Cosmos - Carl Sagan

Starring:JaromÃr HanzlÃk, Jonathan Fahn, Robert H. Goddard
Director: Adrian Malone
Studio: COSMOS STUDIOS
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
When Cosmos was first broadcast in 1980, our world--and the context of Carl Sagan's eloquent "personal journey"--was a different place. The late Dr. Sagan would be pleased to witness the cooling of the cold war, the continued exploration of space, and ongoing efforts to curb our destructive dependence on fossil fuels. For Sagan's series is far more than a guided tour through "billions and billions" of stars and galaxies. It remains a profound plea for the unity of humankind, for the recognition that "we are a way for the universe to know itself," with an obligation to know our origin, our place in the universe, and our future potential.

In the course of 13 fascinating hours, Cosmos spans its own galaxy of topics to serve Sagan's theme, each segment deepening our understanding of how we got from there (simple microbes in the primordial mud) to here (space-faring civilization in the 21st century). In his "ship of the imagination," Sagan guides us to the farthest reaches of space and takes us back into the history of scientific inquiry, from the ancient library of Alexandria to the NASA probes of our neighboring planets. Upon this vast canvas Sagan presents the "cosmic calendar," placing the 15-billion-year history of the universe into an accessible one-year framework, then filling it with a stunning chronology of events, both interstellar and earthbound.

From the lives of the stars, to creation theories, functions of the human brain, and the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Cosmos asks big questions. When appropriate, Sagan offers big answers, or asks still bigger--and yes, even spiritual--questions at the boundaries of science and religion. What's most remarkable about Cosmos is that it remains almost entirely fresh, with few updates needed to the science that Sagan so passionately celebrates. It is no exaggeration to say that Cosmos--for all the debate it may continue to provoke--is a vital document for humanity at a pivotal crossroads of our history. --Jeff Shannon
Description
Complete Landmark TV Series - 13 One Hour Episodes

Amazon.com

When Cosmos was first broadcast in 1980, our world--and the context of Carl Sagan's eloquent "personal journey"--was a different place. The late Dr. Sagan would be pleased to witness the cooling of the cold war, the continued exploration of space, and ongoing efforts to curb our destructive dependence on fossil fuels. For Sagan's series is far more than a guided tour through "billions and billions" of stars and galaxies. It remains a profound plea for the unity of humankind, for the recognition that "we are a way for the universe to know itself," with an obligation to know our origin, our place in the universe, and our future potential.

In the course of 13 fascinating hours, Cosmos spans its own galaxy of topics to serve Sagan's theme, each segment deepening our understanding of how we got from there (simple microbes in the primordial mud) to here (space-faring civilization in the 21st century). In his "ship of the imagination," Sagan guides us to the farthest reaches of space and takes us back into the history of scientific inquiry, from the ancient library of Alexandria to the NASA probes of our neighboring planets. Upon this vast canvas Sagan presents the "cosmic calendar," placing the 15-billion-year history of the universe into an accessible one-year framework, then filling it with a stunning chronology of events, both interstellar and earthbound.

From the lives of the stars, to creation theories, functions of the human brain, and the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Cosmos asks big questions. When appropriate, Sagan offers big answers, or asks still bigger--and yes, even spiritual--questions at the boundaries of science and religion. What's most remarkable about Cosmos is that it remains almost entirely fresh, with few updates needed to the science that Sagan so passionately celebrates. It is no exaggeration to say that Cosmos--for all the debate it may continue to provoke--is a vital document for humanity at a pivotal crossroads of our history. --Jeff Shannon

Description

Complete Landmark TV Series - 13 One Hour Episodes

I: The Shores Of the Cosmos
II: One Voice In the Cosmic Fugue
III: The Harmony Of the Worlds
IV: Heaven and Hell
V: Blues For A Red Planet
VI: Travellers' Tales
VII: The Backbone of Night
VIII: Travels In Space and Time
IX: The Lives Of the Stars
X: The Edge Of Forever
XI: The Persistence Of Memory
XII: Encyclopedia Galactica
XIII: Who Speaks For Earth?

Customer Reviews:

The Cosmos, 20-some years later..........2007-07-06

It feels like billions of years (sorry, I couldn't resist) since I watched this on PBS. I was in 8th grade and remember all the ballyhoo surrounding the production--the (at the time) state-of-the-art special effects, the huge budget, etc. I also recall the series getting slammed by some critics--"an intellect's version of Star Wars," I recall one saying. In particular, they had a hard time with Sagan flying around the universe inside a dandelion seed. If you've never seen the series before, yes, you read that right, and yes, it looks as silly as it sounds.

How does it hold up all these years later? Well, the weaknesses are still weaknesses, the strengths are still strengths. Sagan flying around the universe in his corduroy suit and turtleneck sweater, grinning broadly at the passing special effects, gets tedious. So does the wispy, New-Agey Vangelis music. Sometimes the show is over-produced--and over-acted, a strange criticism to level in a documentary, but it's true. I've read that Sagan and series director Adrian Malone clashed during the shooting, apparently because Malone couldn't find a lens wide enough to frame Sagan's ego. It often shows. (Sagan, for his part, claims Malone was trying to make him "look bad." Uh-huh.) This is as much a vanity trip for the author as it is a journey through the Cosmos.

But what a journey nevertheless. The airline tickets alone must have cost a fortune. We travel to Egypt and Greece and Italy and Germany and England and France and all sorts of other places. And this was in an era where airfares were substantially higher than today. It'd be hard to fund something this ambitious nowadays.

The program is partly a rap session for Sagan. He calls it "A Personal Voyage." Sometimes he wanders, undisciplined, and what he wants us to take away at the end of an episode is not entirely clear. Other times he seems to be trying to sooth his own guilty conscience. It wasn't known at the time, but since Sagan has died we've learned that at the height of the cold war in the late 50s the U.S. military played with the idea of detonating a nuclear bomb on the moon to demonstrate our might to the Soviets. Most scientists refused to have anything to do with the project. One who seriously considered being a part of it was a young Carl Sagan. I'm sure it's a part of his career he later wished he could do over. (Incidentally, he claimed he favored the project in order to learn more about the composition of the moon from the lunar dust that would have been thrown up, a claim he criticizes when Edwin Teller makes it as his own rationalization of the project--see the chapter "When Scientists Know Sin" from his book, The Demon-Haunted World.)

More than that, though, what one takes away from this series is the great joy of learning. This is wonder for wonder's sake, not to get better gadgets or cooler electronics, which is where the layman's interest in science (or "science and technology" as it's now generally called, which is short on science and long on technology) has gone. Over and over again Sagan stresses that when the wonder of learning is replaced with tyranny, with a fixation on the bottom-line fetishism, or with an uneducated populace, the results are ruinous for any civilization, no matter how big it is or how long it's been around. It's not a bad lesson to re-learn today. Some reviewers below me have dismissingly described Sagan's views here as "80s humanism." Aside from wondering how they could be anything but "80s views" since the show was made in the 80s, I'm wondering exactly what's so terrible about humanism. And although I (and others) have ribbed Sagan for his dramatic persona and sometimes outright hamminess, who since has popularized science so, with a strange combination of boyish wonder and movie-star charisma? Sagan was once so mainstream he used to appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. What scientist has Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien ever interviewed?

There are some things to have reservations about: Sagan has a nasty habit of mixing fact and theory, without acknowledging it. His version of the fall of the Great Library at Alexandria, for example, is only one of several. The truth is, few people know exactly how that august structure was destroyed. Much of Sagan's talk about the possibility of life elsewhere is ridiculously speculative. And he just flat out errs when discussing how the nose fell off the Sphinx--that it fell off through erosion was well known even when the series was made.

Some highlights, such as Sagan's visit to that library at Alexandria, his teaching a group of Brooklyn 6th graders (note the wonder in their eyes), or his story of how Champollion deciphered hieroglyphics, are utterly fascinating. (Champollion is not as well-known as he should be--we almost single-handedly owe what we know of ancient Egyptian society to his work.) There are wonderful stories about history, geography, science, scandal, religion and the birth and death of the universe in these 13 episodes, and since they're on DVD, you can fast-forward through all the pretentious "spaceship of the imagination" parts.

But that presentation on DVD is one of the issues I have with this set. As others have pointed out, these 13 one-hour episodes are spread across SEVEN single-layer discs. They soak up about six precious inches on my video shelf, whereas they could have been made to occupy about two. I don't know why the people who put out these things think we'll be more inclined to shell out big bucks if it comes in a big package. A few episodes contain updates from ten years later, but overall there's no reason to believe this couldn't be put on four double-layered discs, each in a slim-line case.

Picture and sound are about what you'd expect for 80s television. This was a fun nostalgia trip, and I relearned some things I'd forgotten. Owning the whole set is surely not for everyone, but episodes definitely worth at least a rental, especially in an age that gives less and less respect to scientists and the scientific method, and looks up to mystical mumbo jumbo instead.

(Piece of trivia to wow 'em at nerdy parties: the recording of the brainwaves he mentions on the Voyager spacecraft record are those of his wife, Ann Druyan. And you can really wow them if you mention that her name is actually pronounced "Dree-yan.")

The perfect compendium of knowledge..........2007-07-05

I don't need to tell you how great a man Carl Sagan was. His reputation speaks for itself: he was an astronomer, mathematician, professor -- a man of many talents. Perhaps the thing he is best remembered for is popularizing science, and he did that to great effect on this television series.

Not an expert in the matter of planetary science? Never heard of an astronomer named Aritostenes or a great library in a city called Alexandria? Know nothing about natural selection or the Darwinian theory of evolution? None of that matters. "Cosmos" has something to offer everybody, from the beginning novice to the professional astronomer. It isn't all about astronomy, either; find here a collection of knowledge of such topics ranging from the big bang and the fate of the universe to the origin of life on our own planet Earth. There are even several history lessons: in the very first episode, "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean," Sagan shows the viewer the history of the now-defunct Library of Alexandria, once a monument to human knowledge. Another episode is by and large a biography of Johannes Kepler and his association with Tycho Brahe. Almost every topic in modern science is covered.

I will admit the quality of the picture and sound is a bit low. This series was filmed in the early 1980s, and it shows. But having picture and sound quality is not a reason for watching "Cosmos," plain and simple. I am a student at university opting for a degree in physics and mathematics, and I was thoroughly impressed at the excellent technical demonstrations and explanations found here. I learned many things I didn't know before. It's a testament to Carl Sagan and company that one can watch "Cosmos" almost thirty years after it was first broadcast and come away from it profoundly touched. It speaks to Sagan's natural affinity for teaching, and it is the reason I consider him such a hero.

Buy "Cosmos." I promise you won't be sorry.

An Understanding of the Universe........2007-06-09

There were two major Public Television science series produced some 30 years ago which profoundly affected my understanding and shaped me philosophicly as a person. The first was the magnificent series by the late Jacob Bronowski: "The Ascent of Man," and the second was this mind-boggling series "Cosmos" by the late Carl Sagan. The science is remarkably accurate for it's time, and is presented in such a way that most any human being with average intelligence can comprehend it. I was in my 30's when this first came out on PBS, and could easily watch it with the kids. Sagan's power to communicate to all of us was his greatest gift. His passion motivated a whole generation of new scientists of the Universe, and enlightened millions of us. Sagan caused us to dream of a better place, and our place in it.
Dr. Sagan speaks to us today. He proposes a dark theory about the future of our technical civilization, in that the reason we may have not discovered any other highly advanced planets, is that they may have already self-destructed. He could see it coming with ourselves, from global warming to the proliferation of "Weapons of Mass Destruction."

Great Series (Bad Copy).......2007-06-08

I enjoyed Carl Segan and the Cosmos Series when it first played in the 80's so naturally I jumped at the chance of get my own copy. I checked the specs and was reasured by the Re-mastered statement that it would be high quality video. Boy was I disappointed upon playing the DVD's. It was a major disappointment to find that this set looked like a very poor reproduction cheapo copy.

Cosmos how could you defraud us fans like this.

Bruce in Kansas City

EXCELENTE.......2007-05-08

EXCELENTE, es una obra maestra de la creacion, se entiende absolutamente todo lo que Carl explica, hacia mucho tiempo que lo queria conseguir.Totalmente RECOMENDABLE

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