Dinosaur - with Stephen Fry: Episode One - a review

Hoo boy, strap in...

So on Sunday the 13th, Dinosaur - With Stephen Fry premiered on the british Channel 5. Remember how I said I was interested in it? That as the first major palaeo-documentary after Prehistoric Planet and had the rare "Human host back in time and interacts with them" format I love and want to see more, I was hyped and eagerly awaited more after its announcement. But then came the trailer, and all that hype pretty much vanished. Once did premiered however, the Palaeosphere literally flipped on it overnight. Why?

Stephen Fry's Dinosaur was not very good. At all. It feels like the monkey's fist flipped me and us all off, a cheap cash in on the success of Prehistoric Planet.

The basic premise is that Stephen Fry imagines himself going back in time to interact with dinosaurs. The first episode focuses on the Jurassic period and focusing on both Diplodocus and Allosaurus and a confrontation between them, before Fry watches the Diplos do other stuff. In addition, we get a few detours to subjects like NHM's Paul Barrett explaining the origin of dinosaurs through Nyasasaurus and baby therizinosaur eggs in the private collection of some Manchester dude John Nudds (which in a major breach of science he uses acid to dissolve them and thus partially destroy them, might I add), only to lead into one about the Auca Mahuevo site.

* There are also insets with static images of Stegosaurus, Guanlong, and Archeopteryx, buut otherwise they deserve no mention.

So why is Stephen Fry's Dinosaur seeing a level of vitriol not seen since 2009's Monsters Resurrected?

For starters, the script has quite a few inconstancies: one moment allosaurus has a weight of four tonnes, the next 15, and in another failure of accuracy it claims that Pangaea was around 155 mya (some that even laymen know had already broken apart by then). More to the presentation, there's a lot less dino-safari then marketing suggested - many of the time the dinosaurs barely interact with or notice Fry even when they should, like the Allosaurus being right next to Fry but doesn't notice the odd-looking mammal that still looks easier to catch then the huge ass sauropod. Just imagine a tense sequence where the Allosaurus looks at Fry with his back turned and starts sneaking up, with Fry only realising at the last second as a tense chase ensues.

The series uses greenscreen used to place humans into the CG world but is painfully evident, as Fry often has visible outlines and things don't face the right directions. The cinematography meanwhile, feels rather disjointed and rather shakey, like it was shot on a VR headset or panning around a video game - because it was, actually being made in Unreal Engine. That could actually work if done well, but it wasn't here, resulting in a flat, uncinematic style that has no real memorable shots beyond one or two. You know it's bad when there are actual game machinmas with more impressive cinematography then this documentary, costing even less then this which is already looking to be made on the cheap.

The show twice cuts to tests with mechanical models Truth about Killer Dinosaurs-style, only worse, one about how Allosaurus used its jaws to attack and how sauropod tails could move. Thing is, both of these are very outdated: Allosaurus' jaws are insinuated to hunt by slamming the upper jaw down in the manner a hatchet would, but this would break the lower jaw (especially with bigger prey like sauropods) and its instead more of pulling back after biting down. As for sauropod tails, they couldn't actually break the sound barrier; worth mentioning it was proposed by a computer engineer millionaire who only occasionally dabbles in hard science and failed to take into account how the actual soft tissie would be affected, so it was always suspect. It's quite evident they were only in because they seemed cool and would grab audiences' attention. But when the wow factor is all there is, that's a failing in a documentary, especially one that ages rapidly like a palaeodoc can.

And honestly, the name is perhaps the most generic for any work about dinosaurs. I mean, it's not The Dinosaurs or just plural, Dinosaur! with an exclamation point, or even Disney's Dinosaur that at least has its creator to distinguish it, here its just Dinosaur, with "With Stephen Fry" tacked on like an afterthought. How horribly unmemorable. You know what, I'm just gonna refer to the series as Frynosaurs. It's way more creative and memorable then what even they chose.

But the CG for Frynosaurs? Hooooo boy....

All of the CG in the series is incredibly low-quality and undetailed, and the dinosaurs at best look like stock models. They move with little weight and fluidity and are very undetailed. The backgrounds aren't much better either: you know how people often decry bad CG as looking like a PS3 game? This is a good example.

The nadir of the bad CG and anatomy is when they contrast Allosaurus and T. rex by showing their skulls. But they are depicted horribly, HORRIBLY wong that barely resemble the real things at all, motre like AI art prompts. It'ds egrigious when resources for accurate skulls are at your fiungertips in this day and age, both online and in literature. No excuses here.

*Internal screaming*

*SCREAMING BECOMES EXTERNAL*

Also, to make things even worse? That rex is clearly a V. rex from King Kong, and there are shots of Titanosaurs and Stegosaurus (as well as Pteranodon as a background - in the Jurassic) taken directly from ARK. You know, the video game that was never accurate at all and had these very stylised designs? So yeah, many were taken from video games. It's utterly depressing that a factual documentary would resort to such a cheap and blatant move. Was some poor intern at the FX company Little Shadow crunched by time and low budget, forced upon by out of touch execs scrambled to find the cheapest models to use on short notice. The kicker? This is apparently illegal as you might have expected, and rumour has it developer Wild Card will sue. I certainly hope they go through with it.

One final complaint I have with Frynosaurs ep 1? Why have the concluding talking head sequence with Nudds be about therizinosaurs if they eventually just talk about sauropods like the rest of the episode? Most likely its just convience as John was at hand for production to use, but he apparently acquired it through illicit means, and as I made clear in my Big John post, I don't like any promotion of private fossil specimens and the trade of them, especially when using destructive methods like acid on them demonstrates why this shouldn't be allowed.

And honestly, not even Stephen Fry, who I generally enjoy as an actor, had the charisma nor memorability to stand out; I can barely remember . Frankly, you're better off rewatching March of the Dinosaurs if you want your weirdly specific fill of Stephen Fry and dinosaurs. There are a myriad of other flaws I haven't even addressed here, and probably will add in later updates.

But is there anything good in this shitstorm?

I pretty much came and stayed for the format of a human host back in time on safari. It's a novel and fun premise that not many other docs do, but should, as it grabs audiences' attention in a good way, and as seen with the Diplo, can certainly give audiences an idea of how big and majestic they were. Even then though, they don't do it well enough, Chased by Dinosaurs or Prehistoric Park this ain't, and Stephen is not Nigel Marvin.

The fight between the (single) Allosaurus and the Diplodocus does go as well as you expect, not a drawn out fight, but a literal stomp in the Diplo's favour.... At least until the Allo gets back up with no harm, then the good in it gets ruined, not helped by the hyping up beforehand as one that could go any way.

Paul Barrett and Susannah Maidment (both of London Natural History Museum) make for decent talking heads in their respective segments, and there are more segments of them that are also decent enough as it is but don't warrant further comment.

I suppose to be fair to Frynosaurs, it was never intended to be a serious competitor to the epic-scale Trilogy of Life or Prehistoric Planet, just a fun thing just for the average british audience. So it's not quite right to hold it to that standard.... but then again even if you knew nothing of those, you would still see a terrible show.

Well, if you couldn't tell, I can't think of anything else legit good in Frynosaurs. Maybe it can be watched ironically, but that's usually not a positive. Really, nothing in Frynosaurs ever rises beyond middle of the road. And worst thing of all? It's so dull. Even Monsters Ressurected is memorable in how bad it could be, and the equally maligned-Clash of the Dinosaurs and Jurassic Fight Club looked way better. This is scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel, folks.

Honestly, if I were in charge I'd have made a whole lot more creative then the ripped off assets and low grade CG, starting with doing away with the generic as hell title, perhaps something like "Dinosaurs Up Close", and removing the outdated model tests to make room for further scenes with the dinosaurs. And rather then the barebones lineup of Diplo and Allo we get here, I would add a couple more dinosaurs for Stephen to interact with, ones more obscure then the usual fare: I'd take a format similar to Planet Dinosaur and have multiple formations featured connected by a unifying theme, in this case, how sauropods and theropods got big together, which the episode touches on. First Fry goes back to his doorstep, Jurassic England for two segments: first would come an Early Jurassic one with the little bipedal Thecodontosaurus and the relatively large quadruped and memorably-named Camelotia and the little theropod Sarcosaurus. Next comes a segment with Megalosaurus and Cetiosaurus in the Middle Jurassic, then finally some of the Morrison bits as they were.

Hell, even if we just limit things to the Morrison, I'd still add a few more dinosaurs to it, though not too much to break the very low budget the show seems to have. And yes, they'd use original designs that are brighter and more creative yet plausible.

• Ceratosaurus (I even mistook the Allosaurus for one when I saw the trailer)
• Another genus of Sauropod, perhaps Camarasaurus, or even the really giant Maraapunisaurus.
• And finally Stegosaurus. Hell, maybe even Susannah could identify one that shows up as Sophie, NHM's own specimen.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here, and who am I kidding? This series so far blows.

• Accuracy - 5/10
• Aging - 3/10
• Visuals - 5/10
• Behaviour - 5/10
• Presentation - 5/10

I really wanted to like Dinosaur - with Stephen Fry from it's premise alone. Unfortunately, right from the first episode it ends up being a staid yet messy affair, floundering in the visuals department and in being up to date, and certainly in just being interesting. I recommend only watching for completionists and masochists. Overall, a flacid 3/10, 4 if i'm being generous.

Fotunately, the second episode whichj aired today was much better an inprovement that averts the flaws here, even if it does rehash much of Walking with Dinosaurs' infinitely better Giants of the Skies. Though I'm in no hurry to review that one.

Anyway... Thanks for reading today's blog post. Special thanks to Mason Pierce/Mr. Ultra for editing the final draft.

See Also/Sources

• Conti S, Tschopp E, Mateus O, Zanoni A, Masarati P, Sala G (2022). "Multibody analysis and soft tissue strength refute supersonic dinosaur tail". Scientific Reports. 12 (1). 19245. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-21633-2. PMC 9732322. PMID 36482175.
• Allosaurus: Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong #20