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ABC stargazing
Watching the ABC’s first instalment of Stargazing had me pondering: could they have done better?
The short answer for me was a definite yes.
Greg Quickie aka astro Gandalf had the occasional interesting demonstration, but this was no slick BBC natural history (eg Attenborough) production.
Many sky-shots and time lapse sequences were poor quality, often repeated, amateur like efforts. CG was almost non-existent and went begging on sequences crying out for its use, such as a clearer demonstration of why we have seasons.
While Greg’s demonstration of the scale of the solar system had merit...again is was on the cheap. A coconut, pebbles and berries? Consider this beautiful quote from a 1960’s “Golden” book on the subject: if the earth were the size of a 20 cent piece, the sun would be a 9 foot ball, 1000 feet away.
Dolly back from massive beach ball, pan to Greg headed down the highway on his Harley toward pea sized Pluto. Overlay some CG....introduce the Oort cloud...nearest star...galaxies....that Harley has a way to go....
Also I’d question the monolog use of Mr Quickie for the whole show....particularly when affable characters such as Fred Watson (gosh....a real astronomer! ) could have given more cred to the show.
Sure it was nice to at least have ABC screen an astro show...more the pity Auntie didn’t truly run with it.
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