Dino Lab review - Part two

Alright, we're back to our Dino Lab duology review, with the other half! Dino Lab II aired in 2009, at a time when the dreck of reality shows were slowly trickling in but Discovery was at least a documentary/educational channel proper (not to mention boasts a lot of nostalgia for Generation Z). For the longest time, this was the only one of the two online, whether in separate videos (now taken down) or currently, on Vimeo (link below).

https://vimeo.com/264297389

Here, rather then the standard bright light and open lab, we have a much moodily lit and dark lab. We also have original designs for the dinosaurs courtesy of Modus FX instead of reused Meteor models (since they went bankrupt in 2008). Meanwhile, only Hans Larsson returns as a talking head, and he's joined by David C. Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum (my old stomping grounds might I say) and veterinarian Marie-Josee Limoges of the Granby Zoo in southern Quebec, who compares each dinosaur to a modern creature similar in some way to them. Their lab is more of a proper lab and its in Dino Lab, and notably has posters of John Sibbick's works posted in the back.

Another key difference is that there's an actual plot instead of barely connected vignettes, where we follow hapless animal handler Dave Dawes on his first day at a vastly different Dino Lab.

The first experiment, like its predecessor, is that of Tyrannosaurus rex, testing to see whether its a hunter or scavenger, this time studying its bite force. Sadly, compared to the Meteor model from the first one, its a bit of a downgrade, being much duller coloured and looking more like a discount V. Rex from King Kong. It also comes to the conclusion that unlike before, T. rex did scavenge, at least as adults versus the lighter-framed and speedy juveniles. While its nice they do acknowledge the role ontogeny plays in T. rex's ecology, what bothers me is that they use footage of the first special's T. rex to represent young rexes, and its not exactly one of the thinner rexes you'll see. Meanwhile, the T. rex is contained for the experiment via a kind of laser fence. The way it knocks itself out immediately makes me wonder why they even have something that could risk injury that much.

Next up, the lab brings in the colossal Argentinosaurus to test its feeding and defensive capabilities, the former by putting a crane in front of it and moving it around to see how its neck can move, and the latter by putting this hologram projector next to it and projecting a T. rex gif to see how it reacts. 

Appropriately, such a big animal moves with the bulk and heft, and is treated with much caution, and is given much space by handlers. Mind you, putting anyone in metres of a multi-metric ton creature  would be too risky in my book; hell, we even see why when Dave nearly gets struck by the creature's whipping tail if it weren't for the lab's vet. Meanwhile, the defence experiment sees the beast guided onto a treadmill where a kind of harness goes up to keep it steady on it. As mentioned in my first review, I don't see why the first part's lab didn't do a similar thing with the T. rex. I suppose the answer is "better writers this time around". I like a bit discussing how sauropods had capillaries in their blood vessels to keep them from flowing downwards under gravity.

After some minor slapstick involving a Stegosaurus being guided in wrecking Dave's car (parked where it shouldn't be, might I add) and him feeling down about his string of mistakes, Dave goes away from the main testing floor to an indoor enclosure home to a family group of three Hypacrosaurus, where the vet is monitoring them. I will admit seeing them in a small concrete pen with some hay doesn't look very good for their wellbeing. 

Don't you ever talk to me or my mate again

This is a shame, as the hadrosaurs are pretty well depicted both physically and behaviourally. In the former, they're much more colourful then the previous dinosaurs, and in the latter case, its shown that even though they are herbivores, the Hypacrosaurus start acting aggressive when Dave turns his back to them, in lieu of the usual peaceful herbivore trope, even comparing them to gorillas. Evans' talking head afterwards discusses how the social groupings of hadrosaurs may have been their only defence due to a lack of other traits besides large body size (while ignoring that hadrosaurs had a huge muscular tail). Meanwhile, the female has an egg, and the vet takes it out to monitor it in another part of the lab, which looks suspiciously like the one the talking heads have....

The show takes a break from that for its third proper experiment, one concerning Microraptor and how far it glides, bringing in both a tree perch and a toy dragonfly mounted on a rig like a fishing lure. Dave makes a klutz of himself and trips, sending the bait higher, but he once again enhances the experiment when he makes the microraptor flap its wings to reach it. Its ultimately concluded that Microraptor was capeable of flapping it wings for short bursts of flight.

Afterwards, the talking head segment of Hans and Julie discussing the preceding subject is interrupted mid-session by the baby Hypacrosaurus starting to emerge from its egg. Its returned to the pen just in time for it to hatch and before its mother finds out, while Evans discusses parental care in hadrosaurs.

The fourth and final experiment brings the Stegosaurus that's been seen earlier into the mix alongside two others, a male and a female. This time, they will be testing how plates may have been involved in sexual selection, using two other stegosaurus: a male and a female. Holding them in divided enclosures in the lab floor, they tranquilise one of the males and outfit it with fake plates that are both much larger and more brightly, orange coloured fake ones (and in this part is the only physical model in both of these). Sure enough, the other male backs away at the seeming alpha male, while the female is immediately enamoured. All the while, the show and Hans are suggesting stegosaurus' plates were used solely for such because they were thin and brittle and useless for defence (which completely ignores there was a layer of keratin that strengthen them).

After this phase, Dino Lab prepares to test stegosaurus' other famous feature: the thagomizers, aka the tail spikes. Here, the lab has put sensors on a stegosaurus, and they're whipping out the hologram projection of the rex (and possible homage to Fantasia) all to see if tail movement is controlled somewhere else. Larsson is explaining its likely that since dinosaurs had a more bird-like nervous system, they could strike more accurately. While neat, he then goes on to say the old canard that stegosaurus had nerve clusters in its hip region that controls the tail. Needless to say, while More (2010) has suggested such existed in sauropods at least, under the term sensorimotor prediction, its unlikely to be in stegosaurus proper (at least for now).

Top 10 photos taken seconds before disaster

Unfortunately, the experiment goes off the rails when it turns out sticking a hologram of a predator in the face of a multitonne spiked creature was a bad idea, as in its blind rage it destroys the projector, and its still ticked off! Fortunately, Dave finally has his "Hapless hero saves the day" moment realising tranqing it so soon after the last experiment could be bad for it, and manages to distract the stegosaurus, and thanks to it having a short attention span, forgets about being mad and calms down long enough for it to be herded away.

Dave is finally part of Dino Lab's staff and is congratulated by the manager, though not before he finally learns about his parking error. The show ends with the talking heads leaving as Hans waxing about how dinosaurs made the modern world, a statement I agree with heavily.

So how how does Dino Lab II fare compared to I? Much better in my opinion. Let' start with the story: unlike the first one's bland collection of vignettes barely tied together by characters, Dino Lab has a clear arc and relatively more developed characters. The most obvious is that of Dave, who goes from being a klutzy newbie to a quick thinking guy who earns the respect of his fellow workers. Compare that to Mike's nonexistent personality, and we've got a vast improvement. Other characters of note are the Lab's authoritative avuncular director, reprised from I if I'm not mistaken, and the lab's female vet.

Meanwhile, the script of the special doesn't seem to focus on debunking misconceptions about is prehistoric reptiles in favour of topics highly debated at the time of release.

Since the models are either changed or original of Meteor's, I'm gonna judge them by their own terms, both in quality and in my personal opinion.

• The T. rex looks to be generic Jurassic Park-cribbing as they come, exposed teeth and pronated hands and all the rest. The dull grey colour scheme does not help.
• The Argentinosaurus is fairly decent, even having accurate feet of only having claws on the back ones, but there are problems. Its head is short and like a camarasaurus, while in real life it was longer like diplodocus'; its nostrils are too far up from the snout, too. Its portrayed with its neck being horizontal like most diplodocids, whereas in real life titanosaurs most likely held there's in a more vertical position, while its skin appears to be elephantine with folds present, instead of the small scales at least some sauropods had. Indeed, it seems that most of the dinosaurs have them. Moving on, the way it moves with bulk and heft does satisfy me.
• The model for the Microraptor is decent for its time, though it does show its age. For instance, it has a feather crest as was common, but that is now seen as a misidentified flattened feathers. Whether Microraptor truly could fly is as of now unknown, but most evidence skewers towards it capable of such. However, it does look a little underfeathered, such as its wing feathers seem to end at the wrist, when such an arrangement would not be beneficial for any kind of volant activity. Frankly, I don't like it for how outdated it is and just not feeling right to me.
• The Hypacrosaurus are generally fine and boasts a pretty good colour scheme and incorporates not just neoteny, but sexual dimorphism, with one adult having a taller crest and brighter colours then the other, undoubtedly the male. However as mentioned above it seems a little too shrinkwrapped and elephant-skinned.
• Since this was before 2014 and pre-Sophie specimen, the stegosaurus havn't aged well, being the droopy, short-armed and high-backed version we often imagine it as. It appears that the show uses the strange blend of stegosaurus species, incorporating the large (9 m and) size of ungulatus with the pentagonal back plates of stenops. Its rather generic-looking, and I no likey.

Accuracy is okay, though there are many bits that do flunk if you're aware of them. Besides the T. rex issue above, there are others one may notice. Admittedly, some arise more from awkward phrasing then anything else.

• The weight given for Microraptor, 375 grams, is actually a bit lower then the single kilogram estimates. Its insinuated to have fed on insects specifically, whereas gut contents stuf show it was a general carnivore that fed on any vertebrate like mammals, birds, and lizards (hell, the former's study (Larsson, Hone, and Dececchi et al. 2010) was actually headed by Larrson himself).
• Meanwhile, it appears that microraptor glides/flies with its legs tucked under the body. Most theories have suggested either the legs splayed outwards or were backwards-facing.
• Stegosaurus is shown to be evolving from Kentrosaurus, even though both were contemporaries and Kentrosaurus is currently considered a basal stegosaurid instead of a stegosaurine.
• A one off line from one of the lab directors says that oxygen is pumped up in the lab to simulate mesozoic conditions. This is a misunderstanding/confusion from the fact that bugs grew bigger during the carboniferous period, not vertebrates of an entire clade; if anything the lungs of dinosaurs and other archosaurs were so efficient they could breath in low oxygen levels.
• In the hypacrosaurus segment, its stated most dinosaurs dropped their eggs and abandoned them. This is unlikely, since we've found a ton of evidence for extended parental care in theropods and thus is likely most if not all of them engaged in such.

On an unrelated note, Dino Lab II abstains from stock footage from other dinosaur documentaries save a brief clip from the first Dino Lab. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, but is noticeable.

The visual effects are pretty good. Heck, compared to I, it actually holds up better and the dinosaurs do seem to blend in better, perhaps due to the dimmer lighting the show and lab features and kind of blue filter over indoor footage. The stegosaurus dummy that appears for all of a minute or two or even less doesn't seem convincing, however.

Hans, David, and Marie are very good talking heads, if nothing special. On a related note, the fact that there's a window where the T. rex passes by, the incubator is in the same space as them and interrupts one talking head, and they leave by a corridor observing the T. rex do make it feel more integrated then the first show's talking heads, which may as well be in a different world entirely.

The music is fine. Its more memorable then the first one's at least, though that may be because I grew up with this one more then the first.

Overall, Dino Lab II holds up better then its predecessor, both as a sequel and as a doc on its own, improving on the flaws of its predecessor while adding its own merits. Nevertheless, it does have its flaws in the form of feeling rather incomplete and feeling its age in the models.

• Accuracy - 6/10
• Aging - 6/10
• Presentation - 8/10
• Visuals - 7/10
• Music - 7/10
• Storytelling - 8/10
• Rewatchability - 7/10

When put together, Dino Lab stands out from the multitudes of either talking head palaeo-documentaries or narrative ones inspired by Walking with Dinosaurs' success by its novel, unique premise alone. Sadly, as much as I like it, the biggest problem with Dino Lab(s) is how they don't seem to do much with their premise of keeping dinosaurs (andotherprehistoriclife) in the present as other shows do, like Prehistoric Park, which actually delved into the logistics of caring for them, and more importantly had a mockumentary flare that helped make things feel all the more real and give audiences a better connection to its prehistoric subjects. If I were making either of these, I'd definitely make them multipart miniseries, ones that could not only feature more dinosaurs, but give things more breathing space and open up the potential for worldbuilding, as well as make it a mockumentary. Still, these are very much enjoyable guilty pleasures to me, which I'll watch time and time again. .

'Till next time! Bye!

See Also

The First part

Sources

Heather L. More, John R. Hutchinson, David F. Collins, Douglas J. Weber, Steven K. H. Aung and J. Maxwell Donelan. (2010). Scaling of sensorimotor control in terrestrial mammals. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Larsson, Hans, Hone, David, Dececchi, T. Alexander, Sullivan, Corwin, Xu, Xing. "THE WINGED NON-AVIAN DINOSAUR MICRORAPTOR FED ON MAMMALS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE JEHOL BIOTA ECOSYSTEM" "Program and Abstracts. 70th Anniversary Meeting Society of Vertebrate Paleontology October 2010