The Forest of Dean anomaly reopens, and people start vanishing at an alarming rate. Helen turns up and says they're being invaded by a creature unlike anything the world has ever seen - a highly evolved predatory bat from the future. Things get worse when they discover a brood of infants. After killing the parent, Helen and Nick agree to take the young through the Permian anomaly, to find the gateway to the future and stop any more from coming through. But their forays into the past could have catastrophic consequences.
- Bat Out of Hell: The Future Predator is implied to be an evolutionary descendant of modern day bats.Helen: Three quarters of all mammal species are bats or rats. Maybe the future belongs to them.
- Cool Versus Awesome: Past vs. Future with a gorgonopsid vs. Predator past wins.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After Cutter and team have gone through the Permian anomaly, Connor gets a rather worrying phonecall:Stephen: Was that the lab?
Connor: Yeah. The creature's autopsy proved beyond any doubt that it was definitely a male.
Stephen: It's got to be female, it was raising its young.
Connor: Maybe in this species, that's a job for the boys.
Stephen: Better be, 'cause if not...it means the mother's still out there. - Failed a Spot Check: Despite having the Permian anomaly surrounded, none of the team or soldiers notice the female future predator darting through to get her young back.
- Godzilla Threshold: Cutter generally recommends that all animals that come through the anomalies be sent back home alive to avoid damaging the timeline. The Future Predators, however, pose so much of a danger to the timeline (being extremely aggressive predators from the future that ended up in the Permian via a new anomaly) that Nick wants them all killed before their survival jeopardizes history. The episode ends up vindicating his thoughts - just two infants surviving in the Permian results in Claudia Brown being erased from existence.
- Hell Is That Noise: The guttural clicking and growling the future predator makes while using its echolocation to hunt.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: While in the sheds, the team are ambushed by the Predator which attacks and kills one of Ryan's soldiers. Upon seeing the creature (right before it leaps on him), the man audibly but barely manages to utter: "Sh—"
- Mama Bear: The Predator father was certainly very protective of his children, but their mother is something else entirely - she massacred an entire special forces team to rescue her infants, then faced off against a gorgonopsid trying to eat them and almost kills it.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Cutter insisting that the Predators are far too dangerous to be kept alive and have to be destroyed.
- Outside-Context Problem: Unlike the prior incursions, the creature in this episode comes from the future, thus leaving the team with no idea what they are facing.
- Sensory Overload: How Cutter kills one of the Future Predators: he lures it into a greenhouse, then shoots multiple panes of glass, distorting its echolocation long enough for him to make a kill shot.
- Stable Time Loop: The camp the team make in the Permian turns out to be the camp they found in the first episode.
- Villainous Rescue: The gorgonopsid comes charging in just in time to engage and the last of the adult Predators.
- Wham Episode: We meet the very for creature from the future, and, at the end of the episode, it's implied the events that happened in the past altered the future and erased Claudia from existence.
- Wham Shot:
- In the Permian, Cutter takes a picture of Helen, for the memories. The wham part? It's the same one he found at the camp in the very first episode.
- Immediately after the Wham Line listed below, the anomaly starts pulsing like crazy, something none of them have done before.
- Wham Line: At the very end:Cutter: Where's Claudia?
Lester: Claudia?
Cutter: Where's Claudia Brown?
Lester: I don't know anyone of that name. - Worf Effect: The Predator's first victim is a lion at the zoo.
