[troutman]

You may also be interested in following or joining the Planetary Society (founded by Sagan).

http://planetary.org/



Emily's detailed review of the first episode:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...ns-cosmos.html

I will not evaluate the new Cosmos in the context of the old one, nor will I compare Neil Tyson to Carl Sagan. Instead, I'd like to focus on the fact that we have a brand-new, expensively produced, 13-part series on the universe and our place and time within it, airing simultaneously on ten networks. In my view, this was something to be thrilled about even before a single episode aired. And I'm really excited to see Neil get an opportunity to have a vehicle for his obvious talent at engaging and exciting the public about science. (Full disclosure: Neil Tyson is on the Planetary Society's Board of Directors, and was President of our board for several years. While I'm at it: Carl Sagan was one of the three founders of The Planetary Society. I came to work at the Society after Carl's death. It feels weird for me to call him by his first name, because I never met him, but all the other, longer-term employees of the Society call him Carl, so I've fallen into the habit.)

I (and other bloggers) can pick nits about too-close asteroids, and the problem of an animated Big Bang that expanded into preexisting space, and of the cherry-picking of history of the Bruno segment. And people should pick nits in any television show in which Neil is involved, because Neil himself is one of science communication's worst nitpickers; I can't tell you how many times I've heard him tell the story of how Titanic had the wrong night sky and James Cameron should've got that right since he was focused on so many other details and Neil complained to Cameron and Cameron fixed it in the DVD release.

Ultimately, this show will succeed or not based on how many people watch and on what kinds of questions they ask when they're done watching, and whether they seek answers to those questions, and how they feel when they answer them. The inaccuracies in the show won't generally lead people too far astray; in fact-checking some of the scenes I myself have learned a few things. I realize now that it's way too early to tell whether my daughters will, eventually, count this series as something that influenced them. But they want to keep watching, and we will keep watching, and that's good.

I don't plan on posting episode-by-episode reviews. I may just post one more blog entry about this show, after we're done watching the series. I hope we make it through all 13 weeks, because I think that would really be a big deal to my daughters. We'll see.