The Universe

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.

Okay, first of all, after reading all these reviews I could't help myself but to write something as well.

So...some people say it's good for kids and unintelligent and uneducated people. I must say...throw that comments in to garbage! Why? Because even if I'm not to physics I can certainly see that this is not too much filled with scientific terms and ways of explanation. That is a fact and that is on spot, but...let me say one more thing. This series are made for wide range of people, not for astronomers and physicists to learn something new or to improve their research. It's meant to show us random people some interesting facts, about astronomy and universe overall and potentially get some of us in to the world of science.

I, for example am a 3D & visual effects specialist and I could easily say, that the visual effects here are mediocre and not something special at all, because that is my profession and I see it. But okay, that goes for me and other VE experts, but random people who are not in to computer graphics will say..."wooow what a stunning graphics and visuals, mind blowing animation and effects, i'm totally blown away." while I'll sit there mumbling "damn, they could've done this a lot better". That's okay, that does not mean they're blind for esthetics and dumb not to make a difference between good and mediocre when they see it. It's just that CG is not their field of interests and they're not learning and researching that field such as us CG (computer graphics) artists do, so they can't tell about processes of creating CG, how it's done, how it could've been done, what could be made better, etc.

Same goes for other people who are saying that this is dumb. Dear people, not all of us here are scientists. If you are a physicists and find it dumb...not all of us will think the same. If you want to discover something new, go do a research, make a discovery for yourself instead of making one-sided comments.

Assuming you've never done CG before. Would you understand me if I start explaining it to you now and immediately start with: mental ray renderer, rendering algorithms, global illumination, final-gathering setup, FG points cashing, reactor scripting, mesh exporting, material map ID setting, channel setting, texture scaling, keying, camera tracking, 3D tracking, setting up key velocity, curve editing, animation controllers, etc, etc, etc, etc.....and you've never even heard for any of the CG making softwares. I doubt it, no matter how intelligent you might be.

So for the conclusion and for recommendations...Do watch this show if you're into something new, if you want to find out interesting and fun stuff about cosmos and astronomy and ignore those who are saying that this is for lowbrainers. You're not dumb if you like to watch this. I'm 26 years old, a member of MENSA with an IQ of 148, and I find this show fun and interesting a lot ;-)

So cheers and enjoy :-)

It really feels like the understand. Why? Because what i was looking for was a show that could teach me about the big damn universe. And so far, it really has. The only problem is, I've gotten addicted, and now i want around 600 episodes, not 50.

Since i have already finished all the seasons, i have had to watch them all over again! Which is great, coz documentaries like this, is not like movies. Good movies you watch once. Great movies you watch twice. Favorite movie, you watch until you hate it. But a show like this, you never stop with! So much fact, some simplified so all can learn and understand!

I love the space. It's big, and i want to learn more about it! This show has helped my understand so much! So. Do you like space? Do you like astronomy? Well then, you should really, really watch this show! It is so great!

Give it a chance, and you will be truly amazed by the show's quality.

It's the perfect type of documentary series that you could explain even with very limited personal knowledge of science to a kid. And at the same time for people with basic to medium knowledge of science it's still a incredibly well done and informative series. I was 20 when this series started. And it really broke apart the terrible experiences I had at highschool with learning the science/astronomy/physics. A really great piece of material.

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/