Deserts moves away from the comfort of the coastline and into the desolate deserts of the Late Cretaceous period. Viewers travel to the deserts of South America, Central Asia, and Northern Africa. While dinosaurs are the primary focus, pterosaurs also feature prominently in the episode. By depicting both predators and prey, life in deserts is presented as an unforgiving yet hopeful experience. The start of the episode follows a gathering of Dreadnoughtus, a genus of titanosaur sauropod, as they prepare for mating season. Their waltz through the heat of the South American desert is breathtaking due to the series ability to make these animals seem massive. Prehistoric Media often neglects to include scale for animals like sauropods, instead stating their dimensions and leaving it at that. Prehistoric Planet makes them feel titanic, however. Each step they take almost reverberates through the screen, building an intense feeling of grandiose and intensity for their every motion. Seeing a flock of birds land on top of one's back makes them seem even more massive, helping to remind the audience that dinosaurs like Dreadnoughtus were indeed giants that would dwarf even the largest modern life forms. While bringing them to life has proven cumbersome in the past, Prehistoric Planet excels at immersing the audience in the sauropods presence. The first thing to note is their appearance. With muddy-brown skin adorned with yellow spots, Prehistoric Planet's Tarbosaurus are not just marvelous to look at, but also quite different from the series depiction of Tyrannosaurus. While you'd think that this is nothing special, unique appearances for closely related dinosaurs is often a rarity in dinosaur documentaries. Two of my favourite dinosaur docuseries, Walking with Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Park, fall victim to this principle.
2 Reviews
Cretacious Citation Needed
owen-watts25 September 2022
Gracefully departing the series at this point, I think. I adore Attenborough and I'll happily watch anything with him in, but this sub-Walking With series rubbed me up the wrong way. The photography is beautiful and the CG is impressive, but it's so wedded to replicating the "Planet Earth" formula that in a lot of cases a severe case of uncanny valley ends up plaguing it and spoiling the fun. I know that the palaeontological research behind the series is rigorous and extensive, but I couldn't quite shake the nagging "but HOW do you know this exactly?" I wanted to see more scientist talking heads. In a nature series, seeing is believing, but here (and for me particularly) it isn't quite.
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