List of Primeval episodes

A sighting of a strange creature occurs on the outskirts of the Forest of Dean, leading a small team of scientists and government officials to investigate it. They find a Scutosaurus in the forest and discover a time anomaly that leads to the late Permian period, 250 million years ago. The team soon realise that a Inostrancevia also came through and they must find it before it kills anyone.

First appearance of: Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall), Stephen Hart (James Murray), Connor Temple (Andrew-Lee Potts), Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown), Abby Maitland (Hannah Spearritt), Helen Cutter (Juliet Aubrey), James Lester (Ben Miller) and Captain Tom Ryan (Mark Wakeling).

After a London Underground cleaner is fatally bitten by some type of giant insect, James Lester (Ben Miller) brings the team together to investigate. They find another anomaly that leads to the late Carboniferous, and a colony of giant arachnids that have come through. Using powerful lights to send the spiders back, the team are then attacked by the true killer, an Arthropleura, which bites and poisons Stephen Hart (James Murray). The race is now on to extract a sample of venom from the giant arthropod to synthesise an antivenom before Stephen dies.

First appearance of: Tom (Jake Curran) and Duncan (James Bradshaw).

A man at a local swimming pool is killed by a Cretaceous marine reptile, a mosasaur when an anomaly appears there. But when the anomaly disappears and reopens several miles away in a reservoir, Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) realises that the anomalies have the ability to move, and his theory is confirmed when the anomaly opens for a third time in a residential basement, where a plumber is attacked by a Hesperornis. When the team find proof that Cutter's wife, Helen (Juliet Aubrey), is alive in the past, Cutter is ordered through the anomaly to find and bring her back.

Helen escapes from custody at the Home Office by taking the team to an anomaly that unleashes a flock of dodos. Some these dodos are carrying deadly parasites capable of infecting humans. Unknown to the team, Connor Temple's (Andrew-Lee Potts) friends, Tom (Jake Curran) and Duncan (James Bradshaw), capture one of the dodos, but when Tom is infected by the parasite and goes on a rampage, Cutter and the team must find him before they have a pandemic on their hands.

Final appearance of: Tom (Jake Curran).

A Pteranodon turns up at a golf course, and a golfer is killed. Cutter and his team go to investigate and find the anomaly up in the air. The team track the flying reptile down to send it back to its time, but Cutter and Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown) become trapped in a mansion by a swarm of bloodthirsty Anurognathus. As Cutter goes to get help, Claudia is saved by the unlikely hands of Helen Cutter.

Helen Cutter returns and informs the team that she has seen a highly evolved predator from the future enter the present day. After dispatching the adult creature, Cutter and Helen decide to take its young back through the anomaly in the Forest of Dean, hoping to locate the anomaly to the future, a decision that proves to be a mistake when the creatures break free. Upon his return to the present Cutter is shocked to discover that Claudia Brown has disappeared and apparently never existed in this world.

Final appearance of: Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown) and Captain Tom Ryan (Mark Wakeling).

As Cutter tries to come to terms with Claudia Brown's disappearance, he struggles to adjust to working with her replacement, the slimy Oliver Leek (Karl Theobald). Meanwhile, a trio of bloodthirsty raptors are rampaging through a shopping mall and the team are called in to deal with the situation. When the team arrives back at the ARC, they are introduced to Jenny Lewis (Lucy Brown), the ARC's new PR officer, and a doppelgänger of Claudia Brown.

First appearance of: Jenny Lewis (Lucy Brown), Oliver Leek (Karl Theobald) and "the Cleaner" (Tim Faraday).

Cutter and his team find themselves pursuing giant, carnivorous worms from the Precambrian that start to appear through an eerie fog in a local office block after emerging through another anomaly. As the team deals with the problem, Cutter becomes preoccupied with the team's new PR executive, Jenny Lewis, whom he is convinced is actually Claudia Brown.

First appearance of: Caroline Steel (Naomi Bentley).

Connor's new anomaly detector is set up in the ARC, but there are fears that the device will not work when another violent attack is reported at Blue Sky amusement park. Investigations lead the team to deduce the attacks took place before the detector came online. The team discover a saber-toothed cat is roaming the park, killing at will, but as their hunt continues, they begin to suspect someone knows of the creature's presence and is covering up for it.

After a teenager mysteriously disappears, the team investigate, and narrowly save Jenny from death at the jaws of a highly unusual shark lurking in the River Thames. Cutter is convinced that the shark's unique morphology is the result of further evolution – that it's a species from the future. They then split up to find the creature's lair but trouble brews when Abby Maitland (Hannah Spearritt) is dragged through an anomaly by another carnivorous species from the future: the Mer creature.

A young girl searching for her dog ends up stuck on the other side of an anomaly, leading Cutter and Stephen to mount a rescue mission into the sandy deserts of the Silurian. But when the anomaly closes, the trio end up trapped with a horde of giant Silurian scorpions which track them from hearing vibrations in the sand. As the three of them fight for survival, Cutter realizes they are not alone: someone is actively trying to sabotage their work.

A bull Columbian mammoth slips through an anomaly, rampaging along the M25 scattering cars and lorries in its wake. As Cutter, Abby, Connor and Jenny take on the task of stopping it, Stephen is shocked when Helen returns with plans of her own. After taking the mammoth back to the ARC, Cutter decides to set a trap to root out the traitor in their midst, leaving Lester to fight for his life against a future predator that has infiltrated the ARC.

Cutter and the team are kidnapped and held in a military bunker by Oliver Leek, who has plans to be the most powerful man in the world using an army of fearsome predators he has captured from past anomalies, while his partner, Helen, furthers her own nefarious schemes. As the team fight for their survival, Stephen deals with a Silurian scorpion which Leek has unleashed onto a busy beach. Back at the bunker, the team have found a way to stop Leek, but at the cost of Stephen's life.

Final appearance of: Stephen Hart (James Murray), Oliver Leek (Karl Theobald) and Caroline Steel (Naomi Bentley).

An exhibition of ancient Egyptian relics comes to the British Museum and an anomaly opens in a mysterious monument called the "Sun Cage". A Pristichampsus, believed in Ancient Egypt to be the goddess Ammut, emerges and proceeds to wreak havoc in London. Cutter, Abby, Jenny and new security chief, Captain Becker (Ben Mansfield), pursue it through the city while Connor and new recruit, Egyptologist Sarah Page (Laila Rouass) try to stop more creatures coming through, and make some interesting discoveries about anomalies in the process. Meanwhile, Lester encounters a new adversary: the devious and ambitious Christine Johnson (Belinda Stewart-Wilson), who is after a strange artifact that Helen has stolen.

First appearance of: Sarah Page (Laila Rouass), Captain Hilary Becker (Ben Mansfield) and Christine Johnson (Belinda Stewart-Wilson).

Three teenage boys break into a house and a mysterious humanoid creature able to camouflage itself in any environment attacks them. Only one boy manages to escape alive. Fourteen years later, in the present day, Cutter predicts an anomaly will appear in the same house in which the boys were killed. He sends Jenny, Abby and Connor to investigate. However, their efforts are thwarted by the creature and the attentions of detective Danny Quinn (Jason Flemyng), who is investigating his brother's disappearance 14 years before. Meanwhile, Cutter, Becker and Sarah are caught off-guard when Helen's forces attempt to infiltrate the ARC.

First appearance of: Danny Quinn (Jason Flemyng).

An anomaly opens at the West London Hospital, causing a group of Diictodon to emerge. They promptly chew through the power cables, cutting the power to the building. Cutter, Abby, Connor and Becker arrive to investigate and evacuate the building as does journalist Mick Harper (Ramon Tikaram) from Evening News HQ, who wants to get evidence of the creatures to expose to the public. However, they return to find Helen and her Cleaner Replica troops (including a clone of Cutter) have taken over the ARC, so they can interrogate the real Cutter about the artifact. As a bomb blast tears the ARC apart and the team battle for survival, Helen declares that she must stop the ARC'S research from destroying the world at any cost... even if it means killing her husband.

Final appearance of: Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) and "the Cleaner" (Tim Faraday).

Mick Harper steals an anomaly detector from Jenny's car and uses it to track down an anomaly at an airport, bringing wildlife presenter Nigel Marven with him to identify any creatures that come through. Yet when a Giganotosaurus comes through the anomaly, the team has to not only stop the humongous rampaging dinosaur destroying the airport and a nearby aircraft, but prevent the journalists from broadcasting its existence to the world. Danny Quinn appears and helps them, then refuses to leave.

Danny Quinn breaks into the ARC and is drafted in to help the team when a fast-growing flesh-eating fungus from the future is transferred to the present and infects a businessman, Sir Richard Bentley. Danny arrives with flamethrowers to try and burn Bentley as he is already infected not realising fire doesn't work. The team manage to bring the creature back to the ARC to destroy it, where Jenny is trapped in the freezing cold main operations area with it and forced to fight for her life. After her recent discovery of Cutter's picture of Claudia Brown and her near-death experience, Jenny decides that she's had enough: she resigns from her job at the ARC, leaving Danny in charge of the team.

With Jenny Lewis's departure and Nick Cutter's death, Danny Quinn is made the new leader of the team. When Christine Johnson and her soldiers take over the ARC in search of the artifact, the team escape to an old cabin on Ministry of Defence property within a minefield which has been abandoned since the 1930s. As Johnson ousts Lester and imposes her will on the ARC staff, Becker must find a way to defeat her. At the same time, with no weapons but their own initiative, Danny, Connor, Abby and Sarah have to find a way to defend themselves, not only from Johnson's soldiers, but from a pack of terror birds that emerge from a nearby anomaly.

A Dracorex comes through an anomaly, trying to escape from a 14th-century knight who believes he is hunting a dragon. The team are forced to find and save the life of the Dracorex, and then, aided with a bit of medieval research by Sarah, return the confused knight, who thinks he is a new Saint George, to his own world before he kills anyone, out of belief they are demons and he is in hell.

An anomaly opens at a race car test track and a Megopteran, an insect from the future, comes through. It is carnivorous and lethal, and the team must draw on all their resources to get it back to its home. However, things get complicated when Jack (Robert Lowe) decides to find out what his sister Abby really does for a living, and inadvertently drives through an anomaly into the future: a post-apocalyptic world overrun by future predators. Now the team must mount a desperate rescue mission after Jack, and then find a way to escape with their lives. During the rescue mission, Abby realizes something about Connor and it will change both their lives forever.

The team have to deal with a herd of Embolotherium from the Eocene. Danny arrives with a mysterious woman called Eve who he first saw in the future; having rescued her from Christine Johnson, they endeavour to save everyone from the stampede. When the anomaly closes, at a campsite, Eve opens another anomaly to return the beasts and are all saved. Upon their return to the ARC, the team are shocked to discover that Eve is Helen Cutter in disguise, who takes Johnson hostage. Holding her at gunpoint, Helen steals the artifact, pushes Johnson through an anomaly to be butchered by future predators, and vows once again to stop the ARC's work from destroying the world. The team decide they must stop Helen before she kills anyone else.

Final appearance of: Christine Johnson (Belinda Stewart-Wilson).

Sarah and Becker investigate an anomaly that re-opens at Johnson's HQ and end up fighting for their lives against Megopterans, while Danny, Abby and Connor hunt for Helen in the future. The trio discover Helen plans to prevent the evolution of mankind in order to save the world, resulting in a chase across a Cretaceous forest and into Pliocene Africa. Danny confronts Helen at the location of the human ancestor, Australopithecus, only to find she has poisoned a small group already. Helen delights in her apparent victory, but a raptor that followed Danny through the anomaly charges at Helen and knocks her off a cliff, killing them both. Having ensured the other hominids have survived, Danny then makes his way back to the anomaly, but it vanishes just before he reaches it.

Final appearance of: Sarah Page (Laila Rouass) and Helen Cutter (Juliet Aubrey).

Interview with James Lester and Captain Becker about the disappearance of team members (at the end of series 3). Introduction of Jess Parker as team coordinator with Matt Anderson and Phillip. Sarah Page's death is revealed.^[6]

Becker arrives at the new ARC HQ. New team leader Matt Anderson^[6] is shown to have a secret agenda, reporting to "Gideon".^[6]

Matt Anderson begins work at the ARC and meets the team.

Matt addresses and impresses the newly formed ARC team.

The team successfully deals with creature attacks. Matt reports to an impatient Gideon.

After a year trapped in the Cretaceous period, Abby and Connor finally return to the present, followed by a giant Spinosaurus, the longest known carnivorous dinosaur. The new ARC team responds. Eventually, the Spinosaurus is returned to the Cretaceous when Connor causes an anomaly to implode, from within it.^[8]

Note: In the episode's initial broadcast, Abby uses the song Don't Stop Movin' to distract the Spinosaurus, a reference to her actress Hannah Spearritt originally being a member of S Club 7 before their break-up.

First appearance of: Matt Anderson (Ciarán McMenamin), Jess Parker (Ruth Kearney) and Philip Burton (Alexander Siddig).

Connor and his old friend, Duncan, track an elusive Kaprosuchus to the docks, and find evidence of a fresh kill. After bringing it down by using their EMD weapons, Connor and Abby then win back their places on the team.

Guest appearance: Duncan (James Bradshaw).

Three 19th-century humans come through an anomaly in a theatre, and are followed by deadly "Tree Creepers", arboreal raptor-like dinosaurs. One of the time travellers, Ethan Dobrowski (Jonathan Byrne), is a serial killer and another, Emily Merchant (Ruth Bradley), appeals to Matt Anderson (Ciarán McMenamin) to help catch him. After the team deals with the "Tree Creepers", Matt tells Emily that he is going to help her to track down Ethan.

First appearance of: Emily Merchant (Ruth Bradley).

Dozens of venomous therocephalians are stalking a school's corridors and a detention class becomes a bloodbath when a teacher and a student are killed. Connor and some students use chemical warfare to finally subdue the creatures. In the ARC, Abby's menagerie is under threat, when Philip Burton (Alexander Siddig) threatens to kill them. However, with a little bit of help from Lester, Abby eventually manages to subdue Philip, thus allowing her creatures, to live. Meanwhile, over at Matt's flat, Emily is kidnapped by Ethan.

Connor, Abby, and Matt are sent to a coastal village, where they discover that a farmer and her son are concealing a labyrinthodont, which has been attacking the local cattle and has killed a tourist. After it kills the two villainous farmers, Connor and Abby then force it back through the anomaly, while Matt follows the tracker Emily carried to a cemetery where Ethan has taken her and left her bound and gagged inside a coffin. Matt rescues Emily, but Ethan escapes. Gideon (Anton Lesser) warns Matt that Ethan presents a terrible danger to humanity, much like Helen Cutter did.

An anomaly allows a pack of Hyaenodons to make their home in the wine cellar of a stately home, where Jenny Lewis is getting married. The wolf-like creatures eat the wedding planner. Jenny and the team subdue them using medieval weaponry. Meanwhile, Becker narrowly escapes a lethal boobytrap set by Ethan, after Jess Parker (Ruth Kearney) saves him; Lester remotely conducts Jenny's marriage. Gideon's "home" is shown – a blasted desolate world.^[17] He finally dies from his illness, and he is then revealed to be Matt's father.

Guest appearance: Jenny Lewis (Lucy Brown)

A pair of anomalies opens in a prison, one to the Pliocene allowing a terror bird to attack, and Danny Quinn to return. He meets Ethan and realises that he is his lost younger brother, Patrick Quinn. Matt reveals to Emily that he is from the future, and trying to prevent an apocalypse involving the anomalies. Emily returns to the 19th century. Danny warns the team that Philip Burton was involved with Helen Cutter, then he follows Patrick into the Pliocene. Connor discovers that the incidence of anomalies is increasing, and is potentially dangerous.

Guest appearance: Danny Quinn (Jason Flemyng)

After a road worker falls into a giant opening and is killed by a giant burrowing insect, presumed from the future, the ARC team are called in to investigate. Meanwhile, Philip introduces Connor to Prospero's "New Dawn" which will extract energy from the anomalies and stop the world's energy crisis. Philip also assigns Connor an assistant, April Leonard (Janice Byrne), to keep an eye on him. Connor makes a late appearance and joins the team in tracking down the giant burrowing insect after Abby tells him that people are starting to notice his absence in the field, and is himself captured, and dragged to its nest in a shopping centre under construction, later to be rescued by Matt by means of explosives. Matt reveals his origin in the future and his mission to prevent the ARC causing a disaster to Abby and asks for her help.

When a submarine encounters an anomaly and a prehistoric creature out at sea, Matt, Abby and Connor are brought aboard to investigate. Their plans to contain the creature and seal the anomaly prove difficult, especially when the submarine loses power and is pulled through the anomaly to the seas of the Jurassic Period. With a young but dangerous theropod dinosaur aboard the submarine, the ARC team then work alongside its naval counterparts to restore power and return through the anomaly before it closes or before they are attacked by an oncoming pod of Liopleurodon. Back at the ARC, Lester and Jess have a battle of their own as they try and dissuade an admiral from nuking the anomaly. At the end of the episode Abby reveals to Matt what happened to Emily after she returned to the 19th century.

An anomaly alert brings the team to the Gaiety Theatre where they encounter a raptor. The team send the creature through an anomaly which transpires to lead to Victorian London. Matt follows the raptor through to prevent it killing anyone. Matt tracks down the raptor but finds Emily who is doing the same. The pair then find themselves accused of being the mysterious Spring-heeled Jack, killing several people actually killed by the raptor. Matt and Emily eventually stun the raptor and send it back. Matt reveals to Emily that her husband plans to have her confined in a madhouse and the pair head back to the present, being followed through the anomaly by her husband, Henry, who holds Matt at gunpoint. The raptor awakes and kills Henry. Back at the ARC, Abby breaks into Connor's laboratory and copies the information on his computer, however Connor catches her. The episode concludes with Connor and April creating the first man-made anomaly.

Connor uses his device to open an anomaly within the ARC. The team come to close it, but are ordered out of the laboratory by Philip who heads to "New Dawn" to collect data from the device. Connor tells Abby the purpose of the anomaly. Back at the ARC, a swarm of future beetles and their enormous queen come through the anomaly and kill a guard before spreading throughout the building after chewing through reinforced concrete. The ARC goes into lockdown trapping Matt, Connor, Abby, Becker, Emily and Jess inside and they are forced to fight for survival. Jess is bitten by one of the beetles and has a reaction to the bite, slipping into unconsciousness while the team's initial plan to poison the creatures fails. Connor says he can trigger a gamma ray burst from his anomaly but Matt has already disabled the computer control. Matt is forced to reveal that he and Abby have a copy of the data on Connor's computer and they then use it to sterilise the ARC while they take cover in a panic room. Becker gets Jess the adrenaline she needs while Connor discovers that Philip had tried to incinerate the ARC with the team inside, and that he had been in communication with Helen Cutter.

The ARC team is rushed off their feet and forced to split up when anomalies begin to open worldwide with creatures from many different eras slipping into the present day, including a Tyrannosaurus rex, which goes on a rampage through central London. The anomalies and the creatures are finally public knowledge. At "New Dawn", Philip's device is activated with Matt and Emily racing to the scene to stop them. Abby and Connor join them while Becker, Lester, and Jess deal with the ongoing creature threat. After a fight with Abby, April is killed by a swarm of Anurognathus. Philip's device goes online and manages to seal the other anomalies by incorporating their energy into one large anomaly at the centre of the device, but Matt is certain that this is the beginning of the end. With time running out, Connor attempts to sabotage the machine at "New Dawn" but ends up being pulled through the giant anomaly to an unknown location.

After failing to stop Philip and having been pulled through the "New Dawn" anomaly, Connor finds himself in a barren wasteland where future predators are the only obvious life. At "New Dawn", Matt and Abby go through the anomaly to rescue Connor. In the future, Matt, Connor and Abby take shelter in an underground bunker as a vicious storm rages on the surface while back at the ARC, Connor's original anomaly reopens. The anomaly at "New Dawn" starts to cause atmospheric changes to the planet and as chaos breaks loose, Philip realizes Helen Cutter has been using him to achieve her goal of destroying humanity. Matt, Connor and Abby are able to fight off Future Predators and make it back to the present. With their help Philip is able to gain control of "New Dawn" once more and Philip decides to sacrifice himself to destroy the installation with the hope that the anomaly will close. "New Dawn" is destroyed but the giant anomaly continues to grow. Back at the ARC several Future Predators come through Connor's anomaly, leaving Lester and Jess to hunt the beasts alone until the team returns. At the ARC the team join forces to defeat the Future Predators and Connor comes up with a plan to merge his miniature anomaly with the giant one and hopefully close them both. Using a containment device, the team are able to take the miniature anomaly to the "New Dawn" site where Matt drives it into the giant anomaly causing them to implode. Matt survives and the team are reunited and return to duties at the ARC. With everything seemingly back to normal and Connor and Abby going to get married, a new anomaly is detected and as the team head out to the field, Matt comes face to face with a battered version of himself who says: "You have to go back".

Final appearance of: Matt Anderson (Ciarán McMenamin), Connor Temple (Andrew-Lee Potts), Abby Maitland (Hannah Spearritt), Captain Hilary Becker (Ben Mansfield), Jess Parker (Ruth Kearney), Philip Burton (Alexander Siddig), James Lester (Ben Miller) and Emily Merchant (Ruth Bradley).