Creatures: DIICTODONS / CLONES
Main Location: Hospital / the ARC
The team faces not one but two very different types of threat in episode three - one from the past, one from the future.
When an anomaly from the Permian era opens in the centre of a busy London hospital, disaster looms as diictodons, cute but surprisingly dangerous burrowing creatures roam freely around the corridors.
With teeth so sharp they can chew through anything from concrete to steel, the safe working of the hospital is threatened as the diictodons threaten to chomp through the main power supply.
Calamity is averted by Cutter (Douglas Henshall), Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts), Abby (Hannah Spearritt) and Captain Becker (Ben Mansfield) who are obliged to get the creatures back to their own time before the anomaly closes. The four split up and while Becker learns just how irritating Connor can be, Abby and Cutter have their knowledge of evolution tested in the ultimate way. Locked in a hospital room with one VERY expectant mother and a burrowing diictodon Abby has to transfer her zoology skills in the most surprising of ways.
Their task isn’t helped by dogged journalist, Mick Harper (Ramon Tikaram), who is determined to catch one of the creatures and expose the ARC and its secrets to the world. Meanwhile Lester, Jenny (Lucy Brown) and Sarah (Laila Rouass) are confronted with an attack on the ARC, led by Helen Cutter (Juliet Aubrey) and a small army of “Cleaner Replicas”. She has come to ask Nick the significance of the artefact which is now in her possession. Featuring in flashback we learn she stole it during the fierce fight between Christine Johnson’s soldiers and the future predators.
Unable to gain access to the ARC without the correct security access, she has however cloned her ex-husband. The ‘other’ Cutter is remorseless and without fear. And when the two Cutters finally come face-to- face, a battle of wills ensues as Helen directs her clone to force the information she thinks Nick has from him. With a gun to his head, Cutter is not blind to the fact that Helen believes the artefact can unlock the secrets of the anomalies and pretends to know its significance. With the trap set, the team find themselves surrounded and fighting battles on all fronts. As the ARC burns who will survive and just how far is Helen willing to go to obtain the information she came for?
DIICTODON – EPISODE THREE
The Facts
Era: Permian
Location: Africa and Asia
Size: 45 cm (1.5 ft)
Diet: Herbivorous
Diictodon were a very common type herbivore that lived about 255 million years ago. Although they lived before the dinosaurs they were more closely related to mammals – hence their mammal like behaviour. The physical recreation of these creatures in this episode is fairly accurate if a bit on the large side. There is plenty of evidence that gnawing animals such as rats and squirrels are attracted to electricity cables but no one is sure why
The Fiction:
When the team arrive at a hospital after an anomaly alert they quickly discover that a small anomaly has let through a colony of burrowing Diictodon now busy chewing through electric cables in the walls. Abby manages to capture one and use its alarm call to attract the rest back through the anomaly, but it closes leaving two of them behind so these are left in the charge of Connor and Abby.