Cosmos. Just saying the name evokes memories of science's best and most eloquent educator, Carl Sagan. By no means a slouch in the scientific field -- he was a planetary scientist who first hypothesized and presented the idea of "nuclear winter" -- Sagan will forever be known for a phrase he never said: "billions and billions" (it was actually die-hard Sagan fan Johnny Carson parodying his science idol). Make all the jokes you want about Sagan's plosive enunciation of "billions" (which he always did to make it distinct from "millions"), Sagan defined what makes great science television for a generation.
The 13 episodes of this Peabody and Pulitzer willing miniseries touch on nearly every science topic of importance: astronomy, cosmology, physics, biology, the mathematics of gigantic numbers, and relativity. It also indulges us in a targeted survey of science history, including sections on the Library of Alexandria, the birth of science experiment, the defeat of ancient Greek science by mysticism, and the lives of Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe (the original Odd Couple), James Goddard, and Edwin Hubble.
Episodes 1, "On the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", and 13, "Who Speaks for Earth?", provide matching capstones for the other 11 volumes, which jump wildly from topic to topic. And yet there is a coherency across the entire run. Whether Sagan is describing conditions on the surface of Venus, the effects of relativity, or the futility of writing out a googolplex, Sagan is our patient, encouraging, engaging guide, making sense to the layman of complex scientific concepts. The script, written by Sagan and future wife Ann Druyan, educated and entertained. Only occasionally did Sagan's delivery approach pretentiousness, but his own enthusiasm for the topics effectively foils any from creeping in.
If you've read one of the Sagan biographies that emerged after his premature death in 1996, you'll know that one of the most effective and clever devices used in the series, the "Ship of the Imagination", was actually forced upon Sagan by executive producer Adrian Malone. This was one of the very few times that Sagan was wrong, because Malone's concept allowed us to step into cosmological situations much more believably than if we were presented simply with Sagan's exposition.
Although by all accounts the two men hated each other to the point of fisticuffs, Sagan and Malone's production surpassed all previous efforts at science documentary and continues to set the standard for all who have come since. Now that the Sagan family's feud with Turner has been resolved, it is now available on DVD.
A previous reviewer wrote, a plain simple "wow" just isn't good enough. Cosmos is, by the judgment of any person on this planet, one of the top 5 television productions in history.
The 13 episodes of this Peabody and Pulitzer willing miniseries touch on nearly every science topic of importance: astronomy, cosmology, physics, biology, the mathematics of gigantic numbers, and relativity. It also indulges us in a targeted survey of science history, including sections on the Library of Alexandria, the birth of science experiment, the defeat of ancient Greek science by mysticism, and the lives of Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe (the original Odd Couple), James Goddard, and Edwin Hubble.
Episodes 1, "On the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", and 13, "Who Speaks for Earth?", provide matching capstones for the other 11 volumes, which jump wildly from topic to topic. And yet there is a coherency across the entire run. Whether Sagan is describing conditions on the surface of Venus, the effects of relativity, or the futility of writing out a googolplex, Sagan is our patient, encouraging, engaging guide, making sense to the layman of complex scientific concepts. The script, written by Sagan and future wife Ann Druyan, educated and entertained. Only occasionally did Sagan's delivery approach pretentiousness, but his own enthusiasm for the topics effectively foils any from creeping in.
If you've read one of the Sagan biographies that emerged after his premature death in 1996, you'll know that one of the most effective and clever devices used in the series, the "Ship of the Imagination", was actually forced upon Sagan by executive producer Adrian Malone. This was one of the very few times that Sagan was wrong, because Malone's concept allowed us to step into cosmological situations much more believably than if we were presented simply with Sagan's exposition.
Although by all accounts the two men hated each other to the point of fisticuffs, Sagan and Malone's production surpassed all previous efforts at science documentary and continues to set the standard for all who have come since. Now that the Sagan family's feud with Turner has been resolved, it is now available on DVD.
A previous reviewer wrote, a plain simple "wow" just isn't good enough. Cosmos is, by the judgment of any person on this planet, one of the top 5 television productions in history.