Cosmos

[arduinna]

I saw my first ad for Cosmos about a month ago, which consisted of a lot of visuals and no obvious indication of who the host would be.

First reaction: outrage! "Cosmos is Carl Sagan's! No one else can do it!"

Second reaction: "... hm, unless they got Neil deGrasse Tyson. He could do it."

*brief interlude of rewinding and watching the footage slowly over and over again, trying to pin down the tiny flash of host I'd caught out of the corner of my eye*

Third reaction: "WOO Neil deGrasse Tyson! This should be great!"

The first episode aired last night, and was everything I'd hoped. There were a lot of callbacks to the original that made me happy, including some straight-up repetition of approach and dialogue. But it wasn't a rip-off; it was clearly an homage to tie the two versions together. This is an updated revision, not a wholesale rewrite, and I totally dig that. Also it's hugely clear that Tyson admired and respected the hell out of Sagan, as a scientist, a person, and the man who'd helped popularize a lot of science almost 35 years ago. The final few minutes of the episode had me choking up.

(Also holy cow, they got Obama to do the intro.)

I can't wait for the rest of this series.

And then there's this, which has me grinning all over my face:

"Delilah's Crazy for Cosmos (2 1/2 years old)" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I really wanted to see this, but of course I couldn't sit down and watch. Is it available somewhere to rewatch? Online or something?

[arduinna]

I think it's repeating tonight on the National Geographic channel, and I'd be shocked if it weren't available online somewhere -- Fox's site, Hulu, somewhere must have it. They clearly want to get this out to people.

If it's not streaming, I bet it repeats during the week or over the weekend.

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you.

[marthawells]

That was absolutely adorable.

[arduinna]

Is she not the cutest little thing? <3 <3 <3

[dragonfly]

I ... hope for more. This first episode felt kind of basic to me. The Giordano Bruno stuff was new to me but the rest of it was old hat. On Colbert tonight Tyson mentioned all the things that have been discovered since Sagan died, like dark energy, exoplanets, Higgs Boson, multiverses. I hope they deal with that stuff, because the history of the universe compressed into a one-year calendar is nothing new and I gave up signing my address including Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Local Group after I graduated middle school.

Sorry. I'm sure I'll be squeeing over later eps, but I wanted more from this one.