On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote:
> I still am a bit bothered by the way they bring narrative to a halt to > show scenes full of special effects. As with the movies, I understand that > visuals are preferred for overseas audiences. And I got a little more > insight today while listening to an Inquiring Minds interview with Carolyn > Porco, a planetary scientist who is in charge of imaging for the Cassini > space probe. Most of the images they use in Cosmos come from recent probes > and telescope images and they are a lot more accurate than was available a > few years ago. > I read a report the other day that said the Hubble could continue working another 15 years, but if it suffers another mechanical failure (it has suffered several since its launch), there are currently no spacecraft capable of launching to fix it. Makes me sad that in terms of mankind exploring the universe, we are now actually worse off than we were even five years ago. > I assume that they are making their assertions about the cosmos in the > early episodes and they will back them up in later episodes when they get a > chance to introduce more information that will help the viewer understand > the support for the early assertions. We will see if that's true. > To quote Fox Mulder, "I want to believe." We will see. One thing that bothered me was the story they presented about Hooke, > Newton, and Halley. Even though Tyson mentioned how important Hooke was to > the history of science, he was represented as the villain of the story > while Newton was portrayed as a generally nice guy. What I have got from > reading the history of science and listening to In Our Time is that Newton > was very difficult to get along with. Tyson mentioned that when Halley went > to Cambridge to ask Newton's help in explaining planetary motion, Newton > was a recluse there. The unspoken reason was that Newton was an unfair > victim of Hooke's scheming, and while that happened, the reason Newton was > a recluse was because nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. In > attitude and demeanor he was probably much more like Hooke than was > portrayed. > >From the "In Our Time" series I mentioned earlier, I'd say reality is somewhere in between. Newton's brilliance outweighed his personality flaws, and it was said being named head of the Royal Society improved his disposition as well as enhanced the society itself. One aspect I would've liked for them to have touched on were Newton's failures. Cosmos very briefly mentioned two of them (alchemy and his attempts to find a hidden message from God in the Bible), but to me there is a greater story (or maybe a greater humanity) to somebody who isn't portrayed as perfect. Take a look at the movie "The Challenger" wherein Feyman is shown to have presented a deeply failed theory to the committee before getting the right one. As with Newton, the failures have the added benefit of truth to them. As for Hooke, the problem, it seems, with uncovering his true nature was he was reluctant to put things into writing. In Cosmos, that translated into animosity and led to the Flash-animated confrontation scene, but for the sake of history, it leaves us with very little evidence of who the man was or what he did contribute to the Royal Society. Now, if I'm a budding Hollywood screenwriter watching Cosmos, my biggest takeaway would be that I need to be researching and scripting a film about Christopher Wren. In everything I've seen and heard about the Royal Society, he was the hand that guided it through a lot of turmoil, and his hand shaped England for hundreds of years. His contributions might not neatly fit into Cosmos, but his story is nonetheless compelling and noteworthy. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
