Obligatory disclaimer – real life sucks, so let us
talk about ‘Prehistoric Planet’, and especially the latest, 3rd,
season. What can be said about it?
…Looks like the people behind the show also feel
like RL sucks and so they decided to spruce their stories… with drama! Many
stories behind the clips feature cute baby animals getting into mortal danger,
(occasionally the animal in danger is of a different age, but that changes
little), and they escape the carnivores just in time, (or their parents help
them), more often than not.
Take for example, the dwarf elephants vs. giant
storks in 3x02 (“New Lands”). A fuzzy little dwarf Stegodon (elephant) calf is
in trouble, but her mum arrives and fights off the giant storks with their
huge, solid, and sharp beaks. Not that I wanted the elephants to perish, but
modern storks (Jabiru storks, to be more precise), are sometimes able to fight
off modern caimans with their beaks, and those storks were the bigger birds
here. I have no idea why they would be intimidated by the dwarf elephant mum –
I somewhat expected her to retreat with new bruises and wounds, (while her calf
got away herself in the commotion). The calf herself has adorability level
dialled up to maximum – to have the audiences root for her, no doubt.
The same goes for the Aepyornis (elephant bird)
hatchlings – they are adorable so that the audiences root for them, and not for
the giant prehistoric fossa, (whose existence is still debatable, BTW). Pause.
Here is the thing – the problem is not in the
visuals and the CGI – they are great, but in the scrip and its’ repeating,
well, repetition – repeatedly we get the same thing – an animal is in trouble
from a carnivore, but escapes. Either that, or the carnivore gets its’ meal –
‘tis column A or column B, not much else.
By contrast, look at the much earlier TV series. The
original ‘Walking with…’ series set the standard not just in visuals, but also
in the plots. ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’-1999 and ‘Walking with Prehistoric
Beasts’-2001, for example, was about evolution of life on Earth, but each of
their episodes, (each series had just 6) told a different story: a sauropod’s
coming of age, a pterosaur’s last trip around the globe, struggles of a
prehistoric whale to keep herself and her unborn calf fed, etc. Some episodes
had a main character, (such as Half-Tooth, an ousted Smilodon male), while
others were less concentrated and focused, say, on the life in the late
Jurassic seas in general; they didn’t restrict themselves to primarily
predator/prey and parent/child interaction and told a more complex story
overall.
Other series… ‘Chased by Dinosaurs’ and ‘Sea
Monsters’ (2002-2003) were more entertainment than education; ‘Sea Monsters’
even had an online game for a while. ‘Walking with Monsters’ (2005) was the
last entry in the series until the 2025 revival, it was shorter and
streamlined, with much more CGI, but even so, it focused on evolution of life
on Earth, not just birds hunting elephants or vice versa. In addition ‘Walking
with Cavemen’ (2003) was about human evolution (4 episodes) and is something
entirely – these day, the media do not like to talk about human evolution
aloud; they cannot deny it, thankfully, but since 2003 there was nothing like
WWC either.
Moreover, the original ‘Walking with…’ series were
not unique. BBC also released – In 2002 – another mini-series called
‘Prehistoric America’ about – you probably guessed it – prehistoric America.
The first five episodes talked about the different ecosystems of that time,
from the frozen north to the prehistoric prairies; the final episode talked
about the human colonization of North America, from the Ice Age to the modern
times…
In addition, in 2003 there were ‘Monsters We Met’,
which discussed humans meeting the last of the megafauna – in North America,
Australia, and New Zealand (plus other south Pacific islands). Again, MWM
talked about a very important topic – how the early humans contributed to the
extinction of the last megafauna (up to date). ‘Prehistoric Planet’ S3 never
did, even though it covered a much narrower scope of time – only the
Pleistocene epoch, while the other shows covered the entire Cainozoic time
period, for example, or, in case of ‘Prehistoric America’, they discussed the
Pleistocene North America in much greater detail. ‘Prehistoric Planet’ comes
across here as jack-of-all-trades instead, and that is not exactly a compliment
here… Less anthropomorphic drama there, too…
Therefore, in conclusion, ‘Prehistoric Planet’ S3 was
not a bad show, but it was only a show, nothing more, leaving me, for one, with
mixed feelings. Ah well, real life sucks, but the way ‘Prehistoric Planet’ S3
handled that is not necessarily an improvement… See you all soon!
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