Sagan's version relied heavily on live sets, real actors, and actual locations; I'm sure that while he had great influence on the complexion of the show, much of it then, as now, is dependent on budget & schedule as well as directorial license. These days, computer graphics can be much cheaper than shooting a live-action scene at some far-flung location, especially when one of the principals involved already has an established animation studio in place. Brent, I would argue that the series isn't aimed at the same audience as the original. The original aired on PBS- a MUCH different audience than FOX. I'm sure that, with a more general, non-science-oriented demographic in mind, the script was intentionally on the light side. No college-level lectures in this one. I'm sure Galileo will make an appearance, we still have 12 more episodes to go, episode one didn't strike me especially as a syllabus. There's no way I could do better; as an industry outsider it's very easy to sit back be critical, but given the same budget and schedule, could any of us really do better? I highly doubt it. Whatever the show's shortcomings (and I have a few nits to pick, myself, some have been mentioned already but, come on, they are minor), I'm going to watch it and enjoy it as presented. It's still better than 99.9% of the crap on TV. I don't see any fatal flaws- yet. And we still have Sagan's original for times when the watered-down modern version just won't quench our thirst. On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 3:15 PM, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> wrote:
I have to agree with that. The calendar idea was used before -- was it in the original Cosmos? One point that bothered me was when Tyson was pointing to early footprints, obviously CGI, when he could have show the footprints themselves, which are preserved as fossils. Too much emphasis on computer visuals, not enough on facts. At least that's my impression after just the first episode.
On Thursday, March 13, 2014 3:01 PM, Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
I finally got to watch the first episode of the program. I have to admit that I was underwhelmed. It didn't seem like there was much more content than you would get in a 5th grade science class; a bit more, but not much. But, there was a bunch of grandstanding to make up for the missing content.
What content there was did not stand out. I thought the calendar exercise was interesting, but very poorly illustrated. The scale of the universe was not stressed in a fashion that brought people to a real understanding of what it really means. I believe additional graphical comparisons and relationships to things that everyday people relate to would be a significant improvement. The calendar exercise is such an idea, but was poorly executed.
Why did Giordano Bruno and the folks living at that time look so dour? In some places it was effective, but the overall feeling of that time can't have been the way it was represented. And, why was Galileo mentioned only in passing?
Perhaps I am being more critical than I should, but I had a hard time getting too terribly excited. I hope the next episodes exhibit an improvement. _______________________________________________