Hey everyone – and welcome to my in-depth Season 5 review of Camp Cretaceous here on The Jurassic Park Podcast! In this video we are holding back on none of the details from the newest season of the show – so make sure to avoid this article if you haven’t had the chance to catchup on Season 5 yet. With all of that said – let’s dive in!
The first thing I wanted to touch on in this article is the character growth – as this is something which I feel got the right treatment in the fifth season of the show. I love the fact that we finally get a relationship between Sammy and Yaz – exploring some of the intricacies that we can go through when we are discovering ourselves and our own identity. This was handled in an incredibly sensitive and respectful manner and is something which felt like a genuine and grounded portrayal of representation within the show. Hats off to the creators for finding a way to be inclusive in such a meaningful way. The rest of the characters in the show get some fantastic development too. I love how we explore some conflict between Brooklynn and Kenji in this season – and also love how Kenji attempts to find his way as he balances the expectations of his friends with the expectations of his father. The characters were handled really well this season and I am happy we got some good growth for them in their final adventure.
A negative which comes from good character growth, however, is that it feels like the overall plot and story of the fifth season isn’t as strong as it could have been. The real core of the story is the tension between Kenji and his father – and this is something which plays out throughout the duration of the story as we learn more about Mantah Corp and what they have been up to. Whilst this does provide some interesting insight into how other genetics companies have been behaving within the Jurassic universe, it doesn’t quite go to the depths I would have hoped for in the fifth season – and it ultimately feels like another story about chaos ensuing on an island which is plunged into chaos. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have any problem with this concept in isolation – but I find it hard to enjoy the more confined nature of this story after Jurassic World Dominion opened up the wider world and showed us what was unfolding across the globe. Granted, Camp Cretaceous does still take place between Jurassic World and Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, but I feel like there was perhaps a missed opportunity to setup a more interesting story arc for the final season here.
With this said, I absolutely adore the inclusion of Daniel (Kenji’s Father) in this season as I think he was incredibly well written in this series. I really love how throughout the season we can see hints at Daniel’s true nature – ignoring Kenji in certain moments, but also manipulating his son and taking advantage of situations like the date with Brooklynn to try and emotionally exploit him. We get a sense of the kind of man which Daniel is – and this makes me very curious for the wider canon. Was he attempting to manipulate Simon Masrani whilst he was working with him? Perhaps some of the technology stolen on Mantah Corp island was obtained before the park even closed? These are certainly things which are hinted at throughout the fifth season, and I would not be surprised to learn that Daniel was playing a longer game through his relationship with Masrani. I really enjoyed how this character was portrayed – and am very interested to think about where he may be by the time we get to the events of Dominion. Men like Daniel don’t tend to stay locked up in Prison for very long, after all.
We go from an aspect I really enjoyed to an aspect I was severely disappointed by – the return of the Barbasol Can. When we talk about ‘bad fan service’, this is sadly exactly what this sequence felt like – with the characters literally just randomly finding the Barbasol Can itself in a muddy mound whilst they are crouched down on the floor. Yes, the characters did discover the Barbasol Can near to an area where several Dilophosaurus are encountered, but this didn’t make this feel like any more than an on-the-nose nod to the original Jurassic Park. I have to admit – I was really disappointed with the way this was handled in the show and wish that they had omitted its inclusion entirely. There have been several proposed ideas for stories about how the Barbasol Can could have been recovered and I wish that the door had been left open to explore those in the future, rather than closing it in a shoe-horned and sadly far too brief moment. With that said – I did appreciate the choice of character who stumbles upon the cryo-can, something I will touch on next!
I’m not going to make the full joke – but it is true that we have Dodgson here. I really enjoyed Dodgson’s inclusion in the fifth season of Camp Cretaceous – showing that even before the events of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, this character was working behind the scenes to prepare BioSyn to take advantage of InGen’s failure. I really loved how the character’s portrayal in the show felt in-line with the way he is presented in the Jurassic World Evolution 2 DLC – creating a man which feels impatient, but also excited when it comes to discovering new things on Isla Nublar. Whilst the legacy of the character and his relationship with Dennis Nedry could have been expanded upon a little in the show, I have to admit that overall, his inclusion was one of the real high points of the fifth season for me. Dodgson and the growth of BioSyn more broadly is something which I find incredibly compelling – so I would love to see more of this in future Jurassic media.
One thing which I found myself wanting more of in the fifth season was dinosaur and location variety. The fifth season of the show acts as a little bit of a trip down memory lane – with season favorites like Bumpy, Toro and the Spinosaurus returning for the final act. Whilst it is nice to see these animals back on the screen it is at the sacrifice of new animals – with the only new animal appearing in this season being the Nothosaurus. The animal has a couple of interesting moments in the show but there is nothing groundbreaking here – and I certainly wanted more. Introducing Lewis Dodgson and BioSyn also made me hungry to see more of the Dolomites Facility and the Pyroraptor, the Giganotosaurus and the Quetzalcoatlus. We never see any of these animals in the show – and whilst they didn’t necessarily appear here, I think it would’ve been interesting if we had learnt that one of the animals which appears in the valley in the Dominion had been a Mantah Corp creation. It’s like I said in my non-spoiler review – this is fundamentally more Camp Cretaceous, and I’m not entirely sure that making it more of the same was an adequate way to close out the series.
We get another welcome inclusion in the fifth season with the return of Dave and Roxie from Season 1 – accompanying Darius’s brother, Brandon, as the trio embark on a quest to revisit Isla Nublar and attempt to rescue the kids. I enjoyed how our time with them felt like a callback to the event of the series as a whole – uncovering Mitch and Tiff’s camp, and also finding the campsite which they built in the ruins of Camp Cretaceous. I would have loved to see more of these characters on the island, however – as it felt as though their quest to rescue the kids was cut a little short. I think seeing more of Dave and Roxie and their emotional reaction to revisiting a Nublar which has fallen into ruin and disrepair since they were last on the island could have made for a really compelling narrative – helping to provide insight into the emotional toll the collapse of Jurassic World had on the employees who worked at the park. Don’t get me wrong – it’s nice seeing them back, but I wish we had spent a little bit more time with them and perhaps had more of a set-up for them returning to the island alongside Brand.
Lastly, we have the ending for the show – and this is something which we have been building to since the end of Season 3. The kids make it home and become known as ‘The Nublar Six’ – making the news as kids who survived on Isla Nublar after the Jurassic World incident. We then get a sneak peek at where they end up – with Bumpy and Ben still on Mantah Corp island with Mae Turner, Brooklynn investigating Lockwood Manor, Kenji helping to continue to fund Mantah Corp Island and Sammy’s Family’s Farm, and lastly Darius – who is out giving talks on dinosaurs as he follows in the steps of Alan Grant. We then have a moment where Darius encounters a Brachiosaurus outside his window – indicating that dinosaurs are now out in the wild. I enjoyed how this ending tied up to Jurassic World Dominion – but I can’t help but feel like this ending would have been more impactful for me had it come after Season 3. Season 4 and 5 do some interesting things but ultimately feel as if they are a detour from the same ending that we were on route to reach at the end of the third season.
So that brings a close to our coverage of Camp Cretaceous – and what a journey it has been! It’s been fascinating seeing how far the characters have come over five seasons – and I enjoyed how many different plot threads and narrative elements we got to explore over the course of five seasons. I really enjoyed this show – and think it was a successful first outing for Jurassic in a televised format. I hope that in the future we also get a more mature live-action television series for fans of the franchise – and have my fingers crossed that this is opening the door for more expanded Jurassic in the future.
That’s my thoughts on Season 5 – but what are yours? Let me know your comments below and stay tuned to The Jurassic Park Podcast for more content in the near future!
Written by: Tom Jurassic