Future is Wild Clip: Diving, Baby Octopuses

Having actually corresponded with Dr. R. McNeil Alexander of the Univerisity of Leeds and Dougal Dixon, author of After Man: A Zoology of the Future about their work with "The Future is Wild" I would have to say that they came up with the ideas on their own. Alexander informed me that the idea of the Swampus came to him while watching an octopus crawl across a rocky intertidal to get from a tidepool to the sea. Dixon takes an interest in evolution and sees great potential in the future of bioforms. He mentioned involvment by Professors William Gilly and Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University. The biomechanics and such were worked out a while before filming started. Its sci-fi, but good sci-fi at least.

The aforementioned "baleen penguins" are the Porpin and Vortex, both animals being future forms of penguins featured in After Man .

John
 
Yeah, the names lacked some imagination... :lol:

What bugged me is that the rainbow squid was overspecialized in eating only "flish". I mean, the oceans circa 300 million A.D. are crawling with all sorts of horrible life forms, so food should be more plentiful.
 
The concept of "The Future Is Wild" seemed a good one to me and after reading about it on these pages, and others, I forked out £30 to buy the three disks with an hour on each one representing the three periods. My mistake; to be honest I was really disappointed, the animation was really quite inferior to "Walking With Dinosaurs" which predated it by two or three years.

I really got the impression that despite the much vaunted 'science' behind the project the producers just thought up some really quite ludicrous creatures (squibbons anyone?) and then back-peddled trying to fit them into plausible scientific principles. Goodness knows what the rejected creatures were like.

It was enjoyable enough as a one watch wonder, but no more than that. I regret my £30, silly me....

Note to producers: stick to the past in future, it's much more interesting. I know, I've been there.

(Oh Ok, the Rainbow squid was cool though).
 
monty said:
No clue if there will be cephs, but I just found out discovery is doing a hypothetical-biology thing called "Alien Planet"

Notification
I REALLY have mixed feelings about this one, mostly since this is based on the book Expedition: Being an Account of Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV by Wayne Douglas Barlowe. Its a great book, with a sad storyline about a terrible future for mankind and a ray of hope in the voyage to this other world.

I am a HUGE Barlowe fan, but I'm worried that Discover is going to take the "fiction" out of this sci-fi work and instead worry about the plausibility of these beasts versus the story behind this work.

Thanks for the link. I have to admit that I would like to see it.

John
 
Even with my problems with this miniseries it's kind of fun to watch - but that's because it was a birthday gift! I would not have bought it for myself, especially for that much.
 
Fujisawas Sake said:
30 pounds?? Phil, you got ripped! :shock:

Tell me about it! At the time I bought it I thought the programme was not going to be shown over here, so it was either that or not seeing it at all. Being dominated by cephs and being discussed in detail on these pages swung it for me at the time.

Since then it has been shown in an extended weekly 30min format on BBC2 and has been released on DVD in a box that has more features than the initial release. Typical. I'm not making that (expensive) mistake again.

Does anyone know if 'Dinosaur Planet' was any good? I'm reluctant to buy it as I have never seen it and really don't want to repeat the above mistake. On the other hand, it could be a minor classic..?!?
 

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