Der Dino Planet

The cartoon monster show is immensely disappointing. The BBC loves CGI which is fine but not when it's cheap 'n nasty CGI, the sort that would shame Channel5. You see the same rubbish in Doctor Who (which is rubbish anyway) & no doubt many other BBC co-productions which I've long since grown sick of. Outcasts, Bonekickers & Day of the Triffids are but 3 dreadful examples. It wasn't always like this. I kid you not the animation in Walking with Dinosaurs(1999)is easily better. The monsters in that have a gait & vitality that put this rubbish to shame. I can't comment about the palaeontological accuracy of this but I know when animation doesn't ring true. The landscapes look thin & synthetic, I've seen better work by amateurs on youtube. Tom & Jerry are more convincing. Ray Harryhausen must be wondering why his stop-motion technique was superseded by something that has been so shoddily rendered. Where's the quality control? The BBC is throwing a huge amount of prestige into this production with ancillary programmes on BBC2 & 4 by the likes of Alice Roberts, Jem Stansfield & Dallas Campbell(Dallas?) - a blitz really, so they obviously aren't aiming this at 5yearolds. Any simpleton can see this is not up to scratch. It's like evolution in reverse. I gave it 2/10 because the on-screen data blocks are OK, not good just OK.

Planet Dinosaur has magnificent, realistic, dynamic direction and SFX that serve to put you into the frame with the gargantuan beasts. The informative narrative puts you further - into the mind of these creatures, as they go through their respective daily grinds. PD mainly focuses on the big boys - the titans who are truly the movers and shakers in their environment. When you watch these giants engage in enterprises like mass hunts or migrations, the events on-screen take on truly epic proportions.

The series uses appropriate props like maps and anatomical drawings to help you gain a better understanding of the dramas unfolding before you.

Very well-made, visually and viscerally impressive. 8/10.

I will admit, this is not the worst dinosaur documentary out there. But it is not to the same quality as the "Walking with" series was.

Let's talk about the pros first. This definitely contains a plethora of factual information to share with the audience, which is quite nice. It takes the time to explain how paleontologists have theorized certain aspects and behaviors of the creatures based on direct fossil evidence. The show focuses quite a bit on the actual fossils rather than always showing the dinosaurs on screen, which is a nice change of pace. With all the evidence they present, it makes the dinosaurs in the show more believable in their behaviors and actions.

Now to the cons. I don't like the style of the show. The models look very bland, especially with the models. Most of the creatures look very similar with their models, and the models themselves look cheap. When there is a feathered dinosaur, not all of the feathers look like they're really on the dinosaur. The creatures and the environments don't look real. It all looks like it was done on a computer (which I know it is, but it would be nice if it looked a little more realistic). I also do 't like how basically every scene with a dinosaur involves it fighting and/or killing another dinosaur. I get it, dinosaurs fighting each other is entertaining, but fighting is not something animals do 24/7. It's actually a last resort for animals, as it would be for dinosaurs. Now it's fine to have some scenes with fighting dinosaurs, but not too much. This is something that Walking with Dinosaurs did fantastically. That program had little fight scenes, and was mainly showing dinosaurs just doing what dinosaurs normally do, and it worked. So why does this show feel the need to only have fight scenes? It's unnecessary.

Have always been fascinated by dinosaurs, whether reading about them or seeing documentaries and films on them. Love documentaries, especially those of the national treasure that is David Attenborough, and admire to love a lot of the late John Hurt's filmography. So my expectations for 'Planet Dinosaur' were quite big and that's an understatement.

Expectations that were actually mostly lived up to, a good thing for me having seen my fair share of wastes of potential recently. 'Planet Dinosaur' is not one of the best documentaries personally seen (far from it), and there are better ones on the subject of dinosaurs. It is also not as ground-breaking as 'Walking with Dinosaurs', as far as dinosaur documentaries go, still a big achievement to this day. Standing on its own without comparing it to anything, 'Planet Dinosaur' was very interesting and mostly very well done.

'Planet Dinosaur' isn't perfect. The dinosaur effects are stiff, hasty-looking and lack finesse too often, though there are some grand ones. At times, it gets a bit repetitive, especially in the last two episodes agreed.

It sometimes is on the biased side, rather than a multi-dimensional picture of the dinosaurs they can be described in a certain way and viewpoint and one is not offered another.

However, when it comes to how it's written, 'Planet Dinosaur' does just as good a job entertaining and teaching, it's all very sincerely done and it never feels like a sermon. There are things here that are common sense and knowledge but one is taught a huge deal as well.

John Hurt's (RIP) narration delivery is similarly spot-on, very sensitively delivered and very dignified in a distinctively John Hurt way. Bias aside, the narration is comprehensive and sincere, with a good balance of things known to me and things new to me (really like it when documentaries do that), as well as compelling.

Visually, 'Planet Dinosaur' may lack the awe-inspiring, almost cinematic quality one anticipates. With that being said, it is beautifully shot, shot in a fluid and non-static way. The sceneries and landscapes can be beautiful but also they can be at other times they can be rendered a bit flatly, would have been better with the real settings.

Every episode is appropriately scored, never intrusive or too low-key. There is fun, tension and pathos throughout and the dinosaurs, prey and predator, are like characters that one cares for in the same way they do a human. The fossil evidence, very well researched and grounded rather than speculative, and the science, which in no way sounds like gibberish or like it was made up as they went along (a lot of homework was done in this regard) are also notable assets.

Overall, very good though with flaws that stop it from being great. 8/10 Bethany Cox

I normally don't talk about actual straightforward dinosaur documentaries, honestly. I'm that niche kind of odd-person-out who'd rather prefer to watch a heap load of non-dinosaur related palaeo-documentaries instead because I've always been more interested in learning about what exactly came right after the non-avian dinosaurs' mass-extinction event, but just before the dawn of civilisation as we've come to know it today, via well-recorded historical textbooks on the middle ages of our own distant past (informative insight on what led up to the triumphant rise of modern animals during ancient times does it more for me in the whole "fascination department"). Ones like; 2001's Extinct, 2002's What Killed the Mega Beasts? And Wild New World: Prehistoric America, 2003's Monsters We Met and Before We Ruled the Earth, 2007's Prehistoric Predators, 2009's Animal Armageddon and Mega Beasts: Monsters Resurrected (I usually tended to just skip over the dino-focused episodes of those two), 2012's Titanoboa: Monster Snake and 2013's Ice Age Giants. And of course, I can't forget about 2001's Walking With Beasts and 2003's Walking With Cavemen, which is pretty much where this little obsession of mine originated from and started with. My close history with all this stuff first began because of these two marvellous Impossible Pictures productions, so I really have them to thank for all this (but it's only MY personal preference, though).

And so without further adieu, let's get stuck right into 2011's Planet Dinosaur as I attempt to review it unbiasedly. Well for starters, this surprisingly adequate miniseries boasts an impressively colourful display of numerous different dinosaur designs and features a whole myriad of several various geological times and places that have never before been seen in any other major dino-centric documentary. I especially enjoy the little aesthetic touches that really go into exquisite detailing, such as the case with the tiny scars and healed wounds (the result of prior battle-damage) all along the sides of the creatures' bodies and even the bright colouration of vibrant patterns running up, down and across the entire length of them as well (now that's a very commendable job well done, on the part of the experienced VFX animators). Unlike its spiritual predecessor, 1999's Walking With Dinosaurs, this BBC documentary actually goes out of its way to provide concrete proof of the factual evidence that's been acquired in the field of palaeontology from over the years (sticking much closer to the latest statistics in up-to-date discoveries, for the time in which it was produced). I believe it was a conscious decision to illustrate the fossil findings in this style of presentation due to the many controversies surrounding some of the incorrect scientific aspects as previously seen in a few of WWD's episodes. I reckon my best guess is that they must've went this route simply to avoid anymore backlash regarding their potential inaccuracies (it was done for the sake of not wanting yet another wave of complaints coming in, which is understandable).

Now onto my problems with the miniseries. It would appear to me that this particular nature programme is more violence-oriented than most others typically are, with a constant strong focus on depicting the ravenous top predators being viciously locked in seemingly endless battles to the death (they really put a tremendous emphasis on the overdramatised bloodthirsty fighting for either survival, dominance, territory, hunting rights or scrapping over the dead carcass of a prey item) with one another and other physical forms of aggressive species competition (whether they be of the meat-eating carnivore or plant-munching herbivore variety). Don't get me wrong, these segments wouldn't bother me all that much if the filmmakers were only striving to demonstrate how the intricate dynamics of symbiotic predator-prey relationships work in a bustling ecosystem (the perpetual state of natural order and balance within our vigorous world). But it feels to me like a reasonable amount of their admirable intentions were just a tad bit overly excessive (taken to some fairly drastic lengths, I suppose).

Coincidentally, Walking With Beasts also had its own fair share of horrific combat and gruesome imagery too and it may have come across as a bit morbidly gratuitous (possibly bordering on exploitive) at times. But ultimately the intensely graphic brutality seen in WWB was unique due to it helping further along the natural progression of the episodes' realistically raw stories, which were all centred around an almost forgotten world of primitive savagery (primal grittiness at its utmost). Besides that, it didn't leave out any of the quintessential supplementary topics; parents rearing their vulnerable offspring, chipper youngsters trying to survive into adulthood, learning what foods are safe to eat and which aren't, an individual's journey to reaching full maturity, mating rituals and reproduction challenges, coping with the tragic loss of a group member, the changing of climates, seasonal droughts, habitat loss, environmental disruption... the list goes on and on (it didn't forget to include any of these things). What I'm trying to say in its defence is that the faithful portrayal of explicit violence in THAT documentary somewhat made sense because functionally-speaking, it served a much greater narrative purpose by staying true to the unpleasant events of these real-life actions. And it didn't even happen all that frequently, which in-turn is what made you feel the full-magnitude of it when these certain parts actually did occur (it had a POINT of being there!). So you see, there's quite literally a vastly wider range of diverse and complex interlinked subjects in the natural world of the animal kingdom to be covered and explored upon besides just egregiously showcasing a merciless onslaught of violent content.

On its own merits, there's quite honestly a whole manner of different qualities Planet Dinosaur possesses. As I've already stated before, the expansive collection of entirely computer-generated environments and models created for each and every single one of the individual habitats and creatures alike were fully-rendered perfectly and made them all look topnotch (very nice lifelike reconstructions). And while some restorations of the prehistoric animals' movements can come off as robotically clunky at times, it wasn't a very noticeable issue for me personally (sadly though, the same can't be said for the cinematography's unnecessary reliance on overused "zoom-in & out" shaky-cam shots and disorienting sequences of rapid-fire editing). The background and theme music were both serviceable enough and just fine while watching the programme, but they don't leave a lasting impact on you in the same way how the majestic grandeur of Ben Bartlett's memorable musical scores do. And although John Hurt was a terrific actor, his narration can become slightly overdone during some sections of the episodes, with the refined tone of his voiceover not coming anywhere near close to being as iconic as the styles of David Attenborough and Kenneth Branagh.

So overall, I thought this was an OK documentary, even if a little redundant with its repetitive fights. I know it might sound like utter blasphemy for me to even entertain the mere notion of this unpopular opinion of mine, but I actually think I enjoyed it a smidgen more than something like the original Walking With Dinosaurs show, which I myself find kind of overrated (however, the sheer mind-blowing experience of seeing the live Arena Spectacular performance of WWD way back in 2009 was truly an unforgettable event in my young life). But this just makes you wonder, doesn't it. If Planet Dinosaur had done better with its initial figures in viewership, then it's highly likely we would've seen a few potential follow-ups to it. They could've gone down the Walking With... path of doing such passion-projects as a "Planet Beast" (sequel series) and "Planet Monster" (prequel series). It's fun to imagine the possibilities of what could have been, there.