In perhaps the strangest twist to recent TV programming, the marriage of Family Guy and Star Trek: Enterprise has produced one of the most entertaining programs in recent memory.
Seth MacFarlane, writer, producer and creator of Fox’s Family Guy, American Dad and the movie, TED, together with Brannon Braga, writer and producer of many of the Star Trek franchise offerings, in cooperation with Carl Sagan’s widow and collaborator, Ann Druyan have resurrected Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The new series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, does not disappoint.
The new Cosmos, led by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, doesn’t deviate much in content from the original series (which is on YouTube and can be found here). However, where the new series excels is strangely enough in its presentation availability. The original Carl Sagan series was first broadcast on PBS and remained a staple of its fund-raising activities for decades. This new series is on 10 networks including Fox and National Geographic Channel and includes an introduction by the President of the United States.
Some of the early reviews of the new series have not been kind with complaints of too many commercials, the information has been dumb down too much or that the animation is “flat.” I look beyond these points. For the first time in more than a generation, a “hard” science program is on prime time TV. And if it inspires a generation to “look to the stars,” the way the first series did, then it will be a success. As Sagan said more than a generation ago, “we are star stuff” and that is all that really matters.
