You all caught this right?
I was a bit disappointed by the first episode of the new COSMOS series, (That Big Bang explosion looked more like ‘Otto blew up the white phosphorus factory again’ then the Beginning Of Everything. And the Cosmic Calender? Groan! Can’t we have newer more creative metaphor?) but did you notice Neil deGrasse Tyson
looks a lot like Isaac the Bartender from The Love Boat?
“While you’re explaining the Higgs boson to the masses as we pass Saturn, I’d like a Fuzzy Navel, please!”
Added:
I sent the following as an email to our Glorious Blogmistress and she asked me to repost it here! Enjoy!
Thinking it through a bit more, I’m even more disappointed in COSMOS.
We’ve now seen more interesting footage, REAL footage mind you, not stills, of some of the planets than their animators made.
The whole thing felt wheezy. Nothing fresh! Bruno looked like Space Jesus as seen by Pixar. (“Goy Story”?)
Unlike in Sagan’s day, we’ve had 30+ years of looking at some hellfire explosions from Hollywood, so the bar is pretty high. They seemed to be going through the motions. (personal fav? At the end of Broken Arrow, John Travolta 1.) wins a brawl with Christian Slater but is 2.) impaled by a cruise missile in 3.) the middle of an exploding fireball in 4.) the middle of a train wreck! Now THAT’s what I’m talkin’ about!)
Even worse the whole thing is produced/written by Brannon Braga, most famous for his work — 25 years ago now — on Star Trek:The Next Generation. Some of the COSMOS tracking shots and camera angles(!) looked like NextGen! Which would be fine if this were 1988, but hey, can’t we do new?
Ambiance 
Icepick said,
March 10, 2014 at 3:32 pm
I recorded it but haven’t watched it yet. I don’t mind that he started with the cosmic calendar. It’s kind of a hoary old idea, but only if you’ve seen it before!
I am kind of wondering why they decided to do it. Is it to be updated from a production values standpoint (in which case it sounds lilke they may have missed), from a stylistic standpoint, or from a scientific standpoint?
Or maybe de Grasse Tyson is simply going to do it sober, instead of wandering around the set looking stoned out of his mind, which is what Sagan did. (When Cosmos first aired, I didn’t realize Sagan’s look of wonder was the look of a man who would be having a savage attack of the munchies in about ten minutes. In my defense, I was only twelve at the time!)
wj said,
March 11, 2014 at 11:01 pm
It wasn’t half bad, I thought.
But what really hit me that it was a show about science, and yet it was on the “creation science” channel. And even started with an intro by President Obama. How did Fox ever let that sneak through???