Evolution (WGBH Boston Video Box Set)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Episodes: B+
After an insane attempt to annihilate science at many
school levels with the fraud called intelligent design (a pseudo-fancy variant
of creationism for those who are more of ignorance than of any faith), better
minds in the country decided to put an end to the lies and madness by voting
down such gibberish and voting out school board members and other people more
interested in politics and agendas than independent thinkers of the future the
country needs so badly. Watching the
seven installments from the WGBH mini-series Evolution (2001) reminded
me that part of the extremists’ arguments (outside of spiting and disrespecting
the intelligence of voters at large in a socialist/fascist move to “put them in
their place”) they are totally exclusive and separate. Only those who want a fight against progress
want them to be.
If you have faith in some single entity that is so great,
than why not these centuries of development are beyond understanding or not of
that entity? The first part is Darwin’s
Dangerous Idea, a feature-length first installment that combines
interviews and facts with dramatizations of Darwin slowly putting together his
groundbreaking work. The dramatic parts
are sometimes awkward just in the way they keep getting cut into, but it is a
very good start overall.
Great Transformations and Extinction!
show the ark (no pun intended) of the rise and fall of species and that
“survival of the fittest” is not about lifting weights, eating a certain way or
clobbering other over the head as some who want you to fear people and life
would like you to believe, but about how where life is is as important as how
that life finds its way. People would
quickly drown in a place with too much water and too little land to live on, to
make a very, very rough example. The
Evolutionary Arms Race is ironically named because it builds on the
prior two installments and focuses on microorganisms and whatever dangers they
could still pose to humans and other living creatures. Why Sex? takes the opposite
approach by saying if the microorganisms do not kill us, how is it this is the
how and why of why we continue to survive.
Getting back to our opening idea, The Mind’s Big Bang
explores how man became the dominant species and it is not as pat or stupid as
the bigotry of “a divine spark” in the brain, as the show traces where man
evolved from other creatures, starting with the ones that rose out of the
water. It is the richest of the seven
installments here. That leaves What
About God? This cleverly
reminds us that we happen to be the only species that tries to explain where we
actually came from through science or much lazier, simpler and inaccurate
explanation, but maybe I digress. It is
the most interesting way to end the series, which I strongly recommend, now
more than ever.
The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image is sometimes is fuzzier
than expected, but has enough clear shots throughout the seven installments
that it is not always an issue. Too bad
this was not all anamorphically enhanced.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has Pro Logic surrounds in all cases, but
they are so weak that you may find yourself playing the shows in regular
stereo. This will depend on home
theater system quality and personal preference, but this critic likes
stereo-only more. There are hardly any
extras, including no closed captions despite being listed as having them. There are no DVD captions either, but the
weblinks lead to extensive information and there are frame son other titles of
interest from WGBH, though you can find them here on the site by entering WGBH,
Nova or Science into our search engine.
- Nicholas Sheffo
