Mar

14

Is Horizon being dumbed down?

March 14, 2007 |

God yes!

I have to admit, that before even watching this programme last night on BBC 2, I could tell it wasn’t going to be great. The title was “Horizon : My Pet Dinosaur”. Says it all really. The programmes’ aim was to explore what it would be like if the meteorite that supposedly hit the earth and caused mass extinction didn’t happen. And dinosaurs were living among us! For the most part, the programme ignores the probability that if dinosaurs were to survive up until now, due to the fact that cause and effect is unpredictable, it is unlikely that humans would have survived too.

The main flaw of this documentary, if you can call it that is that it seemed like it was produced for children. There was no real new science, but lots of cutesy clips of little dinosaurs. In fact what little science there was, was completely flawed. For example the film kept referring to the meteorite impact as if it was proven fact. In reality, although there is lots of evidence supporting this theory, it is still a theory. Just as the majority of scientists believe that evolution is the reason behind life forms as we know them, when discussing such a concept, evolution is referred to as theory as it has not yet been proved without doubt. That’s the basic principle of science.

The film builds up with a crescendo of repeated and re-repeated make believe scenarios and quirky little clips of dinosaurs walking down the street, or sitting in cafes until it finally shares its big revelation: Birds descended from dinosaurs! Err… Tell me something I didn’t know when I was 10 years old. They did the “reveal” by stating:

“For the first time on national television we can show you an autopsy of a real dinosaur”.

They then pull back the cloth covering a body in a morgue, and yes, it’s a turkey. It had even been roasted which seems a bit silly if you are going to do an autopsy.It did have great visuals and graphics although I suspect they were re-used clips from walking with dinosaurs. It especially annoyed me when even the serious scientists on the programme pretended to see superimposed dinosaurs half way thorough the interview. It just made the whole thing feel cheap and lacking of any real scientific value. The worst part was when they did a news 24 news flash “Dinosaurs are being a pest…” and then showing some actor trying to get dinosaurs away from her dustbins.

My partner who also watched this with me kept telling me to “shut up moaning about it”. I guess she has a more open mind about it, but at the end she told me “That’s crap!” Indeed. It was very patronising. The BBC must think we are all really stupid. I swear things are getting worst and these programmes are progressively being dumbed down.

By the way, the programme ends with the words “Who’s a clever boy then?” and a shot of a parrot. Are they taking the piss?


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Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. David Bachauer on December 8, 2008 6:30 pm

    ‘What is time?’ was also a waste of time because of the Horizon’s director’s need for visual gimmickry at the expense of a better interpretation of physicists mathematical illusions (apart from some of the quantifiable observations mentioned). Those who have coomented positively about this programme and managed the full hour,
    have I suspect been influenced more by the appeal of Brian Cox in a non scientific sense, than the forlorn hope of achieving some new knowledge.

    One longed for a biologist to bring a touch of reality to this programme - time is simply something experienced by ’stuff’ - and that includes anything with a randon or unpredictable component in its function as a passage of time has to occur to allow for that randomness.

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