And so, P:NW has recovered from its' hiatus slump by bringing us the latest great episode, "The Great Escape", pun intended. If one discounts some minor issues associated with Titanis (more on that below), "The Great Escape" truly great.
First, the conflicts. Evan still hasn't made it up with Ange or Mac. While the situation with Ange is confusing and tense and Evan probably doesn't know how to solve it, honestly, the situation with Mac can probably be resolved with a single heart-to-heart, so if Evan isn't in touch with his feminine side enough to do that, then maybe Dylan has to pick up the slack: Cross Photonics' dinosaur-hunting team is getting ridiculously understaffed.
That is where the military comes in. As it was revealed back in the episode "Angry Birds", Lt. Leeds has sort of doublecrossed the Cross Photonics team by keeping one at the end of the ep, rather than sending it back home, to the Miocene or Pliocene time period. Now, however, it appears that his own superiors have doublecrossed Leeds and cut him out of the loop (see the previous episode for some more of that), and Leeds isn't taking it lying down, as he saves the day at the end of the episode, or at least Evan and Dylan from being captured by the military in the character of major Douglas.
It should be pointed out at this moment that one of the improvements that P:NW has done in comparison to the original series is that it got rid of the rather 2D secondary characters of original "Primeval". Major Douglas isn't a cardboard character akin to captain Wilder from S3 of "Primeval" - instead, he appears to be a decent and a competent military man, who honestly wants to do the right thing - but is willing to do anything to achieve it, no matter what the cost is. This puts him, of course, on a collision course with Leeds, who also wants to do the right thing, but who is always aware of the cost and who just is not as ruthless as his superior officer is. (Determination now Leeds got plenty.)
Right now, of couse, the score is tied: Leeds was captured, but Dylan and Evan got away and the poor Titanis shall not be experimented on live every again - the resolution of this conflict will probably become apparent in the next episodes: there are just three left, so a lot of resolutions are waiting in the wings.
While Lt. Leeds character development dominated the ep, Evan and Dylan continued to bond too. I really do approve of ship Devan, but Evan's MS skills are ridiculous: in "Fear of Flying" he was almost able to rig a plane to fly again, and here he is able to hijack military radio equipment using some rather impromptu tools. Yes, of course, the Thunderdome is the Thunderdome, but still...
That said, both Dylan and Evan had some nice interactions with each other, as they tried to figure where each other's attitudes lie in relation to each other: Evan's save all humans vs. Dylan's animal loving, and it's nice to see Evan getting along with at least one of the women in his life at this point.
Finally, it should be noted that the way "The Great Escape" referred to the previous episodes of the season is clever, giving the audience ample hints as to what this episode will be about - Leggy the Titanis, "Terror Bird", which already appeared in this season.
Sadly, here we come to some of the minor issues of the episode. Firstly, the model for the terror bird has changed again, this time to that used in the episode 4x06 of the original series. Clearly, when it comes to the terror birds, IP has just too many options: WWB (2001), "Prehistoric Park" (2006), "Primeval" (2007-11) and now P:NW (2012-13) each had its own model of the terror bird, so by now the show's producers probably have too many to pick and choose from, and that's what has happened to Leggy here.
To make things even more messed up, the scientific team at IP is not very good with terror birds themselves: not too long ago they thought that Titanis and Phororhacos were one and the same bird. They are not, and now the episode's script writers took to calling it a "dinosaur". Seriously, WTF? Yes, a bird is a dinosaur, but it is also a bird. A terror bird and a stegosaurus, for example, were two different creatures even if they both laid eggs. And it is not like 'a bird' is a mouthful or an obscure scientific term as 'a mammal-like reptile' or 'a therapsid' are, so what gives?
That said, "The Great Escape" was still a very good episode: the plot was tight, the action - also, and Lt. Leeds finally got his long expected character development, so kudos for that. Cannot wait and see what the next week's ep brings us.
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