I wanted to open this review by trying to find some kind of connective tissue between BBC's ongoing sci-fi series featuring humans against dinosaurs Primeval and Fox's struggling humans vs. dinosaurs show Terra Nova—some way of explaining why we have two English-language TV shows about the (fictional) eternal battle between man and thunder lizard. But beyond the most basic elements of their respective pitches—i.e. dinosaurs are on the rampage for some reason, humans have to take them down—the two series couldn't be any more different, and this might explain why Primeval has done so well while Terra Nova has not.
The basics on Primeval, first: the series features a team of scientists (and in the current season military and shady business types) dubbed The ARC, dealing with the mystery of randomly-appearing portals in time that lead back to the Cretaceous era, from which spill out all manner of angry, confused, and often hungry dinosaurs. This set was actually my first exposure to the show, so you can forgive me if, after the first three or four episodes of the here had me believing that the structure would be painfully similar from show to show: a portal appears in some random, possibly odd location (like a prison-turned tourist exhibit), the team from the ARC showing up and either trying to subdue or kill the dino and close the portal.
But as the episodes here went on (this set actually containing both the fourth and fifth seasons, packaged here as the third season to be broadcast in the U.S.), all manner of interesting mysteries, conspiracies, and counter-conspiracies began to unfold around the main action, culminating in some pretty surprising twists and reversals. Without spoiling too much, the occasional rip in space and time isn't too good for the planet, and with their increasing frequency, something dire is about to happen—and not simply an invasion of ticked off raptors. The series writers keep the structure of the episodes fairly simple and allow the action to unfold simply and cleanly without too much protracted build-up.
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