Sethe McFarlane's "Cosmos"

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Seriously. A sequel to Sagan's series:

Fox has greenlighted Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, a 13-part docu-series from Family Guy creator MacFarlane and late Sagan's original collaborators – his widow, writer/producer Ann Druyan and astrophysicist Steven Soter.

Link

Incongruous as it sounds, I guess there's no real reason McFarlane shouldn't be good at this - he's an honest-to-god geek, and a capable TV producer. As an on-camera host - if he does that - he's no more odd or off-putting than Sagan himself.

According to the producers, the new series will tell "the story of how human beings began to comprehend the laws of nature and find our place in space and time. It will take viewers to other worlds and travel across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience."

McFarlane should skip the turtlenecks, though.

BTW, I know I misspelled "Seth" in the title. Why no edit function?

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Actually he is just going to be a producer on the new Cosmos. The host will be Neil deGrasse Tyson, a worthy successor to the great Carl Sagan.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Good.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Actually he is just going to be a producer on the new Cosmos. The host will be Neil deGrasse Tyson, a worthy successor to the great Carl Sagan.

I like Tyson. I'm not sure that this Cosmos is going to add much to what a myriad of series already cover - The Universe, Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman and Naked Science are just the ones that spring immediately to mind - just how much are you going to be able to get into string theory with a broadcast audience anyway?

But I hope the series is a success because even a little bit on string theory is more than the average Fox viewer will know about and cable science shows are viewed by only a small fraction of the viewers for a major network.

In fact, forget string theory. I hope they start with the basics of "what science is," the experimental method, how to tell good science from junk science, etc, because I wouldn't be too sure people even understand that. McFarlane should take the approach that his audience never sat through a science class in their lives, or if they did, they got bupkis out of it, and many have erected ideologically based mental barriers to understanding science at all.

In fact, forget the science class. Let's start by doing a documentary on how science is deliberately under attack in America. Starting out with string theory would not just be putting the cart before the horse, it would be putting the spaceship before the horse.

 

[Dac]

Hell, I think even if Seth MacFarlane was hosting it it wouldnt be a bad idea. The guy may write dick and fart jokes for a cartoon series, but as a man I think he's a pretty well rounded and intelligent guy who could make a pretty compelling host. Still though, Neil deGrasse Tyson is the better choice.

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

Wait, is Fox going to air this? I think with Neil deGrasse Tyson (you sure it’s not Mike Tyson? This is Fox after all) involved, it can’t get too off track or much of a farce without him walking (… and being replaced with Tyson. “I used to be a heavyweight star”). Did Seth macFarlane blackmail Fox into funding this to keep him happy and making Family Guy?


Covering Pluto is awkward because it’s going to be rapidly outdated as we finally get closeups for Pluto and get a better understanding of it (but not of any of the other dwarf planets out there). Of course, Ceres is looking more and more interesting with each passing year.


It is sad Americans used to have such interest in space and now most don’t give a crap and Cosmos II: Space Strikes Back isn't likely to change that. Granted, nothing was as cool as the Voyager probes and the Moon landing, but 1 Mars rover lasted 6 years, the other’s still going, we learned so much about Mars since 2000 and there’s lots of weird stuff out past Pluto (Sedna is so strange, even its discoverer is befuddled, and there’s Haumea. How many Americans even heard of Sedna?), big discoveries on Titan & Enceladus, so there's so much of interest to keep one's eyebrows raised with space news. Of course, NASA hasn’t dared to probe Uranus again… (and its the same blue as Uranus too)

 

[23skidoo]

There's also a thread about this I started on the SF/F board, due to Cosmos being targeted at SF fans back in the day and still well remembered for its SFX:

http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=146063

Alex