Anomaly Research Centre
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Anomaly Research Centre


Episode 2.7 is the seventh and final episode of the second series of Primeval. It was broadcast as Concrete Menagerie[1] in North America, as Das Opfer (The Sacrifice)[2] in Germany and as Révélation (Revelation)[3] in France.

Summary[]

"With most of the team trapped in the bunker with the menagerie of Future Predators, Leek releases a Silurian sand scorpion at a busy beach and threatens to let loose more horrors. Stephen is the only one who can battle the scorpion, and as he does so Cutter and the others plot their escape - only to realise that if they do, they will unleash the creatures around them."[4]

Full synopsis[]

Oliver Leek has control of dozens of creatures from the past and future in a Creature Prison. The team are also imprisoned: Cutter and Jenny in one cell, Abby and Connor in another. Cutter deduces that Helen is in charge, since Leek 'doesn't have the wit to do this', and that whatever Leek is planning, Helen will have her own agenda. Meanwhile, Leek, who also has Caroline captive, places her in Abby and Connor's cell, taunting Connor with the knowledge she was paid to go out with him. Leek compares Connor to himself, calling them 'the losers, the nerds, the uncool'; a claim Connor swiftly rebuffs. Abby and Caroline swiftly get into a brutal fist fight over Rex, which Leek refuses to intervene in, on the excuse it's too entertaining, and Connor's efforts to break it up earn him a punch in the face for his troubles.

Back at the ARC, with the team missing, Lester is forced to call for Stephen's help in capturing a Giant Scorpion that Leek has released onto a popular holiday beach and has started killing people. Though distrustful of Lester, Stephen agrees to help, on the condition he does it alone. When Stephen arrives, the beach is deserted. He manages to lure the Scorpion to the surface, then uses a harpoon gun to tether the creature to the pier until Lester's soldiers can arrive to take it back to the ARC.

In the cells, Jenny tells Cutter that she broke up with her fiance due to the stress of the job, while Caroline apologises to Connor and Abby. Meanwhile, Cutter admits to Jenny he still loves Helen when she asks him: a revelation that prompts an astonished Helen to release him from the cells and bring him to her. She explains that Claudia Brown's transformation into Jenny Lewis was an accident, but she wishes to replicate the accident as a scientific experiment to see the effects of altering time through the anomalies, in order to prove her hypothesis the anomalies appeared to help humanity create its own future. Meanwhile, in a conference between Leek and Lester, in which Leek reveals that like the scorpion, he has 12 more creatures ready to be released across the country to cause chaos, Cutter realises the reasons for Leek and Helen's alliance: she is helping him to gain power and influence through her knowledge of the creatures and anomalies, whilst he in turn is helping her to perform her experiments to change time by giving her a base of operations. Leek then proceeds to torture Cutter by locking Jenny, Abby, Connor and Caroline in a sealed room and releasing a Smilodon to attack them. When Leek ignores Cutter's pleads, he desperately turns to Helen to back him up: however, Leek also ignores her demands. In desperation, Cutter damages Leek's computer system: when he re-boots it, the virus implanted by Connor beforehand wipes out the system, freeing the group from their captivity and unleashing the caged creatures. In the confusion, the rest of the team, along with Rex and Caroline, make good their escape and alert Lester of the whereabouts of the base.

Leek flees deeper into the base, while Helen helps Cutter escape from the guards. She offers her help, but he refuses; instead, he turns a gun on her and insists she lead him out of the base, upon which she will be handed over to Lester. Helen rebuffs this, saying she knows Nick still has feelings for her, but he retorts what he said in the cells was an act designed to get her attention and his release. However, when they are jumped by guards, she escapes and locks herself in a storeroom to protect herself from the creatures now rampaging through the base. Once secure, she secretly calls Stephen and tells him that Lester has killed the team and is becoming too powerful. She asks him to rescue her and he heads for the base after ditching his phone, unaware he has been deceived again.

Meanwhile, Nick makes his way through the base, stalked by a Future Predator Leek has sent to kill him. Cutter reaches the feeding chamber with the creature in pursuit. He distracts it with blood from a cut on his hand, then tears out the neural clamp attached to its skull, killing the predator from the resulting brain damage. Leek re-appears and reveals he has control of an entire pack of future predators, which he will use as a Praetorian Guard to make himself invincible, ignoring Cutter's comments that the predators will likely destroy mankind if they ever escape their captivity. At that point, Lester makes contact, informing Leek his soldiers have quarantined the 12 creatures he had planned to release, and are about to assault the base. Furious, Leek tries to engineer a hostage situation, ordering Lester to call off the soldiers or he will order the predators to kill Cutter. Lester refuses and Cutter says he's not important; and before Leek can go through with his threat, Cutter deactivates the neural clamps by inserting one in a circuit box. The electrical charge short-circuits the device, deactivating them all and freeing the predators from Leek's control. Cutter narrowly makes his escape as the future predators descend en masse and tear a screaming Leek apart, watched by a dispassionate Lester and the disgusted staff of the ARC.

When Stephen arrives at the base, he rescues Helen and insists they confront Lester, disregarding her suggestion of escape by going through an anomaly and hiding. However, while moving through the base's corridors, he sees Cutter and realises that Helen was lying. Though Stephen is furious with the pair of them (Helen for lying to him, and Cutter for being right about Helen), Cutter convinces him and Helen to help contain the creatures, lest they escape and wipe out mankind, starting with the three of them. Helen suggests a plan to lure the creatures into the feeding chamber by sounding an alarm they associate with food, before locking them in where they can destroy each other. In the chamber, as Helen closes the door, using the internal door control, a raptor attacks her in the doorway. As the door closes on Helen, Cutter destroys the external door controls in an attempt to get help her. As the dinosaur tries to drag her back in, Stephen kills it, but when Nick tries to shut the door, he is unable to. Helen stated that now they are only able to lock the chamber from the inside, but whoever does will be locked inside with the creatures: one of them must go back, but it will mean certain death for whoever does. Nick prepares to go back, but before he can, Stephen knocks him to the ground and seals himself in, ignoring Nick desperately pleading with him to open the door. Nick and Helen can only watch in horror as Stephen is surrounded and killed by the creatures, who then turn on each other. As Nick mourns the death of his student and friend, Helen makes her escape.

At Stephen's funeral, all the team, along with many of the ARC's staff, even Lester, turn out. Caroline makes her peace with Connor and Abby and offers to try again, though it seems doubtful Connor will respond. Jenny offers to go for a drink with Cutter: he refuses for the time being, but implies he'd enjoy doing so. Lester appears and says that there is another anomaly, apologising for the untimely interruption. As the team leaves, Cutter hangs back and pulls out a photo of himself and Claudia Brown. Accepting that the changes to time are permanent and he has lost her forever, he tears up the photo and throws the pieces away, before catching up with the team to go and deal with the anomaly.

Once everyone has left, Helen visits Stephen's memorial, placing a fossillised Ammonite on the grave. She tells Stephen to be patient, promising him that the future can change. Suddenly several clones of the mysterious Cleaner dressed in SAS uniform surround her, waiting for orders. Helen surveys her troops and gives a knowing, evil smile...

Cast and crew[]

This episode's cast and crew:


Appearances[]

Characters[]

Creatures[]

Animals[]

Locations[]

Objects and technology[]

Organisations[]

Chronology[]

  • The events at the Creature Prison took place on 4 March 2007, as Stephen Hart's grave gives this as the date of his death.
  • This episode continues on from the previous one, picking up only a matter of minutes - hours after where it left off.

Trivia[]

  • The original broadcast and UK Netflix release had a previously segment before the credits but for some reason on the DVD release it was cutout, skipping straight to the title sequence.
  • In an alternate scene (as seen on the next time trailer from Episode 2.6), Helen and Nick were yelling at each other when saying "There's nothing you can do." and "Well you're going to have to think of something or we're all going to die." whereas in the episode they just speak the lines normally.
  • In the flashback scene of Connor and Nick installing the virus in the ADD from Episode 2.6:
    • Unused footage of Connor and Cutter saying both parts of the virus are installed. In the episode, you hear them saying the exact same lines but the camera is looking at the ADD not them.
    • Connor says "Leek won't know a thing about this until it turns around and bites him." however in the Episode 2.6, Connor says "No one will know a thing about this until it turns around and bites them." because at that point they did not know who the traitor was. The change was not so much an error but was intentional so viewers would understand easier.

Filming Locations[]

The creature prison was filmed at Longcross Studios. The interior of the ARC was also filmed at Longcross Studios and the exterior was shot at the Duke of Kent building at the University of Surrey. The holiday resort where Leek released a Silurian Scorpion was filmed at Bournemouth beach. The cemetery where the ARC team holds Stephen's funeral was filmed in the Kensal Green cemetery, London.

Errors[]

  • When Leek introduces Caroline and the team to the creature cage room:
    • There are two Smilodon instead of one.
    • In the closeup of Rex in a cage, he is next to one of the Smilodons but in the longshots the Smilodons are next to a scorpion or the entrance door.
    • The final scene is reversed, so all the creatures are in different cages.
  • The position of the dead Predator with the Neural clamp pulled out moved positions slightly between shots.
  • When Stephen shoots the raptor, he fires his gun once but two shots were fired.

Story connections[]

  • The Future Predator previously appeared in Episode 1.6 and 2.6. The Predators reoccur quite often in Primeval. For full list of appearances see "Future Predator appearances".
  • Creatures in the Creature Prison:
    • The Scutosaurus' previously appeared in Episode 1.1 and 1.6.
    • The Arthropleura had occurred in Episode 1.2.
    • The Raptors had appeared in Episode 2.1.
    • The Smilodon occurred in Episode 2.3.
    • The Mer had appeared in Episode 2.4.
    • Some Silurian Scorpions were seen in Episode 2.5.
  • References to Stephen's death:
    • Cutter has a flashback of it, in Episode 3.1.
    • Lester hires a Head of Security to compensate for Stephen's death, in Episode 3.1.
    • When Nick told Helen that she had killed Stephen, she retorted that it was his fault not hers, in Episode 3.3.
    • When the team nearly lose Jenny Lewis to freezing temperatures, Connor exclaims "Not again", in Episode 3.5.
    • Matt Anderson mentions Stephen in his list of 'brilliant people' who the ARC had lost, in the Webisode 4.
  • The Cleaner clones reappear in Episode 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3

References[]

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