Geheimnisse des Universums

History Channel's "The Universe" is a documentary series that fuels its somewhat empty content with blazingly beautiful CGI of the most spectacular sights in the universe. The series covers stars, planets, cosmic weather (!), terra-formation, dark matter and the aggressive nature of the cosmos in hour-long episodes of visual effect candy.

The hook of the series is that you get to take a look at what Venus, Neptune or a nebula or a meteoroid strike on Earth would look like up- close, while the narrator explains the "science" behind it. I say "the science" because very little science is usually covered. Any complicated phenomena is usually explained through real-life analogies. A meteorite crashing the Earth is like shooting a ball with a rifle. The crater can be measured by drawing an analogy of throwing a weight plate on sand and measuring the width of the bump on the beach. And so on.

Then again, this series is not aiming to educate the experts or even science enthusiasts. It's written for the laymen, who just want to see what Venus looks like if you were standing on its ground. On high definition, those images are quite impressive and grab your attention.

Unfortunately, those images are continuously recycled, for probably no other than budgetary reasons. But images aren't the only reused on the show. Every time the show goes on a short commercial break, the narrator insists on recapping what happened just before the break. As if no one could remember the very easily comprehensible bits they had just been told a few minutes ago. In many ways, the series undermines the audience's intelligence and even memory by recapping and reusing its material over and over.

In fact, every season of the series contains at least one episode dedicating to apocalyptic events that wreak havoc on Earth, recycling the same scenarios over and over while adding a few new ones, even going as far as reusing the same narrations!

Regardless, while the Universe is admittedly a little dumb and condescendingly so, the imagery is sometimes truly astonishing. The CGI, of course, is nowhere near what many modern films, such as "2012" or even the "new" Star Wars films have accomplished, but for the small screen on high definition, it's pretty impressive.

And on the bright side, it is really exciting to see what Venus or a pulsar looks like, even if you get to see the same image about a hundred times. Its greatest virtue is its entertainment value. While its greatest vice is the lack of science, the series does introduce the audience to the basic ideas of the newest and hottest theories of contemporary astrophysics and related sciences and find out more by hitting the nearest university library.

This show is absolutely great involving many famous individuals from the science community and unbelievably fun cgi's. It's nice and simple for people just interested in understanding the basics cause in reality most people just don't know or understand much about our world, science, the universe,. They stray from getting to complex or into detail about subjects that people would normally find very confusing. It's by far one of the best shows for introducing people to the fun of the universe and science. They cover all the planets, our solar system, black holes, Galaxy's, the earth, moon, and much much more. I'm not only ecstatic that they have a 3rd season but impressed cause i thought they'd run out of material by now, but then again... were talking about the universe here:p

This program must have been made for the Joe Bloe uneducated TV viewer. Most of the time, the information being presented is not new or interesting, and it feels as if the writers & producers of the show had to fill up a large time slot with very little source material. So what you get is a bunch of information repetitively going on and on about how "dangerous" gamma ray bursts are, or how imminent asteroid collisions are, blah blah blah. Yes, we all know about these things, but the way the program makes you sit through an hour meagerly trying to make you sit on the edge of your seat for a statistic of like 1 in a billion billion (as seen with the gamma ray bursts) that the Earth will be destroyed by some calamity. Yes, we know already! They could have been done with it in 5 minutes, but no, it's stretched to an hour long program! The sensationalism of this program is just too over-the-top, from the drawn-out "fear factor" bits, to the announcer's XTREME TRUCKS style voice. They obviously should have saved him for the Monster Truck series...

Another thing that bothered me were all the "analogies" that took away from the true dynamics of how certain things in the universe work. For example, dropping a Yogurt container to show how a death star works... or a sprinkler for showing how a spiral star is. While these are "cute" they are indeed more annoying than useful, and assumes a real lack of intelligence of the viewer. Just tell us the science behind it without treating us like 5 year olds.

It really is a shame. This program could have been so much more informative and hosted by a much better narrator (writers are to blame too, of course). There are indeed moments where I laughed out loud because of how dumb the narrator's comments were.

On the bright side, however, the computer effects were done well enough. It is an interesting subject, so that's why I gave it a 5. But all in all, terribly done for such a great topic.

This series is obviously a serious winner. It makes you think and although it merely touches on different subjects rather than going into heavy depth the explanations are enough to get the point across. Each interview with each astronomer and scientist is short and attention-getting. The proofs for different theories are shown in non-mathematical terms - except for the "billions of billions" thing which can get on your nerves a little because without math then you almost have to take their word for things. Even the scientists make a few blunders by confusing exponential with geometric or the classic confusing literal with figurative which every journalist does all the time but those are small items.

One interesting item from this series is the constant use of the term "global warming" which even taken in the context of this great series is laughable because in the same sentence a liberal scientist brings it up he explains that the sun has far more influence on the weather than the mere pittance man contributes as they obviously mean man-made global warming as opposed to what nature does. So obviously the makers of this series have bought into this bizarre hoax that makes a few people rich at the American tax payers' expense. That's the reason I can't give it a 10/10.

Otherwise I highly recommend this series. Again, it's superb.

This series started out quite nice. It starts with a tour of our own solar system of which we have a learned a lot in the last years. For those people who have a passion for astronomy/cosmology, not a lot of new information is presented. However, the manner in which they present it is refreshing and also entertaining.

The problem however starts in season 2. As the 'known' subjects have been discussed in the first season, the second season struggles in finding educational scientific materials. Instead they start leaning towards fiction and speculation more and more. Subjects as 'Sex in space', 'Alien faces' that contain no educational information at all. These episodes felt to me like a poor attempt to put nowadays teenagers drama and fantasy into a scientific perspective just to get a higher audience, an audience who will never comprehend the actual real science behind studies like these.

The scientific community has made it a point on their agenda to make science, in particular astronomy, cosmology and theoretical science more accessible to the general public. An action I totally support. However, showing nice CGI's, some enthusiastic scientists that seem to care more about their own popularity then real science, in this case, gives a wrong idea about what we actually do and do not know.

The show contains a lot of solid information but also a lot of speculations and should not be presented as fact or as general accepted theories.

For those people who are interested in the science part, I would recommend watching "National Geographic's Journey to the Edge of the Universe". A stunning documentary also with mind blowing CGI's and very understandable for any person.

Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1363109/