Wulfa_Jones
April 20th, 2009, 07:25 AM
I’m going to go out and a limb and say that at the moment, I feel Primeval is a better show than Doctor Who (since it was restarted) and Torchwood whilst we are on the subject.
Primeval has managed to do something that seemed beyond Russell T Davies and that is a cohesive story arc that runs along with the monster of the week. In regards to singular episodes, Doctor Who is better, but it’s season long story arcs have been incredibly weak in both build up and execution. Bad Wolf, missing Bumble Bees and the drums are all prime examples of the poor build up and, personally, I’ve not been satisfied with one of the big season finales so far. Primeval’s season 2 finale was pretty exciting and rewarding from what I remember.
The current season of Primeval is some of the best UK genre viewing in years, whilst not of the calibre of Being Human – which is a different sort of show, the entertainment value and the desire to “tune in next week” that Primeval provides is very high. For me, the prime reason for this, is wanting to see the few hints of what’s happening in the big picture.
I don’t want to plant any spoilers for Primeval, but there was a surprise ending in last weeks show that Who, under it’s current team anyway, would never have had to guts to pull off.
On the effects side, I think the Planet of the Dead special’s FX were truly horrible and whilst Primeval’s aren’t Hollywood standard, they are improvingly steadily especially for the amount per episode. It was good to see Planet of the Dead shot outside of Cardiff, Primeval’s first two seasons had loads of location work doubling for Pre-historic and future landscapes.
Whilst I am a massive Who fan, I just feel that it has been let down by the season long arcs they’ve attempted to pull off. I’m hoping that new Who show runner does a good-a-job with the shows overall direction as he has with this individual episodes.
Primeval has managed to do something that seemed beyond Russell T Davies and that is a cohesive story arc that runs along with the monster of the week. In regards to singular episodes, Doctor Who is better, but it’s season long story arcs have been incredibly weak in both build up and execution. Bad Wolf, missing Bumble Bees and the drums are all prime examples of the poor build up and, personally, I’ve not been satisfied with one of the big season finales so far. Primeval’s season 2 finale was pretty exciting and rewarding from what I remember.
The current season of Primeval is some of the best UK genre viewing in years, whilst not of the calibre of Being Human – which is a different sort of show, the entertainment value and the desire to “tune in next week” that Primeval provides is very high. For me, the prime reason for this, is wanting to see the few hints of what’s happening in the big picture.
I don’t want to plant any spoilers for Primeval, but there was a surprise ending in last weeks show that Who, under it’s current team anyway, would never have had to guts to pull off.
On the effects side, I think the Planet of the Dead special’s FX were truly horrible and whilst Primeval’s aren’t Hollywood standard, they are improvingly steadily especially for the amount per episode. It was good to see Planet of the Dead shot outside of Cardiff, Primeval’s first two seasons had loads of location work doubling for Pre-historic and future landscapes.
Whilst I am a massive Who fan, I just feel that it has been let down by the season long arcs they’ve attempted to pull off. I’m hoping that new Who show runner does a good-a-job with the shows overall direction as he has with this individual episodes.