There is an old proverb that says that best is the enemy of the good. Last night's episode of P:NW has shown this very clearly, for the script writer Jon Cooksey apparently had gotten too perfectionist or ambitious and wrote a very peculiar script for the episode, but first - a relatively brief run through the characters, old and new.
Lt. Leeds, of course, was one of the main stars of this episode as he had made his choice fully in favor of Cross. This must signify his new redemption story arc as he tries to make up for what he did in the past (led military teams into the time anomalies and captured creatures for study and dissection). Simple enough. Also, this episode reveals that despite his occasional stutter and Star Trek fanboy mode, Leeds can be as canny and self-controlling as any, such as colonel Hall, the season's chief human villain (it seems). Admittedly, this sight of the good lieutenant has been hinted at, for example in the "Clean-Up on Aisle 3", but now it was revealed fully. It will be interesting to watch further developments of Leeds' character, if the good man is given any more screen time.
Ange, of course, has returned, and she is on colonel Hall's side rather than Evan's. Maybe her running into Lt. Leeds in the hall, as he is being sent back to his cell will give her a change of heart but honestly? The episode's script has made it ambiguous enough for Ange to have equal (50-50) chance both to go back to Evan's team in some new capacity or to make "The Inquisition" her swan song and to leave for good (especially since there are only 2 episodes left till the finale). Guess only next week will show. (That said, Miranda Frigon must've made some sort of a contract regarding her legs: even in "The Inquisition" there was a shot centered on them. Yeesh!)
Toby, sadly, wasn't in this episode - well, she was, but only at the very beginning and end, so let us turn to the other half of the good ship Moby - Mac. He has also returned and apparently "stopped sulking" as Dylan put it, but Dylan has her own issues so let's not underestimate Mac. In "The Inquisition" Mac has become a foil to Dylan, being something of the voice of reason to her emotions so we have to respect and appreciate Evan's firearms expert for that. Other than that Mac's main contribution was to tell Dylan and the audience that everything related to the ARC has been removed from the Internet. Personally, in this day and age, I find this unlikely, but technology aside, I honestly hope that Connor will be able to explain this situation to the Cross Photonics gang when they return: what did happen to the original ARC and is P:NW actually canon or not?
Dylan. Ever since "Breakthrough" she was one of my least favorite characters of P:NW; no offense to Sara Canning, but since when did Dylan became so Greenpeace? Let's not forget that Evan got involved with the time anomalies to protect innocent people such as his late wife from the dinosaurs, not vice versa. Evan's silence on this subject ever since "The Great Escape" (considering that Leggy that terror bird got shot dead during maybe "The Epic Fail" would've been a better title from his point of view as the escapee) is less peculiar: he had already lost several people from his team, even if he wasn't falling in love with Dylan, he cannot afford to alienate her without a good reason. That said, he is still in charge of his team, not Dylan, so either he and Ms. Weir must have a confrontation about their goals and have a good heart-to-heart talk about everything short of the moon, or Evan should resign and make Dylan the full and rightful leader of the team instead.
The second big problem with Dylan is Sara Canning, or more precisely - her acting. In this episode, Sara hammed it up. Certainly, "The Inquisition" was supposed to be a very tense, very dramatic episode, but Sara went at it as if she was a character in an ancient Greek tragedy, like Medea or Antigone, for example. There are various ways to execute this sort of character, and Sara had failed at it almost as badly as Leggy the terror bird did with his escape. I wouldn't say that Sara came across as a third-rate diva in a second-rate TV series, but it could have gone a lot better.
If Dylan has turned into Antigone - all emotion and rightful fury, then the CP team's new nemesis, colonel Hall, is king Creont - all logic and domination and the same unyielding character. His master plan is to raid the past in order to save the humanity's future, a clear nod towards Earth's future in the original series. Evan and the others (primarily Mac and Dylan) see this as good intentions that lead to Hell, but did Evan really sell his company? For if he did, he not only had destroyed his own power base, but also, possibly, betrayed the expectations of many people who were loyal to him - hardly heroic at all.
This brings uns to the main problem that plagued 'The Inquisition' - the episode's script. The actors did their jobs very well, even Sara, who hammed it up somewhat, but the script itself was flawed, and in several ways. Firstly, it's the shifts in Evan and Dylan's characters - too large and drastic for the audience to believe in, as I mentioned above.
Secondly, it's the lack of the actual dinosaurs & co. and the time anomalies in this episode. "Primeval" was all about them, basically, and if P:NW is moving away from them, it is also moving away from being a spin-off of the original and into the realm of independence. If that's the case, some sort of a press release would've been nice, thank you.
Thirdly, it's the multiple flashbacks to the previous episodes - the pilot, "Babes in the Woods", "Truth". Even if the audience is incapable of uploading those episodes from YouTube or wherever, there is still no reason to assume that they have short-term memory of a gnat and are incapable of remembering which episode stared Ange's first meeting with Leeds, which episode had the Ornithomimus, and which episode - the Pachycephalosaurus. The flashbacks were supposed to intensify the drama, I reckon, but instead they just made "The Inquisition's" script fragmented and hard to follow. Combine this with Dylan's/Sara's over-the-top acting, and instead of feeling horrified or sympathetic you begin to feel annoyed and start hoping for the latest dinosaur or other prehistoric animal to come through a time anomaly to break things up.
And there were no dinosaurs or other creatures in "The Inquisition" either. Instead we had several long talks about the sanctity of life and of humanity's place in it. I cannot say that I'm fully surprised by this - P:NW may be a Canadian show, but IP who made it is a British company, and lately England has been very involved with wildlife conservation efforts - just ask Sir David Attenborough. That said, a sci-fi TV series isn't the best place to introduce such topics to the wider audience: another TV series, "Terra Nova", made in the States but based on an idea of a British writer, tried this, and got cancelled after a single season; I honestly hope that P:NW will not.
And there you have it, folks. "The Inquisition", the episode where P:NW appears to be on the verge of transforming from a spin-off into an independent series, where most of the main cast got captured by a villain whose hideout, for all of its high tec, lacked simple security cameras to track Mac and Dylan, and where Jon Cooksey's ambitions to write a very good, very serious episode backfired on him and the audience...at least partly. What will happen next week? Only time will tell.
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