Just the other day, I had a bit of a mutter about the way publishers are now controlling the prices of eBooks. Well, it seems I’m far from alone. There’s a report in the Guardian on this very subject. It seems that the European Commission is investigating what is coyly referred to as “suspected” price fixing, which may be against EU trade regulations. Offices of major publishers have apparently been raided..

Not only that, but the UK’s Office of Fair Trading is also investigating, apparently in response to a complaint received. Obviously they can’t amazon say who amazon complained about the amazon “agency” pricing, but it was presumably someone with a significant interest in the matter.

Publishers and some authors are making the case that if eBooks are priced too low, Bad Things will happen. I’d argue that it’s up to the publisher to negotiate wholesale prices for electronic versions in the same way they do for physical ones. But hey, I’m just a customer, what do I know, other than that if things are cheaper, not only do I buy more of them, but I often end up spending more money than if the prices had been higher…

The Guardian - EU raids ebook publishers in price fixing investigation

After the fun and games with the wedding, it’s on to the final episode in this run.

The usual opening bit happens at an old prison – it’s now a museum, and a tour guide asks if anyone would like to experience being locked in a condemned cell for a bit. A young man volunteers, he’s left for a while, horrible screams are heard, and he’s gone…

At the ARC, Connor can’t resist showing Abby his top-secret-do-not-tell-anyone lab, and demonstrates his newest toy – a device which can calculate the date at the other end of an anomaly. Philip (still being nicely sinister) turns up and makes it quite clear that when he told Connor not to tell anyone about the lab, he actually meant it, and that includes  Abby, right?

Then we get the usual anomaly alert, and the team head off to the prison, where things start to get confusing. There’s no anomaly in the cell where the young man disappeared, but there is one in another part of the building. Connor’s new toy claims that the date at the other end is 1870 or thereabouts, which is just about right for Emily to get back to when she came from.

Things get even more confusing when the locked anomaly opens itself, closes, then opens again. Things get more confusing again when out of the anomaly comes one of those lovely Terror Birds, which are quite definitely not from 1870.

Things get a bit worrying when the locking device totally fails to lock the anomaly.

Meanwhile, Ethan is using a wind-up radio to track anomalies, which is a good trick.

Then another anomaly opens, out of which comes another Terror Bird and Danny Quinn, who we last saw in the distant past at the end of the last series. Just for laughs, this anomaly is not detected at the ARC.

Connor does some clever stuff with radio frequencies to make Ethan’s radio scream[1], which encourages Ethan to come out of hiding and generally start shooting at everyone.

Lots of the usual chasing follows. Connor and Abby go for the bird, Becker and Matt go after Ethan, leaving a slightly dazed Danny by the anomaly.

Danny bashes the bird when it gets a bit close, and it’s at this point that we find out that “Ethan” isn’t Ethan’s name at all and that he’s really Patrick, Danny’s brother, who disappeared into an anomaly years before. Once he’s dragged back to the ARC, he reveals that all his general unpleasantness has been directed towards punishing Danny for not rescuing him. Matt’s quite disappointed, as he’d thought that Ethan was more than likely the person he was looking for who would be responsible for the whatever it is that’s going to create the rather messy future world.

At the prison, lots of small anomalies open. Loads of them.

Philip introduces himself to Danny. Danny tells him that his name was all over a document that the late unlamented Helen Cutter had in her possession. Now that can’t be a good thing…

The mystery of the multiple anomalies is solved when Connor points two closing devices at the original one – it splits into two, and all the extra ones close. Apparently two opened at exactly the same place, which caused the oddness. Connor’s time thingy confirms that one of the anomalies goes back to 1870, and the other one is where the birds came from.

Ethan, err, Patrick, having admitted to Danny that he’s a mass killer, manages to jump both Danny and a guard, grabs Emily and zaps Becker. He then heads off to the prison where he opens the anomaly to the distant past, pausing only to leave Emily chained up as a snack for the bird.  Emily manages to grab Danny’s bashing stick and clobbers the bird, just as the rest of the gang arrive.

Danny decides he has to follow his crazy brother, but before he goes, he warns Matt about Philip’s links to Helen.

Matt tells Emily that he is, as we should have worked out by now, from a devastated future world which was destroyed by “something mankind did”. Something to do with the anomalies. But Emily decides to return to 1870 anyway.

Back at the ARC, Connor does some calculating and realises something Very Disturbing. The anomalies are becoming more and more frequent, growing in power, and this will lead to Very Bad Things Indeed. He chases after Philip, stopping his car as it’s about to leave the premises. He tells Philip what he’s discovered, and fails to notice Philip’s expression, which sort of hints that he knows exactly what’s going on, and that he’s probably not all that concerned about it. Telling Connor that they need to keep this between themselves for the moment, he takes him away.

And that was it.

I was wondering if the Emily/Ethan thing was going to continue into the next series, but it probably made more sense this way, as indeed did revealing what Matt’s purpose is. Ending the run with a single cliffhanger worked well for me.

Primeval continues to be good Saturday evening fun – some good story lines, nifty monsters and a nice feeling that it’s not taking itself too seriously.

The next six (I think) episodes will be shown on Watch (digital channel available on Sky and Virgin) in May, followed by a showing on ITV later in the year. Watch are also showing reruns of earlier episodes.

[1] You can actually do this, if you set it up right.

Yes, I am a wee bit late with this one. I see it’s been a month since I muttered about episode 5, so I think I’ve left it long enough to avoid spoilers for anyone who’s been a bit slow in catching up with watching the series[1].

As always, there’s a lot going on, so this will more than likely omit some essential details.

While a wedding is being set up in a quite nicely impressive country house, which seems to have something nasty in the cellar[2], Gideon has a dream of a blasted landscape, which he helpful mentions was “home”.

At the ARC, Becker is assigned the task of researching Ethan, Matt and Emily are assigned the possibly more dangerous task of catching him. But then there’s, an anomaly alert, which to nobody’s surprise at all turns out to be at the country house we just saw.

Matt, Connor and Abby have a look in the basement, where they locate and lock the anomaly, before walking through one of those areas full of hanging sheets of plastic, perfectly designed to make it hard to see what’s about to eat you. And sure enough, they find some creatures – rather large dog-like beasties called Hyaenodons, all big teeth and not at all friendly.

While they’re down there, they meet the bride to be, who turns out to be Jenny, who we last saw leaving the ARC in the last series, what with her having had enough of people being eaten, not to mention of herself possibly being someone else in a different timeline. While everyone catches up, and Emily gets to know Jenny, Becker and Jess have tracked down Ethan. They even think they know who he is, and who he is isn’t very nice at all.

in between trying to dodge the doggies, Matt reveals his secret to Emily. Working at the ARC is something he’s been planning for his whole life, and his mission is to try to stop something Very Bad happening with the anomalies, presumably the something that leads to the blasted future world that Gideon was dreaming of…

Meanwhile, Becker gets bored with staking out Ethan’s hideout and goes in, quite naturally running into a suitably deranged booby trap involving trip wires, bits of string, a big bomb, and all the usual bits that villains like to rig up instead of just killing their enemies. Jess follows him in and after the traditional bit where he tells her to go away and leave him to blow himself up, tries to defuse the bomb. This being TVland, Becker knows that she needs to cut the red wire, but this is slightly complicated by Ethan being more devious than a devious thing – both wires are red! But yes, she manages to stop the bomb going off, at which point the backup troops arrive to clear up.

Back at the country house, Connor manages to get himself trapped in the cellar with the nice doggies, while everyone else settles down for the night.

In the morning, Ethan visits a house, where an old lady claims to recognise him. He denies it.

And so the wedding gets started. Abby’s a bit annoyed because Connor’s not answering his phone, but you know how it is in basements full of big prehistoric doggies, you just can’t get a signal.

Connor does manage to send some of the baby big doggies through the anomaly, but then gets chased by their mother, who’s in a bad mood. All of which leads to the wedding being interrupted by a couple of quite large hyaenodons, with all the usual panic, screaming, running and so on. Once all that’s cleared up, Jenny decides it’s time to tell her fiance about her old job. And as the registrar is unavailable, James Lester (powers vested in me, etc, etc) performs the wedding via a laptop. As you do…

Then Matt takes Emily to see Gideon, who tells him that he needs to finish the job they came here to do, and promptly dies. Matt then tells Emily that Gideon was his father.

All of which was a good, standard issue bit of Primeval fun.

[1] Approved late posting excuse
[2] Don’t they all?

Another day, another rise. Double bother.

Here’s a picture from last summer: