• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Animal Planet "Dragons"???

DangerousBeliefs

Graduate Poster
DangerousBeliefs
Joined
Aug 25, 2003
Messages
1,299
Ok, it sounds great that they're showing "Dragons"... a scientific "what if" about dragons and how they may have actually lived... but how about a few minutes at the beginning letting people know... NONE OF THIS IS BASED ON REALITY?!?
 
It was totally presented as if this were real. My 9 yr old was really disappointed when I told her it wasn't. She is still bummed.
 
We know that dino bones got peoples' imaginations going about "dragons" in the first place. They became stuff of legends and heros.


I went to the their site:

http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/dragons/index.html

They want to explore the "myths". I don't see them misleading anybody.

They explain how they are made to look in the movies etc.

When they get to the questions "are they real?" they say they are not convinced they ever were. That's not the point of the show though.


In the title it says "fantasy made real".

On the program they say "they're animals WE'VE breathed life into"

On the site they explain how they've made their different types of dragons from mythical stories and how. There are flying dragons, and underwater dragons.

I think this can be made into a great lesson on critical thinking for children.

They've tried to make myths and make them real for us, to match our imaginations with what they can now do with special effects. Were they close? Did they do a good job?

We know dragons exist in myths. Let's take a look at them all. That's all. My children are enjoying the site immensely.

My son does keep repeating "but they're not real". I let him know that "yes, they are not real, but it's neat how we can use things to make them look real in movies and on TV".

I told him about movies about dragons and dinosaurs when I was a kid, and how fake and mechanical they were. The stories are even better when they look more real, because then you can get caught up in the story without the distraction of the mechanically fake looking character in it.

It's also neat how we can get our imaginations out for others to look at as well. It's not real, but it's nice to share with others what we can dream up. We all love and appreciate good entertainment. This program is for entertainment purposes and to explore the dragon myths throughout human history.
 
Eos of the Eons said:
This program is for entertainment purposes and to explore the dragon myths throughout human history.
Click to expand...

My point is that they went out of their way to not mention this.

In fact, you point out that they say that on their website... they certainly didn't through much of the show.

I also enjoyed it BUT imagine not going to their site... or not catching the couple of minutes where they sort of explain this is all fantasy... there are no bodies, etc. etc.

"Fantasy made real" can be taken two different ways.

For a channel which supposedly presents the facts about animals... they did cartwheels to present this as fuzzy fact.
 
I didn't go to the site but caught most of the show. My daughter kept saying "but they said they found the remains of dragons." This was totally represented as real from the get-go.
 
Nope, I didn't see the show at all, and don't get it, so it looks like I can't offer any opinion on the show.

Wasn't "Fantasy Made Real" appearing in the title though? It does on the show stuff on their site. They want it to appear real in the show don't they?

I'd love to see what they were doing about "finding remains" on the show. On the site they are saying they want to make people believe...

So you all are saying they did manage to try to come across as making most of it seem real? And DangerousBeliefs IS saying that you needed to catch their "admission" it wasn't real on small bits of the show.

On the site they wanted to have fun and present the myths as "real" as possible.

Like I said, it would be a great way to get kids to think critically...they do admit in the show it's not real, and to keep that in mind, but also enjoy their presentation of the myths to make the dragons real to us. They were successful? I think they would be pleased to hear that they were successful in getting people to ask as they are here.

This is a show that explores the human myths, and wants to make them a reality. It is not a show exploring "why dragons aren't real".

Do we expect more from Animal Planet? You can write to them how you feel if you do feel a bit let down. I'm sure there's a link to email them on the site.

My kids enjoyed the site, and I'd love to show them the whole show as well, with my comments about how they are having fun trying to make the myths come alive for us. I've enjoyed the benefit of coming across the site first, thanks to you guys :)
 
So, was there anything about how sea horses were rumoured to be baby dragons by the Japanese?

And isn't it funny how in the Chinese zodiac the dragon is the only fictional animal on the whole wheel?

Actually, the dino bones are also being scrutinized as being the things that spawned such legendary creatures as gryphons and even humanoid giants.
 
I am unfortunately going to have to reply on this subject. This entire show pretty well ruined my day. This show used the quote "Now that we've established dragons scientifically..." WHAAAAAA???? "With the help of their autopsy, scientists have found evidence..." WHHHHHAAAAAA!

The show presented far too much as fact, and as we all know, skeptics and logical people are not often the majority. I am convinced that there will be children who will grow up to believe that dragons were in fact real, because Patrick Stewart told them so.

The show even attempted to make us feel bad for causing the extinction of the poor mythical creatures. :( awww.

Should we expect more from Animal Planet? Yes. Showing animals might be nice. But considering they're showing their Animal X week next week, searching for yeti and so forth, I guess we don't get the option of responsibility.

I assume the Biography channel will next be presenting the life and hardships of Woody Woodpecker, ESPN will review higlights of my recent game of MADDEN 2005 for my playstation, and The History Channel will show how Marty McFly changed history not once but 3 times with his Delorian.

It angers me enough that the discovery channel often makes up fable like stories for 3D rendered dinosaurs, emotions and friendships attached, but at least those creatures existed.

All I can say is that it makes me sad. Shouldn't this crap be on the Sci Fi Channel?
 
I haven't seen the show in question but I don't think it is a big deal.

Sometimes you can learn quite a bit from material that is not intended to be really serious. One really nice example is Mash's How to Keep Dinosaurs that is written as hobbyist guide for dinosaur rising. It is one of the funniest books I've ever read and it actually contains a lot of real information about the great lovable lizards. If somebody just translated it into Finnish, I could give it to my nieces as a birthday present.
 
I thought about the "reality" angle quite a bit during the show. Just curious about reactions from any true scientists here, but it seems like the examination procedures were on a par with LAPD's handling of the evidence in the OJ Simpson case.

I actually laughed when they used a T-square to measure the length of the broken sword bit they extracted from the dragon's stomach, because they used the wrong end of the ruler!

The only thing that really irritated me was the huge logo in the corner of the screen, that only went off a few seconds before the commercial.
 
I don't actually have anything to say about this subject. I just wanted to show off my new dragon avator. This is one of my favorite works by my husband. You can see more of his work at markclarkson.com if you're interested. He's particularly found of doing space scenes for those who prefer sci-fi art.

Sorry for the interruption of the normal flow of this thread.

Beth
 
I’ve been very disappointed in “Animal Planet” at time and this was one of them. What a great opportunity to educate about the history and mythological origins of dragons but they took the WOO-WOO path instead
 
DangerousBeliefs said:
Ok, it sounds great that they're showing "Dragons"... a scientific "what if" about dragons and how they may have actually lived... but how about a few minutes at the beginning letting people know... NONE OF THIS IS BASED ON REALITY?!?
Click to expand...

The title say's "A fantasy made real" or something to that effect. I suppose that, yes, you could claim that they don't make the disclaimer 'This is pretend" every 5 minutes, but, somehow, I don't think my son would have enjoyed watching it nearly as much. Suspension of disbelief is pretty basic to the enjoyment of any entertainment. I don't see any need to stick a pin in the balloon over and over and over when it is obvious that the makers were not trying to fool anyone.
 
kedo1981 said:
I’ve been very disappointed in “Animal Planet” at time and this was one of them. What a great opportunity to educate about the history and mythological origins of dragons but they took the WOO-WOO path instead
Click to expand...



How? They didn't say they were real. Don't you get it? It was a big "what if?" If the legends are true dragons would have to obey physical laws. The show just was about what they would be like had they existed. I question the feasibility of hydrogen gas lift bladders though. They may have done the math, but I picture an animal that holds enough gas to help with flight to look much more balloon-like. It takes quite a bit of hydrogen to lift anything.

The only thing that bugged me was the heavy handed "All cultures had dragons." No, many cultures had large lizards and snake-like animals. They also had other mythological creatures. Just the reptile ones are close to other reptile ones because reptiles look so much alike. As far as I know only European dragons breathed fire. Some Middle Ages' mythology dragons were small to. About the size of a Komodo monitor lizard. But with wings and fire breathing. Now if all cultures had griffins, Anubus god, Krishna, Medusa etc. then they could make a point about being so much alike.


I liked the show, but an obvious disclaimer might be nice. Probably most people aren't dumb enough to be fooled though.
 
SkepticJ said:

I liked the show, but an obvious disclaimer might be nice. Probably most people aren't dumb enough to be fooled though.
Click to expand...

I just found out that my niece, 11 yrs old, was very excited to "learn" that scientists actually found remains of real dragons!!!! She saw the show and has been talking about it since. She was very disappointed when her grandma broke the news. Oh, she isn't "dumb" either - just a normal kid, and like most normal kids who saw the show she believed what they presented as real.
 
Most people should know that it wasn't real, but the Adult Swim message board would indicate otherwise. It's not exactly a bastion of intelligence anyway.
 
Animal planet has a series of these make believe things, there is another one on animals a million or years ahead in evolution. One featured a giant spider that raised mice to use as bait for lager prey. The web extended like metal wires across a big canyon.

I thought it was well done and a fun way to teach some underlying scientific concepts. They work a lot of real science into the project and they kid's interest in a world of PS2 and Xbox gaming.

Better than that Earthsea thing Sci-fi channel had. Yuck. And I like fantasy.
 
Barbrae said:
I just found out that my niece, 11 yrs old, was very excited to "learn" that scientists actually found remains of real dragons!!!! She saw the show and has been talking about it since. She was very disappointed when her grandma broke the news. Oh, she isn't "dumb" either - just a normal kid, and like most normal kids who saw the show she believed what they presented as real.
Click to expand...

So, are you blaming a TV channel for disappointing your relatives because it wasn't made clear enough to them that it was only pretend?
Kids watch TV. They believe in something. They learn otherwise. Life goes on.
Some people don't just leave it to the TV to teach their kids things; they use it as an opportunity to explore what is real and what is not, themselves.
 
Kopji said:
Animal planet has a series of these make believe things, there is another one on animals a million or years ahead in evolution. One featured a giant spider that raised mice to use as bait for lager prey. The web extended like metal wires across a big canyon.

I thought it was well done and a fun way to teach some underlying scientific concepts. They work a lot of real science into the project and they kid's interest in a world of PS2 and Xbox gaming.

Better than that Earthsea thing Sci-fi channel had. Yuck. And I like fantasy.
Click to expand...

Oh nevermind. Kopji got it. As usual.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom