If you enjoy seeing extinct animals in the flesh, thanks to animatronics and computer animation, you’ll probably enjoy this. The addition of people and artifacts such as an ultralight aircraft, a jeep and a sailboat really puts the dinosaurs and sea monsters (ones that really existed) in scale. They are impressive.
On the negative side, the plot (such as it is) is pretty inane. And the explorer, Nigel Marvin …. Well, all I can say is his writers gave him a death wish.
Any reasonable explorer takes precautions. Even a modern camper in bear country knows not to leave food out if you don’t want a tent broken into. I can only suppose that the writers put excitement above being reasonable. I have to say that I was left feeling that this guy was a grade A idiot.
As a bonus, there is a program about the finding of fossils of Argentinosaurus and Giganotosaurus and the argument on whether carnivorous dinosaurs may have hunted in packs. Personally I found some of the against arguments rather doubtful. Carnivores simply do not move as a group the same way a herd of herbivores do. They split up, attack from different directions, and explore. Consequently, a group of carnivores will not leave the kind of trackways a herd does.
This was a BBC science program and overall is well produced, but I have to admit there are very few natural science programs that I do not find errors in. Overall, though, I probably yelled at the screen less often in this than in many other DVDs.
That said, it’s still worth watching for the dinosaurs.
Again, the DVD is Chased By Dinosaurs.
]]>