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YMMV / Primeval: New World

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  • Anvilicious: Nature is fragile, particularly when human intervention is concerned.
  • Awesome Music: OSTs of the series' soundtrack apart from the main theme seem to be very difficult to find, but it has some crowning pieces.
    • Brooke's theme music is a beautiful, moving and melancholic score, emphasizing both the tragedy Evan suffered and how it marked the start of the path he's been set on since.
    • The music from the climax of Episode 8 is no snore either, with its tune and vocals heart-rendingly eclipsing both Evan's inability to let go of his past grief and Ange's dismay at realizing Evan hasn't moved on from his dead wife after all despite Ange and Evan's current romantic relationship.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Dylan Weir. Some people like her for being an Action Girl who goes through various stages of development, and for her chemistry with Evan. Others, however, see her as a boring Mary Sue who doesn't contribute much to the cast.
  • Broken Base: The theme song. Fans can't decide whether or not it's better than the original Primeval theme, if it's just as good, if it's not as good as the original, but still enjoyable, or if it's complete trash. The theme's so divisive that someone posted the old theme over this show's opening, because the old theme seemed better to the user.
  • Catharsis Factor: After all the grief and suffering it's caused and the way it's triggered the events of the entire series (albeit only by trying to hunt and kill), there's a sense of catharsis and closure when the Albertosaurus is gunned down and killed by Evan, the person the Albertosaurus has affected the most directly.
  • Contested Sequel: Fans have debated whether this series succeeds in being Darker and Edgier than the original and whether that is a positive or negative change, and they've debated whether it succeeds in having a greater emphasis on Story Arcs than the original did (particularly since the original's Seasonal Rot started) or overlooks more interesting plotlines in favor of less interesting ones.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Recurring Character Ken Leeds was favored by viewers over most of the main characters, finding his character well-rounded and feeling he had an interesting character plotline.
  • Fanfic Fuel: What happened to the Alternate Timeline Mac Rendell before he arrived from his timeline in the past that led up to that event? Was it similar to what happened to his prime counterpart at the series' end or not?
  • Franchise Original Sin: It's been accused of not knowing what to do with plotlines and having too much focus on episodic filler, both of which are problems that fans had with the original series' third season which did it to an even worse extent.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The Easter Egg suggesting that Connor and Abby have married since the original series' ending becomes this, after Andrew Lee Potts and Hannah Spearritt broke up later in the same year the episode was released.
  • Iron Woobie: Dylan Weir could qualify. She loses her beloved mentor in the first episode (this definitely gets to her), followed by her suffering You Have to Believe Me! in the next episode. Whilst she does find new purpose by joining Evan's Special Projects Group, throughout the series, she clearly develops romantic feelings for Evan but is repeatedly pushed away by Evan's behavior, right up to the penultimate episode.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Project Magnet's cruel experimentation on the captured creatures is bad enough, but Colonel Henderson Hall debatably crosses the line when he directly ignores all of Evan's warnings about removing the Albertosaurus from the Anomaly Spaghetti Junction when it needs to ensure events that'll occur on the other side of an Anomaly six years in the past remain unchanged, all for the sake of experimenting with changing history. It gives one the impression that Hall might be more of a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist than he let on.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The queen Jurassic Beetle in Episode 3 happens to have the same vocalization effects as Rex from the original series, rather satisfying to hear for those feeling overly nostalgic.
  • Narm: There are moments; like Mac backing up against a barrier and cursing "Oh, shit!" when the Monster of the Week is sprinting past, straight towards where another of the Main Characters is currently on a bridge, or Mac and his girlfriend removing an intact egg sac from the throat of an extra, then taking turns providing exposition and being squicked whilst the extra in question is regaining his senses and starting to freak.
  • Salvaged Story: One of the fanbase complaints about the original show's Seasonal Rot was the introduction of apocalyptic bad futures from the third season onward, which some fans felt took away from the show's more naturalistic approach to the past and future in the first two seasons (where the future was largely shrouded in mystery, but natural-seeming animals presumed to come from distant post-human time periods emerged through Anomalies). New World largely reverts to the original format of keeping the future mysterious, if only by virtue of its first and only season featuring zero Anomalies or creatures connected to the future (except for a claim by Henderson Hall to have witnessed an ecological apocalypse in the future, which might or might not have been him speaking in metaphor).
  • Shocking Moments:
    • The reveal at the end of Episode 4 that Ken Leeds lied to the main characters about returning all the Terror Birds, and has deliberately kept the juvenile captive for some unknown purpose at the time.
    • The Mid-Season Twist revealing the frozen ARC soldier's identity is easily one of the biggest shockers in possibly the entire history of the franchise, up until the Two-Part Season Finale starts rivaling it...
    • There's the revelation in the penultimate episode that the Anomaly of the week actually leads to a whole Spaghetti Junction of other Anomalies, seen for the first time since the original show's first season (not counting one Expanded Universe reappearance), instead of leading to the Monster of the Week's home time period.
    • And in the same episode, there's the moment when Evan finds an Anomaly in the junction which leads to... the Cross Photonics cold room where his wife was killed, six hours before that event happens, revealing it's both the same Anomaly he originally encountered open at the same time he originally encountered it.
    • Colonel Hall and Project Magnet suddenly tranquilizing the Albertosaurus in the Anomaly Spaghetti Junction, with only hours to spare before the Albertosaurus needs to be on the other side of the Junction's 2006 Anomaly, can easily induce a Jaw Drop in the series' viewers.
    • The Anomalies at the Spaghetti Junction all suddenly closing one-by-one once the Albertosaurus is killed after ensuring events in 2006 remained unchanged, leading Evan to assume they've unwittingly changed the timeline somehow, is pretty unexpected.
  • Squick: New World is Bloodier and Gorier than the original series with much less use of the Gory Discretion Shot. Moments which stand out include: the queen giant bug in Episode 3 giving a captured victim a "kiss", which it's later revealed implanted a large sac of eggs down his throat; the team dragging the security guard's body out of the Anomaly in Episode 6 to find he's been bisected; and the Pachycephalosaurus' sawed-open cranium in the military's Mad Scientist Laboratory in Episode 11.
  • Stoic Woobie: Evan Cross. He lost his wife traumatically six years ago when an Albertosaurus ate her alive in front of him as he was reaching out to save her with his hand barely a metre away, and he hasn't truly gotten over it since. Whilst Ange leaving Cross Photonics as a result of the latter is partly Evan's own fault due to not being honest about it to her, it does then lead to Ange joining the human antagonists' side. By Evan's own admission, he isn't unfazed by losing people close to him to the creatures but he's gotten used to it. If he didn't already have enough on his plate to make him a Woobie, then there's that in the Season Finale he's forced to re-engineer the events of his wife's horrible death to prevent a Grandfather Paradox, then minutes later watch the very friend whose destiny he altered give his life in a Heroic Sacrifice by meeting the very fate that Evan originally tried to save him from — and unless that closing Anomaly cuts him in half, he'll likely have to live with it all on top of the crap that's already screwed him in the head.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Somewhat. In Episode 11, Ken Leeds' countering of Evan's argument that preventing even a few creatures from being returned to their prehistoric homes seems more logical, because of the number of creatures from the past that died or just got stranded in the present during the original series and yet no Ripple Effect on the present was observed (unless of course you think Abby's apartment changing between the second and third seasons was a sign of the timeline being impacted, or the timeline was constantly changing and it's just that the audience and characters don't observe it). It's also mentioned in earlier episodes that the team have sent the corpses of creatures killed in the present back through the Anomalies they came from. What do they expect is gonna happen, that those creatures' corpses are just gonna get up and find their way to whatever location in their own time their bones would've been located at in the original timeline, or for that matter that the creatures' corpses are gonna ensure the same creatures they would've eaten in the original timeline still get eaten?
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Viewers complained that most of the characters in this series weren't as well-rounded or as likable as in the original series, and others were asking after the Season Finale where the heck Matt and Becker are in London.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Somewhat. People wish Ken Leeds' plotlines got more focus and address, and they felt Lisa Merryweather ended up serving no purpose.
  • Ugly Cute:
    • Leggy the Terror Bird, very much which makes his fate in Episode 10 all the more Tear Jerker. Even as a ferocious adult, he still has his cute moments.
    • The Lycaenops in Episode 5 have a cute aspect to them. Becomes Tear Jerker when the male mourns the death of his mate.
    • The Daemonosaurus in Episode 6 look quite adorable, especially when they're showing curiosity. Make no mistake though, their name "demon lizard" is appropriate.
    • Even the Ornitholestes' appearance and its waist-height stature made it look rather cute.
    • The Pachycephalosaurus in Episode 8 had this all over the place, from its first scene where it's pacing evenly after an oblivious jogger with seemingly no motive beyond innocent curiosity.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mac at the end of his Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Episode 5, when he shoots the male Lycaenops dead in utter cold blood, right when the creature is mourning the death of its mate. The latter moment was meant to show how badly Samantha's death by the female Lycaenops has gotten to Mac and make the audience pity him, but for the majority of viewers, it seemed like a completely asshole move of him. You'd think Mac would relate to the Lycaenops' pain of losing a loved one at least for a moment, besides the fact that it's the already-slain female who killed Samantha. Not helping the fact is Mac handling the Jerkass Ball earlier in the episode, when he tried to innocently trick Toby into flattening the unconscious female Lycaenops with a truck (directly after the rest of the team had explained to him why they weren't killing the creature), which almost makes the same female later killing his loved ones seem like a disproprortionately-overblown helping of karma for Mac. Fortunately, the next episode did a bit to make up for Mac's actions here.
  • Villains Act, Heroes React: Colonel Henderson Hall actively seeks to use the Anomalies to manipulate and alter the past, which Evan and his team very much oppose when they find out, culminating in the heroes attempting to get the Albertosaurus Colonel Hall has tranquilized sent through the right Anomalies to 2006 before a Grandfather Paradox can ensue.


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