Impossible Engineering

Season 2, Episode 1. "Scientists believed, because there's no air in space there would be nothing for the rocket to push against so it wouldn't be able to fly... but Goddard had other ideas"... This coming out of the mouth of a real scientist... NOBODY who studied physics since Newton believed that!!, especially scientists!!! Maybe an infamous newspaper editor put his foot in his mouth claiming so but he was quickly put in his place by thinking people. Goddard, of course a genius, didn't go against known science and believed that in space his rocket would work, he KNEW it would work, Just like Columbus didn't go against general knowledge and bet that the world was round, he knew it was round... Sometimes I wish they would sell us straight science and not some trumped up dramatic crap... we deserve better and maybe one day the producers of these shows will treat us with respect. Very sad.

Great intent. They constantly repeat and repeat and repeat to make the show longer. Just tell the story.

Wonderful subject matter, good but not remarkable production. The problem is, I cannot stand to listen to the current, immature-sounding and thin-voiced narrator! Please go to a nearby school and draft one of the students in the school radio station who will probably do a much better job narrating! Or, hire an adult...ANY adult to take over. (Except for Erik Todd Delums!) There is a Multitude of quality voice talent out there yearning to work, It should be an easy task to find a qualified replacement. PLEASE!!!

The concept is great. Explain how engineers have created modern marvels, drawing upon past experiments by their predecessors. However, the actual show is unbearably drawn out. I only watched one episode; about the Shanghai Maglev Train. Fascinating subject but it was a half hour documentary padded out to last twice that long. I lost count of the number of times the same shots were re-used; the music was intrusive; the repetitive commentary was aimed at an immature audience and what exactly was the presenter in Shanghai doing? If she was presenting the show then she should have been doing it to camera; if she was an interviewee then she should have been directed to keep her eye line closer to the camera, not be staring into the middle distance. Viewers have to sit through a whole hour of this stuff, just to enjoy a handful of three minute bursts of interesting information separated by plenty of padding. The only reason I give it 4/10 is for a few engaging sequences of archive material and modern experiments, with appropriate homages to the engineering pioneers. Oh and by the way, Nigel Gresley's streamlined locomotive is usually called "Mallard" and not "The Mallard" but it's a moot point so no marks lost there.

The premise of Impossible Engineering sounds great; highlight huge or revolutionary engineering projects, tell the history behind them and what makes these projects special and incredible. I was excited to see this show and set my DVR to record all episodes. Tonight I sat down to watch two episodes which I thought would be of the most interest to me, "Ultimate Warship" about the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and "World's Biggest Cruise Ship" about the Empress of the Seas. Unfortunately I was so very disappointed. I already know a fair amount about these ships and the history of their respective classes and was appalled by the amount of misinformation in these episodes. So many times the narrator used hyperbole about the "biggest," "fastest," "first" and on and on when those statements should come with qualifications. When they say "It was biggest project..." what they should be saying is "It was the biggest project in the UK..." or "...the aircraft carrier was an effective weapon for the first time in history" when the described event took place two years after it had been done in two other parts of the world, and four years before an aircraft carrier was used in warfare as a weapon. If these kinds of things were errors in just a few places they would easily be forgiven but the entire show is predicated on making everything be the "biggest," "fastest," "first" or other extreme and the wording used reflects that goal. So my thinking was that if on an episode where I knew, or could readily look up specifications, there were this many errors or out an out misleading statements how could I trust what the other shows were telling me? So I watched a second episode and sure enough it too was full of errors. There are some reasonably good parts of the shows but in no way enough good to offset all the horrible bad. I deleted the rest of the episodes from my DVR and will donate the time to watching something that is truly educational. Oh, and I can't forget to rip the horrible choice of background martial music and the volume that is so high as to almost drown out the voices and sounds.