states the UK's government attempted to invoke WeirdnessCensor. |
| 600 | * ToUnmasqueTheWorld: |
| 601 | ** In Season 1, {{Conspiracy Theorist}}s Tom and Duncan attempt this when they think there's a GovernmentConspiracy involving bio-engineered MindControl parasites. Realistically, even with a live dodo it wouldn't be hard for the government to hush them up even if Tom hadn't [[spoiler:gotten infected with an ultimately-deadly parasite]]. |
| 602 | ** The HiddenVillain of Season 2, Episode 3 says they intend to do this once TheTeam discovers who they are, believing not unlike the above two that there's a malevolent GovernmentConspiracy (although their motivations for doing so are considerably more personal and tragic than Tom and Duncan's were). |
| 603 | ** Mick Harper actively tries the IntrepidReporter variety, as does his boss once she sees the BrokenMasquerade as well, mainly for money. |
| 604 | * UnspokenPlanGuarantee: Subverted; whatever Sarah's plan was to get Danny, Connor and Abby back, it doesn't work and gets her killed offscreen. (Prequel webisodes show that she and Becker went into the future anomaly, where Sarah gets trapped in a car and mauled to death by a Future Predator.) |
| 605 | * VilerNewVillain: |
| 606 | ** PlayedStraight from Season 1 to Season 2. In the first season, Helen just wants to [[spoiler:find an Anomaly to the future so she can explore it for herself]], and the worst she does in pursuit of that goal is manipulating Cutter and the team into expending their resources and troops' lives to serve her own ends. Oliver Leek from the next season is listed as a [[invoked]]CompleteMonster on this wiki for a reason: his entire motivations are power-hunger and ego, he's willing to commit terrorism via using [[spoiler:captured creatures]] to mass endanger the public, and he's far more petty and needlessly malicious than Helen; setting a Future Predator on Lester to slowly toy with the latter just for making Leek feel small, and having Cutter's team [[spoiler:fed to a Smilodon]] while Cutter helplessly watches for no other reason than his own sadistic kicks. |
| 607 | ** After Leek, however, this trope is ZigZagged. In Season 3, Helen, though far more dangerous and more of a threat than before, is ultimately trying stop mankind from unleashing an extinction-level apocalypse in the future, [[spoiler:even if she decides she can take the same opportunity to prevent mankind from existing altogether so that other species can develop without suffering humanity's shortcomings, and she implies that she's willing to die if it'll achieve her ends]]. In Season 4, Ethan[[spoiler:/Patrick]] is senselessly murderous, doesn't seem to have any more idea of what he wants than the writers do and doesn't have a higher plan, but he has a fairly compelling excuse for growing into such a psycho and he still has something resembling a heart when it came to Charlotte. Philip Burton in the last two seasons, though he can be dangerously petty, egomaniacal, overly manipulative and ruthless in his own right, is arguably the least violent of all the seasonal antagonists: compared to the previous antagonists, he wants to use the Anomalies to solve the worldwide energy crisis with completely-green energy which he supposedly intended to give away for free, he arguably never breaks the law outright in pursuit of his goals, and he [[spoiler:sacrifices himself to try and amend his mistake upon realizing [[BadFuture what he's done]]]]. |
| 608 | * VillainousLegacy: In the final two seasons, Helen is dead but [[spoiler:she's revealed to be responsible for engineering Philip's plot which creates the BadFuture]]. |
| 609 | * VillainousRescue: Helen does this to Claudia once. |
| 610 | * TheVirus: The FesteringFungus (see above) in S3. |
| 611 | * WeaksauceWeakness: The future Predators hunt by echolocation, which opens up some avenues for a canny [=ARCer=] to get the better of them. |
| 612 | ** [[spoiler:Lester]] turns an iPod dock up very loud, which briefly causes the Predator extreme discomfort, allowing him to escape. |
| 613 | ** [[spoiler:Cutter]] comes up with an even cleverer solution: when cornered by the Predator in a greenhouse, he [[spoiler:shoots out the glass, causing the poor Predator to go nearly catatonic with confusion.]] |
| 614 | * WilhelmScream: Constantly. Any time anyone is attacked, killed, or even vaguely threatened. |
| 615 | [[/folder]] |
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