BBC America’s “Primeval” Season 5 is set to stun

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These are good times for sci-fi fans. With the knowledge of our universe expanding and time and space showing an elasticity that, in the past, we could only barely have dreamed, the imaginations of today’s sci-fi writers are fertile with theoretical possibility — regardless of plausibility, of course. Fans of Primeval will get a rich sampling of those possibilities when the series returns to BBC America for Season 5 this Saturday, Nov. 12.

The opening of Primeval‘s new season finds the rips in time — anomalies — opening up across the UK with greater frequency and with further-reaching consequences, allowing ever-more dangerous creatures from the past and the future to mingle in time, and putting all of humanity at risk. The Anomaly Research Center (ARC) set up to deal with these creature incursions has now been privatized, but secrets amid the team threaten to tear it apart, which in turn endangers the world’s populace. Field leader Matt (Ciarán McMenamin) may be withholding what he knows about the anomalies, arousing suspicion about his motives. Abby (Hannah Spearritt) works out his secret and confronts him after an underground creature from the future nearly kills her tech-genius and Star Wars-loving boyfriend, Connor.

With the help of a new lab assistant, April (Janice Byrne), taken on by Philip (Alexander Siddig), Connor is developing technology to change the future of the teams mission and the anomalies, but suspicion of the purity of Philip’s motives — as well as the increasing number of anomalies — combines to put a strain on the team. As the situation becomes less and less controllable, the future survival of the human race is in doubt.

It’s a pretty cool-sounding Primeval season, with situations that should be compelling to see, like a nuclear submarine experiencing an anomaly while at sea, a subterranean creature terrorizing a city, and a raptor roaming the streets of Victorian London at the same time as the infamous killer Spring Heeled Jack.

In other words, you’ll be glad that the Primeval writers have once again thrown plausibility under the bus.

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Photo: © Impossible Pictures Ltd.