Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey: The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
May 10, 2014 1:16 PM - Season 1, Episode 9 - Subscribe
We travel through Earth's past, glimpsing at how different the world used to be and learning what processes and events caused (and continue to cause) its changes.
Plate tectonics! Iridescent deep sea creatures! Global catastrophes! And maps!
Plate tectonics! Iridescent deep sea creatures! Global catastrophes! And maps!
Possibly this guy?
I doubt I'll be doing a episode-by-episode threadchat but I did want to say my wife and I are thoroughly enjoying the series. I had tried to take her through the original but the smeary VHS image quality kept her from accepting it.
I haven't gone back to see if they are doing a straight one-to-one matched episode themes remake or not. I found the animation distracting at first but have come to accept it. I have noticed that the episode scripts show the same kind of thematic unity and structural beauty that the original did.
The effects, the eye-candy, are literally fantastic, and carry the sense of wonder that the original delivered in Sagan's voice. My wife was initially confused by their persuasiveness and context into thinking that the astronomic visualizations were photographic records created in realspace. I do wonder if the decision to rely on CGI to such an extent will undermine the longevity of the production, given our accelerating CGI-spotting acuity over time.
The series' clear determination to highlight the scientific career contributions of nonwhite nonmale persons in addition to the usual suspects is something i am also deeply appreciative of.
posted by mwhybark at 9:47 AM on May 11, 2014 [3 favorites]
I doubt I'll be doing a episode-by-episode threadchat but I did want to say my wife and I are thoroughly enjoying the series. I had tried to take her through the original but the smeary VHS image quality kept her from accepting it.
I haven't gone back to see if they are doing a straight one-to-one matched episode themes remake or not. I found the animation distracting at first but have come to accept it. I have noticed that the episode scripts show the same kind of thematic unity and structural beauty that the original did.
The effects, the eye-candy, are literally fantastic, and carry the sense of wonder that the original delivered in Sagan's voice. My wife was initially confused by their persuasiveness and context into thinking that the astronomic visualizations were photographic records created in realspace. I do wonder if the decision to rely on CGI to such an extent will undermine the longevity of the production, given our accelerating CGI-spotting acuity over time.
The series' clear determination to highlight the scientific career contributions of nonwhite nonmale persons in addition to the usual suspects is something i am also deeply appreciative of.
posted by mwhybark at 9:47 AM on May 11, 2014 [3 favorites]
Possibly this guy?
I'll bet you're right (even though it doesn't mention Newark); thanks!
The effects, the eye-candy, are literally fantastic, and carry the sense of wonder that the original delivered in Sagan's voice. ... The series' clear determination to highlight the scientific career contributions of nonwhite nonmale persons in addition to the usual suspects is something i am also deeply appreciative of.
Ditto and ditto, but I can't agree about the scripts: there's so much repetition, dumbing down, and artificial suspense my wife and I feel we're being treated like kindergarteners. Don't get me wrong, we're watching it religiously (er, so to speak) and are thrilled about the good stuff, but I don't think the scripts are a patch on the original.
posted by languagehat at 5:14 PM on May 11, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'll bet you're right (even though it doesn't mention Newark); thanks!
The effects, the eye-candy, are literally fantastic, and carry the sense of wonder that the original delivered in Sagan's voice. ... The series' clear determination to highlight the scientific career contributions of nonwhite nonmale persons in addition to the usual suspects is something i am also deeply appreciative of.
Ditto and ditto, but I can't agree about the scripts: there's so much repetition, dumbing down, and artificial suspense my wife and I feel we're being treated like kindergarteners. Don't get me wrong, we're watching it religiously (er, so to speak) and are thrilled about the good stuff, but I don't think the scripts are a patch on the original.
posted by languagehat at 5:14 PM on May 11, 2014 [1 favorite]
I see your point with regard to repetition and suspense, but it hasn't really bugged me. I'm watching it with the ads edited out so the suspense beats are roughly elided for me. The couple times repetion has sorta stuck out that I noted were this past episode's reuse of shots from the black hole episode and the first two episodes' invocation of Sagan's ties to Tyson (which, hey, I'm not inclined to bitch about).
The prose is not as strong as the original. I still appreciate the internal harmonies the structural aspects of the scripts provide. I haven't noticed a great deal of dumbing down, but I do note occasional throwaway references that function roughly like classical allusions in literature directed at an audience assumed to have a classical education. That sort of rubs my by no means prickly modernist sensibilities the wrong way but it's such a mild wrong way as to not count as an irritant. Marvel and DC built energetic pop media empires based on exactly that sort of allusiveness, although with helpful buyer's guide footnotes embedded.
Next time I watch one I'll see if I can note some specific examples of this structural stuff to cite.
posted by mwhybark at 5:49 PM on May 11, 2014
The prose is not as strong as the original. I still appreciate the internal harmonies the structural aspects of the scripts provide. I haven't noticed a great deal of dumbing down, but I do note occasional throwaway references that function roughly like classical allusions in literature directed at an audience assumed to have a classical education. That sort of rubs my by no means prickly modernist sensibilities the wrong way but it's such a mild wrong way as to not count as an irritant. Marvel and DC built energetic pop media empires based on exactly that sort of allusiveness, although with helpful buyer's guide footnotes embedded.
Next time I watch one I'll see if I can note some specific examples of this structural stuff to cite.
posted by mwhybark at 5:49 PM on May 11, 2014
I've found the scripts to be more uneven than the original Sagan series. I think that lacking the special effects budget, Carl put a lot of thought into what he was going to say and present. Some episodes of the new Cosmos have been all over the place; not necessarily dumbed down, but flitting from here to there to everywhere driven more by the possiblity of cool FX and one-liners than a coherent presentation.
The episodes that have a tight focus, such as the one on the lead contamination / age of the Earth guy, and the one on women of science -- have been quite good, on a par with the original. This one wandered a bit but was OK overall, quite a bit better than say eps 2-5 which seemed to be trying to do everything at once and nothing completely.
posted by localroger at 3:19 PM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
The episodes that have a tight focus, such as the one on the lead contamination / age of the Earth guy, and the one on women of science -- have been quite good, on a par with the original. This one wandered a bit but was OK overall, quite a bit better than say eps 2-5 which seemed to be trying to do everything at once and nothing completely.
posted by localroger at 3:19 PM on May 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm glad other people have felt like some of the episodes were all over the place. It's much harder to enjoy when you feel like you're being tossed around from subject to subject.
Something else that's been bugging me is that it seems rare that NdGT's voice isn't poorly dubbed. It hurts my brain when the words don't exactly match up with the visual. And with all of the CGI, it's just too much fakey-fake for me.
I'm learning a lot from the series, and I love that about it, but my brain is struggling with the presentation when it should be struggling with the concepts and ideas.
posted by MsVader at 9:21 AM on May 13, 2014
Something else that's been bugging me is that it seems rare that NdGT's voice isn't poorly dubbed. It hurts my brain when the words don't exactly match up with the visual. And with all of the CGI, it's just too much fakey-fake for me.
I'm learning a lot from the series, and I love that about it, but my brain is struggling with the presentation when it should be struggling with the concepts and ideas.
posted by MsVader at 9:21 AM on May 13, 2014
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posted by languagehat at 6:26 AM on May 11, 2014