Dinosaur Planet

I've only just attained the patience to watch the series in full, but I love it. It does a great job of balancing science and education with entertainment and cartoonishness. (unlike other docs *cough*Dinosaur Revolution) Effects are great for their time, and music's great too.

My problems I do have with it?

• Some scenes do seem to drag on and could be trimmed down from a 45 minute mark.
• Some of the designs and depictions of the animals are dated scientifically to the point of being distracting (pronated zombie hands, not enough correct feathers on theropods).
• Africa and Oceania seem annoyedly left out of the lineup (personal nitpick)

In order of favourites, I rank them: 1. White Tip's Journey 2. Pod's Travels 3. Alpha's Egg 4. Lil' Das' Hunt

Dinosaur Planet was made in 2003 and in a way is the American counterpart of Walking with Dinosaurs and it more of a focus on a specific dinosaur rather than a safari ,like the Original. To be honest the cgi here has not aged as well as the Walking series and the fact that the environments were digitally edited ,also alienated me for I was used to cgi creatures into a real environment, with no editing in the environment. This are the drawbacks of the series, but its pros are far more strong and important. For instance the series show you fascinating new things you certainly ignore about the dinosaurs and the fact that it is a focus series allows you to understand how the creature feel, though I have to admit that on occasion ,it becomes a bit anthropomorphistic, seen it with human qualities, which is a little selfish. However the overall experience of this documentary was a nice one and the series is available online so ,I recommended to watch it, is for certain a fun ,informative ride dispute the forgiving flaws it has.

Dinosaur Planet is another attempt of creating a great documentary about dinosaurs. This one is worth checking out, but by no means is up to par with Walking With Dinosaurs.

The Good: Dinosaur Planet has some attractive visuals and even greater CGI models. Most of the dinosaurs look very accurate and beautifully rendered. The soundtrack is also good as well as the HD sound effects. The idea of portraying a story is a very good concept and is something new different, and fresh.

The Bad: Dinosaur Planet suffers from noticeable flaws which stop it form being as great as documentaries like Walking With Dinosaurs. First off the pacing can be slow at times and 45 minutes is too long to spend on one dinosaurs story. Another problem is that the dinosaurs often do very stupid and unbelievable things. There are a few scientific inaccuracies and other minor quirks that are noticeable throughout some of the scenes as well. It also isn't as action-packed as you'd hope.

Alpha's Egg: 7.9/10

Little Das's Hunt: 7.8/10

Pod's Travels: 8.2/10

Whitetips's Journey: 7.9/10

Overall: 8.0/10

Before you start going for my throat, let me point out that this is my opinion and mine only. If you agree, fine, if you don't, fine too.

Now, I had the distinct displeasure of seeing two parts this week in a re-run on UK TV.

The first impression was that the dinosaurs look more like cuddly toys, come plastic bathtub Godzilla look-a-likes. In other words, awful.

There is hardly any interaction of the animals with their environment and personally, I don't like the idea of humanised dinosaurs (ie. giving them names and attach human emotions to such animals).

If you are 10 years old, yes, watch it, you might like it. If you've already grown up, grab a book and save the time doing something useful.

As far as a comparison with 'Walking with Dinosaurs' is concerned, I think it beats the hell out of this programme, never mind any inaccuracies.

Most people say this is a lot worse than Walking With Dinosaurs. Although Walking With Dinosaurs is more accurate to how dinosaurs actually were, Dinosaur Planet is much more entertaining. Their are some nice visuals in Dinosaur Planet and a lot of action and intense violent scenes. I'd recommend this to anyone who has the slightest interest in dinosaurs. Some people complain that they saw dinosaurs walking on grass. First of all, the "grass" was probably a type of grass-like plant that evolved earlier. Second of all even if it were grass that doesn't ruin the film and only real Dino nerds would care about that too much. Overall this is one of the best dinosaur documentaries ever made.

9.8/10