Episode 1.6 by Adrian Hodges

After the original portal in the Forest of Dean reopens, something powerful and deadly begins roaming the surrounding countryside. Claudia starts experiencing vivid dreams of terrifying dinosaurs, a warning of things to come? Meeting with Sir James Lester, Claudia reiterates the importance of Nick’s work on the Portal project, although it is clear that her feelings for the professor are not just professional. Stephen receives a visit from Helen at the Central Metropolitan University, asking for a meeting with her estranged husband and Lester. Investigating the mysterious abduction of a lion from Wellington Zoo, Abby and Connor discover traces of blood from a bat-like creature; then Abby’s boss goes missing – the third disappearance in the last few days… Meeting Helen at a secluded rendezvous point, Nick, Stephen and Lester learn that a highly-evolved predator has arrived in the present, a creature with near-human intelligence and an almost supernatural ability to stalk its prey – a creature not from Earth’s past, but from its future. Learning about the bat blood from Connor, Stephen realises that Abby is at risk; racing to the zoo, he and the Special Forces team arrive just in time to save her from the creature. Determining that the predator hunts through sound like a bat, Nick and the team use an oscilloscope to track the creature to its lair in an old barn on the zoo’s grounds; here they find a nest of five babies, and the partially-eaten corpses of the missing people. As the predator bursts in and slaughters one of the soldiers, Nick grabs a baby and leads its parent into a greenhouse; by shooting out the glass, Nick disorientates the approaching creature and then shoots it dead. Knowing that the vicious predator presents a serious threat to the integrity of history, and that it came to the present via the network of portals, Nick decides to travel into the Permian Era with Helen, Captain Ryan and a group of soldiers to locate the anomaly it used to reach them, and then station a permanent armed guard there. Claudia is concerned, and to everyone’s surprise, kisses Nick passionately before he steps into the portal with the others. When Stephen receives a call from the autopsy team informing him that the dead predator was a male, he realises that the babies’ mother is still at large – unseen by everyone, the surviving predator leaps through the portal… At the camp in the Permian Era, Nick makes a shocking discovery that throws doubt on everything he thought he knew about the portals and his wife – but before he can act, the second predator attacks…

Douglas Henshall (Doctor Nick Cutter), James Murray (Stephen Hart), Hannah Spearritt (Abby Maitland), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor Temple), Lucy Brown (Claudia Brown), Ben Miller (Sir James Peregrine Lester), Juliet Aubrey (Helen Cutter), Mark Wakeling (Captain Tom Ryan)

Directed by Jamie Payne
Produced by Cameron McAllister
Executive Producer Tim Haines
An Impossible Pictures production for ITV / ProSeiben / M6

TX:
17th March 2007 @ 7:00 pm

Notes:
*Featuring Doctor Nick Cutter, Stephen Hart, Abby Maitland, Connor Temple, Claudia Brown, Sir James Lester, Captain Tom Ryan and Helen Cutter