Walking with Beasts: New Dawn review
Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. Today, the work we're looking at actually isn't Mesozoic in nature (only at the very, very start), instead being the era we apes live in, the Cenozoic. I admit as amazing the Cenozoic was/is, my heart is always going to be more interested in the Mesozoic and all works associated with it, but nevertheless, will do my best to take interest in this one.
I admit that I was more familiar with this then WWD, thanks to the above reason and the bevy of videos on Youtube growing up. And who could forget its absolute banger of a theme song and intro? Ben Bartlett strikes again. Also, note how the intro has its footage stylised to look like cave paintings in a very nice choice.
The first episode takes place in Germany 49 million years ago, specifically around the famous Messel Shale. We primarily follow the lives of three creatures of the region: a family of the strange mammal Leptictidium, the giant bird Gastornis, and the ancient whale ancestor Ambulocetus. However it was filmed in Java, and makes fairly good use of the setting.
The show starts off proper with a very tiny meteor falling to earth and onto the forest floor of Eocene Germany, observed by a few denizens of it, like the bizarre, trunked hopping mammal Leptictidium. We are then introduced to the Gastornis as it goes on the chase against the Leptictidium, who escapes by hiding in its strangler fig burrow. Kenneth notes that as birds are dinosaur descendants, this is the only time in history "Bird rule the earth", making it clear that even 16 million years after no dinosaurs, mammals aren't dominant over the ecosystems just yet.
If it weren't obvious, the scene all has a washed out blue scheme due to taking place in early morning. The rest of the film has warm greens and yellows as it's in the daytime. Nice cinemtographic touch in my book.
The next morning, we follow the same Leptictidium as its shown she is a mother. She's followed around as she hunts for food, choosing insects and and a frog because they aren't warm-blooded like she and all other mammals are, so they're sluggish and slow. and need the sun to get active. A pleasant and fun-looking slo-mo sequence of her catching insects mid-air also occurs. However, there's a cutaway as midday approaches to hot springs, where noxious gas is spewed, and we are told geologic activity make for ever present threats. Meanwhile, one Gastornis, also a mother, has come to check on her single egg soon to hatch. However, she detects another Gastornis entering her territory, and tries to scare it off in a simple but enjoyable fight.
As the mother goes to the lake, the Leptictidium sees an unexpected creature: an aquatic mammal like an otter but with a wolflike snout. This is Ambulocetus, an ancient relative of the whale. Its not native to the region, but swam up from the Tethys Sea's coast. He swims around in the lake, scaring off a croc, and its a rather beautiful and calming scene, before trying to ambush a Propalaeotherium, an early horse. However, Kenneth informs us of the volcanic gas in the lakebed, and if unleashed it could suffocate everyone.
Elsewhere, the baby Gastornis hatches. However, arriving at the nest is Titanomyrma, a genus of giant ant. It swarm eats the chick alive and strips it to the bone, killing it. The scene is very hard to watch. Not even I can watch it, preferring to skip it, and just thinking about it makes me shudder. One can't help but feel sorry for its mother when she returns, who walks away with the last few months wasted. It sets a tone for the show, making it clear death will come for all creatures in the show, and not even babies will be spared.
However, in between those two, in the afternoon, a group of Propalaeotherium feed on falling berries and leaves. Eventually, this starts to dull their normally senses with the alcohol, providing an opportunity for one Gastornis to ambush and eat one. It's a tense, horrific scene helped by the music and the cacophony of noises fleeing animals provided. Its all capped off by Kenneth saying "This is a world where birds eat horses." as only he can.
As night falls, a basal kind of primate seen sleeping through the episode, Godinotia, awakens and begins their mating rituals, graphically shown, while the Ambulocetus catches prey before sleeping out of water.
However, the gas and tectonic activity mentioned throughout the episode come to a head as an earthquake happens, releasing the former. Chaos and pandemonium ensues as the gas disorients and suffocates the forest animals as seen with one poor Propalaeotherium.
The whole night sequences are shot in greyscale like actual nature docs do when filming at night. It's nice touch that makes for stark, haunting imagery, helped by distorted cinematography that conveys what they're likely seeing and how the gas spreads across the forest floor.
New Dawn ends the next morning as peace returns. The final scene is with the Leptictidium family hopping away to live another day and observing the now-dead Ambulocetus. However, as Kenneth notes, the future holds opposite fates for their linages: whales are still going strong to this day (...or at least until we started #%&!ing the seas up in the last 400 years), while I ask when's the last time you saw a descendant of Leptictidium? This is how due to a trend of cooling temperatures, things are growing cooler and dryer, the forests will disappear. It's also conveyed visually, as the Leptictidum all hop away and offscreen while the Ambulocetus remains in frame. Sure enough, we get something different then Dinosaurs': a teaser for the next episode plays before and during the credits (as opposed to after), and in this case we see the next episode, Whale Killer, about the giant basal whale Basilosaurus and life along the Tethys Sea of the Late Eocene as mammals truly come into their own.
So yeah, New Dawn is a solid start to the next series. It's relatively small scale gives us a more intimate look of what early cenozoic life was like.
The story is well plotted and written, themed around spending 24 hours in it. While its the first species we properly see and initially focus on, the Leptictidium only serves as an anchor point for the story and doesn't suffer that much hardships, while it gravitates more towards the Gastornis who loses her baby just as it was born and whose species as a whole is going extinct, and the ambulocetus, whose kind is going to literally become big soon as one of the group that had its origins in the time period, but the one we see tragically perishes.
The visuals and creature design are all solid, whether it's the striped baby boar-esque colours of the Leptictidium or the mouse deer look of the Propalaeotherium. I like the Gastornis too.
On the subject of Propalaeotherium, I like that the models had rectangular pupils. It may not seem like much, but these kinds of eyes actually help in actual ungulates that graze and need to watch for hunters at the same time as their pupils rote in their sockets when the head's downturned; hell even people who work with horses know they have a similar thing going on.
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| "Eye" like what they did.... |
It should come as no surprise that Ben Bartlett's score rules. My favourite one of the ep would have to be the Ambulocetus' theme, which while instrumentally simple, is very mystical-sounding and perfectly conveys the origins of whales taking their first steps into the new world of underwater. It's an utter crime the soundtrack's never been released in full.
The sound design is also great. I believe I forgot to mention this in previous reviews, but the editing of sounds to make vocals for animals that we can barely guess what they sounded like is truly an underrated part of palaeo-documentaries and palaeo-media as a whole. I like the leptictidium's sounds and gastornis' vulture sounds (as we ll as guanacos, badgers, baboons, and slowed spider monkey chatter), mostly because they are the ones I can best remember, as are the shrill chimp noises for the Godinotia.
The behaviour is up to par for the franchise. That's all that needs to be said and need to know.
Of course, a 20-year old show is going to age poorly and have a lot of inaccuracies, and in particular actually undermine the plot. Probably the [literally] biggest example is the Gastornis. Portrayed as a speedy predator as was considered for a long time (and still is according to episode advisor Larry Witmer), scientists now know based off analysis of the bones inside and molecular they were more then likely primarily herbivores feeding on hard plants and seeds. Even without that, the way the leg bones measure show that Gastornis was not that fast enough to be a cursorial pursuit predator. If anything, top predatory role around Messel would be large crocodilians like Boverisuchus. It's also given a weight of a half a ton, something only elephant birds of Madagascar reached. Try half that at roughly 2500 pounds/1133 kg.
Another would be the Ambulocetus. Unlike the semi-aquatic creature that can easily move on land, it would have been fully aquatic. And while they do acknowledge its not native to Europe of the time and swam upriver from the coast... it's from Pakistan in southern Asia, which even in the Early Eocene was very far from Europe, way too far for an animal as it's portrayed to be capable of swimming, unless it's range was way bigger then we currently know.
The Godinotia are also big offenders, looking like old world monkeys who wouldn't evolve until the Oligocene rather then more like lemurs due to being the in the more basal clade of them, Strepsirrhini.
Most importantly, the plot point that mammals weren't yet the dominant creatures in the Early Eocene and confined to being small creatures isn't true. Even at the time the series was being made, it was known that even as early as 60 mya, mammals were already growing to the size of bears, like the ground sloth-like (but NOT actual sloths, mind you) Barylambda, or the basal, predatory ungulate Ankalagon, and the time of the episode's timedate you already had cow-sized creatures like the horned Dinoceratans and the hippo-like Coryphodon roaming about. Granted, those there were from North America and not western Eurasia/Germany, but my point still stands that the early Cenozoic wasn't quite an underdog story for mammals the show pushes. If anything, just like every ecosystem in earth's history, it's not accurate to say one group dominates an ecosystem at a time and keeps another down, but rather they live more symbiotically and are part of a larger thing. That's not the most accurate way to phrase it, but you get what I mean.
That's not getting into the assortment of other minor inaccuracies the episode has. I won't list them, but you get what I mean.
Also, it may just be me, but there's a very morbid feel to the episode that may be an acquired taste. Maybe its the sound quality making for louder and intense noises and the frequency of it (being neurodivergent loud noises can grate on me), or the abundance of death in it (again, ants devouring a baby bird). Not that WWD had its fair share of morbidities, but its so overtly omnipresent it can detract from a viewing experience from how bleak it can get.
But don't let these inaccuracies or some grim setpieces stop you from watching it. New Dawn is a wonderful new chapter and introduction to Walking with Beasts that does much justice to the unique environment and ecosystem of the Messel and the mid-Palaeogene. Where else in media can you see the fauna it introduced the public world to, like I was?
- Accuracy - 6/10
- Aging - 5/10
- Presentation - 9/10
- Visuals - 9/10
- Music - 9/10
- Storytelling - 9/10
- Rewatchability - 8/10
And no, I'm not reviewing Whale Killer next time, at least not for a while. If anything, I'm going to the Paleozoic and taking my family there.
Sources
- Angst D.; Lécuyer C.; Amiot R.; Buffetaut E.; Fourel F.; Martineau F.; Legendre S.; Abourachid A.; Herrel A. (2014). "Isotopic and anatomical evidence of an herbivorous diet in the Early Tertiary giant bird Gastornis. Implications for the structure of Paleocene terrestrial ecosystems". Naturwissenschaften. 101 (4): 313–322. Bibcode:2014NW....101..313A. doi:10.1007/s00114-014-1158-2. PMID 24563098. S2CID 18518649.
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