So, I just finished watching the Seth McFarlane/Neil deGrasse Tyson series: Cosmos.
And then I watched Carl Sagan’s series: Cosmos.
Am I the only one who feels like my time would have been better spent watching Family Guy? I mean sure, Tyson got to be supported by tons of glorious CGI, and maybe a few more and slightly more accurate facts, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Sagan’s production from almost 40 years ago. McFarlane’s rendition is repetitive and comparatively uninformative. It doles out some facts, repeats them, often a third time, and proceeds to make the subject matter gloriously beautiful and thoroughly unobtainable to the average Schmoe. It’s pretty, but it’s hardly inspiring. Sagan, on the other hand, covered a lot more ground, didn’t do a bunch of condescending repeats, and made it all very relevant to an average person’s life. With Sagan, a kid could watch, understand a little bit, but not be scared off from science. Tyson is aloof and better than you but that’s ok cuz he loves you even though you’re stupid. Sagan’s vibe is more like, “Yeah, you maybe don’t fully get it, but try harder and I’ll pull you up here.”
And now I’m watching James Burke’s Connections from 1978. Sure, it’s dated, but still fascinating and thought provoking. There was a thread not long ago asking what someone should do with a massive lottery win. What about a reboot of Connections? After all, Connections was made when you could at least see the mechanics in most of the technology which enslaved you, and still the prospect of starting it all over was daunting. If you could generate electricity, you could maybe restore some semblance of modern 1978 civilization. The message for today’s people would be much more bleak. Damn near everything we have can be broken, yet appear exactly as if it were brand new.
I wonder how much of it boils down to Tyson’s speaking style. He has a tendency to sound like he’s talking to a group of children at times and may slip into full on talking down to his audience occasionally.
Doesn’t mean he’s not good at what he does, but it can get annoying.
The are certainly very different shows, not the least of which is that Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (the original 1980 series) was written largely by Carl Sagan and his (soon-too-be third) wife, Ann Druyan. As such, it reflected his particular didacticism, optimism, and personal voice for science and space research. In Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Neil DeGrasse Tyson is just a presenter, and the dialogue often does not well fit with his normal presentation elsewhere, to the point that it often feels as if he is just reading words off of a TelePrompter[SUP]TM[/SUP]. The earlier series was also produced by KCET to be broadcast on PBS, meaning that it the episodes had a narrative flow with no commercial interruptions. Even though the version on Netflix does not include commercials, the punctuations are obnoxiously obtrusive. I’m also not a fan of the style of animations in the new series, which replace reenactments in original. And despite a few glaring errors and changes in knowledge of the original series, it remains very watchable and almost timeless; the newer series seems kind of disposable, and with several of the episodes I found it difficult to retain focus. Looking at the list of directors, all but one episode were directed by Brannon Braga or Bill Pope, neither of whom has any background in directing documentary features, whereas the original series was directed exclusively by Adrian Malone who was a noted science documentarian (Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man) before working on Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
And while the new series covers a lot of the same ground as the original in broad strokes, Sagan’s presentation had a lot more depth. As an eight year old child I remember every episode clearly and looked forward fondly to the next as it enriched my view of science as a process of testing and holistically knowledge rather than just a collection of factoids and unrelated disciplines. It may be my cynicism and current despair for humanity, but the new series just doesn’t really have that kind of well-constructed approach. I applaud MacFarlane’s sincere desire to use his pull and wealth to make science accessible to a new generation, but it just doesn’t compare to the earlier series. However, apparently it has still pissed of Christian fundamentalists by factually denying Creationism and promotion the factual basis of evolution, which is never a wrong thing.
The “Ship of Imagination” was corny when Sagan was doing it, but at least it kind of fit with his almost Fred Rogers-like persona. It is one element of the original series that really doesn’t translate well to the new show, and they would have been better off by doing without it. There are certainly other narrative devices which would work better.
I love NDGT, but he just cannot draw you in like Sagan could. The love and wonder he had for the subject matter was mesmerizing, and his voice was warm and mellow. Not Neil’s fault, those were big shoes to fill. Maybe Morgan Freeman could have done better voice work, but he lacks Neil’s stature in the sciences, and carries with him the baggage of acting roles.
Also, the asthetics of the new show put me off greatly. The cartoon style bothered me so much that I didn’t even watch past show #3. I didn’t want or expect much in the cartoon front, but they chose a style I just could not watch, and Cosmos was the TV event of the year for me. I SOOOO looked forward to it.
I love NDT. He is my own personal astrophysicist, but his talking style sometimes goes past pontificating and skirts far to close to bloviating. Sagan did not suffer from this problem. Still, I loved both Cosmos. There should be more. A whole series of science educators explaining everything in the universe from their perspective. I’d love to see a Bill Nye or Michio Kaku or Carolyn Porco or Bad Astronomer Phil Plait who, by the way, used to be a Doper but left us when his public career took off.
This. Without commercials, made as relevant as possible to today’s sociopolitical climate, and not dumbed down.
And I get the atheism angle–Sagan was so disdainful of religion he actually lectures, about religion as a hindrance to progress I want to say, from the ruins of some ancient Greek temple, while walking ON the ruins. You can see the marble crumbling under his shoes! At first I was all, “NO! Ancient stuff!” but then my inner dialogue ran to , “Yeah? It’s a temple–not only not sacred, but a symbol of the enemy of truth–crush them all and study the sand.” But I digress. The atheism thing. It doesn’t even have to come up. Just say as much, “This is what the science tells us, which is different from what religions tell us. This show is not about religion, except for where it has conflicted with or advanced the interests of science. You can resolve the conflicts on your own–here’s a quick lesson in critical thinking to help you with that.”
Sorry for rambling. I fear a return to the dark ages and the loss not only of our wealth of knowledge, but of our desire and ability to do anything with it.
I think part of my viewing issues has to do with my age for each. I watched Sagan’s Cosmos when I was around 13-14 years old and wanted to be Spock or Scotty. The subject matter was fast paced for the time and really interesting to me.
I liked the new Cosmos, but it had a tendency to lull me to sleep. I generally like NDT but I don’t think Cosmos was the right vehicle for him in the end and to be honest, I am clearly not that 13 year old that enjoyed the original so much.
I thought the show was good. If I was currently a youngster I expect I would be riveted. It’s not exactly the show that inspired me when I was a kid but the Sagan version is out there for anyone looking for more.
Anyone watching One Strange Rock? I keep meaning to watch but have missed it so far.
I think it was in the late 90s that Connections made a comeback, and even then it was made for shorter attention spans.
It’s a fascinating exercise to connect two things in the web of all innovations that could be connected. It would make a good game.
Of course there is also James Burke’s Day the Universe Changed. Loved it; got the book, just like with Cosmos.
I remember being awed by the original ‘Cosmos’ when it first came out. Then, when I rewatched it several years ago, I was rather underwhelmed. But maybe it’s because at this time I already knew most of what was going to be presented. It’s also interesting watching him on the ‘Carson’ reruns. I remember being spellbound each time he was on. Now, I keep thinking, “For as smart as he is, he sure didn’t say much worthwhile.”
Sagan has an interesting way of occasionally ‘popping’ his initial p’s and b’s (of course, parodied by the ‘Billions and Billions’ line).
I like your post better than mine. You described my issue with NDGT perfectly. He tends to hold forth, and he doesn’t exude Sagan’s patience and calm. I’m not quite sure I’m a fan of Michio Kaku in general, but I do love his speaking voice and his presentation style.
Phil would give the whole show a slightly Adam Savage vibe, if I remember his style from his short lived show a few years back, and everyone knows what Bill Nye brings.
Have any of you actually watched the new one with kids? My daughter (11 at the time) loved it, and found the original not as entertaining when I showed it to her afterwards.
I did, they got bored of it after a few episodes. They’re both science oriented, so that wasn’t the problem. I think Tyson was actually the problem. Great in small doses, but not so great in the Cosmos format.
I really think Tyson could have pulled it off, but the commercials blew the continuous flow Sagan was able to enjoy, and forcing the repetition after the commercials only reinforced the sense he felt he was talking to idiots with no attention span…Um. I mean, in college level science classes you don’t get a 10 minute break every 15 minutes and the result is you actually get a chance to see how the subject matter flows from point A to point B without interruptions. Heh, Connections was tough enough to keep up with, it’d be unintelligible with commercials.
Seems like what we need is some sort of educational television programmed in a commercial-free format. Agenda-free funding would be troublesome, so there would need to be some other way. Maybe a grant from the federal government, or viewer donations? Nah, that’d never work.
I never watched the sagan cosmos series back in the day. I thought i would try watching it on YouTube recently but i didn’t get very far. i just didn’t care for the overly theatrical soundtrack, over-poeticization (to coin a word), nor sagan’s voice/ narration. I prefer a more plain-facts documentary style i guess. I still respect him very much and his work to convey science to the public. My current-day favorite cosmology presenter by far is Brian Greene from Columbia in NYC.