Reply to: What's happened to "Horizon"?

[hyperD]

[mcquiggd]

Was that the one sponsored by Wipro...?

[hyperD]

Was that the one with the monkey being trained to use a joystick to play "pong" with and they had his brain wired up to another joystick that was being driven by his brainwaves and suddenly, he let go of the joystick and just watched the screen and the second joystick carried on moving playing the "pong" game?

[zeitghost]

Tuesday's episode about the Robot Cars was rather good, in its way, compared with earlier progs.

Still a bit lightweight though.

[zathras]

A good question.

Tuesday's prog was one of the most tedious I've dozed through...

"Are chimps human?"

As narrated by some know nothing non scientific goon.

Who apparently smells like a chimp on the T shirt test.

We need more Horizons like this one; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074206/

[Pinto]

Xogg would have liked the arse on that bonobo...

hehe..good one.

[Troll]

In addition to the dumbed down content, the thing I also find annoying is the over-use of incidental music... every sentence has to have a musical accompaniment which builds up to a crescendo and then repeats ad-infinitum.

Very distracting…

Mind you I caught The Romans on BBC last night for the 1st time... I could not believe it possible to make such a collection of dross.
I had to keep watching in the hope that it couldn't get anyworse & must improve..

it did & it didn't

[OrangeHopper]

Horizon was worth watching in the 70's and 80's but dummed down when it went after the american market.

Last one I actually remember enjoying was Harry Kroto and C60. Had the pleasure of a term's seminars on astro-chemistry from him. His enthusiasm for his subject was infectious. Horizon needs to present more 'hard science' programmes featuring men and women who love their work.

Richard Feynman rules!

[BoredBloke]

"The programme was made with chimps in mind."

Well I quite liked it - I saw it not realising it was horizon and thougt it was more of a programme along the lines of the one where the guy wanted to turn his house into a republic (an idea I had way before the TV prog came about).

From an entertainment point I thought it was ok with some funny lines.

From a science point of view it has a slight bit about animal behaviour, but not much else. Still I thought it was ok. I guess that makes me a chip then. Mind out what I show you my @rse while I chew on this banana.

[Pinto]

The programme was made with chimps in mind. There's no point making a film about chimps, if the chimps themselves are going to find it difficult to grasp.

What do the monkeys' opinion on this board? I suppose you felt left out?

[zathras]

I thought the guy presenting it did drop a few good lines in it. But the point I was making was, if you make it like an Open University programme, you will only get hardcore geeks watching it. You have to dumb it down to attract a bigger audience

I don't think you need to dumb it down, while much of the viewing public see Big Brother and I'm a nobody get me on camera as the hight of their viewing week these same people will have no interest in a science (well except for sociology folks but then they are strange anyway).

Dumb it down too much and you alienate your core audience.

[BoredBloke]

The point he was making was that a fully mature chimp is mare advanced than say a two year old child. They can reason, solve problems, co-operate to complete tasks, communicate with each other and are pretty intelligent. Kind of like chico without the god trappings! Oh and with more intellegence.

What he was saying was given that they portay most of the characteristics which make us human, then why are they not considered so. So the point was put to scientists who each time would agree that chimps did show the characteristics but would not go far enough to say that they were human.

[sasguru]

I thought the guy presenting it did drop a few good lines in it. But the point I was making was, if you make it like an Open University programme, you will only get hardcore geeks watching it. You have to dumb it down to attract a bigger audience

Do you have to dumb it down so much that he has to repeat the inane assertion that "Chimps are people"? Utter crap.

[BoredBloke]

I thought the guy presenting it did drop a few good lines in it. But the point I was making was, if you make it like an Open University programme, you will only get hardcore geeks watching it. You have to dumb it down to attract a bigger audience

[BoredBloke]

I agree that Horizon is not what it once was, but I thought the programme was entertaining enough. What is the point of making a programme to encourage people to take an interest in science if you make it so boring and dry that the potential viewer switches off after 30 seconds?