Cosmos Reboot: Running Discussion Thread

I'm hoping for an HD stream here in the next day or so, sans commercials.

There will be DVDs some day.

Not surprising. I don't think I've ever seen such a ratio of commercials to content, even in a TNT rerun.

it's nothing new for nerds like me. i hope it can inspire half as much people as the original did. for me, neil degrasse tyson is kinda 'too much'. there is just no spacey documentary he isn't part of. i truly like him but he's so inevitable.

however. this shows the passing of time so well. i watched a few of the originals and it was like i had only seen them yesterday even though i was only around seven when i first saw it. i also still have the book, read it like a dozen times. ah, memories...

I think he was smoking pot at the end. Or it could be his eyes were reddish from thinking of Carl Sagan which got a little creepy. I was almost thinking he was going to say that he called Sagan with a lie about missing the bus so he could stay at his house.

I like Tyson a heck of a lot more than Sagan.

Very comprehensive review over at the AV Club...

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/cosmos-spacetime-odyssey-begins-going-big-science--201981

You need to watch it on Hulu, and here's why: Because Nielsen is now tracking views on Hulu, which means that even if you're not a Nielsen family, your watching it counts towards the ratings. The higher the ratings, the more likely we are to see more shows like this on broadcast TV. We need more shows like this, and fewer shows about Honey Boo Boo (I feel dirty even knowing who the fuck that is), so watch it where it counts. (And yeah, the Hulu version is HD., and tafkats is right about wanting a bigger TV.)

I think I may have been watching a "bootleg" version of the show.
Should Carrot Top be hosting, and are goats driving gold carts typically used to demonstrate electromagnetism?

Kaku's an idiot. Rather than sticking to the science that he knows, he's become a media whore, commenting on things which he really doesn't know very much about. What's harming NDT in this episode is that they've done some subtle speeding up of his scenes. It makes his gestures seem strange, and fouls up his natural cadence of speaking.

And I can remember Sagan being mocked by lots of people for much of his career. What got him respect was the fact that he died a slow and painful death from cancer. Before that, you found people eager to mention that he cheated on his first wife with Ann Druyan, that he thought nuclear winter would be worse than what science indicated it would be, that he had a weird pronunciation of the word "billions," and that he said it often.

Bruno is the first "Nerd Saint" and I'm guessing that nobody had really heard of him until a few years ago, and now, everybody's got to drag him out whenever they can, because, well, nerds. Also, by doing it animation style Seth MacFarlane can play Bruno.

Well, yeah, I mean, if you say something too interesting about the Earth, then people might go outside and stop watching TV. You can't have that.

Didja notice who directed the episode? Brannon Braga. Need I say more?

Inside joke. NDT is one of the people responsible for Pluto no longer being considered a planet.

Yeah, well, dude, not everybody has an 80" plasma to watch this on, so they had to shrink it down.

Well, yeah, since its sort of the outer limit of the solar system, though if you really want to get nit picky about it, there's people who claim that the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud are actually all the same thing, while others aren't so sure, and how much shit do you want to try and cram into a 44 minute program that has to try and get people to understand the concept that the universe is really fucking big between ad breaks for crap people don't need?

There are night vision goggles that can pick up parts of the infrared spectrum as a side effect of amplifying ambient visible light. Indeed, there are problems with certain digital cameras picking up the light from IR TV remotes. Yes, technically, his statement isn't 100% correct, but its close enough for government work. If you say that infrared is what FLIR uses, you then have to explain what FLIR is. Not too many people know about that, but they almost certainly know about night vision goggles.

Yeah, I wish they could have spent a little more time on that than what they did.

In a perfect world, it'd probably rate a "C," but let's face it, when was the last time you saw one of the major commercial broadcast networks (as opposed to PBS) attempt to tackle such a subject? That alone should net it an "A+" even with all its flaws.

Agreed. The show uses storytelling shorthand, which is an absolute necessity in a television program. That doesn't make it dumbed down, just simpler to grasp, and I do believe there's a difference. The asteroid field didn't bother me, because if they only showed one asteroid, the effect of there being a massive asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter would have been lost. By showing all of those asteroids, the point of "asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter" is made stark and clear. Storytelling shorthand, which I feel was competently employed here.

Oh, and I feel the urge to point out out that there's lens flare all over the fucking place while NDT is flying around in his mirror ship.

Pretty lame. Basic fluff although they had to dumb it down for the network audience I suppose. However, they did tick the liberal boxes. Obama, take a swing at the church, get some islamic references in there, etc. Science channel shows, to be expected, blow it away. One and done for me.

It was pretty good but pretty basic; I hope future episodes really get into the latest observations and theories about dark matter and dark energy and such. Could've done without the over-dramatic cartoons.

What did you expect? Republican propaganda complete with creationism, presented by Newt Gingrich?

It's science. Basic science. But if even that's too librul for the likes of you, bye. I'm sure you'll be very happy watching Honey Boo Boo wet her pants.

I don't know if that's not over the heads of the intended audience. I mean, I hope there'll be something new down the line but I doubt it. It's bottom line inspirational popular science, just like the original. And it's excellent as such.

The early ratings are promising, with roughly 6 million people watching it on TV, final numbers won't be in for a few days (the web views count for three days after its posted). http://www.ibtimes.com/cosmos-premi...-first-episode-if-you-missed-it-video-1560454

Oh, I fully expected what they came up with. Basic, vanilla and boring, unlike most of the SCI channel offerings. And the left doesn't have the market cornered on science either.

The segment on Bruno and a couple of comments here have got me thinking that the problem wasn't his message so much as his presentation. Infinite God = Infinite Universe...why not? According to the Church at the time, it was because God created us, so we're *special*. But the Infinite Universe model doesn't inherently conflict with that, unless you get to the point where there are other sentient beings. So forget to mention THAT part of it, and it's just an infinite universe of worlds with exciting and different plants and beasts for HUMANS to explore! Framing it that way might've made all the difference.

Or not...

The church was, (and is) about earthly human power.

Make the universe infinite, and all the nasty little power-mongers, religious or secular, become a joke, and they automatically know it.

Sentient alien life doesn't make us any less special. Diamond is still a diamond, right?

Yep. It's to draw people in. Notice the lack of hard facts and figures in the first episode. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson. The man probably knows the number of molecules on Leonard Nimoy's butt. It won't be long until we start hearing more concrete statements, but I think they will be introduced gradually, to acclimate the audience.

If you want Tyson in molecular detail, listen to Startalk.

http://www.startalkradio.net/

I listen to StarTalk regularly. It's a great show. That said, I'm actually expecting Neil to build on the science gradually over time. This episode feels more like an overview.

Well yeah. An introduction, an overview, a "set a spell and let's us talk a while" kind of thing.

has somebody, um, found a 1080p version? i only see the 720 which is good but well, you know.

Hulu's not streaming 1080?

indeed, i could try that via some proxy server. our copyright fuckazoids are so diligently protecting physical media that we don't have any good streaming services here. it's a very sad, very 1980s yugoslavia situation.

FYI, Sagan's widow wrote the first episode, and check out the credits for who did the music. I know it doesn't list it there, but he's listed on the credits for the episode, why it hasn't made it to IMDB, I don't know.

So, in short, it looks like they've gone full on nerd cred for the series.

I'm buying Silvestri's soundtrack. Eventually.