Great graphics and you're convinced the critters are actually there
Disadvantages:
Doesn't quite live up to Walking with Dinosaurs as a prequel and relatively short
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Specs: Release date: November 21, 2005
Classification: PG
Special Features: Trilogy of Life - the making of the dinosaurs, beasts and monsters series.
Languages: English
Subtitles: English for hard of hearing
Duration: 1 Hour 30 Minutes (approx)
Label: BBC ----------------------------------------***Review***------------------------------
Having been a huge fan of both previous series - Walking with Dinosaurs followed by Walking with Beasts, I saw this in Woolies and didn't even know it had been on TV, quite a nice surprise. So I bought it at the fairly reasonable price of £12.99 and headed home with high expectations. Since then I have also noticed one called Walking with Cave Men, which is next on my list.
Rather than containing two discs, like the other series', this is only one, and I must say I was disappointed when it seemed to end much too quickly. The perspective of this series is very much that evolution occurred by the process of natural selection and explicitly shows in every episode the gradual evolution of man - Australopithecus (the missing link). I loved this as this is totally my thing, answering questions like 'where did we come from?' from a purely scientific perspective. It would suit fans of the other series' and people interested in the evolutionary origins of humankind. It may however, be unsuitable for those who dispute the claim of evolution, as it does rely heavily on this theory.
A great thing about this series is that it provides a deeper insight into the other known species of the past, 50 of the featured 'stars' have never been seen before, other than those like the dinosaurs who are well documented and known. I can't say I had heard of any of the creatures in this series and it was very enlightening.
I do think that they could have been a lot more detailed as they pass through 300 millions of years of evolution in the space of a three half hour episodes, leaving many unanswered questions, and it could have been so much more given the time and money it deserved. It tends to concentrate more on the stepping stones of evolution, such as the first steps of a fish onto land, the first land animals, it doesn't give much of an insight to survival between these milestones, but I'm trying hard to pick faults here.
One good thing about this series which I think Walking with Dinosaurs lacked, is a sense of time and it's effect. In these episodes they document the activities of a creature then focus in on it and show a time scale and as this moves along the creature evolves on screen into another species, evolved from the parent species, which is then documented as well. I thought this worked really effectively as in the dinos series it was at times hard to follow what was happening when and how all the creatures linked together and ultimately how they and we evolved.
Technically and graphically, this series has the same exceptionally high standard of the previous series', you really do get attatched to the baby Intricathea (spelling?) and cling to the edge of the sofa in the big territorial fights. It is very easy to just believe that this was actually filmed as it happenned, in the unique mix of visual graphics and paleontological fact from over 600 scientists. There are however, a few things featured that you can't help but think are mere speculations, like the fact that the Intellidont (sorry about the spelling??) defficated on it's caught prey to distract competitors from the smell, it leaves you thinking - 'How do they know this stuff?'. Well a few of these can be answered in the specail feature documentary but appart from this I think a few things need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Animal behaviours used to make the storyline more enriched seem to appear at best as educated guesses, often what paleontologists have to rely upon in making their assumptions.
As far as being a PG, I think this is fair. Some moments of fighting are brutal, but only for the shear size of the animals not gore or violence. There is one mating scene but it's not that bad. It would be a great thing for kids to watch, especially those interested in the dinosaurs as it shows many more very different creatures to those around today, but still weird and wonderful.
Synopsis from the back of the box: 'From the makers of Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Beasts comes an epic and entertaining new exploration of life, revealing that in the age before dinosaurs, a succession of fantastical animals and plants ruled the planet. Most of us are completely unaware that these creatures ever eixsted, or believe our planet was home to just worms and bugs.
Yet there was a time when a two-tonne predatory fish came on land to hunt, when four-metre sea scorpions sliced sushi in the shallows, when just one species of lumbering reptile represented eighty per cent of all life. For the first time, this series will uncover these creatures and the bizarre worlds they inhabited. '
