Product: Future Is Wild [VHS]
Rating: 4.0
Sound science, CGI a bit lacking
I watched this program and wrote a review of its scientific principles for a college assignment. Honestly, I'm surprised by how many reviews suggest that the creatures presented are too "fantastic" to have evolved from living forms in 200 million years. If you've ever studied what earth looked like 200 million years -ago-, it really is not all that fantastic...in fact, I was surprised things didn't change -more-.The scientific principles behind this are very sound. The scientists creating this series looked at existing diversity of life forms and adaptations that exist today, and projected future continental drift and climate change to see what the world of 5, 100, or 200 million years from now would look like. The phyla that inherit the future Earth are molluscs and arthropods, currently the most taxonomically dominant and diverse groups on the planet today. They have very successful body forms, and it did not surprise me to see them largely take over the land from tetrapod forms in 200 million years. Especially in the harsh conditions of a worldwide supercontinental desert after a mass extinction, it's no surprise that tetrapods don't last. We and our four-legged kin aren't as well-suited to that sort of environment as other organisms are.In addition, specific episodes focus on different evolutionary and ecological mechanisms. "Tropical Antarctica" discusses evolutionary radiation and coevolution in an isolated environment. "Flooded World" looks at symbiosis and mutualism. "Waterland" examines parental care mechanisms, and each episode of the "Ice World" series at 5 million years from now looks at evolution of animals to adapt to a rapidly changing ice age climate.The only thing I can really criticize is the CGI. The effort in this series was obviously put into scientific accuracy rather than stunning visuals. I've seen better CGI out of movies ten years older than this. Something I found annoying, but actually slightly humorous was that they would use the same CGI multiple times to describe a single organism, but mirrored or with a different color filter, and apparently expected no one to notice.Of course, the point of this series was not the CGI, it was the science, so it only loses one star for that. That and the names of organisms are a bit fanciful, like deathgleaners and sharkopaths, but again, that's not the point of the series. In addition, not all questions about specific organisms are explained, but I imagine that to be the nature of a 25-minute program rather than a flaw in the science.Although we won't be able to start judging it as accurate or inaccurate for 5 million years (and I highly doubt humans will be around that long, honestly, at least not in our current form), it does present realistic and well-thought-out possibilities. I think this program would be an excellent discussion-starter for a class on evolution, ecology, or organismal diversity. I doubt that in 200 million years, we'll see the skies populated by "flish" as seen in the film. At the very least they'll look a lot more realistic! But it is certainly a possibility, and well-justified by scientific knowledge. And that's the whole idea.