Mesozoic Mind

IT'S BACK! I'M BACK! Do I mean my blog or Prehistoric Planet ? Both. This time, instead on continuing with the dinosaurs, we go to our era, or rather the period before the human era: the Pleistocene. Granted, there are key differences that at least for me make it feel more like a spinoff then a proper new season. I rank the episodes (without elabouration): Grass Lands New Lands Desert Lands Big Melt Big Freeze The effects are great as ever. Framestore takes over from MPC after they sadly went the way of the di-, nah, pterosaur, and they still have have it 20 years on from a certain other cenozoic palaeodocumentary. Also ever, the sequences and photography are brilliant as ever. The species selection is good, going beyond the usual stock genera/northen hemisphere fauna, from australian megafauna to deep cuts like the giant otter Enhydriodon . That was a thrilling sequence. But all that said, I do admit Ice Age feels a bit... downgraded from the first two seasons. Here's why ...

Well, Walking with Dinosaurs 2025 came and went. The reboot to the icon of palaeodocumentaries, promising a new take that would appeal to audiences not versed in the nitty gritty by showing dig sites in action to show how palaeontology works alongside the usual nature doc-style life reconstruction sequences. It .... was .... Not very good. While no one ws expecting it to surpass the original, so much seems to conspire to make it subpar. There's a reduced budget compared to the original, so there aren't that many species, and to choose active dig sites only limited the sites, meaning half the series is Cretaceous North America. Conbine that with being made in the fog of COVID and at a time when nature docs are bing underfunded by a society caring only for sating the rich, and you thus get a series which feel thin and empty, not really a succesor to the classic. But which reaches the heights of what came before it and which plunged deeper then even the movie? Let's find out....