Year Million

I thought the film Year Million was absolutely one of the best documentaries I've seen in awhile. The Dyson Sphere theory is great. Scientists have already identified a G-type star far from our reach that fluctuates in and out of light at different rates of speed. For me, that's proof enough that there is life out there. Once we harness the power of our nearest star, we will move onto distant ones because ultimately power is what it takes to keep things in motion.... if I lived in the future my main focus would be space exploration I would travel to the furthest reaches of the galaxy searching for life. It would be the greatest adventure mankind has ever taken...

Caveat: I only managed to get through one episode of this, maybe it gets better, but I doubt it.

This feels like someone ripped off one of the ripoffs of the, admittedly quite good, near future horror/sci-fi anthology "Black Mirror". Except instead of having some decent social commentary being the payoff, or at the very least a twilight zone type twist at the end, the show pretends the reward is that it has "educated" us with it's fear/wondermongering about it's completely improbable sci-fi future. I gave this show a chance because I thought NatGeo had decent programming, sadly I was mistaken. Fortunately there are already a few reviews that deal with some of the major flaws, but I still have a few selected gripes about this show to force upo-, I mean, to share with the reader.

Despite the claim the show's opening makes, that "this is not science fiction" this show manages to be nothing if not a jumble of common science fiction tropes. If the show was still critical and thought provoking that wouldn't be so bad by itself, but instead of actually rigorously looking at the possibility of these things happening, the show handwaves all the hard science to have random people -no-name comedians among others- talk about things clearly outside of their area of expertise in some lame attempt to justify the show's grandiose claims. Often the show meanders off tangent to make some halfhearted pondering of human nature or some other such nonsense, seemingly dedicating more time to talking about the past than justifying why the future is going to play out in this manner. The show's claims hurdle past ludicrous and head straight into wacko territory faster than a speeding hyperloop car. In the first episode only a few minutes in they just casually state how the singularity will obviously happen and robots will rise up and become the dominant species and yada dada yada, throughout it all the only impression I could get was that the writers are either insane, or that they plagiarized the plot of the episode from some crappy airport paperback sci-fi. Really barely anything they state actually seems to be constrained by logic, it's a schizophrenic mess of tangentially related subjects somehow leading to each other. One example of this is how in the first episode it's stated that a cellphone is somehow an AI, and AI has gotten better lately, therefore humanoid robots taking over is an inevitability... Yeah I'm as puzzled as you by the logic on that one. The show is riddled with that kind of thing, any decent points made are lost in a sea of bullcrud.

Another thing that ticks me off about this whole thing is that the show said that the the future will be "practically unrecognizable". Yet the show looks like the most uninspired sci-fi shlock some art student came up with for their graduation project. Everything is neon, gaudy, and glow-y when there's no reason for it, everyone looks like they fell out of some 90s cyberpunk parody with all the tech they have jammed into and on their their body, and cars look like they were on the way to some Asian street race they are so riced out with neon. There is nothing at all convincing about any of it, none of it makes any sense. Like we are supposedly a few hundred years into the future and practically nothing changes but superficial crud which we could realistically create using only technology available to us today? Honestly if I was actually into design as more than a passing fancy I think I might have had an aneurysm from how appallingly little thought went into depicting this future.

All I can say is that in my opinion this show is a pile of dog droppings which only insults and misinforms it's viewers. This kind of crud belongs on the new history channel with ancient aliens and occult Hitler show, not from a publication that is at least seemingly respectable such as NatGeo.

The show had great potential but it is lacking in several areas to be great.

I think the biggest problem -maybe my expectations were too high- is the lack of actual science, you get interviews and interventions from a lot of people who are completely unfamiliar with robotics, engineering, economics, etc. It's like asking your neighbor's opinion and frankly it's quite tiring. I believe the show would gain from explaining the different technologies they present in greater details.

Because of that, the show doesn't know where to go, is it science- fiction, is it actual science? Based on facts or assumptions? Trying to tangle the lives of fictional characters with a documentary is tricky and it sometimes feel like a cheap feeling grab to get the viewers involved. If I wanted drama, I'd watch a drama, I don't understand the need for the character's story arc, it feels forced. Because you simply jump from their story that serves the purpose of introducing the technologies to the audience, it doesn't feel (pardon the pun) organic and ruins the story-telling.

Finally, the show suffers from what could be called "americanisms" : everything is tremendous, crazy, on the verge of a massive discovery, etc. The use of constant superlatives actually weakens the viewers' understanding of what is important and what might be less important. "This is science and not science-fiction", "It's a question of when an not if". I could go on but you get the gist of it. What am I watching, a sales pitch? In the end this is probably the biggest disservice to the series.

So, I'm not strongly against it, the message is interesting and I believe it comes from good intentions. But this is not a science show, there is a lot of prediction and telling you how something will happen but very little factual explanations. A lot of people who give their opinions instead of sticking to facts or fact-based insights.

I just hope we'll have something better in the future.

P.S : Lose the comedian(s), they're supposed to be the "relatable" audience member, they just seem out of place and their interventions are strangely paced as well.

Not counting daytime television this maybe the dumbest show ever put on television

Really interesting story, i learned quite a bit of possibilities of the future. Lady in the red glasses (comedian of some sort i guess) incredibly annoying. Other than that pretty good show!