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07/18/2001 Archived Entry: "Space"

There's been quite a bit of publicity lately for the new series by the BBC called Space. It actually looks pretty decent - they've gotten a 'name' actor (Sam Neill) and put him together with generous amounts of computer generated imagery, so you get to see him walking around black holes and so on.

When I first heard about this, I thought, 'Well, hold on a sec, isn't this exactly the same as The Planets?' And of course it isn't, since it's not exclusively about the planets. Anyway, I never really did latch on to that series - it seemed a little too slow for me and I knew most of the stuff they were talking about.

That's really one of the main problems I have with watching science programmes on TV these days; if I watch something, it's usually about biology or space. Unfortunately, since I've been doing that and reading books and the Internet for several years now, there isn't that much stuff that I can actually learn from a TV programme, which in all fairness will (and should) be aimed at beginners to the subject. So, earlier this year I switched over to watching the History channel non-stop - there's all sorts of interesting stuff on it.

After a while though I realised that they kept on repeating all the same programmes, which were all about the same subjects in the first place: WW1, WW2, prohibition, the Great Depression, and various famous criminals. Occasionally you'd see stuff about ancient history but remember, this is an American programme we're talking about here.

Still, to get back to the point, this new BBC series looks promising and it's debuting this Sunday at 8:30pm on BBC1. I'll probably be watching it, although not for the right reasons (I always like seeing new CGI). And what the hell, it'll make a change from all the dinosaur programmes that seem to be on these days...