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The Official "Cosmos" Thread


Dixon Hill

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2 hours ago, TGP said:

Joey must have a very long shit list. 

You havent a clue Corky. But the pluto assassin does not melt my butter.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.inverse.com/amp/article/14978-neil-degrasse-tyson-haters-guide

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2 hours ago, Jay said:

Great news! I loved the last season.  I should watch it again

 

Not quite news, the article is from January. Didn't we really not have a conversation about the second season on the board yet?

2 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

Hopefully there will be less animated cartoons this time.

 

The cartoons were good! Arguably the one part of the revival series that improved on the original. I thought the cartoons worked better than the live action reenactments of the Sagan series.

2 hours ago, JoeinAR said:

Neil GrassTyson ugh.

 

Well, obviously noone can replace Carl Sagan. But he's dead, so Tyson is a good host for this programme.

 

What's a pluto assassin?

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43 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Not quite news, the article is from January. Didn't we really not have a conversation about the second season on the board yet?

 

Not that I saw - this was news to me.

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The first season had increasingly diminished returns for me. It all started well enough, but then had an unfortunate tendency to creep towards preachiness.  That said, a second season of Cosmos that's actually about the cosmos would be most welcome indeed.

 

They should give a show to that Seth Shostak guy from SETI. Yeah, that cat's alright in my book.

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The animations were okay at first but I felt they became a bit of an intrusive drag after a while (I appreciate the historical exposition but I don't need a lengthy cartoon to reenact it) and so I actually didn't finish the series. I feel like I saw about eight episodes.

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Carl Sagan's Cosmos was a masterpiece.  It is full of hokey animations like this one:

 

and actually part of why it is so great is how it wasn't just about space but earth.  It combined literature, history, philosophy, with science and did so beautifully.  The final episode "Who Speaks for Earth?" is very poetic conclusion to the series in that it transcends science and is infused with humanity.

 

The same formula of Cosmic science mixed with history, philosophy, art, literature, etc., is used in the modern series.  Both series are equally preachy and I say "preach it brother"!

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3 hours ago, JoeinAR said:

A person who who help demote Pluto from planet status.

 

I wonder... is there an equally fanatic movement that derides anyone saying that whales are not fish?

2 hours ago, karelm said:

The final episode "Who Speaks for Earth?" is very poetic conclusion to the series in that it transcends science and is infused with humanity.

 

One of the best and most engaging things ever seen on a screen.

 

2 hours ago, karelm said:

The same formula of Cosmic science mixed with history, philosophy, art, literature, etc., is used in the modern series.  Both series are equally preachy and I say "preach it brother"!

 

Sagan was a master at intelligently preaching truth.

 

Speaking of the old series, can we please finally get a regular release of the missing Vangelis cues?

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2 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Sagan was a master at intelligently preaching truth.

This is true.  Part of that is because he wasn't just a scientist but a visionary, philosopher, artist, communicator, entertainer.  Remember, scientists and engineers hated the whole idea of his pale blue dot image which was one of the most powerfully moving and transcending images ever taken.  Though not the equal to Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson is the closest we have these days.  He has a weekly show called Startalk that is co-hosted by a comedian for christ's sake...and it is a great show.  I enjoy every episode.  This one for example is great fun and enlightening:

He is both mind blowing and down to earth, not easy for a guy with a PhD in Astrophysics to do.  Go Neil!  Plus I love his Shatneresque swagger. 😜

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3 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

I wonder... is there an equally fanatic movement that derides anyone saying that whales are not fish?

 

One of the best and most engaging things ever seen on a screen.

 

 

Sagan was a master at intelligently preaching truth.

 

Speaking of the old series, can we please finally get a regular release of the missing Vangelis cues?

Whales are not fish but Pluto IS a planet albeit a small one. Fyi on a side note spiders are not insects or bugs.

 

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I think it's a little unfair to compare Tyson too closely to Sagan.  Tyson has forged his own identity as a popular science educator that grew out of his own, much goofier and jocund personality.  He's not shooting for Sagan's more solemnly profound thing and that's ok.

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13 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

So our solar system has thousands of planets?

No one said that. There are not thousands of bodies that size in our solar system

And it was a planet longer than it wasnt.

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Because there was, I think, no clear definition of the term "planet" until 2006 and Pluto happened to be the first object of its class that was detected:

 

Wikipedia:

 

In the 20th century, Pluto was discovered. After initial observations led to the belief that it was larger than Earth,[39] the object was immediately accepted as the ninth planet. Further monitoring found the body was actually much smaller: in 1936, Ray Lyttleton suggested that Pluto may be an escaped satellite of Neptune,[40] and Fred Whipple suggested in 1964 that Pluto may be a comet.[41] As it was still larger than all known asteroids and seemingly did not exist within a larger population,[42] it kept its status until 2006.

 

A growing number of astronomers argued for Pluto to be declassified as a planet, because many similar objects approaching its size had been found in the same region of the Solar System (the Kuiper belt) during the 1990s and early 2000s. Pluto was found to be just one small body in a population of thousands.

Some of them, such as Quaoar, Sedna, and Eris, were heralded in the popular press as the tenth planet, failing to receive widespread scientific recognition. The announcement of Eris in 2005, an object then thought of as 27% more massive than Pluto, created the necessity and public desire for an official definition of a planet.

Acknowledging the problem, the IAU set about creating the definition of planet, and produced one in August 2006. The number of planets dropped to the eight significantly larger bodies that had cleared their orbit (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), and a new class of dwarf planets was created, initially containing three objects (Ceres, Pluto and Eris).[46]

 

Anyway, I don't see why this is still so hotly debated. As Sagan was fond to point out, the greatest thing about science, the one thing that sets it apart from mere belief systems, is its in-built mechanism of self correction. For a while, Pluto was considered a planet, until it became clear that the concept of a planet wasn't clear enough. We now have do have a clear definition of the term "planet", which means that Pluto is not considered one anymore. Nothing about Pluto has changed, it's just not assigned an unclear label anymore because that label wasn't clear enough to be scientifically meaningful.

PS: Melville argued in detail why whales, despite their biological properties, must clearly be considered fish. Same pointless argument, really. Something doesn't belong to a specific class of things just because it looks like it, or because we're used to thinking it does.

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Ive read Melville's book torturous as it is. His argument fails much easier that the Pluto arguement and we all know there may be another large planet in our solar system and bodies larger than Pluto for sure. Btw Pluto is the largest of the so called dwarf planets.

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6 minutes ago, JoeinAR said:

we all know there may be another large planet in our solar system and bodies larger than Pluto for sure. 

 

And that will probably turn out to be a planet.

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Just now, Marian Schedenig said:

 

And that will probably turn out to be a planet.

As Alex already pointed out

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  • 1 year later...
Quote

"Cosmos" Returns! Season 3 of the Most Celebrated Science Show on the Planet to Premiere March 9, 2020, on National Geographic


The new season airs on Nat Geo in 172 countries and 43 languages and on FOX this summer.

 


 

[via press release from National Geographic Channel]

 

COSMOS Returns! Season 3 of the Most Celebrated Science Show on the Planet to Premiere March 9, 2020, on National Geographic

THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS TO AIR GLOBALLY ON NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IN 172 COUNTRIES AND 43 LANGUAGES

 

FOX to Air the Complete Season Summer 2020

 

The Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning Series Hails from Executive Producer, Writer, Director and Creator Ann Druyan with Executive Producers Seth MacFarlane, Brannon Braga and Jason Clark; Series is Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

The 13-part Mind-Blowing Voyage Boasts an All-star Team of Creatives Including Acclaimed Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter, Cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub and Composer Alan Silvestri

 

Voiceover Artists Include Seth MacFarlane, Sir Patrick Stewart, Viggo Mortensen and Judd Hirsch; Author Sasha Sagan, Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan's Daughter, Recurs In Live-action Role of Sagan's Mother, Rachel Gruber Sagan

 

NEW YORK -- The most beloved, wonder-filled science franchise in television history returns with a new, 13-episode, mind-blowing adventure when COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS premieres March 9 on National Geographic. This out-of-this-world trip through space and time will transport viewers across 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution and deep into the future.

 

The next chapter of COSMOS, announced in celebration of what would have been visionary Carl Sagan's 85th birthday this Saturday, Nov. 9, continues the legacy of the groundbreaking series co-written with Ann Druyan and Steven Soter, which was broadcast to a global audience 40 years ago. COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS airs on Nat Geo in 172 countries and 43 languages and on FOX this summer. The previous season was seen by over 135 million people worldwide.

 

This Emmy-winning, worldwide phenomenon is the brainchild of Emmy and Peabody Award winner Ann Druyan, creative director of NASA's legendary Voyager Interstellar Message, who serves as creator, executive producer, writer and director, and Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated executive producers Seth MacFarlane ("The Orville," "Family Guy"), Brannon Braga ("The Orville," "Star Trek") and Jason Clark ("The Orville," "The Long Road Home").

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, host of the four-time Emmy-nominated "StarTalk" series and best-selling author (Death by Black Hole," "Letters from an Astrophysicist), returns as host and series executive science editor. This season begins with him on the shores of the cosmic ocean as COSMOS' enhanced and upgraded 'Ship of the Imagination' and 'Cosmic Calendar' return, taking viewers on a journey through time and spanning a stunning variety of worlds. Throughout these adventurous episodes, COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS integrates one-of-a-kind VFX, animations, holograms and stylized reenactments to carry viewers to never-before-seen worlds and meet unsung superheroes who have made possible our understanding of life's spectacular voyage - from its origin at the bottom of the sea to its possible future on the exotic worlds of distant stars.

"This third season of COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS is our boldest yet," says Druyan. "The 'Ship of the Imagination' will carry us places we never dared to venture before: lost worlds and worlds to come, deep into the future and straight through that hole in the curtain masking other realities - and all of it rigorously informed by science and made real by lavish VFX."

 

"National Geographic is proud to be the world's leading destination for viewers who are passionate about science and exploration," says Courteney Monroe, president of global television networks at National Geographic. "Which is why we're excited for the next chapter of the most-beloved and most-watched science show to date, COSMOS, to return to our air. COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS takes complex themes from astrophysics, astronomy and anthropology and makes them accessible and entertaining for millions of people around the world to devour."

 

COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS ventures to previously uncharted territories: starting back to the dawning of our universe, moving forward to the futuristic 2039 New York World's Fair and then far beyond into the distant future on other worlds. Visit an open house in the first apartment ever built and climb a 10,000-year-old stairway to the stars. Return to the foreboding 'Halls of Extinction,' with living dioramas of the broken branches on the tree of life, and venture to the new, glorious 'Palace of Life,' with its soaring towers filled with vibrant marine creatures. Stand beneath its 'Arch of Experience' to know what it's like to soar with the eagles or swim with the whales on their epic voyages.

 

Associated with the series are some of television and film's most revered creatives across all crafts, including Emmy-nominated cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub ("Independence Day," "Stargate"); Academy Award-winning and Emmy-nominated costume designer Ruth E. Carter ("Black Panther," "Roots"); Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated composer Alan Silvestri ("The Avengers," "Forrest Gump," "Contact"); visual effects supervisor Jeffrey A. Okun ("Clash of the Titans," "Blood Diamond"); and supervising animation directors Lucas Gray ("The Simpsons," "Family Guy"), Emmy-nominated Brent Woods ("American Dad!," "Family Guy") and Academy Award-nominated Duke Johnson ("Anomalisa," "Mary Shelley's Frankenhole").

 

Many celebrities compose the noteworthy corps of actors who lend their voices to COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS. This season includes Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning actor Seth MacFarlane ("The Orville," "Family Guy") as President Truman; Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated actor Sir Patrick Stewart ("Star Trek," "X-Men") as German, British-born astronomer William Herschel; Academy Award-nominated Viggo Mortensen ("The Green Book," "The Lord of the Rings") as Soviet plant geneticist Nikolai Vavilov; and Judd Hirsch ("A Beautiful Mind," "Independence Day") as Robert Oppenheimer, famously known as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb." Sasha Sagan, Druyan and Sagan's daughter, appears in a recurring live-action role as Sagan's mother, Rachel Gruber Sagan.

 

In conjunction with the launch of the new season, National Geographic Books is publishing a companion book, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, by Druyan, the long-awaited follow-up to Sagan's international bestseller, Cosmos.

 

COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS is produced for National Geographic and FOX by Cosmos Studios, the company Ann Druyan co-founded in 2000, and Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door. Druyan and Brannon Braga are the series' writers and directors. Druyan, MacFarlane, Braga and Jason Clark executive produce. Kara Vallow ("Family Guy," "American Dad!") co-executive produces, and Joseph Micucci ("Patriots Day," "Ted 2") produces. For National Geographic, Kevin Mohs is executive producer and Geoff Daniels is EVP of global unscripted entertainment.

"Like" COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS on Facebook at CosmosOnTV. Follow the series on Twitter @CosmosOnTV. See photos and videos on Instagram by following @CosmosOnTV.

 

About National Geographic

National Geographic Partners LLC (NGP), a joint venture between the National Geographic Society and Disney, is committed to bringing the world premium science, adventure and exploration content across an unrivaled portfolio of media assets. NGP combines the global National Geographic television channels (National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, Nat Geo MUNDO, Nat Geo PEOPLE) with National Geographic's media and consumer-oriented assets, including National Geographic magazines; National Geographic studios; related digital and social media platforms; books; maps; children's media; and ancillary activities that include travel, global experiences and events, archival sales, licensing and e-commerce businesses. Furthering knowledge and understanding of our world has been the core purpose of National Geographic for 131 years, and now we are committed to going deeper, pushing boundaries, going further for our consumers ... and reaching millions of people around the world in 172 countries and 43 languages every month as we do it. NGP returns 27 percent of our proceeds to the nonprofit National Geographic Society to fund work in the areas of science, exploration, conservation and education. For more information visit natgeotv.com or nationalgeographic.com, or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

 

About Cosmos Studios

Co-founded in 2000 by CEO and visionary Ann Druyan, Ithaca, NY-based Cosmos Studios creates, produces, and distributes eye, brain, heart and soul-nourishing science-based entertainment in all media. Cosmos Studios aims to tear down the walls that have excluded so many from the scientific enterprise. We work to demystify the language, values, and drama of science, to give everyone the power of its permanently revolutionary methodology. Carl Sagan, and those privileged to work with him, demonstrated that there is a world-wide appetite for compelling entertainment that reflects our dawning awareness of cosmic evolution and our place in its great story. There is a planet-wide hunger for images and dreams that reflect our radically altered sense of who, where, and when we are... where we might go, who we might become. In collaboration with award-winning writers, artists, filmmakers, producers, researchers, engineers, educators, artists, and a growing list of partners across science, communications, and finance, we seek to touch audiences with the soaring spiritual high that comes from grasping science's central revelation- our oneness with the cosmos. Come with us at www.cosmosstudios.com on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CosmosStudiosOfficial/ on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cosmosstudios on Instagram at www.instagram.com/cosmosstudiosofficial/

 

About Fuzzy Door

Led by writer, producer and director Seth MacFarlane and president Erica Huggins, Fuzzy Door is the production company behind many of today's most successful film and television projects. With potent irreverence, biting satire, rule-breaking humor, compelling social issues and engaging storytelling, it has created an enviable portfolio of award-winning properties. Currently, the company produces the Hulu space adventure series "The Orville"; the beloved and Emmy-winning animated comedy series "Family Guy," which is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary; and the fan-favorite series "American Dad!," now airing its 14th season. Fuzzy Door strategically built on the success of the 1980's "Cosmos" series by producing the award-winning "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey," which garnered 13 Emmy nominations and was seen by more than 135 million people worldwide, and is gearing up for the next installment, COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS, set to air in 2020. On the film side, Fuzzy Door has created several commercially successful comedies, such as "Ted," "Ted 2" and "A Million Ways to Die in the West," which have collectively grossed more than $800 million at the worldwide box office. The company is committed to weaving a socially conscious and intellectually curious thread through projects to bring fearless, innovative and bold stories to life, while maintaining its trademark sense of humor and wonder.

 

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  • 3 months later...

For those of you who are fans of science/history/philosophy, the third season of Cosmos starts March 9 on the National Geographic channel.  Alan Silvestri returns as the series composer with guest stars including Seth MacFarlane, Patrick Stewart, Viggo Mortensen and hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  The series is cowritten by Sagan's wife and Cosmos 1980 co-creator, Ann Druyan.  She was the author of the Voyager 1 & 2 gold record "time capsule" that summarized who we are as a species and will most likely outlast our species.  Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980) was one of the greatest science/history/philosophy documentaries of all time and I have great hope for this newest season.

 

 

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I really enjoyed all the deGrasse Tyson presented parts along with the digital effects over which he narrated, but the excessively long and intrusively numerous animated vignettes REALLY got on my nerves in the end. I never did finish the first series. 

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If anything, those were probably the best parts for me. And certainly in keeping with the spirit of the original series (which had live action reenactment segments of similar historic events). Tyson is fine, but compared to Sagan I often find his presentation a bit too hyped and sensationalist. And the Silvestri scores never live up to the original classical music/Vangelis combo - after A Light in the Void, I'd love to see Wintory get a shot at this.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anybody watch last night?

I am a bit bummed they are doubling-up episodes and blowing through all 14 in 7 weeks instead of 14 weeks.  Oh well

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Watched the first episode so far. Impressions are similar to what I recall from the first season: Generally very fine, but although I like NdT, I'm getting annoyed with his sensationalist style that comes across as more hyped than sincere. Sagan had a (quite unique) talent to convey excitement in an extremely heartfelt way, and the difference is hard to ignore. Plus the score still consists of a few lovely bars of music followed by a few more lovely bars of totally different music etc. - I'd rather have a Fenton score, or a classical/Vangelis hybrid like in the original (which often used largely unedited lengthy cues - very much unlike Silvestri's jumpy style).

 

One thing I'm not sure about with the new season is the "Possible Worlds" approach. That sound quite speculative, and that's just the area where the first season tended to get superficial and spotty. But that's just my initial feeling, the first episode fared quite well in that regard.

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3 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Watched the first episode so far. Impressions are similar to what I recall from the first season: Generally very fine, but although I like NdT, I'm getting annoyed with his sensationalist style that comes across as more hyped than sincere. Sagan had a (quite unique) talent to convey excitement in an extremely heartfelt way, and the difference is hard to ignore. Plus the score still consists of a few lovely bars of music followed by a few more lovely bars of totally different music etc. - I'd rather have a Fenton score, or a classical/Vangelis hybrid like in the original (which often used largely unedited lengthy cues - very much unlike Silvestri's jumpy style).

 

One thing I'm not sure about with the new season is the "Possible Worlds" approach. That sound quite speculative, and that's just the area where the first season tended to get superficial and spotty. But that's just my initial feeling, the first episode fared quite well in that regard.

I'm confused by your post and nomenclature.  Isn't this season 3 which would mean season 1 is the 1980 Carl Sagan edition?  For example this article announces the current series as season 3: https://www.space.com/cosmos-season-3-premiere-announced.html

 

Also confused by your comment about the score being stylistically jumpy but then wanting it to be like the original Vangelis/classical music score of the original in which all the music was preexisting rather than scored for the show but the original would literally go from Bach to ingenious music to Vangelis.  

 

Sagan is irreplaceable and you shouldn't look to NdT to be Sagan 2.0.  But they both posses a popular culture aptitude and our times are very different so you should expect whoever is the scientist for the masses would have a different style. 

 

I don't know if anyone else on this site remembers the original 1980 series when it first appeared other than me, but here are my thoughts.  I was a grade school kid in 1980 but very much remember every episode of Cosmos and even wrote a paper I had present to my grade school class about its mix of science and music.  It made a tremendous impact on me and I don't think I ever heard the name of Carl Sagan before that but he was already known to be a significant scientist to my elder brothers at least.  The show immediately impacted me with its state of the art (in those days) visuals and very latest science by the leading popular scientist of those days because I saw him on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson talking about the voyager missions. 

 

The original show was a masterpiece of mixing science with history, art, and philosophy.  I think the first episode talked a great deal about the Library of Alexandria.  This sort of approach was very unique then.  It's sort of like the "Planet Earth" series on BBC to start of by talking about exo-planets, Einstein, and the Trojan war.  What does that have to do with a documentary called "Planet Earth"?  Similarly Cosmos was full of very mundane episode stories of the human experience BUT always integrated that with the cosmic story.  That is exactly what Cosmos 2 and 3 (or whatever we call the NdT era) seasons!  This is why I absolutely loved the second episode about the earliest explorers from indo china and animated them (the original series would animate but also include mediocre live action sequences of those historic epochs) to make them tell a cohesive story of how we got to where we are. 

 

I short, I loved the first two  episodes and completely see how it fits into the Cosmos ethos of the original however modernized.  I am completely fine with the epic score of Silverstri but wish they also  used timeless classical music and indigenous music which is exactly what the original series did, though in those days, Vangeles was sort of the state of the art in contemporary music.  One other very important point, the original series really built upon itself so each episode further developed a theme.  By the end of the series (if you watch it in order), it was incredibly powerful and moving tale of humans, our origin, history, growth, and future.  That is what "Possible Worlds" is doing and in the two episodes I've seen so far, I love that they are using the term "worlds" metaphorachically, just as the original series did.  I met Sagan and he means something very special to me.  I fundamentally disagree with your assessment and don't think you understand the show.

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10 minutes ago, karelm said:

I'm confused by your post and nomenclature.  Isn't this season 3 which would mean season 1 is the 1980 Carl Sagan edition?  For example this article announces the current series as season 3: https://www.space.com/cosmos-season-3-premiere-announced.html

 

I think IMDb lists them as two separate series. They have different titles (A Personal Voyage, A Spacetime Odyssey, and now Possible Worlds). The previous season seemed to be more or less a reimagining/reboot of the original, so it seem natural to consider them Old Cosmos and New Cosmos S1 and now S2.

 

10 minutes ago, karelm said:

Also confused by your comment about the score being stylistically jumpy but then wanting it to be like the original Vangelis/classical music score of the original in which all the music was preexisting rather than scored for the show but the original would literally go from Bach to ingenious music to Vangelis.  

 

But not within seconds. The Sagan series used minute-long excerpts of symphonies and Vangelis pieces without too much editing, which helped to give the episodes a cohesiveness that's not quite there in the new version. As I said, Silvestri's music, while nice, jumps from one cut to the next like a slave to the picture with not much internal cohesiveness. (The cliffhanger cuts before commercial breaks also don't help, but I suppose there's no way to avoid them.

 

10 minutes ago, karelm said:

Sagan is irreplaceable and you shouldn't look to NdT to be Sagan 2.0.  But they both posses a popular culture aptitude and our times are very different so you should expect whoever is the scientist for the masses would have a different style. 

 

Obviously, and nobody has to be "the next Sagan". It's just that I tend to sometimes find NdT's sensationalism grating, because it tends to feel a bit like a action movie trailer voiceover rather than Sagan's essentially spiritual excitement for science (which I'm sure NdT personally shares).

 

10 minutes ago, karelm said:

Similarly Cosmos was full of very mundane episode stories of the human experience BUT always integrated that with the cosmic story.  That is exactly what Cosmos 2 and 3 (or whatever we call the NdT era) seasons!  This is why I absolutely loved the second episode about the earliest explorers from indo china and animated them (the original series would animate but also include mediocre live action sequences of those historic epochs) to make them tell a cohesive story of how we got to where we are. 

 

The historic reenactment sequences were essential to Sagan's series, and the animations successfully carry that over to the new one (in NdT's first season at least; there wasn't yet one in the one new episode I've watched so far). Which is why I'm somewhat distraught when I see people saying the series is great but they should drop the animations.

 

10 minutes ago, karelm said:

I met Sagan and he means something very special to me.

 

:up: Sagan is my hero, but while I first saw Cosmos sometime in the (probably) mid to late 80s, he died before I was aware of him personally, or his other achievements.

 

10 minutes ago, karelm said:

I fundamentally disagree with your assessment and don't think you understand the show.

 

Say what now? I'm mostly positive about the new version, so I don't think you disagree *fundamentally*. Having watched the Sagan original countless times and the first NdT season twice so far, claiming that I don't understand it seems a bit bold.

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I've still only watched the first episode, been busy!  The first episode was mostly just a re-introduction to concepts introduced in the last season (such as the calendar), but I still really like the presentation and the angle of telling the human stories; not just communicating what we currently know about our universe, but the context of how we've gotten to this point.

 

I'm not sure "sensationalist" is the adjective I'd use to describe Tyson's style.  He's certainly a more effusive and gregarious personality than Sagan was, more suited to the late night talk show guest circuit (I do enjoy his frequent appearances on Colbert).  He lacks Sagan's calm, humanist profundity, but I appreciate his enthusiasm and the knowledge is clearly there.

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On 3/16/2020 at 5:44 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

Say what now? I'm mostly positive about the new version, so I don't think you disagree *fundamentally*. Having watched the Sagan original countless times and the first NdT season twice so far, claiming that I don't understand it seems a bit bold.

 

I felt you were too harsh based on subjective criteria criticizing many of the very same qualities that made the original a timeless classic but I can't even find the post I was responding to so never mind. 

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  • 3 months later...

Did anybody end up watching this new season?  I never found the time to get started

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I watched the first two, downloaded two more, missed the rest and never watched those two. Perhaps I'll just wait for the Blu release.

 

Speaking of which, anyone where familiar with the Blu release of the Sagan original? Until a few months ago I didn't even know there is one. I still have to pick it up.

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23 hours ago, Jay said:

Did anybody end up watching this new season?  I never found the time to get started

 

Of course I did.  I really liked the music too.  The animation (sometimes very high quality claymation) and voice work was quite good featuring Patrick Stewart, Seth Mcfarlane, Viggo Mortensen, etc.  But it was very subtly done so even when they were introduced as episode guests, I thought they would be on screen but never caught where and how their voices were used during the episode.  It's very CGI heavy but I always felt the visuals were imaginative and very high quality.  Some episodes were listed as written by Carl Sagan which of course is super cool.  Tyson overacts but it doesn't bother me that much.  It's generally obvious they're in a green room but sometimes they blend it nicely with live action.  I really loved the episode about the Sacrifice of Cassini because of multiple personal connections such as meeting the Cassini team, being at the NASA JPL mission control, loving the elegiac score, and knowing some of those scientists and their personal connection with Carl Sagan and Voyager 1 & 2 without them ever saying so.  In short, it's a multi layered show like the original.  Those who are new to the concepts will get something out of it just like those who already know this stuff but it might not be the same take away.

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