The star and creators of the hit British family dinosaur series talk about the show finally jumping the pond to U.S. audiences on BBC America
By Mike Szymanski
Will a creature jump out of the pool? Doug Henshall ("Dougie" to his pals) remains a safe distance out of the sun and away from the edge of the pool at the Beverly Hills Hilton during a recent interview. He notes that in his popular British show Primeval, a prehistoric monster of some sort could jump out of the pool and gobble up a few of the sunbathers, and after three seasons of filming the show in the United Kingdom, it keeps him a bit on the edge.In an interview with
SCI FI Weekly, Henshall is joined by co-creators Tim Haines and Adrian Hodges. Haines is the guy behind the factual series
Walking With Dinosaurs, which scientifically re-creates how dinosaurs walked, looked and sounded. Hodges is now working on a remake of a post-apocalyptic remake of a 1970s TV series called
Survivors, based on the SF novel by Terry Nation and scheduled to be broadcast this fall.
The trio said they hope that
Primeval will catch on quickly with U.S. audiences when it kicks off on Aug. 9. Also starring Lucy Brown and James Murray, the series follows a ragtag team of scientists led by Henshall's evolutionary zoologist character Dr. Nick Cutter as they battle creatures that come through these unexplained anomalies that are ripping holes in the fabric of time.
One problem has been that both in the U.K. and the U.S., people are comparing the show, and Henshall's character, to a certain "Doctor."
Douglas Henshall, how have you been avoiding the Doctor Who comparisons during interviews here at the Television Critics Association press tour? Doug Henshall: Well, of course
Doctor Who is enormously popular where I'm from, and it's becoming known here, too. And, it's the one question I've been getting asked about the most—people comparing the show to that Doctor, and for that reason I've been comparing it to the American show that people would get,
The A-Team, because it's an ensemble piece. I was mainly trying to avoid the comparison of the show we don't want to mention, and so I picked something very different, and our show is more of an ensemble like that show was. In our show our characters all have different skills and need to work together. That's how the shows are alike, we each come from different backgrounds to work together.
Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines, you have now included as one of the new writers Paul Cornell, who not only wrote for Doctor Who but also wrote more than a dozen novels about Doctor Who and his spinoff companion Bernice Summerfield. Is there any chance a Doctor Who character could pop in on the world of Primeval?Tim Haines: No, absolutely not will we have a
Doctor Who character pop in on
Primeval. They have very different worlds and realities—
Adrian Hodges: Anything can happen on
Doctor Who—
Haines: That's right, and the world of
Primeval is more reality-based.
Hodges: Now, that doesn't mean there were a few times that we were tempted to sneak in a few sly references, like having someone say, "There's the doctor," and the "Doctor who?" But no, every time I was tempted to even put in a vague
Who reference, I stopped myself. The worlds are very different. ... At one point we considered a sly
Doctor reference when someone got angry at another character and threw a box set of
Doctor Who at them, but we thought not.
Adrian Hodges, you are working with actress Freema Agyeman on another SF show, Survivors, and she is best known as Martha Jones in Doctor Who and Torchwood. Since she gets around, is there any chance she would make an appearance?Hodges: No, not even Martha Jones will make an appearance on
Primeval. She's in a different time continuum.
Your show is popular on a Saturday night in England, and it obviously has a big appeal to all generations and ages. Why is that?Haines: Saturday night is family night, and we want this to be a show that does not talk down to kids and is ambitious enough that some older people enjoy it very much as well.
Hodge: We want there to be enough of an edge that the adult audiences will enjoy it, but we don't want to make it so scary that the children are afraid to go to bed.
Henshall: Yes, Saturday night is family night, and it does have a wide appeal. Parents are not bored with it. The fact that you have something you do that can take you into the past is fascinating, and there's a reality to it, like
Jurassic Park. If you could take a piece of amber that has a mosquito that has some dinosaur blood in it and can replicate it through the DNA and make a creature, people say, "Is that possible?"
Doctor Who has none of that; it's not possible. Anything can happen in that world, and in ours everything is possible and plausible.
Will that keep your show from going into the more risqué sexual encounters that go on with Doctor Who and Torchwood?Haines: Their shows are later in the timeslot, so they can have their characters kissing anyone, even kissing aliens and such. We don't have anyone kissing our dinosaurs.
What creatures do you like to interact with the most?Henshall: There are supersized spiders, dodo birds, raptors and wooly mammoths that slipped through to the modern world from the past. ... I really like the pteranodon in episode five, and the [Alfred] Hitchcock
Birds reference we make to these things flying around us. You know, when you look at crows, seagulls or pelicans, you look at them and you become aware that they are not something you should get pissed at you. They have really really sharp teeth. But I like the idea of the big pteranodon in the sky, something that graceful and beautiful as that up there was particularly nice to see.
What was the most unpleasant creature?Henshall: That had to be the giant worms. ... In this biosphere where they survive there is a level of smoke, and they had to have a smoke that was low like dry ice, and mix it with something that wasn't too toxic ... and they had to take these toxic readings all the time ... and then the heat would expand and explode the worms. The art department came up with a concoction of green, yellow and red like a children's party that exploded, and they were throwing it at us. It was something to laugh at now, but not at the time. It was just gross.
And you had a bit of apprehension about creating the new characters of the future?Henshall: I was concerned that they would make up some creature that would have some odd arm coming out its neck or something, but the future predator is spectacular and very realistic.
Tim Haines, you worked on Walking With Dinosaurs, which required some scientific basis for the look and walk and colors and sounds of the creatures he created. How did that expertise help you? Haines: It was obviously beneficial in the look of the creatures, but this was more fiction, so we didn't have to argue where the forearm bone would go or something like that. ... I was very fortunate; because of
Walking With Dinosaurs we developed some very, very good international relationships, and the co-producers, especially the German ones, are the same ones that were on
Walking With Dinosaurs, so our budget for this is very much similar to what you might get on a prime-time show. ... After years of discussing things like the angle of an abelisaur's front arm, I think it's great to just say, "Well, this is sort of what they looked like." And primarily what they are—characters—are things that play among the actors, and therefore they've got to perform their roles. We don't worry about scientific accuracy because the whole premise is a science fiction one.
Hodges: We try to create characters that are fantastic, yet also believable, and we never want to repeat ourselves with any of the creatures. I have to say we spent a lot of time thinking up very crazy and sort of adventurous, exciting scenarios, and then Tim will always come in with the science part towards the end. He'll always worry about that side of it. He's not giving himself enough credit. It's science fiction, but there's a lot of science in it.
Henshall said: It was not rocket science. Many of these creatures were real, and it had a reality. ... One of the greatest scenes was when something the future was clashing with a real monster from the past, like the gorgonopsids. That was really something.
Haines: The best science fiction really does try to tie itself to some set of rules, but then give it a twist, which makes you understand things better. It's a lovely genre to work in because emotions are higher, bigger, bolder. It's a great release, and it was great to work with Adrian [Hodges], who had not done this kind of thing before but was a big
Buffy [
the Vampire Slayer] fan and was dying to get his teeth into something like this.
Is there any real-life explanation or inspiration for any of the stories that you're doing?Haines: Of course these stories go around anyway. I mean, in the U.K. people spot giant unexplainable cats 80 times a month. In Shropshire there's a big focus on them at the moment, and yet, of course, you read about them and you don't believe a word of it, and that's why this is meant to exist. The mammoth turns up on a motorway and they are explained away by being an escaped elephant.
Hodges: I think you would have to sort of ask yourself, "Would people believe it?" I mean, the Internet is a medium of great truth and innovation, and it's also full of enormous amounts of rubbish. So there's going to be a balance there. Very few people are going to believe that you've actually met a dinosaur, so we play coastal in a series off of people's natural disbelief, and I think, hopefully, it strikes a balance that works.
Your show is already popular in places outside of the U.K., right?Haines: Primeval has a large following already in Australia, South Korea and Germany.
Did you look at what makes some family movies work and some don't? Hodges: Yes, yes, of course. The only reason I wanted to do this was because it so got to be ambitious, and look at
WALL*E, look at Pixar. Pixar never compromises the special effects; you can create drama in a family plot.
You have had a lot of praise about the special effects. Is that the biggest part of your budget?Haines: Hollywood invented that, but then it became democratized, so now everyone can do it. In fact, the sort of skill levels you've got in London are the same as you've got in San Francisco or you've got in Auckland. ... We know how to do creatures very, very well.
The fans have certainly gotten involved in this show, too, haven't they?Hodges: We are delighted to have an extremely strong fan base since the show started [in the United Kingdom two years ago], and we want to continue a good relationship with them. They have come up with names for some of the creatures and even figured out their origins even as we are trying to figure things out ourselves.
Haines: For example, the unofficial and official fan sites have dubbed the place where the time anomaly has occurred as "the Primeverse," even though the scientists in the show have never called it that. ... With the third season planning to kick off in January 2009, the fans are becoming even more involved. They are becoming more active, and we are giving them more opportunities to become more involved. There is going to be a parallel drama that is going to occur online as the show evolves [
see: http://www.itv.com/primeval].
Hodges: We are very aware that we have a lot of kids who love the show, who love the creatures, and all the rest of it, but quite clearly at the same time, the research shows that their parents and older people love this more serial side of it as well, and the adult relationships.
Haines: In the contest for the animals of the future, the contestants ranged from 8, 9, 10 and up to 58 years old. I think people like to escape. They like a big, bold premise.
There were about 5,000 entries for suggestions in a "create a creature" competition?Haines: Yes, this kid, Carim [Nahaboo, of Essex, England], came up with a fantastic creature, and we will be using it. The 16-year-old came up with a carnivorous insect-like creature that will do battle with other monsters in episode eight of the third season beginning next year.
Hodges: Sometimes I don't like to be involved in what the fans are saying because it's so distracting, but in this case we are very interested and like some of the things we hear. I am constantly surprised and delighted by the enthusiasm of the fans.
Did you worry that the shows were too scary for some children? 
