The Universe: The Complete Season Six Blu-ray Review
Very little new under the sun (or anywhere else for that matter).
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 23, 2012
The Universe has been one of the more reliable series running on The History Channel for the past several
years, offering some great visuals and interesting information along the way, but it is also a somewhat problematic
series that has several issues which seem to be endemic to many History outings. First of all, it is relentlessly
apocalyptic at times, focusing on death and destruction and all manner of things that go bump in the vast night of outer
space. Second of all, it is incredibly repetitive at times, something that might seem to be peculiar when one considers
that entire universe (which is, after all, a
very large place) is the subject of this series. But it can't be denied
that our actual knowledge of the universe is relatively miniscule, meaning this series tends to tread and retread over
the same material repeatedly, trying to dress it up in different attire but never fully managing to avoid the fact that
longtime viewers will have been there and seen that. The previous seasons of
The Universe were reviewed on
Blu-ray.com here:
The
Universe: The Complete Season One Blu-ray review
The
Universe: The Complete Season Two Blu-ray review
The
Universe: The Complete Season Three Blu-ray review
The
Universe: The Complete Season Four Blu-ray review
The
Universe: The Complete Season Five Blu-ray review
The Universe: The Complete Season Six includes the following 14 episodes spread over three Blu-ray discs:
Catastrophes That Changed the Planets.
Once again it's "Apocalypse Now" on
The Universe, only this time on a solar system scale. This episode delves
into how cataclysms in various epochs created and then altered planets and the general "neighborhood" around us.
The chaotic nature of untold eons past is compared to a pinball machine, where planets were formed and destroyed
with seemingly careless abandon. These cosmic disasters created virtually every aspect of our solar system, according
to this episode. One of the more interesting facts that comes out in this outing is how the order of the planets as we
now know it was once different and that at one point Jupiter and Saturn especially kind of "wandered around" before
settling down into their current orbits. This is yet another "countdown" episode, which seeks to present the viewer
with something like a Top 10 of cosmic calamities, counting down to a patently ridiculous Number 1, a potential "duel"
between Jupiter and Mercury that might wreak havoc on Earth. Emphasis on
might—this is yet another episode
in this series where disaster is highlighted, and then a scientist comes along to inform us that the chances are
exceedingly remote.
Nemesis: The Sun's Evil Twin. There are some cynics who might be inclined to laugh out loud at the premise of
this episode, a premise which posits a dim red star (which is only
suspected of existing) which every, oh, 26
million years or so triggers untold disasters, mostly by flinging comets from the wonderfully named Oort Cloud toward
the Earth. This is another massively hypothetical episode that nonetheless is rather compelling, and which has some
interesting sidebars, such as the development of a cosmic sleuth system known as WIDE (Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer), which, if it's ever launched, should be able to find Nemesis since it reads heat rather than light. There's also
a segment on a world that few have probably heard of, an ancient planetoid named Sedna whose radically changing
orbit may hint at the nefarious activity of Nemesis.
How the Solar System Was Made. Haven't we been down this Milky Way before? This is an undeniably
informative episode, but it just smacks of what is so problematic about
The Universe, namely, they just keep
covering the same information over and over in slightly repackaged ways. Here we're once again treated to the
development of our solar system, and the "gimmick" this time is that they use a timeline to chart the course of that
development over 700 million years. This episode benefits mightily from some great looking CGI, which is often almost
three dimensional in its effectiveness, especially as it depicts huge floating rocks in space. There's also some
interesting information about the "proto-planet" that trailed Earth in eons past, Thea. But for anyone who's been a fan
of
The Universe from its first episode, this is going to seem like awfully stale material for the most part.
Crash Landing on Mars is perhaps one of the
most ridiculous episodes of this season, one which may in
fact lead some people to just throw up their arms in frustration and turn the damn thing off. Instead of focusing on a
manned expedition to Mars, this episode chooses to focus on what might go
wrong if the first manned
expedition crash lands on the planet. Full of silly doomsday scenarios and silly hypotheticals, this episode pretty much
completely misses the mark and highlights some of the glaring defects that
The Universe seems to be falling into
more and more as it proceeds along. At least this episode has some nice clips from cheesy sci-fi movies from decades
past where astronauts crash on Mars.
Worst Days on Planet Earth is another sad entry into
The Universe's annoying tendency to focus on
apocalyptic issues, not to mention couching them in "countdown" episodes. Here we get the "seven worst days on
Planet Earth," a litany of disasters that have befallen our beloved orb. We get everything from volcanic eruptions to Ice
Ages to the Ordovician Extinction, counting down to Number 1 with a bullet (and/or a solar flare, as the case may be),
yet another accounting of the sun's annihilation of all earthly live in a mere five billion years or so. Evidently the Mayans
were off by a little bit.
God and the Universe begins to at least partially redeem (no pun intended) this season with an interesting look
at creation theory and whether a Divine Creator or "mere" physics can account for anything. The episode gets off to a
promising start by showing the viewer both the cataclysmic destruction that takes place throughout space, contrasted
with the rather extraordinary amount of life on our planet, and then posits the question: how could this huge disparity
have come into being? While the episode doesn't really give any ultimate answers (how could it, really?), it does a fairly
well modulated job of ping ponging emerging hypotheses (like string theory) with ancient beliefs of an omnipotent
creator. Religious types will no doubt notice that the portentous narration "evolves" (again, pun intended) from
mentioning "God" to "
a god", something which must might rankle the Almighty. The episode does
devolve slightly at the end with a sidebar dealing with the possibility of ancient alien cultures seeding our
planet, a la Erich van Däniken's
Chariots of the Gods.
UFOs: The Real Deal is kind of a fun recounting of several big sightings through the years, beginning with the
June 24, 1947 flight by Kenneth Arnold over Mt. Rainier in Washington state, a flight that began the whole flying saucer
mania. A reporter actually misquoted Arnold, who had said the craft he witnessed "moved like saucers skipping on
water," which morphed into flying saucers and forever entered the public lexicon. There is of course copious time given
over to Roswell, as well as several sightings in outer space in the background of space missions, including a July 19,
2009 space shuttle Endeavor flight where
something is clearly seen in the background hovering above the
ship's robotic arm. There's also some nice archival footage from the well publicized mass sighting on March 13, 1997 in
Arizona.
How Big, How Far, How Fast.
This is what
The Universe really should be about: helping
everyday viewers understand the complex data of science, especially when that data is mind boggling, to say the least.
What this episode tries to do is to reduce the vast sizes, distances and speeds of the universe to human scale,
hopefully making them more comprehensible in the process. While this episode is full to the brim with comparisons (the
sun is 300,000 times as heavy as the Earth, for example), there are also some cogent examples of various concepts.
While my regular
Universe nemesis Alex Filippenko gets the "duh" Comment of the Year award with his
statement, "The speed of light is really fast", he at least goes on to give a salient example by showing that light could
bounce back and forth between Los Angeles and New York 38 times in a second.
Our Place in the Milky Way once again revisits information that
The Universe has covered previously
(
several times, in fact), something made all the more maddening by the fact that it turns out scientists aren't
really sure
where we are in the Milky Way. Our predicament is likened to that of a rat in a maze, the poor beast
able to traverse pathways but never cognizant of what the whole "pattern" looks like. It almost gets ludicrously funny
at times in this episode as various scientists admit that not only do we not know where we are in the Milky Way, we
don't even know what the Milky Way really looks like. Some posit two spiral arms, others four, and the simple fact is no
one knows for sure. The best part of this episode is some of the names of celestial matter, including a cloud known as
The Local Fluff.
Alien Sounds begins with that iconic tag line from
Alien, "In space no one can hear you scream," but then
gets into a kind of ridiculously technical examination of defining what "space" means. Does an astronaut on the surface
of Mars consider himself in space? There's some silly but undeniably entertaining segments in this episode, including a
completely inane but funny bit with a researcher name Bruce Betts who has developed a computer program to
approximate what voices would sound like on Mars. His contraption is called The Marsinator, and it ends up slowing
down speech and making it sound like a drug fueled, bass heavy version of his normal speaking voice. Mr. Betts
evidently has
way too much time on his hands. There is some interesting analysis here of the physics of
acoustics, but this is yet another "countdown" episode (here done as a sort of quasi-Casey Kasem outing), leading (of
course) to Number 1 being the many sounds from planet Earth. Not exactly alien, you say? Well sleight of hand can do
wonders: if aliens are in outer space listening to sounds emanating from our planet, that makes those sounds alien to
them. Got it?
Deep Freeze deals with the coldest places in the universe but in typically anachronistic fashion starts out with
the
hottest event known to Man (or at least
suspected by Man), the Big Bang, which was evidently 100
million trillion trillion kelvins. A lot of this episode concentrates on the New Horizons mission to Pluto which has the kind
of interesting addition of enlisting every day armchair scientists to sort through countless star images to help select
where New Horizons should aim for after it completes its survey of Pluto. Some of the scientists here reveal their film
geek side by mentioning things like Hoth, the ice planet from
The Empire Strikes Back. Once again we get the
cheery news that we're all headed for annihilation (in countless billion years, of course) since all energy in the universe
is slowly but surely dissipating.
Microscopic Universe is actually one of the more interesting episodes from this season, if only because it
ventures into a different sort of universe, the one of subatomic particle and quantum physics. The fact that this
particular universe is so nonintuitive is explored, with a number of paradoxes looked at with a fair degree of
comprehensibility and visual flair. Those who grew up reading books like
The Tao of Physics or
The Dancing
Wu Li Masters will no doubt recognize many of the concepts covered in this episode, but this is a fun and
informative outing that at least doesn't endlessly rehash items that have already been done to death before.
Ride the Comet reviews some of the beliefs of ancient cultures who would witness fireballs traversing the sky,
and then uses the gimmick of a super hi-tech spacecraft shadowing a comet to uncover information about how comets
are formed and how they zoom through space, covering a huge expanse in the process, from the Kuiper Belt to our sun.
There's some nice information about the relatively recent Deep Impact mission that sent a projectile directly into Tempel
1, spewing huge amounts of debris out into space and finally allowing scientists a chance to investigate what's inside
these icy planetoids. There's also a segment on the Oort Cloud which contains perhaps over a trillion comets.
When Space Changed History. It's death and destruction again, but at least this time there's a relative novelty
of this episode focusing on a bunch of scientific outcasts, a coterie of civilians who are attempting to prove that comets
hit the earth circa 535 A.D., causing a well documented dimming of the sun for well over a year, resulting in the most
severe cooling period our planet has experienced over the past two thousand or so years. The Holocene Working
Impact Group, as the aggregation is known, may not have the imprimatur of well established traditional organizations,
but they're an interesting lot who just might have stumbled onto some fascinating information. There are a number of
other cataclysms explored here (you expected anything less with
The Universe), including the Biblical flood of
Noah and the somewhat similar Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as the extermination of the Clovis Culture and Emperor
Constantine's "vision" which led to his conversion.
