Primeval/Awesome

Primeval gives every character at least one of these.

• Exhibit A: Stephen stopping the gorgonopsid by ramming it with his car.
• Exhibit B: Connor attacking a mosasaur with a boat oar, all to save the girl he's crushing on. Considering that this was long before he started taking levels in badass, that's pretty damn impressive.
  • Connor (after two and a half seasons as Butt Monkey and Plucky Comic Relief ) rescuing Rex after Abby's brother gambled him away at poker.

Smug Snake: "You and whose army?"
Connor: *stands aside to show Becker and some squaddies holding guns nonchalantly* "Mine, actually."

• Exhibit C: Abby being attacked by a mercreature...and repelling it by kicking it in the face and knocking it back into the water.
  • Abby, completely unarmed, attacking an armed and fully armored KNIGHT who's ready to slay the Dracorex.

Abby: Oh, I'm a demon alright.

• • • And when it becomes clear that the knight would kill her, Abby bares her neck, showing her clear willingness to die to protect the Dracorex.
  • Abby (again) driving a mobile home through backroads over the cliffs of Northern Ireland while a giant hungry Wyrm^[1] is sitting on top of it trying to eat her.
  • Abby dodging a nuclear torpedo while driving a submarine backwards through an anomaly.
• Exhibit D: Cutter punching a Deinonychus. Okay, it didn't end the fight, but come on, he PUNCHED a RAPTOR.
  • In the first season finale, Cutter takes out a future predator by grabbing one of its babies, running into a greenhouse, and then proceeding to shoot out the windows to confuse the hell out of the predator, before shooting it. The calm, determined look on his face makes it so much more awesome.
    • Adding to the awesome is why he shot the glass. The future predator hunts with echolocation, and Cutter's trick created a sheet of falling glass shards that scattered the sonar every which way, blinding the predator and allowing Cutter to line up his kill shot. Yes, he improvised SONAR Chaff.
  • Cutter has also punched out a caveman. ...Okay, it wasn't a real caveman, but come on.
  • Cutter giving Helen a taste of her own medicine by toying with her emotions so she'll help him when handling Leek's guards. And then mocking her afterwards.

Cutter: Oh I'm sorry honey, I didn't mean it.

• Exhibit E: Quinn using a helicopter to bait a Giganotosaurus into chasing him through an open wormhole. Best part? He Indy Ployed the whole thing.
  • Hell, almost anything involving Quinn, including his method of getting into the ARC team, by completely ignoring them whenever they told him no.
  • S3 episode 8. Quinn kills a predator. With. A. Broomstick.
• Lester taking down a mind-controlled future predator - not with a gun, not with hand-to-hand, but with a FREAKIN' COLUMBIAN MAMMOTH.

Lester: Good boy. Good mammoth.

• • Lester's return from his Ten-Minute Retirement. "I think you're sitting in my chair."
• Claudia hitting a tiny bloodthirsty pterosaur with a golf club, despite being blinded and covered in blood. Considering that she's normally a noncombatant, it was pretty impressive.
  • I saw it this way: Human without weapon? Easy prey. Human with weapon? The deadliest thing in all creation.
• The gorgonopsid (well, a gorgonopsid) gets its Crowning Moment during the first season finale. A future predator follows the team through an anomaly into the Permian. It wipes out the soldiers accompanying Cutter and Helen, and then a gorgonopsid shows up. Everyone is expecting The Worf Effect...and the gorgonopsid promptly subverts the trope. It takes every blow the future predator throws at it, and it just gets angrier, until it finally grabs the predator by the arm, crushes it (the predator, not the arm) and drags the carcass off to eat. WIN.
• Becker hiding inside a car and then blasting a predator from below just as its about to pick off the rest of the team.
• Jenny gets one in her reappearance in Series 4, when she defends her fiancee from a ravenous Hyaenadon, using nothing more than a spear, while in her wedding dress. And she has a nice little moment of badass rhetoric afterwards too...
• Even Badass Bookworm Jess gets one in Series 4. In fact, since she's only nineteen and yet generally agreed to be one of the best possible team co-ordinators the ARC could hire (not to mention her complete non-chalance when faced with the creatures the ARC has to deal with), it could be argued that her entire presence in the series is a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • In particular, her moment in Episode 6 is pretty amazing, where she shows herself to at least have some proficiency with firearms, and even saves Becker's life by disarming a bomb set by series Big Bad Ethan...
  • She gets another in 5x04, when she one-handed deadshoots a two-inch beetle from six feet away while half-conscious, feverish, and hallucinating due to a severe allergic reaction.
• Danny, and later Emily, beating the ever-loving crap out of a terror bird with a big stick. Named Molly.
• On a similar note to the above, Connor braining a very angry raptor with another big stick. Considering that he'd just woken up after being exposed to a stun grenade and falling out of a tree...
• Season 5, episode 5. Crowning moment for the series because finally, after five seasons of paying its paleontological dues by showing Seldom-Seen Species, suddenly, right there in the Cold Open, a Tyrannosaurus Rex in downtown London.
  • Matt's Crowning Moment: channeling the spirit of Stephen, he trips the T. rex with some Car Fu, and then tranquilizes it, a lot, from about one foot away.
• Lester in Episode 5 of Series 5 when he sees an aboreal raptor climbing on his car while everyone is called out.

Lester: (After seeing an Anomaly open in the ARC car park) Oh my God! My new Jag's in the car park! This time its personal.
Lester reappears a few minutes later walking out of a lift with an EMD and watching a raptor climb on his car.
Lester: OI! Have you ANY idea how much that thing cost?! (proceeds to repeatedly zap the raptor).

• Abby and Connor survived in the Cretaceous. For a year. With minimal supplies and training.
• In 2.04, Lucian (the victim of the week), hits a mer with a rather large rock via ricochet.

Lucian: Two points!

• Abby stares down a sabre-toothed cat in 2.07.

Abby: It's trying to decide whether or not I'm a threat.
Connor: And if you're not?
Abby: (without a hint of fear in her voice or expression) Then it eats me.
 

1. ↑ a 20-foot labyrinthodont