Walking with Dinosaurs: All Episodes personally ranked
22 years ago in 1999, in the cultural age of Jurassic Park, the BBC would air a seminal work: it revolutionized how so many people thought about dinosaurs, computer animation, and the genre itself: Walking with Dinosaurs. Across six episodes, we got 28 minutes each of dinosaurs acting as animals in real life do and not as monsters too many of us perceive them as, with not a single cutaway to humanity (unless its the american cut on Discovery Channel, but that's beside point) like the nature documentaries also put out by the beeb's Natural History Unit, all stately narrated by thespian Kenneth Branagh. It even spawned several follow ups that if anything improved on the things that made it good, from sequel series Beasts and Monsters that showcased the other eras of Earth, Nigel Marvin's Chased by Dinosaurs and Sea Monsters that gave the show the Steve Irwin treatment with an onscreen human host, and Robert Winston's Walking with Cavemen. But one must ask: which episodes are less good, and which are really, really good?
Now let me make this clear: none of the episodes are bad. All of them are excellent in the cinematic presentation, excellent story flow and editing, great flowing stories, epic score, and superbly-made visuals. Also, 1, I'm saving the 2000 special Ballad of Big Al for another time, if at all, and 2, these are just my opinions, with accuracy and aging taken into account. With that said, let’s go through them!
#6 - Death of a Dynasty
At the bottom list of the series is the very last one, about the last days and extinction of the dinosaurs as seen from Late Cretaceous North America's fauna, including Tyrannosaurus.
I will be honest: the episode really begs my suspension of disbelief to how it has aged the most poorly out of episodes. The show's T. rex is infamous in palaeo-fan circles for how grotesque and inaccurate is, especially in the head and neck. But its not just rexy: most of the other animals (with the possible exception of the Torosaurus) are extremely wrong in design due to many reasons such as recycling CG models, such as Edmontosaurus having the bulky arms of Iguanodon and the toothless Quetzalcoatlus looking like Ornithocheirus. No they did not. AT ALL.
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| Eep... |
Meanwhile, the episode presents the idea that dinosaurs were already in a tight spot that just so happened to be interrupted by a certain asteroid impact, when the current consensus is they did fine enough as they were. meanwhile, the dry volcanic forest setting of the Hell Creek, while making for interesting visuals, isn't reflected by evidence in lieu of swampy forests.
Still, there is plenty of good in the ep too. As usual, the behaviour is on point. The fight with one T. rex and an Ankylosaurus marks one of the few times T. rex doesn't come out on top in a fight, just like how it would be in real life. The dying atmosphere of the episode sticks to one. Finally, the inevitable extinction at the end is as heart-breaking as you could imagine, and the tension leading up to it is always present.
On the first note, that's one of the best parts about Walking With: even in the worst, most inaccurate, and poorly-aged designs of the animals, the behaviour of them is realistic and believable enough to sell to viewers.
- Accuracy - 7/10
- Aging - 5/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Music - 8/10
- Storytelling - 9/10
- Rewatchability - 6/10
#5 - New Blood
(Link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2n72dd)
Like the previous episode, this episode's loaded with both inaccuracies and poorly aged stuff. Most notably, it goes with the idea that dinosaurs like our lead Coelophysis were dominant right from the start and helped drive other , more primitive animals to extinction. Not only is the evidence clear they were only bit players in the ecosystems 220 million years ago when it happened, but it doesn't really reflect such in the narrative proper, more as nuisances that suffer no hardships at a time when other groups were, and so their rise feels oddly unearned.
With that out of the way, the episode is an atmospheric ride looking at the origin of dinosaurs. The dusty orange and red scrubland setting of it makes for an effective backdrop as we watch the old guard fauna of crocodilians through Postosuchus and dicynodonts like Placerias tragically die out and be outcompeted by dinosaurs and early mammal relatives.
- Accuracy - 7/10
- Aging - 6/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Music - 8/10
- Storytelling - 8/10
- Rewatchability - 8/10
#4 - Spirits of the Ice Forest
(Link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6cif3v)
This episode about Antarctica 106 million years ago used to be my favourite of the episode for having a smaller, more intimate feel. Now? Its probably because it was the first of them I watched in awhile, and is instead in the middle third of the list. But that's not a bad thing at all: besides the afromentioned point, the dense polar forest and green colour pallet all make for nice, almost mystical atmosphere. Meanwhile, ornithopods get their turn in the limelight with a flock of Leaellynasaura being the focus, and showcases behaviours not often represented by them in popular media, most notably intraspecies fighting.
Granted, this episode's drawbacks can be summed up by saying there should be more. I wish we had seen more of the conflict between Leaellynasaura. The inaccuracies are also present if not that well-noticeable, such as only one species (Muttaburrasaurus) actually being from the period's specific year.
- Accuracy - 7.5/10
- Aging - 7/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Music - 8/10
- Storytelling - 8.5/10
- Rewatchability - 9/10
#3 Cruel Sea
For the better or worse, the ep is dominated by the Liopleurodon, here depicted as a 15 to 25-metre, 150-ton giant due to some fossils from Mexico, and for the better or worse defined the creature in other popular media. But nevertheless, from the way it effortlessly plucks token dinosaur into the sea at the beginning, or just swimming around, or a fight ending with one tragically washing ashore and suffering a slow death and proving its not invulnerable, is a way more interesting plot and storyline. Still, the blatant inaccuracies of the ep and some plotting issues bring it down in my opinion.
- Accuracy - 7.5/10
- Aging - 7/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Music - 8/10
- Storytelling - 9/10
- Rewatchability - 6/10
#2 - Giant of the Skies
I admit that the fourth ep, about the pterosaur Ornithocheirus (now understood as the brazilian Tropeognathus) and one's odyssey across the early Atlantic Ocean 127 million years ago is definitely one of the less accurate and poorly aged ones, but damn if it isn't one of, if not the best stories in the entire series, let alone franchise. While I admit I wasn't on board with the island hopping premise at first and thought it was unfocused, I now love it, especially as it showcases how the Atlantic's formation had a lot of far reaching effects, such as weather conditions in turn leading to the rose of flowering plants and the big chewing ornithopod dinosaurs that fed on them.
The back drops are much wider in variety and scope, the musical score is some of the series' best with sweeping scores, Kenneth's narration carries more , and the ending? Hoo boy, bring some tissues or anything like it, because after seeing the trials and misfortunes the old male goes through, seeing him fail at his goal of successfully mating and dying alone will get you crying, not helped by how more often then not animals get this fate in real life.
Just about the only thing bringing the ep down in my book are a bunch of inaccuracies (pterosaurs could probably make it through a storm, scaly Utahraptor in Europe) and how none of the locations (Brazil, Appalachia, England, and Spain) get enough time for us to really understand what makes them unique.
- Accuracy - 7/10
- Aging - 6/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Music - 8/10
- Storytelling - 10/10
- Rewatchability - 9/10
#1 - Time of the Titans
- Accuracy - 7.5/10
- Aging - 7/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Music - 9/10
- Storytelling - 8/10
- Rewatchability - 9/10
- Accuracy - 7/10
- Aging - 6/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Visuals - 8/10
- Music - 8/10
- Storytelling - 9/10
- Rewatchability - 10/10
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