I’m very excited and very scared. If they follow the template of the original: don’t dumb it down, give the science and the history precedence over the “look what we can do!” special effects, and for the love of Baby Jesus don’t mention Alien Astronauts or creationism it could be great. I hope Tyson has some kind of editorial power over the content and isn’t just a paid narrator.
True. Murdoch is first and foremost interested in making money.
Point.
If Tyson agreed to be a narrator for that kind of show, I’d think a lot less of him than I do now. He doesn’t seem to be the kind of person to put his principles aside for an extra paycheck.
Agreed, but he’s also probably not super well versed in the ways of big budget documentary projects, so I hope he has a good agent.
Well, he’s done two Nova shows on PBS, one a four-part miniseries and another seasonal pop-culture-oriented show which he’s done since 2006, and appears regularly on The Hitler Channel’s show The Universe. Those are his documentary credentials which don’t include his frequent guest appearances on talk shows and his own radio talk show which has been going since 2009.
It’s not an extensive resume, and PBS is definitely not Fox, but he’s not some scientist who happens to be good at holding a lecture hall’s attention but is unversed in media.
I love Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think he’s the right man for the job.
“Dinosaurs are actually named Jesus Horses.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson bugs me. Ever since he took over Nova that show has shed about a thousand IQ points. It’s now an hour of idiotic computer animations and grade-school level narration, instead of the interesting science documentary that it’s supposed to be. (The ones that he is not on are far better.)
Tyson’s a very good choice. He’s definitely the go-to mouthpiece physicist these days, and has charm and charisma. He does not, however, quite have Sagan’s talent for making physics sound not mere fascinating but beautiful, spiritual, and deeply meaningful. The joy of Cosmos wasn’t just that it gave us a glimpse into the world of science, but that it really helped convey why science was worth pursuing as a people.
Leon Lederman (Nobel Laureate, Director Emeritus of Fermi) would have been a great choice at one time, but I haven’t heard him speak in a decade, and I don’t know if he still has the energy he once did.
I agree. Greene’s delivery tends to be more casual and natural, while still conveying a sense of wonder and curiosity. I like Tyson, but often he seems like he’s trying too hard to be enthusiastic and it goes overboard and doesn’t feel natural. He also tries to “dumb things down” a little too much sometimes. I’ll still watch, though!
Murdoch is the puppet master of everything Fox though.
He does not personally vet everything that airs on his networks. Or if he does, he’s 20 years behind on The Simpsons and a decade behind on the Seth McFarlane shows since they’re both openly left leaning. Either way, I figure they’re not going to run a science documentary and delete references to evolution. And for whatever it’s worth, I like Tyson.
I don’t think Mike Tyson is right for Cosmos.
I imagine him looking down at a chess board making deliberate moves with a smile.
“The Magellanic Clouds. I’m going to eat their children!”
Tyson hosts Nova Science Now, which is a spin-off of Nova. They are two different shows with two different formats.
He allowed or missed HUGE creationist-bashing on the Simpsons and Family Guy.
The museum exhibit Flanders sees about creationism with “What a Fool Believes” playing… When Peter Griffin is diagnosed as mentally retarded and the doctor shows an intelligence chart with “creationist” well below the “retarded” line…
And that’s just two examples.
Oh, OK. I didn’t realize they were separate shows.
He still annoys me though.
Can’t wait. Loved the original and with the new data from spacecraft that have come since Sagan’s original show, this should be super!
No dumbing, please. That’d just ruin it.