Primeval Series 2 :Episode 2
THE WORMS
Cutter and the team are joined by a new PR guru in the guise of Jenny Lewis. Sharp, cynical and witty, she almost immediately develops a sparky and adversarial relationship with Cutter. The fact that she looks every inch like Claudia Brown but has no recollection of her doppelganger adds even more intrigue.
Meanwhile Connor is picked up in a video store by a beautiful young woman called Caroline. Caroline is everything Connor is not. Poised, well connected and effortlessly sexy, her interest in him is all the more surprising for it. But Connor isn't waiting around to analyse his good fortune. Right from the beginning Abby takes against Caroline for reasons even she herself doesn't quite understand.
But meanwhile...a gleaming new skyscraper in the centre of the city has quickly developed a reputation for teething problems in its electronics so no one is surprised when smoke is spotted creeping out from the server room. On inspection the janitor finds a thick layer of mist hugging the floor and a foul sulphurous smell - but no fire. Then something moves in the mist and he is suddenly yanked out of sight by a shadowy creature... the mist continues to spread...
Cutter and Connor get down to the serious work of trying to build an anomaly detector system. For the first time since the crisis began the team will no longer be dependent on luck to find the anomalies. Lester is sceptical of the plan but Leek is enthusiastic and Lester reluctantly agrees a budget. Connor is immediately set to work.
At the skyscraper panicking staff flee as the sinister mist oozes down the stairs and lift wells, accompanied by a foul stench of rotting matter. A fire crew arrive and enter a surreal office waist high in sulphurous fog. They are attacked by shadowy, giant creatures; we see tantalising glimpses of these odd, frightening beasts that seem to live inside the mist. The skyscraper is evacuated but in one glass-walled meeting room a group of executives assume the warning alarm is nothing more than a drill. They cannot yet see the mist enveloping them...
By the time the team arrive the skyscraper is filling with fog. While they explore offices full of abandoned chairs and desks they discover that there are giant carnivorous worms moving inside it. Leaping from desk to desk they only just manage to escape with their lives, while a fireman is killed horribly. Jenny, who has been appointed as operations manager on the ground (reporting directly to Leek and Lester) is given her first taste of her new job and nearly breaks down with horror when she realises what she is dealing with. But she recovers, showing real guts in the process and Cutter cannot help being impressed, even though the two of them find themselves in almost constant opposition.
The race is on to rescue the executives in the meeting room before the worms get to them first. In the process Stephen gets separated and gets trapped in a lift shaft. Cutter realises the worms can’t survive outside the fog and Connor and Abby set about turning up the heating in the building. They succeed in doing this but no one is prepared for the effect the heat has on these deadly creatures…
THE FICTION
In programme two a stinking fog starts to flow through the corridors of a new glass and steel high rise. The alarm is raised but the first fireman on the scene is attacked by things moving about in the fog. Cutter’s team arrives and come face to face with bizarre shaped giant worms, some of which are large enough to consume a human.
THE FACTS
The worms are not based on any real creature that is known to science although the extending proboscises they use to attack are taken from marine ragworms which are active predators. It is worth noting that it is very hard to be sure about the early development of soft bodied creatures because they fossilise so badly, so there were probably millions of strange creatures in the Precambrian environment that we know little about before shells and skeletons evolved. Also it is well known that in Earth’s very early history life first evolved in the absence of oxygen and then produced so much of it as a waste product that it poisoned its own atmosphere and these first organisms were then replaced by oxygen breathing ones. However, it is very fanciful that giant carnivorous worms were ever a reality; as far as we know these early organisms were nearly all bacteria. |
