Steven Savile’s work includes the acclaimed novel Silver, a series of tie-in Warhammer novels and the Torchwood audiobook novella Hidden. He also wrote the recent guide to cult television Fantastic TV. His Primevel novel Shadow of the Jaguar is out now from Titan Books. “There’s just something wonderful about dinosaurs,” he tells Total Sci-Fi.

Can you briefly tell us what Shadow of the Jaguar is about, and where it fits into the Primeval timeline?

The timing is pretty specific in relation to the series – it slots in neatly between episodes two and three of Season 2, meaning that Cutter and Stephen still have an uneasy truce after the Helen revelation, and poor old Cutter is still in disarray over the whole Claudia/Jenny timeline change.

It struck me as one of the most interesting places in the series to explore – though admittedly when I actually wrote Shadow of the Jaguar they hadn’t filmed the episodes. We were all working off various shooting scripts. Another key point in choosing this place in the timeline was that up until this point there had never been an inclining of an anomalies taking place overseas. The great thing about books is there are no special effects budgets, so you can really cut loose with the imagination and have some fun. Big government conspiracies, glorious locations, death defying feats… the works.

Of course then you’re just looking for a great excuse to send your heroes off into danger. In this case the call to adventure comes by way of a coming together of events. The first: the son of a Government Big Wig stumbles out of the jungle claiming his brother has been killed by some strange big-cat creature like el chupacabra, and is facing murder charges.

The other is an email from an old student of Cutter’s, which suggests strange things are afoot in the wilds of the Peruvian rainforest. The Big Wig wants his boy home, and they can hardly send an exfiltration team, so the team are sent on a duel-purpose fact-find-bring-our-boy-home mission… but it was never going to be that simple.

Where did the initial idea come from?

The initial remit was to expand the scope of what we see on the screen, to ‘go big’ and tell the stories we couldn’t see on TV for budget constraints if nothing else. So, with the idea of going big, the notion of going ‘mythic’ in origin was the next obvious step.

I had two ideas I was developing at the beginning: one ‘kraken-like’ story set on an oil rig in the North Sea, which would play into all of the ‘sea beast’ mythologies from Great Cthulhu to the Bermuda Triangle, and the one we eventually went with, which really is the birth of a god when you think about it… inverting the old Arthur C. Clarke maxim about any technology sufficiently advanced appearing as magic, and going for any evil so ancient appearing godly.

It was just a case of painting a canvas broad enough to do the show justice, do the characters justice, hold true to their personalities and roles, and keep it fun. I loved the idea of an ancient dinosaur being the foundation for the legend of a god, and the idea that Cutter essentially has a hand in shaping an entire religion – which of course proved to be fundamental part of Season 3 and beyond, showing just how closely we all worked to make Jaguar a genuine extension of the show.

Did it require undertaking much research into the Peruvian jungle (or anything else)?

I did a fair bit of research, I always do. I find the place itself often becomes an extra character in my work. I wanted you to be able to feel the sweat running down your back as they’re traipsing through the jungle. I wanted the claustrophobic feel and the isolation both at the same time, and the feeling of the team being aliens, out of their comfort zone with no easy clean-ups.

There’s one scene where Connor’s trying to show off to Abby, which was fuelled by my own awkwardness around pretty girls at university. I remember I’d try and amaze them (OK, that’s going a bit far, but I’d try to keep them interested for more than 30 seconds) when we walked around Newcastle at night, and I’d spout odd little facts about the things we walked by. I like to think of it as nerdily endearing. That scene took quite a bit of research to prevent it sounding like it came from a tourist guide.

The world has changed so much though; you can go onto Google and find people’s holiday snaps, capturing every angle of Lima or wherever it is you’re trying to find out about, and find all of the authentic little details that make a story feel more grounded and hopefully vital without having to become Bill Bryson.

But yes, long story short, I spend a few months becoming an expert on all things Peruvian, down to the various flora and fauna of the specific areas of the rainforest. One particular discovery ended up becoming quite pivotal to the whole story, and that was when I came across the fact that the trade in endangered species was right behind drugs and arms as the most smuggled commodity… That was eye opening for a guy from Epsom, where wildlife was reduced to race horses on the Downs. The more I delved into the research the more I realised this was something Cutter would be passionate about. He’s that kind of guy.


Primeval has recently returned for its fourth series. Why do you think the show remains so popular?

I’ll offer an anecdote from early in my writing career – I got a phone call from an editor one day, 1995 I think, which went something like this: “Steve, we’ve got a job we think you’d be great for, but we can’t tell you what it is… Just one question – did you like dinosaurs growing up?” I said yes, they faxed over the Non-Disclosure Agreement and I was told about an hour later I was doing a kids’ book to tie in with the launch of Jurassic Park II: The Lost World – one of those Funfax Filofax kind of things full of games, puzzles and facts about all things Dino.

My next few projects were also Funfax things, for the re-release of the classic Star Wars movies. I said then it was pretty much perfect that the twin obsessions of my youth had become the twin obsessions of my working career…

There’s just something wonderful about dinosaurs, coupled with the mad science fiction quality of something like Star Wars, where, as Clarke said, the technology is sufficiently advanced. We have anomalies that allow the past to come leaking through and the future to bleed back… Now you tell me, what’s not to love?

If you consider the fact the show has survived the complete rewriting of its relationship dynamic more than once, and lost more than one of its main characters, you start to understand just how powerful the actual basic premise of dinosaurs and science fiction is for kids, making it the absolutely perfect subject for good old-fashioned family entertainment.

Do you have a favourite character to write for?

In terms of the show, Cutter was by far and away the easiest voice to capture, Stephen was the hardest – but in part that was because of the nature of the story I was telling. The role Stephen would usually fulfil was handed over to special forces guys because they were going to have to kill – and having Stephen kill someone would have been to take him well outside of the written character, but that basically emasculated him in terms of what point he served.

Connor was probably the most fun to write, though. I got to channel my inner clueless romantic and have some fun.

You’ve done a lot of tie-in writing. Does writing fiction based on an established franchise make things easier or harder?

Well, I just touched on one of the issues there, in adhering to the character as presented, and really capturing the voice. Cutter has a unique, sort of lecturing way of talking sometimes that Lester just wouldn’t, and Lester’s acerbic wit means a certain way of thinking becomes natural to him, and so on and so forth…

The fans know how these people sound. And you’re writing these books for fans of the show, no one else. You’re not trying to bring in people who’ve never watched an episode. You’re trying to bring something of added value to the guys who love the show.

Not easier, not harder. Different. There are a lot of rules for every universe, and every fan knows the rules. In some universes incredibly well – better than the writers who created it, you’d think at times.

But beyond that you have ownership – every fan owns the series they love in a way that they don’t with original fiction. That gives you a great responsibility to play by the rules and not set out to try and write something deliberately subversive, screwing around with what they love. You have a duty to them every bit as much as you have a duty to the team who put the show on the screen and a duty to your story.

There’s also a fairly vigorous approval process tied in to writing stuff like this, to make sure you don’t slip in any fanboy moments just for the sake or it, or deviate from the plans laid out for the future or contradict existing cannon. So you’re writing to please a lot of paymasters, not just to please yourself.

I’m not sure if that really answers your question, but hopefully it gives you the right impression – I don’t get to sit in my study and just make stuff up when I’m doing something like this. I talked to the guys from Impossible several times checking how my story could feed into where the show was going because they were just beginning to think about ideas for Series 3. Everything has to fit the world.


You’re obviously very interested in cult television, and wrote the recent book Fantastic TV. Are there are shows that have particularly influenced you?

I’m a TV junkie. It’s one reason why I say I have the best job in the world. I mean I got paid to sit down and watch hour upon hour of old sci-fi shows. What a hardship! Like every English boy of a certain age, there are some seminal moments in my TV-life – Tom Baker falling from a great height to become Peter Davison, the first time Scott Bakula uttered the words “Oh boy…”

The DVD box set is the best invention ever, forget sliced bread. I was able to watch the old David Morrissey series One Summer the other day for the first time in 20 years, and I’ve just ordered the full series of Hot Metal, which is linked indelibly with Spitting Image in my mind. I’ve just done 5 seasons of Cold Feet back to back because I missed it when it was on the TV (it aired just after I emigrated to Sweden).

I have a few ‘must watch’ shows at the moment: Human Target, Eureka, Supernatural, Warehouse 13, Nikita and Sanctuary to feed my genre soul; then Being Erica and Republic of Doyle, two great little Canadian series; and Life UnExpected, which has just been cancelled despite having some of the best writing in a show for years.

The fact is I am a really stubborn TV consumer – I don’t give up. I watched every episode of Eastwick, Journeyman, Pushing Daises, Wonderfalls (so, so, so good)… Basically anything that isn’t reality TV has already found a place in my heart where it will be nurtured and loved.

What’s next for you?

In March Abaddon are releasing my Arthurian novel, The Black Chalice, and I am hard at work on Gold, the second in my thriller series (the follow-up to Silver, which as yet isn’t available in England, but if you are in Spain, Germany, France, Poland, or the States you’re in luck).

I’ve recently finished a huge Fabulist Victoriana novel, London Macabre, which I guess is best described as the bastard child of Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman (not my line), but probably most fitting for this conversation would be the fact that I’ve just signed a deal with a major Hollywood studio to develop a TV series. No clues though. The official announcements will probably be made in a few weeks…

Primeval: Shadow of the Jaguar is out now (Titan Books). It is reviewed here.

Visit www.stevensavile.com