Cosmos’ beauty
Evolution, the big bang theory, the origins of time and space and less-thanstellar ratings. Three weeks in, the stardust is starting to settle on Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson and Seth MacFarlane’s re-imagination of Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking 1980 science series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
While Spacetime Odyssey hasn’t had the cross-cultural impact of the original — these are different times — there are moments of breathtaking beauty and wide-eyed wonder just the same. Sunday’s program, When Knowledge Conquered Fear, follows a comet’s tail on its million-year voyage to the sun.
There’s a homage to Sir Isaac Newton and the friendship between Newton and the young mathematician Edmond Halley, who computed the orbit of the comet that bears his name. Newton’s masterwork, Principia Mathematica, prompted a revolution in thinking, Tyson says, and ushered in a new age of science and reason.
This weekend’s hour is full of striking images, but one is particularly profound: a close-up of a baby’s face, studying the world with wide-eyed innocence and curiosity. It’s a deliberate reminder of the heart-stopping closing image in the late Stanley Kubrick’s film classic 2001: A Space Odyssey — and a reminder, too, that some of humankind’s most dramatic advances in science and technology have been driven by a childlike curiosity.
Last week’s hour, which touched on evolution caused a stir in some religious circles, at least in the U.S. south.
The original Cosmos aired on public television, on PBS, preaching to the converted. This version is aimed primarily at the general mainstream audience that, on Global anyway, would otherwise be watching the Sunday animated shows Family Guy and The Simpsons. (Fox, Global — 10 p.m.) ❚ Resurrection, a promising ensemble drama about people returning from the dead to the small town community where they grew up, shows signs of being a midseason hit, judging from early ratings. This weekend’s episode finds Henry Langston (Kurtwood Smith) struggling to accept the boy in front of him as the child he lost 30 years earlier. (ABC, City — 10 p.m.)