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- A made-up crocodile relative hops around the screen like a frog.
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- Dinosaurs eagerly await mates like singles in a pick-up bar.
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- Delgado’s comic book stories were the inspiration for the Discovery show.
After years of serving dinosaurs to their viewers and getting good ratings, channels such as Discovery and National Geographic are struggling to find a way to continue to produce high-rating dinosaur shows. Last month, Discovery Channel premiered Dinosaur Revolution, a show that had been in production for nearly three years. The 4-part series is based on Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles comic book series and the idea of the show is to let the dinosaurs be the characters, not the scientists or a host. While Discovery’s idea is admirable and daring, the show was a big disappointment, but not because the idea was bad.
The show failed because the program had glaringly low-quality animation and speculated without explanation far beyond the norm for television. Also, the plot was stale and the dinosaur characters are anthropomorphized to such a level that they are entirely annoying.
According to the Discovery Channel’s show description, Dinosaur Revolution combines the talent of the world’s best dinosaur illustrators and animators with the latest paleontological research and the best of Hollywood storytelling.” This show falls flat on all three fronts.
1) The art is not great. The creatures are not credible, and some, such as the green crocodile-like animal that bounces around like a frog in the first episode, are not even real animals.
2) It is true that recent research is reflected in the show, but some of it, such as research suggesting dinosaurs were colorful and probably had mating-related displays was taken to extremes. Why stoop to showing a bevy of female Eoraptors approaching males with their fan-like tails swaying together like the limbs of synchronized swimmers? They might as well have had make-up, mini-skirts, and batting eyelashes.
3) And the story? Give me a break.
This is the worst dinosaur show that I have seen in a long time.
To be fair, producers and artists associated with the show said that some of the sequences and animations were shifted around during post-production without their consent. That’s plausible, but it is sad to see that this is the best Discovery could do, especially when BBC just released its stunning Dinosaur Planet series. For those interested in dinosaur character-driven stories, stick to Delgado’s comic books and skip the show.
—Chris Sloan with Justine Benanty
Cover art for one part of Ricardo Delgado’s “Age of Reptiles”
