So, let us talk about “The Sound of Thunder, Part 2”. This
episode has introduced new plot developments to the show, so let us talk about
them first.
As it was said on P:NW’s Facebook page, the finale’s name
was derived from Ray Bradbury’s short story with the same name, where a time traveling hunter, after stepping onto a butterfly, changed the entire history –
for the worse. Since then, this idea has been used at least once, in 2005, in a
film vaguely based on the same concept, and also in 2007, at the end of the
first season of original “Primeval”. This concept states that messing with the
past is always bad and should not be used.
Unfortunately, the delivery of this idea by the P:NW somehow
fell somewhat short; in fact, the entire conveyance of “The Sound of Thunder
Part 2” fell short. Two weeks ago, in “The Inquisition”, the actors took Jon
Cooksey’s script and managed to ham it up, especially Sara Canning (Dylan Weir);
here, they went the other way, and not just them, but Gillian Horvath and Katherine
Collins (the scriptwriters) as well.
Messing with the time, i.e. with the past, is bad and leads
to untold or unimaginable problems? Perhaps, but somehow the actual reasons
delivered by Evan and Connor were less grandiose and more personal: Connor just
wants to get back to his wife (Abby, I hope) and not lose her, Evan just does
not want to die and disappear up the Albertosaurus’
gut; project Magnet may be able to save the people killed by the dinosaurs and
co. from the pilot episode onwards, but Evan would not be around...
No, I am not saying that Evan should have died – he is the
main character of the show, but frankly his line of reasoning was weak,
especially since he failed to save a lot of people, starting with his friend
Drake in the pilot, ending with Mac in the season finale, and over a dozen
people in-between, that is all.
On the other hand, he does kill the Albertosaurus, after it apparently killed his wife and Mac (again)
and that changes something in the time line...thus nullifying all of the song
and dance that was done to ensure that the dinosaur does go back in time and
kills all of the right people. That, in turn, makes all of the episode’s lines
about the non-violation of the past seem not even hypocritical, but pointless.
(And considering that ever since “The Inquisition” Evan’s team was worried that
Hall’s people were going to change the past, this is also dramatically ironic,
in a moronic way, though.)
As for the other characters, well, Connor got married.
Congratulations. I am sure that he and Abby are going to be even happier
together now that they got together at last, but... he knew that Evan and the
other Canucks were either messing with the time travel technology or had
problems with time anomalies of their own and just went back to England and did
nothing? What the f*ck was he thinking – the ARC job is to constraint the time
anomalies and ensure that the time anomaly situation doesn’t get out of hand,
so to ignore the situation in Canada is nothing short of criminal. Both Connor and Lester should be sacked for letting
it get that intense and not contacting either Evan’s team or project Magnet to establish damage control. This is criminal
negligence, period, and Connor really should not have been so smug, when he
told Ange that it was he, who introduced Evan to this whole thou shall not kill
prehistoric animals’ philosophy – he was lucky that Evan is an easily
influenced guy.
No, seriously, Evan is. He accepted Connor’s policy about
the dinosaurs after one brief talk with him, he accepted Dylan’s Greenpeace-like
opinion without an argument, and I honestly do not know why he was able to
resist colonel Hall so well. Maybe because the good colonel challenged Evan’s
alpha male status? I have no idea...
Speaking of males, Leeds’ character has developed little in
this episode: he was shown as a take charge and an intelligent man (maybe that
is why Evan had problems with him since the beginning), while Toby is actually
alive. Yay for Toby, she really had us worried.
But Mac is dead. Boo. And he had not told Evan about any of
his and Toby’s ARC related discoveries or about his conversation with Connor (really
bland and pointless, if you ask me). I seriously hope that Toby will fill the
blanks for Evan and the others, or this plot thread will a) bite them all in
the ass; or b) vanish completely, making the audience wonder why was it so important
that Mac worked in the ARC in the original timeline.
As for character development – well, Mac clearly was a
tragic hero of this season: nothing, not even Toby, appeared to be going his
way ever since Samantha died in “Undone”, just as he was about to take things
with her to a new level, plus he already had to help his friends to bury himself.
I seriously hope that he will not be forgotten in the next season or so, as captain
Ryan, Nick and Stephen had been in the original series, eh?
Toby, incidentally, has changed little in this episode, and
neither has Ange. Maybe she has done the right thing, by having Connor and his
friend (Kieran, was it?) go back to London via the time anomaly express, but for
all that we know, this could have been rendered pointless by Evan killing the
dinosaur, so I honestly cannot say that either, she, Leeds, Toby or Dylan have
changed much. Dylan, in particular, did little other than demonstrate her field
experience and her fiery temper; and also she had saved Leeds from the Albertosaurus – this will probably be
important in the next season of P:NW (if there will be one).
So: Evan had his reckoning, Connor became thoroughly OOC,
Mac is dead, Toby is not and the other characters have remained as they were.
Plus the season ended on an open note. A fitting end for the first season of a
show that had plenty of both ups and downs.
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