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The New 'Cosmos' Revives Carl Sagan's Sense of Awe

Despite a different feel and some odd cartoons, Neil deGrasse Tyson catches the magic of the original.
Image: National Geographic Channel

This Monday, the show everyone should be talking about around the proverbial water cooler is CosmosA Spacetime Odyssey, the 2014 update of Carl Sagan's seminal PBS series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The beloved 1980 program was, for millions, an introduction to scientific inquiry and a life-changing look at the Pale Blue Dot we call home. The splashy new reboot promotes itself (awkwardly) as “the real Gravity” but has Cosmos really been reborn? Everyone in the office will probably be debating the finale of True Detective—Rust Cohle and illusory selfhood, et cetera—but see if you can steer the discussion starward.

Maybe interject an idea from the original Cosmos, delivered in your best Carl Sagan voice—gentle but authoritative, like a sensible turtleneck: “We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” (This is also a fun quote to drop on first dates, comment cards and your therapist when there’s a lull in conversation.) In any case, the show, which airs Sunday on Fox, is worth talking about. While the reboot has its foibles, it still features the wonderfully philosophical bent you'd expect of the original.

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At Chicago's Adler Planetarium earlier this week, I was one in a sea of Saganites who watched the premiere of the revitalized docu-series. Broadcast to fans in 10 cities across the US, the first episode was shown in science-friendly venues from the American Museum of Natural History to the Kennedy Space Center. At the Adler, so many people turned out to catch the March 4 preview and live stream Q&A that some were turned away.

It comes as no surprise, as the show is backed with star power. A Spacetime Odyssey is produced by Seth MacFarlane—yes, Family Guy guy and controversial Oscar host, among other things—and Ann Druyan, co-creator of the original Cosmos, widow of Sagan and equally gentle but emphatic spokesperson for scientific inquiry (and legalizing pot).

Popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts this time around, but the plot of the 13-part series remains largely out of this world, exploring the farthest reaches of the knowable universe and the origins of life on Earth. Spoiler alert for anyone who missed Sagan’s groundbreaking Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the instructive 1977 film strip Powers of Ten, or every science class ever: The universe is old. Mind-blowingly old and vast. To explore it is to better understand ourselves.

That’s why watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is a matter of necessity, and what distinguishes it from what’s usually on TV—Hell’s Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares or Hotel Hell or My Cat From Hell or whatever. Whereas the vast nebulae of reality shows entice viewers with the notion that ordinary people (and cats) can access instant fame, Cosmos shows reality as it applies to everyone, famous or not.

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To quote Sagan again, this includes “every hunter and forager, every hero and coward…every mother and father, every inventor and explorer…every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species.” The story is universally relatable, and no one need fantasize about starring in it. We already do.

Of course, its being mandatory viewing doesn’t make the cerebral and celestial series above critique. How exactly does the modern update stack up against the original, which for 10 years after it first aired was the most widely watched public television series in America? What new methods are used to convey scientific facts? Can we even learn about our place in the cosmos without Sagan, clad in a corduroy suit, talking soothingly over Vangelis music?

The first episode begins familiarly, opening on the same cliff in northern California that appears in the 80s original. Over crashing waves and a stirring orchestral score by Alan Silvestri, Tyson addresses the camera. “A generation ago the astronomer Carl Sagan stood here and launched hundreds of millions of us on a great adventure—the exploration of the universe revealed by science," he says. "It’s time to get going again.”

It’s clear this 21st-century odyssey has a lot more going for it in the visual effects department. The original Cosmos—in which Sagan strolls among models, such as Egypt’s Library of Alexandria, that appear to be full-size sets—was pioneering in that department more than 30 years ago. Watch old episodes on YouTube or Hulu, though, and everything looks exceptionally (if endearingly) dated.

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The “Ship of the Imagination” that Sagan invites us aboard at the outset floats through space like a glowing dandelion seed, “drawn by the music of cosmic harmonies.” Inside it’s all breezy minimalism with translucent walls, a mod captain’s desk and chair and pentagonal windows framing cosmic phenomena—basically, my dream apartment.

By contrast, the 2014 Ship of the Imagination is a cold, sleek, straight-out-of-a-blockbuster-sci-fi-movie spacecraft. Stars and planets reflect in its silvery exterior as it whizzes through space. It looks like an electric can opener my dad gifted me from the Sharper Image.

Space is almost Gravity­­­-level breathtaking in the new Cosmos—the Sun and moons and rings of Saturn, Jupiter’s massive swirling red spot, which Tyson explains is a hurricane roughly the size of three Earths. Out beyond our solar system we encounter Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977 and contains the Sagan-curated Golden Record, poised to convey to extraterrestrials the story of our world.

As we travel out farther and farther still, past hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe—which, as Tyson points, could very well be one of infinite universes, the multiverse—I’m reminded why so many astronomers, including Sagan, smoke weed.

While I love the Cosmic Calendar featured in the original, the crude computer graphics and bright colors—neon pink and bright blues that really pop against Sagan’s earth-tone ensemble—the new Cosmic Calendar is much improved. We begin to see the richness of the 2014 Cosmos’ visual palette, with Tyson walking through the forest when an asteroid slices through the sky, a recreation of the one that crashed into Earth some 66 million years ago, meaning game over for the dinosaurs.

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By pinning cosmic events to specific days—the Milky Way forming on May 11, for instance, or the sun showing up on September 1—Sagan’s reborn Cosmic Calendar remains a useful tool for communicating our newness as a species in the context of spacetime.

Less successful are the animation sequences, which are mainly hand-drawn cartoons that look like some low-budget video you’d see in elementary school when there was a substitute teacher. MacFarlane thought animation would be a dynamic way to tell stories like that of Italian Dominican friar Giordano Bruno and his “gospel of the infinite," which is featured in the first episode. Perhaps the agreed-upon style is supposed to be palatable for the Sunday School set, even while Bruno’s story is an example of senseless violence conducted in the name of religion.

But I think it makes Cosmos seem geared exclusively toward kids, when it’s not. As Tyson pointed out in the follow-up Q&A, he’s not worried about kids encountering science, unafraid as they are to embrace their innate sense of wonder. He’s worried about scientifically illiterate adults.

“They run the world, they wield resources," he said. "The issue of our modern time is do adults have the wisdom and insight, brought to you by a scientific perspective, to actually lead this world into the future? Because it doesn’t matter what you do with the kids, if adults don’t have it, you are throwing seeds to fallow ground.”

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“He’s better off the cuff,” a colleague commented to me as the crowd at the Adler cheered Tyson’s insight. It’s true. The affable astrophysicist and frequent Colbert contributor does a fine job in the role of narrator. But it would’ve been refreshing to see him inject more of his signature humor and wit into Druyan’s poetic, wonder-strewn script.

Perhaps the rest of the series provides more of these moments, as when Tyson dons sunglasses to watch the Big Bang or theatrically plugs his ears in anticipation of that massive asteroid. I hope so. The universe itself, and the scientific understanding of it, lends Cosmos enough gravitas; the narration could afford to loosen up a little.

Druyan is one of the best advocates we have for reuniting skepticism and wonder, finding ways we might bridge science and spirituality. During his life on this “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” Sagan carefully and affectingly communicated the same ideas. His sense of wonder was infectious, and that—more than his signature turtlenecks or the way those “cosmic harmonies” stir up nostalgic 80s feelings—is what makes the original Cosmos so important to so many.

It’s not surprising that Druyan’s updated script seems written for Carl: His presence is felt in the words, if not exactly the delivery. But Tyson has his own talents—a more gregarious nature and easy conversational style that makes you just wanna have a beer with the guy—and I hope the series will make better use of them as it progresses.

Still, the new Cosmos is compelling because it forces us to think. Druyan said that, in her wildest dreams, Cosmos “awakens us from our stupor. We take the revelations of science to our hearts and act accordingly to preserve and protect this tiny world.” That objective is what really distinguishes it from what’s usually on TV. Cosmos promotes action and awareness as opposed to inaction or escapism. Gordon Ramsay can belittle people all day, but he can’t make us feel as wondrously small as Cosmos can, tracing our path from stardust to sentience.