re: #10 freetoken

Well, it’s one thing to paint in broad strokes, and quite another to substitute finger painting for Flemish masters like Rubens.

Here again is my beef: not the simplicity, but the presenting of science wrongly. The process that is described by the melodramatic music and narration betrays the real meanings of the data and what is behind the scientific process.

And even more importantly is the poor handling of words like “theory”, “proof”, and so forth. Add to that loaded words like “creation” and I think the narration really lets down the real meat of the project. The scientists interviewed themselves try to do a good job, but their explanations take up only a small portion of the hour long shows.

As much as I like the idea of making a major tv series about human evolution, given how poorly our society handles issues about which modern science gives definite answers (or raises important questions), I’d rather go for making the process and history (of the science) clear, rather than trying for drama that climaxes in the last 5 minutes of the show.

This series falls well short of the quality we’ve seen before, such as the one on Ardi a few years back.

Science and history docus are where the Beeb unquestionably does a better job than we Yanks. PBS, it seems, is following the lead of the Discover and History channels by making every science or history program a kind of reality TV episode, with artificial drama and suspense added to “grab” the audience. The BBC tends toward more sober exploration of subjects; like a college lecture series but with a bigger budget and more audiovisuals. I used James Burke’s Connections series in my physics classes, because he does a great job tracing the influence of one breakthrough on later history. High school students, naturally, found the series a total bore (I assume) but I at least appreciated its responsible approach to presenting the material.

Anyway, after I watch the first ep of First Peoples I may have more comments to offer.