A New Pattern
Episode 1 of Prime Target begins with us in Baghdad, Iraq. Baidaa and her daughter Amira, head out to get some ice cream. Baidaa leaves the girl in the shop while she gets some cash out but suddenly, an explosion rocks the street and sends Baidaa flying. Miraculously, Amira is still alive but the ground gives way and both she and Baidaa go tumbling down into the depths.
In Cambridge, England, we meet Edward Brooks, who’s wrapped up in his work. He’s a mathematician and not particularly great with people, especially Fiona who clearly has the hots for him. He isn’t really interested, although he does like that she’s 23 as it’s a prime number.
During his math lecture, he’s pretty pessimistic while Professor Robert Mallinder is talking about the wonder of math. The university obviously needs funding, explaining his pitch to the other students, but in private he looks over Ed’s research paper and isn’t impressed. Robert is obviously good with his math work, although it soon becomes eerily clear that Ed is being watched on the cameras. By who? Well, we’ll have to wait and find out.
Meanwhile, another teacher, Andrea, is over the moon when she finds out about the gas explosion in Iraq, the same one we saw at the start of the episode. Not because of the bombing of course but because it’s revealed a hidden underground chamber from the 9th century that’s almost untouched. The Baghdad Department of Culture and Antiquities want her to fly out and investigate.
Now, Andrea happens to be Robert’s partner and she encourages him to try and see eye to eye with Ed. Math is everything to Ed, as we’ve seen from every time we cut back to this guy. He’s always writing in his notebook and he’s not particularly sociable either, although he does get on well with the male bartender whom he sleeps with that night.
Afterwards though, he’s very cold with the guy and forces him out while he works.
He’s not entirely wrong when he says he has “family coming over”, although that may be stretching it a bit as he goes to have dinner with Andrea and Robert the next evening. There, he discusses numbers and, in particular, how it’s a voyage of exploration.
Andrea is impressed and shows off the work from the underground chamber from Iraq. Ed checks it over and immediately realizes there’s a number pattern on the walls. The picture Andrea has isn’t distinct enough to see the whole pattern but whatever’s here, they’ve stumbled on something massive.
Some of the reason why Ed is getting under Robert’s skin stems from his pure passion for maths. According to Andrea it’s “just like her”, although we can’t be certainly exactly what this means right now. However, we do know that both Ed and Robert are being watched and as they scrawl down the numbers and try to work out a pattern, an invisible force is watching and snapping photos of their work.
Speaking of invisible forces, when Ed speaks to Robert the next day, he theorizes about prime numbers and exactly what they may have found. He believes that there’s something called the “God’s Cipher”, and the underground chamber in Baghdad is actually hiding a Prime formula.
Robert demands Ed drop this, refusing to go to the Board with this research. He doesn’t want it to consume him like others have been, and he races back home. It turns out Robert appears to be working with these shadowy people, because when he boots up the computer, we see a message from someone called “The Keeper”, asking why he’s working on Prime Numbers.
Robert’s little slip-up to Ed about others working on Prime Numbers sees our protagonist do some research online at the university’s computers. He notices that other students who have also worked on Prime Numbers have all had their research papers removed from the records.
When he heads back to his dorm, Ed finds out that Robert has been inside his room too, taking all of his work and burning it. Ed is angry and heads to his house, where he finds Andrea just as dumbfounded. Robert leaves a message saying goodbye, apologizing for not being able to do more.
As we cut across to the professor, we see that he’s inside his car, dead.
The Episode Review
So Prime Target is the latest AppleTV+ original to hit the platform and it’s clear that we’re in for a world of conspiracies, craziness and math equations. This idea of numbers being the root cause of some sort of global cipher isn’t new in the world of thrillers, but it’s given a fresh twist here with the mathematician Ed, whose personality feels quite similar to Will’s in Good Will Hunting.
The man clearly knows his stuff but whether the show can sidestep the cliches it’s in danger of falling into remains to be seen.
For now though, the first episode gets off to a decent start, and with a second episode already released, we’re bound to have more drama come our way.
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