#COSMOS A SPACETIME ODYSSEY SERIES#

#COSMOS A SPACETIME ODYSSEY SERIES#

The show ends with an animated sequence from the original series of life's evolution from one cell to humans. He then returns to Earth and tells about abiogenesis and how life changed and evolved. From there he speculates about life and how it first began. From there he talks about what other kinds of life might have been created on other worlds. He then tells how some life has survived, and then focuses on the tardigrade. Explaining the five great Extinction events. He then discusses extinction, by going to a monument called the Halls of Extinction, dedicated to the broken branches of the tree of life. Next he goes to a forest and describes the Tree of life, this leads him to discussing the evolution of the eye.

Along the way he talks about DNA, genes and mutation.

He then enters the Ship of Imagination, and explains natural selection with the process that helped to create the polar bears. Nature doesn't really come into the picture until the second episode, though, which contracts in as far as it initially expanded: DNA and molecules make the focus small, but vast in their own way.The story begins with Tyson sitting at a campfire, and telling how the wolf changed through artificial selection, and selective breeding into the dog breeds around today. Visions of rogue planets seen only by infrared, and massive planet-sized hurricanes are all explored with amazing clarity, on par with other nature series of recent years. Mixing live action, animation and CGI, Cosmos' first episode generally outlines the known universe by using illustrative tools like a 'cosmic calendar,' to explain the passage of such large swaths of time. Tyson also brings things down to a personal level, speaking at length at the close of the first episode about a personal encounter with Sagan in his youth that helped cement his desire to become a scientist, which also pays homage to Sagan and the original series. Like Sagan before him, Tyson is a good ambassador of the universal, because he is able to explain even the most mentally tortuous concepts in ways that are able to be understood on a basic level (the series is also co-written, directed and executive produced by Carl Sagan's wife, Ann Druyan). His involvement with Cosmos suddenly made the project's viability a toss up - which MacFarlane were we going to get? He can be brutally funny, then willfully obtuse (take, as exhibit A and B, Family Guy versus Dads). MacFarlane is a man of extremes, much of which was on display when he hosted the Oscars. One of the most focused-upon aspects of Cosmos is not its enthusiastic, friendly and well-respected (not to mention uber smart) host Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but MacFarlane. Hit the jump for whether it deserves its high-profile slot.

A revival of Carl Sagan's seminal work Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was a massive hit on PBS in the 1980s, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey goes on a visually masterful trek through space at the hands of popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and his 'ship of imagination.' The 13-episode series, which will be running on a myriad of Fox networks, is the first time a documentary has aired in primetime in a very long time, thanks to a big push from executive producer Seth MacFarlane.

Cosmos a spacetime odyssey