“New World” becomes old news…

It looks like we won’t be traveling through anymore anomalies. After the mere first season, it seems like Canada isn’t ready for the same anomaly phenomena that has struck the U.K

How is it that its parent series, Primeval, made it to its fifth season, when New World barely went extinct after one? The spin off from Primeval sought to be “older, darker, and scarier”, and this is something I can see the series really worked hard to accomplish. The “older” aspect was definitely there in that it made the anomaly problem much more complicated. New World gave a sense that the anomalies have been opening well before Evan and his team started investigating them. However, the “darker, and scarier” could have been a bit better shown. While the series has never been shy to kill characters (most commonly at the beginning of the episode) if New World was to be “scarier,” it could have made the deaths less predictable.

Another goal the show was striving for was being more “adult”. There was a clear increase in the depiction of blood and gore as opposed to the U.K version, which definitely gave more of mature audience feel. Also, the show wasn’t shy of showing some romance via a steamy shower scene with Mac and his love interest.

Danny Rahim (a.k.a Mac Rendell) tweeted February 21: “Hey peeps. PNW will not be going again-Thanks for all your continued support, we hope you had as much fun watching it as we did making it! x”

It seems Danny took the news lightly, but the same could not be said for PNW fans across the twitter universe. As soon as news hit the internet that Bell and Space were to cancel the show due to low ratings, twitter saw just how persistent the fans could get when #SavePrimevalNW started to trend. An online petition started up to bring back the show which has accumulated over 1,500 signatures in hopes of reaching the 5,000 goal. But will the people at Bell and Space pay some attention to this?

It’s understandable that a show’s cancellation is a result of ratings, but New World was definitely a series that could have improved over time. Yes, the leading character’s storyline is extremely similar to Primeval (dead wife and all), but Niall Matter shows some potential in developing his character more, especially with his involvement with the suspicious Project Magnet. Even on Project Magnet’s side, there was character potential.

Lieutenant Ken Leeds (Geoff Gustafson) was a great character to watch. Leeds perfectly portrayed a fumbling lieutenant, having audiences wonder how a clumsy man could reach such a high ranking. But it was the small things he did that showed courage, and nicely surprised viewers of his character. Another fantastic character was Mac Rendell (Danny Rahim). Not only was he a nice connection to U.K series, Mac filled the comic relief role perfectly, and his identity crisis story was fun to follow. It’s a shame we won’t get to find out if he survived past the season finale!

Now, what fans truly watched for!

Aside from mediocre special effects, the selection of what creatures to include was good. Instead of having a majority of the dinosaurs being carnivores, it was nice to see how the human cast reacted to the peaceful creatures as well. What was done especially well was the close look at the creatures in the autopsy scenes (Episode 11).

Having characters, such as the ones in Project Magnet, violently react to the dinosaurs, the series gave a look into the classic story of humans being the most dangerous animals, regardless of whatever existed in whichever time period.

All in all, it looks like we won’t be stepping through another anomaly anytime soon in Canada. But it was fun while it lasted!