Digging Dinosaurs

Cable World, April 10, 2000 by Mike Reynolds

If you dig dinosaurs, then walk toward your TV set April 16. For the second time in a little more than a month, Discovery Channel will go prehistoric, this time with the three-hour miniseries, Walking with Dinosaurs. A co-production of BBC/Discovery Channel/TV Asahi, Walking with Dinosaurs makes its U.S. premiere April 16 from 7-10 p.m. (ET/PT) and repeats from 10-1 a.m.

Using advanced computer animation, state-of-the-art animatronics and the latest scientific findings, Walking with Dinosaurs utilizes filming techniques to depict these creatures as if they were lions, rhinos or monkeys in the wild. The $10 million production also has a fourth hour. On April 17 at 9 p.m., viewers can discover how the mini-series was made with The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs. The hour-long special repeats at midnight April 18.

Dinosaurs comes hard on the giant footprints of Raising the Mammoth, the documentary about the excavation of a preserved wooly mammoth from the permafrost in Siberia. Mammoth scored the highest rating ever for Discovery during its March 12 premiere with a 7.8.

Although Discovery has not pushed the promotional pump as hard for Dinosaurs as it did for Mammoth, the miniseries generated big numbers when it premiered in the United Kingdom last fall. The first episode notched a 51 share, making it the highest-rated science program in BBC history.

The miniseries spans 155 million years of history and features such familiar species as Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus, whose spiked tail accidentally makes short work of a baby Sauropod. There are also shots of Jurassic Period carnivore kingpin Allosaurus, the 50-ton, five-story-high Brachiosaurus, a herd of migrating Iguanadons and a pack of vicious Utahraptors.

The film also shows how such lesser known dinosaurs as Postosuchus, the lion of the Triassic Period, and Coelophysis, a small, mobile and erect creature that heralded the giants to follow, may have lived and died. There are also mating scenes and bathroom moments, which elicited howls of laughter from my fellow reviewers, my 10-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son.

The miniseries could also be dubbed Flying or Swimming with Dinosaurs. At 60-feet long and weighing over 100 tons, Liopleurodon, the largest marine reptile that ever lived, gets plenty of screen time. Similarly, there are myriad views of Ornithocheirus, whose 40-foot wing span, made it lord of the prehistoric sky.

Eight paleontologists, five of whom speak on screen, worked as scientific advisors to the series, while more than 100 scientific sources were consulted on their specialties.

Walking with Dinosaurs used background locations that were as authentic as possible, including the puzzle forests of Chile, the fern vegetation of New Zealand and the California redwood forest.

Tim Haines was the series producer for the BBC, while Mike Milne, director of computer animation at FrameStore, was in charge of that discipline for Dinosaurs. FrameStore won four Emmys for outstanding special effects for projects like Merlin and Alice in Wonderland,

Milne spoke to the differences of the creatures in Jurassic Park vs. those in the miniseries. "We had a different brief, in a sense. Our dinosaurs didn't have to act. We had to try and get across the character of what sort of animal this was. Is it a herbivore, does it come out at night? We're not obsessed with whether the creatures eat lawyers or whatever," he said. "Where I think we've taken it a little further ahead, I would say on muscular movement and on the detail of the textures."

Relative to the dinosaurs presented in the feature films Jurassic Park or The Lost World, some of the creatures in this miniseries appear to be more detailed than their theatrical counterparts. Close-ups of rib cages, sinew and muscle groups give these TV dinosaurs a realistic texture.

RELATED ARTICLE: Prehistoric Beasts Get April Spotlight

Since kids of all ages seem fascinated by dinosaurs, Discovery Kids is making April Dine-Month.

Discovery Kids is devoting its weekend morning lineup to prehistoric behemoths. On April 15-16, it will air back-to-back episodes of Bonehead Detectives of the Paleoworld, a series that introduces children to the mysteries of this branch of science, it will then break Walking with Dinosaurs down into haft-hour episodes April 22-23, April 29-30 and May 6-7 from 11 a.m. to noon.

In addition to the dinosaur programming, Dine-Month includes a dinosaur trading card game that kids play on-line at discoverykids.com and a sweepstakes running from April 1-May 15 in which winning children and their parents can spend a day with paleontologists at New York's Museum of Natural History. Discovery Kids hosts will quiz museum paleontologists in special segments appealing during the weekend.

There's no shortage of dine merchandise. BBC Worldwide America has inked a deal with Giftware North America to be the importer of Walking with Dinosaurs plush figurines and puzzles related to the miniseries. The book, "Walking with Dinosaurs, a Natural History" is also available.