We Got Netflix Covered: The Cosmos, A Prince, And An Aged Jackass…

Documentary Pick: Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (2014)

What was in the water at Fox the day this was greenlit? An update of the seminal science doc series hosted by Carl Sagan, produced by Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, the master of tasteless animation with a pop culture zip, Seth MacFarlane, and Brannon Braga, the man that drove Star Trek into the ground? Utilizing a “murderers row” of behind-the-scenes talent, from composer Alan Silvestri (The Avengers), cinematographer Bill Pope (The Matrix) and art director Seth Reed (From The Earth To The Moon), the Sagan series is revitalized with new data and state-of-the-art visual effects, and the audience is guided effortlessly along thanks to the dulcet tones and child-like wonder of host Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The other minor miracle of Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, aside from the eclectic crew who made it a reality, is daring to be a purely scientific endeavor in the age of science skepticism. Some Fox stations censored segments or preempted entire episodes, and almost as if the blowback was anticipated, the entire second episode rubs the viewers face in the facts and benefits of evolution.

Sometimes Cosmos goes too far into science’s persecution complex, like comparing the life’s work of Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar who had – in essence – a lucky guess about the grand cosmology of the universe, to that of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Henrietta Swan Leavitt. The show concedes that yes, Bruno wasn’t a scientist, but he was right and burned at the stake by small-minded religious thugs, and sometimes that is equal to a lifetime of institutional scientific pursuit.

Despite those valid, but ultimately small, criticisms, Cosmos is an amazing journey through the universe, from the microscopic to the macroscopic; from molecules barely bigger than an atom, to the “Wall of Infinity,” the edge of the observable universe. The 13-part series is filled with enough facts and figures for about 10 university textbooks, but its presented in a way that’s neither intimidating nor difficult to understand, and with added attraction of building these lessons around one or two key figures in scientific history, many of whom you’ve undoubtedly never heard of it you’re a non-scientist. And, at the center of it all is Tyson, who ably and skillfully steps into Sagan’s shoes as a great science communicator, and drives the show from the spaceship of the imagination with equal parts insight and inspiration.