Since I’ve participated in threads (quite rightly) trashing History Channel for its “Are we even pretending to do history anymore?” recent lineups (Ice Road Truckers, Axe Men, Gangland) and its obsession with the da Vinci Code, Bible Code, UFOs, and other “Roger DeBris presents… history!” style documentaries, I wanted to give thumbs up to this show. Just when I was losing hope I found it while channel surfing and after a “but… but… that’s history! How’d that get on there?” moment I started watching and am really enjoying it.
For those who haven’t seen it, Battles B.C. is a new series about, obviously, ancient battles that uses interviews with scholars and a combination of actors and CGI to replicate them. The special effects may not be to everyone’s liking- there’s a definite 300 look and feel to it- but the history’s really good and the shows are really interesting. The episode I watched last night was on Alesia, and while I was familiar with the battle’s name/approximate timeframe/significance (it’s where Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix and crushed the Gallic Celts) I wasn’t familiar with the fighting of the battle itself, and it’s a battle of fascinating tactics and technology.
For those not familiar, Vercingetorix was a Gallic noble who had served as a cavalry officer under Caesar who later turned against him and decided to drive out the Romans. His campaign culminated in his investment of the heavily fortified hilltop city of Alesia, to which Caesar laid siege to starve him out. What’s interesting is that the campaign ultimately ended with a ring of concentric circles: the city of Alesia with its walls [Vercingetorix and his followers inside] was surrounded by a second wall built by the Romans with high watchtowers and motes and “pointed sticks” in which people expelled from the city by Vercingetorix ultimately took refuge, and that surrounding wall was surrounded by yet another huge wall (20 miles around and divided by two rivers) with the Roman legions were housed. In the final days of the campaign 60,000 Gauls surrounded the Romans who had surrounded the city (and the no-man’s land between the city walls/inner Roman wall) and Caesar fought the forces of Vercingetorix who was attacking from within the city and the Gauls who were attacking from outside the Roman walls (concentrating on weak spots in fortifications and at the rivers). It was a complete bloodbath, but Caesar (leading troops himself) was triumphant. And it was extremely well realized visually on the show- it teaches you why Big Julie is still considered one of the great military geniuses.
Several of the shows have dealt with biblical battles, and those are also good. Since the written sources are few and heavily biased they rely a lot on archaeology and conjecture- in the episode on Joshua for example they conjecture that the red rope Rahab draped wasn’t so much a signal for her to spared as a focal point for how to upload men into the fortified city. They also don’t mince words or try to make it palatable to Fundamentalists: the Canaan campaigns are presented as unqualified slaughter and genocide for the purpose of land theft. Very good episodes.
This is what good history programming can do. I’m hoping it will get great ratings so they’ll be encouraged to do more programming of this type. I think they could extend the concept into a great show: perhaps a show on Battles for the New World- they’ve got almost 500 years to work with; the United States alone has bloody wars from Jamestown through the Civil War [lots of great battles begging to be recreated digitally] and Indian Wars while South America & the Caribbean can broaden it from Columbus to Castro.
Anyway, has anyone else been watching this show?