Hi! I'm Nathanoraptor. This is based on a story I wrote about two years ago, which I was too anxious/lazy to update and just seemed terrible. I don't own Primeval. Sadly, it belongs to somebody else. And I don't own the cryptids; the planet does. I decided to change the rating to T, because there is gonna be a lot of gore in the story.

I grew up with monsters. Monster films were part of my childhood; my earliest memories are pretending I was asleep, late at night, so I could watch old monster movies on late-night TV. Some of my earlier experiences to monsters were due to this method; the werewolves and vampires of old horror movies, the titanic-but-misunderstood ape, King Kong and the works of the late, great Ray Harryhausen; The Valley of Gwangi, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Clash of The Titans. From Japan, Godzilla lumbered onto our screens. A 400-foot tall, radioactive sea monster, doing battle with contenders to his throne as King of Monsters. Godzilla enthralled me. In more recent years, films such as Jaws, Anaconda and Jurassic Park have inspired a monster-loving generation; myself included.

Why did I like these monsters? The reason why is that they seemed very compelling and real; a monster that could exist in your back garden is scarier than one from the far side of the galaxy. To me, they oozed menace and weirdness. Surviving dinosaurs and a giant ape found on a remote tropical island, a giant radioactive sea monster, genetically-engineered dinosaurs getting out of control… they were just so awesome. This sparked my interest in monsters. I owe an awful lot to these people.

Sadly, for the longest time, dross dominated, with the same old vampires (usually pretty teenaged ones), werewolves and zombies dominating the screen; those plus aliens and demons were the main antagonists on TV. Too often, monster stories are stuck in a rut, using the same subjects and monsters (e.g. vampires, werewolves and zombies), which are often poorly portrayed and/or ill-researched; basically every pretty teenaged vampire is a blasphemy against how they are supposed to be portrayed. Primeval, for this reason, was an automatic win for me. In an era where sci-fi horror mainly consisted of aliens, demons, vampires/werewolves or zombies as villains, dinosaurs were a refreshing treat. 10-year-old me watched, goggle-eyed, every Saturday night at the adventures of Cutter and team, saving the world from the monsters of the past and future. I was a little adrenaline junkie, yes. It was a badass crew detecting space/time anomalies and fighting dinosaurs; what part of that is not awesome? I watched Primeval, almost religiously, every Saturday night for the next three years (ahh, those were the halcyon days); I am still a fan of it (and have even met Andrew Lee-Potts and Hannah Spearitt, the former twice! They were both great. Be jealous, I don't care.) However, it did go down in quality with Series 4 and 5; New World was an improvement but didn't last long.

My favourite part of Primeval was the anomalies opening in past times and the creatures that came through them becoming our mythical beasts; it gave the anomalies a history and a depth that had not been shown before. It turned them into terrifying natural phenomena, temporal natural disasters with the ability to cause great destruction. Now, I eagerly absorbed this development. The reason why is because I understood that there were a wealth of mythical creatures to be brought to terrifying life in conjunction with this development, so it was something that was very enthralling to me; a pity it was only used sparingly in the ensuing series.

The point of this is to rectify this; to tie the Primiverse with actual folklore of our green, unpleasant land (TITLE DROP). This owes influence to sci-fi royalty; one of the great eras of Doctor Who was that of the Third, Jon Pertwee. In this era, the Doctor was confined to Earth; principally Britain. So, to emulate this, I have set these stories in Britain, either in the present day or within living memory. The ARC team will feature in some, but not in others; although, they will be the main characters in the majority, those set in the past will (for obvious reasons) not feature them. Herein you will find giant boars and goblins, dragons and hellhounds, basilisks and werewolves; a vast menagerie of nightmares, all pulled from both folklore and the fossil record.