Why do documentaries about space suck?

[keniakittykat]

Granted, there are some very good ones out there, but I was watching National Geographic just now to see a documentary about space. As most people who watch these, I was expecting science and new nifty info.

I was wrong. Again.

It seems to me that most space-mentaries I see on tv are nothing more than Windows 98 screensavers while a sleepy British person speaking in new-age riddles while beauty spa muzak plays in the background. No science, just mellow hippie bullshit.

I really hate these things! Oh, well. At least there's still Vsauce...

 

[Clowndoe]

Because now you can make that joke. You know, space. Suck. Badum-tish.

It all makes sense when you think of it as a conspiracy.

But, yeah, I've noticed it, and it really rustles my jimmies.

 

[Frission]

It's boring?


I always like news on space. It gives me a sense of scale and time that helps put my problems in perspective. I find it very calming.

Different strokes for different people I guess.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

I think the reasoning is that science is hard, so we'll treat the viewers like morons so that they might have a tiny chance of understanding something.

I recently watched a programme on black holes, and they showed someone jumping into water so we could understand what falling was.

Since I watch most things on catch up these days, I just fast forward to the interviews with the researchers.

 

[Danny Ocean]

My solution to all of these problems is to:

1. Read New Scientist
2. Read The Economist (Not all sciences are natural, y'know)
3. Listen to BBC radio 4
4. Watch BBC 4 on TV.

Discovery Channel and National Geographic are just... awful.

 

[A_Parked_Car]

The vast majority of documentaries suck. They are written and produced for the lowest common denominator, so they are always over-simplified and often when there is a choice between keeping things factual or 'stirring up controversy'/'creating some kind of mystery where there isn't one' to gain ratings it is quite apparent what side the documentary producers come down on.

About the only time even 'good' documentaries are useful is when you know basically nothing about a subject. Then, IF the documentary is 'good' (and that is a big if), you may come out of it marginally more informed than you were going in.

The study of anything is extremely complex and must be dumbed-down for non-specialists. For military history (my specialization) it is usually watered down to just battles, which is then further watered down into just looking at technology, because people can kind of understand that (well, they think they can). It is even worse that my main area is the Interwar period and Second World War, which means that 99.9% of documentaries just spend over half their running time jerking off to late-war German military hardware. Then they spend the other half jerking off to the Wehrmacht in general. Especially when it involves the Eastern Front, since they don't seem to read anything on the Red Army (or the whole front for that matter) other than the grossly biased memoirs of German generals, which have been discredited for around thirty damn years.

I would imagine that documentaries on space suffer from the same issues. Understanding space is difficult for people, so documentaries aren't going to go all that in-depth. I took an introductory-level Astronomy course, and that shit was crazy even at the very beginner level.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

My solution to all of these problems is to:

1. Read New Scientist
2. Read The Economist (Not all sciences are natural, y'know)
3. Listen to BBC radio 4
4. Watch BBC 4 on TV.

Discovery Channel and National Geographic are just... awful.

By and large, this. BBC science documentaries are usually fantastic, especially Horizon. They don't dumb things down too much but are rarely too complicated. They tend to benefit from being quite specific, rather than just being about space in general they'll focus on our understanding of black holes, or searching for extraterrestrial life.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

A lot of space documentaries on cable think space is boring. They think we are so uninterested in space that if they don't throw in the word 'alien' at some point, then we'll immediately change the channel. Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole, though the better of the bunch, mostly is rerunning that alien episode or the time travel episode, hardly anything else.

Watch The Cosmos by Sagan, or wait for the new ones Fox is releasing by Neil Degrasse Tyson. But even so, those are equal parts space and Earth history.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, lots of documentaries suck nowdays. They get some presenter who desperately wants the documentary to be about them, and then they try to "widen the audience" or whatever by making it half something else, and failing at both.

If I wanted to watch a drama or comedy or action thingy, I'd watch a drama or comedy or action thingy. It's like making every game a half-arsed CoD rip off, it's competing with various existing CoDs already.

 

[Albino Boo]

By and large, this. BBC science documentaries are usually fantastic, especially Horizon. They don't dumb things down too much but are rarely too complicated. They tend to benefit from being quite specific, rather than just being about space in general they'll focus on our understanding of black holes, or searching for extraterrestrial life.

Horizon is dumb down to what is used to be 20 years ago. There are too many of the horizons that are made as co-productions with the discovery channel and are aimed at mid market as a result.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

By and large, this. BBC science documentaries are usually fantastic, especially Horizon. They don't dumb things down too much but are rarely too complicated. They tend to benefit from being quite specific, rather than just being about space in general they'll focus on our understanding of black holes, or searching for extraterrestrial life.

Horizon is dumb down to what is used to be 20 years ago. There are too many of the horizons that are made as co-productions with the discovery channel and are aimed at mid market as a result.

Eh, they may be dumbed down a bit, but they do have to cater to an audience that may well not be familiar with the subject. To me, they seem largely the right tone to explain a subject sufficiently to people without much knowledge of it without getting too technical or just waffling on about nothing.

 

[McMullen]

Science? In a documentary? That's so 1988! The networks think people don't want any of that, they want science-themed action films. They want to hear how the deadly, terrifying, hate-fueled FURY of nature is going to kill them any second now.

Actually that's only half the market. The other half wants to hear that magic is real and quantum mechanics (or string theory) can do anything, including explaining the paranormal.

If they haven't already I predict they will soon drop any pretense of trying to educate and start claiming things like ghosts are what happen when the quantum thingamajig of a dead person gets caught up in too many cosmic strings and becomes entangled with the threads of our universe and theirs.

The sad thing is I know I could probably fund my education and research by writing a book saying stuff like that. Accursed scruples.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm terribly bored by documentaries in general. I'm very much bored by their routine, scholastic take on anything (you know, the National Geographic style). They have to bring in something else, dammit. Here're a few documentaries I've enjoyed: Thin Blue Line, Persepolis, Waltz With Bashir, any Werner Herzog documentary. Those are awesome.

 

[laraghboy]

You should watch the BBC ones with Brian Cox Wonders of the Solar System/Universe. If you can get over the fact that he looks a bit like James Blunt, it's very good. Gets the message across quite well and uses easy analogies for people who don't want to get too technical. Worth a watch!

 

[krazykidd]

Science? In a documentary? That's so 1988! The networks think people don't want any of that, they want science-themed action films. They want to hear how the deadly, terrifying, hate-fueled FURY of nature is going to kill them any second now.

Actually that's only half the market. The other half wants to hear that magic is real and quantum mechanics (or string theory) can do anything, including explaining the paranormal.

If they haven't already I predict they will soon drop any pretense of trying to educate and start claiming things like ghosts are what happen when the quantum thingamajig of a dead person gets caught up in too many cosmic strings and becomes entangled with the threads of our universe and theirs.

The sad thing is I know I could probably fund my education and research by writing a book saying stuff like that. Accursed scruples.

This post made me laugh a lot more than it should have . Comedy gold right here .

OT: like others have said , most documentaries suck , and most of the info get's dumbed down .

 

[Albino Boo]

By and large, this. BBC science documentaries are usually fantastic, especially Horizon. They don't dumb things down too much but are rarely too complicated. They tend to benefit from being quite specific, rather than just being about space in general they'll focus on our understanding of black holes, or searching for extraterrestrial life.

Horizon is dumb down to what is used to be 20 years ago. There are too many of the horizons that are made as co-productions with the discovery channel and are aimed at mid market as a result.

Eh, they may be dumbed down a bit, but they do have to cater to an audience that may well not be familiar with the subject. To me, they seem largely the right tone to explain a subject sufficiently to people without much knowledge of it without getting too technical or just waffling on about nothing.

Thats the problem, to me the modern horizons feel dumbed down and to you they feel just right. There is no right answer to what is the point to pitch a documentary at, whatever you do someone will dislike it. Its very hard to get right the level and the Discovery go with the lowest common denominator. The BBC go at higher level but not as high as it once was. I suspect that's due to the decline of the number of people taking sciences at GCSE.

 

[Jamash]

You should watch the BBC ones with Brian Cox Wonders of the Solar System/Universe. If you can get over the fact that he looks a bit like James Blunt, it's very good. Gets the message across quite well and uses easy analogies for people who don't want to get too technical. Worth a watch!

plus he is so adorable when he tries to explain things but cant work out how. i love it when they keep those moments in the docs

Brian Cox and the style in which Wonders of the Universe is presented can make even the most complicated and intimidating subjects palatable... and make some of the most mundane and everyday actions interesting:

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

You should watch the BBC ones with Brian Cox Wonders of the Solar System/Universe. If you can get over the fact that he looks a bit like James Blunt, it's very good. Gets the message across quite well and uses easy analogies for people who don't want to get too technical. Worth a watch!

plus he is so adorable when he tries to explain things but cant work out how. i love it when they keep those moments in the docs

Brian Cox and the style in which Wonders of the Universe is presented can make even the most complicated and intimidating subjects palatable... and make some of the most mundane and everyday actions interesting:

Massive Brain Cox fan, definitely the way to go if you want "Interesting" and "Space" in the same documentary.

 

[piinyouri]

Oh God you must be talking about Wonders of the Universe.

As a huge fan of shows about space in any fashion, I simply cannot watch it. It teaches me nothing, and it's not entertaining.

I tend to enjoy everything else space related Science Channel puts out though. The ones with Nike Rowe narrating can be very beautiful. Like the episode where they explain how there's only so much "stuff" in the universe and eventually, star and planet formation will use it all up. Then, very slowly the stars will blink out and no more new ones will be born. The universe will fade into an eternal black.

 

[rockerjohn]

science documentaries are awesome! My my favourite docs are from the BBC, check out The Human Universe which is presented by Brian Cox:

http://docur.co/u/john/list/human-universe-VoT