"Cosmos" Is Coming / Episode Guide
Hit Parade
Cosmos Studios debuts enhanced 2000 release of Carl Sagan's Cosmos
September 28, 2000
One of the most awe-inspiring TV series ever produced, Cosmos will finally make
its long-awaited appearance on DVD as a Collector's Edition boxed set, courtesy
of Cosmos Studios.
Cosmos is the story of how the human species came to establish its coordinates
in space and time. A seamless blend of solid intellectual content combined with
potent emotional and spiritual uplift, Cosmos
was a global phenomenon that transcended every conceivable demographic. Some
600 million people in more than 60 countries have seen the show since it
originally aired 20 years ago -- making it arguably the most popular science
program ever produced. This vast international audience can now let their
children experience the inspiration of Cosmos -- and impressively, after twenty
of the most
eventful years in the history of science, it requires virtually no revisions
and has proven to be strikingly prophetic.
Cosmos Studio presents The Collector's Edition of Cosmos in a digitally
restored and enhanced version of the original thirteen hours on 7 discs. It
contains updates by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan as well
as science bulletins and an array of new astronomical images.
Keeping its attention on the international audience, the new edition is
playable on any DVD player on earth. It contains seven different subtitle
language selections French, Italian, German, Spanish,
Mandarin, Japanese, English (for the hearing impaired) and features newly
re-mixed Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround audio. The DVD also contains a Dolby
Digital Music and Effects track.
Cosmos Studios plans to have Cosmos available sometime in November.
The suggested retail price is $169.95.
Note: This summary is taken directly from the videotape sleeves.
EPISODE 1: THE SHORES OF THE COSMIC OCEAN
From the shores of the great ocean of space, Carl Sagan embarks on an immense
cosmic journey which begins 8 billion light years from Earth. Aboard his
spaceship of the imagination, he takes us to the wonders of the Cosmos:
quasars, spiral galaxies, star clusters, supernovas, and pulsars. We then glide
past Pluto, the rings of Uranus, the majestic Saturn system, and the lightning
on the night side of Jupiter. Piercing the clouds of Earth, we find ourselves
in Egypt where Eratosthenes first measured the size of the Earth. Dr. Sagan
shows us how it was done. The Alexandrian Library, the seat of learning of the
ancient world, comes back to life in all its glory - to illustrate the
fragility of knowledge. Sagan then introduces the "Cosmic Calendar" to make
comprehensible the vast expanse of time from the Big Bang to the present.
EPISODE 2: ONE VOICE IN THE COSMIC FUGUE
How did life on Earth begin? Are there other kinds of beings on other worlds?
Carl Sagan explores the origin, evolution, and diversity of life on Earth. With
stunning computer animation, we enter the heart of a living cell to examine
DNA, the master molecule of life. To understand how evolution occurs, Dr. Sagan
follows the story of the Japanese Heki crab, whose form has been gradually
changed as people selected which crabs should live and which should die. We
witness laboratory experiments on the early steps that led to the origin of
life. Spectacular animation sequences trace human evolution from one-celled
organisms in the primitive ocean. Creatures on other planets, if any, must
evolve to fit their alien environments. Dr. Sagan gives us a speculative look
at the "hunters," "floaters," and "sinkers" that might possibly exist in the
atmosphere of a Jupiter-like planet.
EPISODE 3: THE HARMONY OF THE WORLDS
All over the world, our ancestors in every culture taught themselves astronomy.
Their lives quite literally depended on it. But the human journey from the
earliest astronomers to the modern explorers of the Cosmos detoured into a
pseudo-science called astrology. The last scientific astrologer was also the
modern astronomer: Johannes Kepler. Kepler struggled to find a harmony in the
heavens, and made the critical step to move us into the scientific age. His
secret was an uncompromising respect for observations of the heavens, even
when, agonizingly, they conflicted with his most deeply cherished beliefs.
Kepler's insights taught us how the Moon and planets move in their orbits, and
ultimately, how to voyage to them.
EPISODE 4: HEAVEN AND HELL
In 1908, in Siberia, a mysterious explosion rocked the landscape, felling trees
for miles and making a sound heard around the world. Did a mini-black hole hit
the Earth? Did an extraterrestrial spacecraft suffer a nuclear accident? Carl
Sagan examines the evidence and concludes that the Earth was hit by a small
comet. A model of the solar system shows how other planets must have suffered
similar impacts. Was the planet Venus once a giant comet, as Immanuel
Velikovsky claimed? No, concludes Dr. Sagan, the evidence does not support the
claim. We embark on a descent through the hellish atmosphere of Venus to
explore its broiling surface - heated by the greenhouse effect. The fate of
Venus may be a cautionary tale for our world. Dr. Sagan urges a wise and
protective stewardship of the fragile blue planet Earth.
EPISODE 5: BLUES FOR A RED PLANET
Mars has fascinated humans for centuries, in science fiction and in science.
Carl Sagan takes us to the observatory Percival Lowell built in Arizona to
study the Martian "canals" which Lowell believed were built by a dying
civilization. In our time, two Viking spacecraft have landed on Mars. Dr. Sagan
shows us the Viking Lander and demonstrates the marvelous machinery that sent
thousands of pictures and other measurements back to Earth. In exploring the
stunning landscapes of the red planet, Viking found no canals, no artifacts, no
intelligent Martians. The question of microbial life, past or present, remains
open. But humans someday might unlock the water frozen in the polar caps. Then
there will be Martians - visitors and eventually homesteaders from the planet
Earth.
EPISODE 6: TRAVELLERS' TALES
Only three hundred years ago, Holland first sent vessels halfway around the
world, assembling knowledge of our planet. Today, spacecraft have been sent to
all the other planets known to our ancestors. Carl Sagan takes us inside the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory to compare the exhilaration of a sailing ship voyage
of exploration with the excitement of scientists witnessing the first close-up
images of Jupiter's moons, taken by the Voyager spacecraft. Following in
Voyager's path, Dr. Sagan's spaceship of the imagination takes us through the
rings of Saturn, and into the thick atmosphere of Titan, rich in organic
matter. After examining Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the Voyager
spacecraft will ply forever the great sea of interstellar space.
EPISODE 7: THE BACKBONE OF NIGHT
What are the stars? There was a time when curious humans imagined stars to be
campfires in the sky, held up by magic, or thought of the Milky Way as the
"Backbone of Night." On the Greek island of Samos, 2,300 years ago, a man named
Aristarchus suggested that the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of the
solar system. He was the beneficiary of a 200-year old tradition, now largely
forgotten, in which natural laws, not capricious gods, govern the universe. In
Pythagoras's cave on Samos, Carl Sagan also finds a very different side of
Greek thought, the mystical world guarded by a scholarly priesthood that worked
to conceal its knowledge from the people. The birth of scientific thinking in
our civilization and within ourselves is the theme of this episode. Dr. Sagan
travels back to the Brooklyn neighborhood where he himself first began to
grapple with the study of the universe.
EPISODE 8: TRAVELS IN SPACE AND TIME
The stars in the Cosmos are more numerous than all the grains of sand on all
the beaches of the Earth. If we could watch the sky for millions of years,
constellations would change shape as their stars move and evolve. With Carl
Sagan we circle around the Big Dipper to see it from a new perspective. In a
time machine, we explore what would happen if the past could be altered. We
travel to the planets of other stars. We retrace the teen-age Albert Einstein's
reverie about traveling on a beam of light; his theory of relativity predicts
strange effects that arise from travel near the speed of light, but it would
offer space explorers the chance to journey within a single lifetime to the
center of the Galaxy. They would return, however, to an Earth much older than
the one they left.
EPISODE 9: THE LIVES OF THE STARS
To make an apple pie from scratch, we must first invent the universe. Most of
the atoms in our bodies were made inside the stars. "We are star stuff." With
computer animation and stunning astronomical art, stars are shown as they are
born, live, and die. Carl Sagan follows the origin and nature of black holes,
objects with such strong gravities that light cannot escape from them. The
"last perfect day" on Earth is portrayed, 5 billion years from now, after which
the Sun, entering its red giant stage, will reduce the Earth to a charred
cinder. We witness the exploration of distant stars which make cosmic rays that
produce mutations in the beings of Earth. In the deepest sense, the origin,
evolution, and fate of life on our planet are connected with the evolution of
the Cosmos.
EPISODE 10: THE EDGE OF FOREVER
What is the origin of the universe? What is its fate? Will it continue to
expand forever, or someday collapse upon itself? Carl Sagan explores the time
when stars and galaxies began to form, and shows how in this century humans
discovered the expansion of the universe. We journey to India where an ancient
ceremony celebrates the cycles of nature. Like modern astrophysics, Hindu
mythology speaks of a universe billions of years old, and the possibility of
endless cycles of death and rebirth. Worlds of two and four dimensions are
explored before Dr. Sagan disappears down a black hole. He then takes us to the
plains of New Mexico where 27 giant radio telescopes probe the farthest reaches
of space as astronomers wonder which fate - limitless expansion or endless
oscillation - lies in store for the Cosmos.
EPISODE 11: THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
The human brain is the point of embarkation for all our cosmic journeys. It is
a repository of information, as are the genes which evolved much earlier and
the books which evolved much later. Carl Sagan takes us aboard an oceanic
research vessel to examine one of the other intelligent species with which we
share the planet Earth - the great whales. He then ushers us on a walk through
the human brain to witness the architecture of thought. Dr. Sagan enter the
"brain library" where trillions of bits of information are stored. Something of
the information within our genes, our brains, and our libraries has been
launched into space aboard the Voyager interstellar spacecraft - a message in a
bottle to beings of other epochs and other worlds.
EPISODE 12: ENCYCLOPAEDIA GALACTICA
Carl Sagan examines the persistent reports of extraterrestrial visitors to
Earth and argues that among all the UFO accounts, there are no compelling
anecdotes and no convincing physical evidence. In a re-creation of the
decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, he takes us to Egypt where Jean Francois
Champollion first deciphered the hieroglyphic messages left by an ancient
civilization. The "Rosetta Stone" of interstellar communication, he argues, is
the content of science. The world's largest radio telescope stands able to
receive radio messages sent by alien civilizations anywhere in the Milky Way.
In his spaceship of the imagination, Dr. Sagan allows us to riffle through a
"galactic computer," the repository of data on a million planets of other
stars.
EPISODE 13: WHO SPEAKS FOR EARTH?
This episode is the historic television declaration of the urgent need for a
planetary perspective to meet the madness of the nuclear arms race. In the
past, we made war on one another, rarely appreciating the similarities of all
cultures and peoples of the Earth. But now the planet is in the midst of a
stirring world-wide revolution as it becomes bound up into a single global
community. At the same time, humanity's engines of destruction have become able
to destroy our civilization and, perhaps, our species. The promise of a great
scientific civilization was once destroyed by ignorance and fear, when, in the
5th century, a mob of fanatics razed the great library of Alexandria. We
retrace the 15-billion-year journey from the Big Bang to the present - a planet
Earth infested with 60,000 nuclear weapons. Dr. Sagan argues that our survival
is owed not just to ourselves, our ancestors and our descendants, but also to
that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
clem
originally broadcast) program as badly as the improved Ted Turner
version did (removing 10-15 minutes per hour-long episode), I'll pass.
If they put the additions and enhancements at the end as supplements,
this could be a magnificicent release. If they rethink and re-edit
Sagan's original concept, I hope the dealer I buy the first disc from
will let me return it for a refund (unlike my experience with Sight &
Sound when the laserdisc version was released).
In article <20001001085011...@ng-fd1.aol.com>,
hitp...@aol.com (Hit Parade) wrote:
> http://dvdreview.com/html/news.html
>
> Cosmos Studios debuts enhanced 2000 release of Carl Sagan's Cosmos
>
> September 28, 2000
>
> Cosmos Studio presents The Collector's Edition of Cosmos in a
> digitally restored and enhanced version of the original thirteen
> hours on 7 discs. It contains updates by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
> as well as science bulletins and an array of new astronomical
> images.
--
Best Wishes,
Don Leighty <cl...@a1usa.net>
Turn me on, Redmond. Turn me on, Redmond.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Stan Jensen
>All I can say is that if this enhanced version chops up Sagan's (as
>originally broadcast) program as badly as the improved Ted Turner
>version did (removing 10-15 minutes per hour-long episode), I'll pass.
This DVD was worked on by Ann Druyan, and has been in the works for a
few years now.
dhmac
"clem" <dlei...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8r7vvs$1oq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> All I can say is that if this enhanced version chops up Sagan's (as
> originally broadcast) program as badly as the improved Ted Turner
> version did (removing 10-15 minutes per hour-long episode), I'll pass.
>
> If they put the additions and enhancements at the end as supplements,
> this could be a magnificicent release. If they rethink and re-edit
> Sagan's original concept, I hope the dealer I buy the first disc from
> will let me return it for a refund (unlike my experience with Sight &
> Sound when the laserdisc version was released).
>
>
> In article <20001001085011...@ng-fd1.aol.com>,
> hitp...@aol.com (Hit Parade) wrote:
> > http://dvdreview.com/html/news.html
> >
> > Cosmos Studios debuts enhanced 2000 release of Carl Sagan's Cosmos
> >
> > September 28, 2000
> >
> > Cosmos Studio presents The Collector's Edition of Cosmos in a
> > digitally restored and enhanced version of the original thirteen
> > hours on 7 discs. It contains updates by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
> > as well as science bulletins and an array of new astronomical
> > images.
>