The life of George's and Nina's daughter is at stake in Being Human's excellent opening premiere episode to Season Four, "The Eve of War" (4.01). The BBC team obviously worked hard on this episode with some solid acting and clever storytelling.
The opener to the episode is unexpected. It's London in the year 2037. A group of resistance fighters are living in an underground bunker while above them society has turned into a ghastly futuristic version of 1984. The resistance team hears on the radio their fellow freedom fighters in New York have fallen prey to vampires. The vampires are killing everyone, leaving no survivors behind. It makes you wonder what the vampires will feed upon once the humans are gone.
Cut back to the present. George is mourning for Nina while keeping obsessive watch on their only baby daughter. Annie tries to convince George to let his daughter outside and away from the nursery turned panic room against vampires. George hasn't given his daughter a name for fear of seeing that name etched on a gravestone. George only lets his baby daughter out of his sight when Tom comes calling. Tom has a lead on the vampires that killed Nina. George wants revenge and a quick way to end the vampire threat against his family.
Back at the vampire nest, the war room is underway. Cutler mocks the vampire commander's idea on an all out war on the humans. Cutler warns the commander that armies will be amassed before the vampires are able to commence their blitzkrieg. Griffin plans to kidnap George's daughter and sacrifice her to the Old Ones. Griffin believes the baby is special since she is the first werewolf by birth instead of being turned from a human into a werewolf.
While George and Tom are gone, Griffin breaks into George's apartment where he takes the baby by force from Annie. George and Tom realize it's a trap when they arrive at the vampire hideout and find mannequins instead of vampires. By then the full moon is out and George and Tom transform into werewolves.
Griffin brings the baby back to the vampire lair and lays the baby on the bones of the Old Ones. Griffin is in a for a rude shock when the baby remains human during the full moon. The werewolf genes cancelled themselves out and the baby is totally human. To cut his losses, Griffin approaches George and makes a deal: George's life for the life of his daughter. George accompanies Griffin back to the vampire lair where George is locked in a cage.
Regus (the vampire recorder) informs Griffin that the baby is special afterall. According to an old vampire parchment (written on human skin) the baby is to stop the vampire war and exterminate the vampires. The commander orders the baby's death, but Regus stalls by convincing the commander only Regus can conduct the ceremony to kill the baby.
George forces himself to transform into a werewolf by staring at a poster of a full moon on a wall in his cage. George breaks free and kills many of the vampires, including the commander by forcing him to drink werewolf blood, which is toxic to vampires. Tom and Annie arrive and are there in George's final moments as he dies from the shock of the half transformation. Before George dies, he names his daughter Eve.
Back in 2037, a young woman about the right age for Eve in her 20s has one of her fellow freedom fighters kill her. The woman's ghost tells the freedom fighter "I'm going to save the world. The baby has to die." It's a bit questionable what the ghost woman will do. Will she kill the infant version of herself and avert the war? Surely this will be answered in the episodes to come and we'll find out what the third part of the parchment revealed.
"Eve of War" was an exciting and truly engaging episode. The idea of vampires coming to kidnap a baby and when that baby was about to be murdered was really chilling. I really was sad to see George go. I loved his character, but sadly it seems Being Human has a high body count. While the series might not be a slick or high-budget as some other shows, the series makes up for it with solid story telling and engaging characters. Being Human is off to a great start. I can hardly wait to see where it goes from there.
Being Human is a BBC-produced show and is different from SyFy Channel's series Being Human. The UK Being Human series airs at 8 p.m. CST Fridays on BBC America.
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